Um, yeah.

While looking up something else entirely, I just discovered that Stephanie Meyers' agent is actually from a well-respected agency.

Without in any way necessarily agreeing with the taste of said agent, I do have to say: that's a really, really good agent.

No, I don't have the game installed yet. In fact, I'm feeling like crap and I did say don't expect anything for a while, right? But I've been looking at my downloads and mods and stuff anyhow, trying to figure out what I want to keep, and ACR is on the "only maybe" list.( cut for length )

Okay, well, after thinking about it some more, since I'm still feeling iffy about the old projects, I think maybe I'd be better off just making a fresh start.( Cut for length )

So... yeah. Don't expect to see anything for a while, but I am definitely planning on trying to get back into the Simworld. I may even start leaving comments again someday. :D

Post-by-email automatically strips all html, even when starting with the tag that alleges to not do that. I was hoping to find a way to automagically clone blogger posts for my LJ friends (i.e., almost everyone who reads my blog) but it seems like it's not going to work correctly. So I'll just keep posting links, unless people would rather I manually clone posts, which isn't really any harder or more time-consuming.

New blogger post about plans, or lack thereof, regarding Simming.

Darn it, Pescado, you've gone and made TS3 look potentially interesting...

(PS: My computer is working again.)

Long post about Sims 3 impressions

Graphics editing for fun and profit (without the profit). Long post, lots of pics, hopefully clear. Let me know if you've got questions.

Before reading this, you'll want to go over to sim_spiration and read my entry for today's prompt if you haven't yet. ( Really, it won't make sense until you do. )

Actually there were only 4 things, but I'm going to take the two she mentioned as things she would've used if Marina hadn't gotten there first and do short comments on them for two halves. :D

1. SecuROM
2. Japanese culture
3. Legacy villains in general
4. Rain Greene

And Edgar and video gaming again. ( Cut for tl;dr )

So, there ya go. Hopefully I didn't bore you to tears.

Edit: Oops, I forgot one the first time around, but it's there now!

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. (And note I suck at coming up with things like this sometimes so your five things may be a little strange...)

5 things from Marina:
1. Anime
2. Bright colors
3. Video games
4. Phototaking
5. Edgar Highwind

( Bright colors? Really? )

(If I get other sets of 5 I'll do separate posts.)

I just had a very vivid, very weird dream that ultimately ended with someone being literally pushed into another dimension to save them. I blame the Sims, and particularly the Round Robin project. I'd volunteer for one of the last spots but I'm avoiding it for the same reason I didn't volunteer in the first place: uncertainty about my health and its current effects on my own gameplay time. So, uh... maybe I'll use it on my own, or at some point suggest doing another one, dunno. But I thought I'd share that since I do think it was partly because I read Gin's update before sleeping.

A rather long glossary of CoX terms, for when I forget I'm talking to people who don't play.

Probably more interesting, there's also several posts of screenshots:

Fun Screenshot Sequences
Scenes from Around the Villain Isles
Scenes from Around Paragon City

No character foo yet, but that'll probably be what I do next time I update.

Over on PPPP: Blather about why I'm not buying Sims 3 (long)

I haven't updated the non-Sims gaming blog for a while but I plan to do another post or two, with funny or interesting screenshots, sometime this week probably. In the meantime, the first four posts I made, if anyone's interested:

What's This?
Gaming and Health
What's So Great about City of Heroes? (long)
What's So Great about Guild Wars? (long)

I've made a new blog for my non-Simming gaming blather, if anyone's interested. Incidentally, both PPPP and the new blog now have subscription links on the bottom if you want to use an RSS reader to keep up with them, though I'll continue to post links from here as well (and occasionally posts that are only here as usual).

Hopefully everyone else had a better New Year's Eve... Me, I got a bruise on my arm from an IV! I've had a bit of a sinus cold and some nasty headaches and nausea for a while and yesterday it got to be too much, so I went in to Urgent Care and they did a few neuro tests and then decided it was a tension headeache; no real surprise since the other problem I've had is neck and shoulder pain. They gave me a few good drugs via the IV. I still have signs of the headache today but it's definitely loads better, so I'm trying to relax and drink a lot of chamomile tea, and later I may have some Kahlua, which originally was for last night but obviously got put off. Spent some time logged into Guild Wars for the first time in ages to get the holiday stuff, and we just resubscribed to City of Heroes so we'll probably do more of that later. No Simming yet, sad to say. I miss it, but I still haven't gotten around to reinstalling. Soon, though, I think.

Happy New Year's to all!

I just heard that absentee ballots are estimated at about THREE MILLION, and those have decidedly not all been counted yet. I found this, from the LA Times:

OAKLAND, CA (KGO) -- We're just a week away from the November elections, and today is the last day to request absentee ballots. It's so popular, that nearly half of California is expected to vote by mail, with Northern California taking the lead.

The Los Angeles Times says nearly 69 percent of Santa Clara County voters mail in their ballots, in Marin county it is nearly 60 percent and in San Francisco, 40 percent.

It's also very popular in Alameda County with 46 percent of absentee ballots, and workers are already counting them.

The first results you are likely to hear reported on election night usually
reflect votes cast by vote-by-mail ballot. These, however, are not complete
totals and may reflect only those vote-by-mail ballots returned prior to
Election Day. Those ballots received prior to Election Day can be
“processed” (i.e., verify the signature, etc.) within the seven (7) days prior to
an election. Under no circumstance may a vote count be accessed or released
until the polls close on Election Day.
Election Code § 15101
A substantial number of additional vote-by-mail ballots are returned on
Election Day either to the polling place or to the elections office. These
ballots, because they require the extra handling of checking the voter’s
signature, and ensuring that the voter did not also vote at the polling place,
are usually the last ballots counted, and are not likely to be reported in the
vote totals until after the Election Day.
Elections Code §§ 3017, 3019

So, okay. I got sick of sites telling me how horrible I was for not upgrading to IE7, and tired of Windows Update trying to suggest it, so I did.

Boy, was that a mistake. I now understand why so many people dislike IE these days. IE6 was fine. IE7 is a piece of crap.

Microsoft has Star Trek syndrome. For those of you who aren't geeks, Star Trek Syndrome is this thing where the Star Trek movies tend to alternate between good and bad releases. (You might find some argument about which is which, mind.) Microsoft has apparently developed the same problem. For instance: XP? Fine. Vista? Piece of crap. IE6? Pretty good. IE7? Piece of crap. Luckily that means chances are whatever's after Vista and IE8 will both be fine.

Anyhow, I am now using Firefox. Reluctantly, but I am.

You might wonder, why am I reluctant? Because I am sick of people telling me how fab00 and absolutely better than anything Firefox is. Because it's not magic. It still has CSS display issues (every browser does). It doesn't magically protect you from spyware and malware, despite what people claim. (Ask my sweetie.) It's not that I think it's a bad piece of software; there's definitely good points about it, and there are ways in which it is stronger than IE... but it's not magictabulous. (I've been infected by Miranda, I think.) And I'm sick of people who think that it's okay to code for one browser and not care about others. (That applies to people who do it for IE, too, yes.) And I'm sick of Microsoft bashing. They're not perfect, no, but they're astoundingly better than they used to be, and I think that some people refuse to even consider that. Their problem, I guess.

Anyhow. I'm keeping IE7 installed and using it for sites where I have multiple logins as my alternate (Neopets is the main one for that), but I'm setting Firefox to be my default for now.

I haven't even tried reinstalling Sims yet. I wanted a break. Part of the problem is if the reinstall doesn't fix my problems I'm still not sure what I want to do. The issue doesn't make the game unplayable. It just makes it laggy in certain circumstances. So, um. Yeah. That and I don't feel like digging out and reinstalling all 9000 discs. Next week, I think.

[Cloned from P^4.]