Greg and his freaky stray cat
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Brain candy
I got the Unleashed update for The Sims over the weekend, and have been playing quite a bit lately. I wanted it more for the expanded neighborhood and other options than for the animals, because you can't create pets in the family deal (you have to either befriend them or buy them) and the strays tend to make a huge nuisance of themselves.

A couple weeks back I started the very bad habit of downloading various Sims crap from fan sites. I especially like creatively hacked items that fix little things that make the game wonky. I found this really cool endtable that when you place it in a room everyone in the room is considered to be in a group conversation. This is the best way to develop a friendship, since you only have to be in the same room as the other Sim to build up Relationship points.

I usually build a few families and move them in around the neighborhood, overload them with the money cheat to build their house if I feel like it, or just buy them a phone if I'm lazy, and leave them be to be friends of my 'real' Sim. The real one I don't use cheats on, and generally play exclusively - hoping to find him true love, a fascinating career, and all that happy shit. This is Greg Bear - the Sim I'm currently playing.

I've finally managed to get him promoted to Lieutenant - he's a cop. He hasn't yet found love, but he's flirted around a bit. Since I added Unleashed he has a lot of animals running around. Normally I have him shoo them away because they are annoying as hell, but there are 2 cute little black cats that I've decided he's going to adopt.

So the readme's these hacked objects came with warned me of possible strange side effects. The aforementioned end table causes adults to talk about child topics at random. It also causes the pets to join in the conversation too, meaning that they are now a bit easier to befriend. Now I had been warned about it, but this is the strangest side effect I've ever seen:

This is Cali the cat, having a cup of coffee. The coffee pot is hacked - and it's very much a compromise with me. See, the coffee makers that come with the Sims are practically worthless. They give only the barest amount of Energy with a slight decrease in Bladder as a side effect, and really just don't help at all. I found one some time back that was a mixed blessing - it would increase all your motives to max, and those of everyone on the lot. This was far more than I ever wanted it to do, and all the Sims would get addicted to it and go crazy trying to get some. It was great for parties. I did finally find one that increased Energy to max while putting Bladder at near emergency levels. Not convenient at all - especially considering it had a strange habit of backfiring and giving the Sim brain damage, making him lose all his Logic skill points.

So this coffee maker is sort of the least of all evils until I can find one that does what I want. It comes with a little coffee cup icon decor that you have to place somewhere on the lot. This icon controls it - you set the coffee to increase your motives to a certain level. The thing I don't like is that it increases motives that have nothing to do with coffee, including Bladder. What I want is a coffee maker that gives a substantial, but not insane increase in Energy (a good emergency boost), while impacting the Bladder motive in a realistic fashion as well. I could also see it giving a bonus to Hunger, since caffeine is an appetite suppressant, though I could live if it didn't have that.

But isn't that just the cutest thing? Awww, the kitty gets a caffeine fix. I laughed so hard when I saw this and just had to capture a pic so everyone could see.

More irritation
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Bitchy rants
Somebody at Emerson will pay.

The hubby and I went to Wal*Mart a couple weeks back to buy a completely overpriced and unnecessary piece of equipment - a VHS/DVD recorder, mainly to dub some tapes to disc. We had to return it because it was fuctup and ate a tape, and got a new one. We have bought 2 stacks of blank DVDs to feed the thing. And how many DVDs have we burned so far?

ZERO

The first stack of DVDs wouldn't work because they are DVD+R, and it doesn't specify anywhere on the box that the little '+' means 'does not work on this machine.' I can live with that - they should still work fine on the laptop.

After reading the instructions (which were obviously written in some other language and then translated to 'English' by crack monkeys) I learned that we needed DVD-R. Note the dash, not plus in there. So I grabbed a stack of non-plus bearing dash-R DVD type discs. And how many of them are now bearing dubbed VHS goodness? You know the answer. Apparently the fucking machine just plain doesn't like the brand of discs I got, or it didn't feel like working yesterday, or maybe - just maybe - I'm being fucked with again.

I so don't want to have to deal with some bitch tech motherfucker on the phone. I know he won't speak English with any clarity and I just can't tolerate Geek Speak, especially when I'm in a pissy mood. I had the urge to just beat the shit out of the machine. I hate it when inanimate objects defy me. But no - it would be the height of counterproductive to destroy the damn thing, unless I were to use it to beat some asshole at Emerson senseless for making it behave this way in the first place.

A little weak in the knees
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Various webshit
So I found this little 100 question quizzy here and here. (And who knows where else this filthy little whore meme has been?) I had fully intended to be a good lemming meme fiend and post my answers. I already have them copied somewhere, neatly formatted and everything.

Except I'm not posting it... Yup. Totally pussed out. I find it endlessly amusing that there is no question #23, because that was the one I had decided I would post no matter what it was. You know, as a tease. So I am forced to choose another number of significance as my teaser.

18. Used hot melted wax erotically? Once, a long time ago when I didn't know any better

And that's really all I have to say on the matter.

It's only been like 2 months
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Head games
I finally finished editing the latest entry for Briar County Blues. I've got another one filed up and ready to format for posting, which should be sometime around the weekend. I'm hoping to get another 2 or 3 posted soon too - if I don't keep up on it my natural procrastination urge takes over and the project just sits. I hope I managed to catch most of the little formatting errors - it just irks me when they creep through, and I hate having to go back and fix them.

I'm not imagining it...
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Bitchy rants
This weekend was filled to the brim with petty annoyances. I'm going to spare you the rant - it's really not worth hearing me bitch about a whole bunch of inconveniences. There is one thing I want to point out, however. I have proof that the world was designed specifically to piss me off...

The fucking tape adapter for my mp3 player has been stuck in the radio of the pickup for well over a month now. I don't see any hope of ever getting the useless thing out of there. I got myself one of those little FM transmitters as a replacement, and I was rather pleased to see how well it works. It has a switch on one side of it to choose from 1 of 4 different frequencies, so you have a range of choices in case one of them has a station on it and it's giving you interference. I do at least half of my driving in Clovis, NM.

Clovis has a fucking radio station on every one of those 4 frequencies. That's it. I'm gonna have to blow one up.

Smells like crap to me
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Head games
Make that Topic: Gaming/Bitching...

So I've been in this Exalted game on Rondaks for a while, since well before xmas in fact. The game took a hiatus for the holidays, like most games did, and has since never started back up.

I should have known better. The ref running the game is one of the players from my drastically failed attempt at a Changeling game on Rondaks, and she wasn't exactly a prolific poster, or any good at following instructions.

But get this - a couple weeks back I was rather pissed off to note that she was advertising an Ars Magica game on the Forum. Where in the hell is she getting the time to run a totally other game, when this little exchange happened only recently:

Player A - Off on holiday for about two weeks - sorry! Have a good one!
========================================

Player B - So what's up now?
========================================

Ref - I got hopelessly busy. Normal service will be resumed on about
Tuesday or so. Possibly
========================================

That Tuesday (or so) is long past now. Nothing has happened. Well... not quite nothing:

Player A (again) - So, is it safe to say that this game's not continuing?
Chess[the ref],  sorry if it seems I'm prying, but I'm a lurker in your Ars Magica
game, and since you're active in it and not in this one, it would seem
that this game has finished.
========================================

Ref - No, it's just that the Ars Magica game is currently easier for
me to run; I still plan to continue this game when I'm back in the swing
of term.
========================================
 

I'm just sitting there, waiting for more nothing to happen. It doesn't cost me anything to take up space in a game that isn't happening. This bitch is officially on my 'never in any of my games' list.

I should have known better.

Oh my poor heart
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Nothing in particular
I've been e-heckled. I feel so special.

Some little bitch, probably waiting for hours with orange cheeto stains on his fingers (and likely other areas...), added me to his MSN contact list, specifically to let me know that the website that this blog is attached to (entr0py MULTIMEDIA) is a waste of time and that I should erase it so nobody else will be tortured by reading it.

Oh, how awful that someone [Principal Skinner, I Got Car Sick In Your Office - skid_row_03@hotmail.com] had to read that mess I left lying around years ago when I got tired of updating it. Sure, maybe one day I will get around to doing something with that space, but right now I don't care.

So I told the little troll to bugger himself and immediately tossed him on my block list so I can have the last word. That, ladies and gentlemen, was my first official heckling. Lame.

Flood
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Life in Texas
It's my fault - I wasn't paying attention. I put a load of shirts in the washing machine, then sat my ass back in this chair to Sim some more. Next thing I knew, the utility room was sopping wet and soaking its way into the kitchen. Stupid me, I forgot to check the outlet and make sure it wasn't frozen, and all the water backed up into the house. Stupid stupid stupid.

I've already shop-vac'd up some of it, now the fans have to do the rest of the work. It's gonna be musty in here for a while, and I'm praying there won't be any horrible long term damage.

Procrastination (aka: lazy bastard)
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Dirty Vegas
Topic: Nothing in particular
What I should be doing:

Cleaning up old posts for the Briar Co. blog
Sorting through shirts and ironing
Feeding animals and seeing if the cattle tank is frozen
Vacuuming
Some kind of exercise
Reading a book I've let sit for over a week

What I'm doing instead:

Fucking around on IRC
Listening to music (Look, I actually used the Now Playing thing!)
Posting mindless drivel on this blog

My sleep schedule is in multiple psychotic flip mode. I don't imagine anything is going to get done today. Hell, I'm amazed I managed to get the dishwasher loaded. I'm gonna get a secretary ass if I don't stop playing on this fekkin' machine.

The hand of cucui
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Brain candy
I've given in to the natural urge for evil, and my hand is all scary and red because of it. No not that you sick bastard, I'm talking about Black & White. See, your hand and your temple change according to the actions you take, reflecting the alignment your deific persona takes on. And yes, I've gone over to evil. Biiiiiig surprise...

I tried, really honestly and truly tried to be good. Not for any sort of moral blah-de-blah, but because I see that as the bigger challenge. It's easy to just fling villagers around when they won't cooperate, it's easy to blast your opponents with lightning when they won't make with the worship, but it's much more impressive to win them over with kindness.

But really, not worth it in the long run. For one, the stupid villagers aren't quite so impressed when you do the same thing over and over again. For another, when you start out in a land you've got a very limited amount of miracle juice coming in, so it's nice to have something free to impress the ants... er villagers with. This is what started me down the dark path - I'd pick up the occasional rock and fling it over the village to get their attention. Whee! In comes the belief. Except the controls take some getting used to, and it's far too easy to accidentally roll a rock right into one of their houses. Ooops!

But the land I'm in now was the final straw. First off, there's this little bitch guru that's giving me attitude. I'm supposed to follow the little fucker down a spiral path to some stupid secret place, only I'm not allowed to let him see me. I've tried that damn challenge a good dozen times and can't get past the second tier because the little shit stops and looks around at one point where there is nowhere for me to hide. And where does this little asshole get off telling me what to do? Fuck him - I started flinging rocks and lighting at his temple, and he's lucky he's outside my influence or I'd toss his little "Don't follow me" ass into the fucking ocean. Shithead.

Then there's the whole goal of the island itself. My stupid creature got taken away from me in the previous land. Good riddance I say - the stupid cow is far more micromanagement than I want to deal with. But this damn game was based around the stupid animal, so of course I have to rescue the stupid stroganoff on the hoof. There are 3 villages that I have to take over, and I've managed the first 2. (Of course the little shits in the 2nd one changed their mind when the opposing deity sent a flock of wolves after them, but they learned very quickly that indecision leads to very unfortunate circumstances.) The 3rd one is just outside my reach though. I can't do any helpful miracles for them and engage their belief. Well, I can create wood and food for them, but I have to drop it in a pile as close to their village as I can, then pick it up and fling it at them and that tends to freak them out. So I've had to resort to stronger measures - flinging rocks, fireballs and lightning their way. The Indian village has a wonder that makes my lightning miracles so much more effective, so those poor people have been blasted several times by it. All this violence has changed my relatively benign looking hand into a red and clawed menace and the temple is now a red and black testament to pure evil.

So I figured if I had to be evil I may as well go with it. The Japanese village I've got has been bugging the shit out of me. In the last land I nearly lost a village because the stupid people couldn't figure out how fucking works and kept bitching that they needed offspring. Now really, if you can't figure out tab A into slot B on your own, do you really need to be procreating? So anyway, the Japanese village was doing quite well - too well in fact, every time I stopped by to see what was up they were complaining that they didn't have enough homes. Now I gave them several scaffolds to build houses with, but they kept running out of wood because the efficient little fuckers would deforest everything within miles before I could water the trees and make more of them. So I got rid of all the breeder disciples, figuring they would manage well on their own. Then the evil crept in, I got sick of them complaining about houses when I was busy dealing with the newly conquered and reconquered Indians, and I didn't have much prayer power to work with to do the miracles I needed to do. So I made a new rule: if I visit your village and you complain you need homes, there must be too many of you around so I'm gonna snatch one of you up and toss you on the sacrificial altar. Works well all around - I get prayer power, and there's one less homeless guy to worry about. So far the Japanese ones are the worst about it, often complaining right in the middle of me snatching one up from the last complaint. They will learn eventually.

So there is proof positive that you do not want me to be your Deity. Despite my best intentions, I am a nasty and unforgiving god. And I own a giant stupid cow that would just as soon shit on you as help you. Avoid avoid avoid...