More Sim updates later, but for now…

I guess I should start thinking about next semester. I need to go by the financial aid office and see what I can do about paying for it. I got some grants and loans and stuff for this year, but I never got around to really accepting them or anything, so I don’t know what I have.

I’m getting an advising appointment set up for next week sometime, since I can’t really remember which classes I need in order to graduate. I can’t remember if I’ve finished all the classes for my English minor or not. I think I have like 18 or 21 hours left. Not too bad. So here’s what I’m thinking:

Spring 2005: CS 365, CS 380, CS 494
Summer 2005: MS 202
Fall 2005: CS 340 or CS 370, CS 494 (another one), and possible an English class if I need it

My tentative schedule for next semester is:
CS 365 - TR - 9:40-10:55 - Berry (shouldn’t be as bad as it was last spring, different prof)
CS 380 - MWF - 9:05-9:55 - Thomason (reviews for this prof looked decent, I know this is a hard class, a lot of math-type stuff)
CS 494 - W - 3:40-6:20 - Dunigan (this class is on security, looks kinda cool, again the reviews looked good, minimal programming)

Then I’m just going to work after I get out of class, part time. I need a money tree.

I went and looked at the apartments across the street on Monday. I can get a nice-sized 2-bedroom for barely more than I’m paying now for my tiny 1-bedroom. I’m talking like 200-300 more square feet. That will be nice. They don’t have any free right now, but I’m supposed to check back in a couple weeks. I also need to talk to my current landlord about what would happen if I broke my lease.

More Sims!

Here’s a couple more families I created, the Meadows Family (Joe and Frances) and the Taylor Family (Jason and Becka):

Joe and Frances immediately had twins, which just reconfirms my statement that no one should ever have twins under any circumstances.

Or, really, no one should ever have KIDS under any circumstances, as witnessed by this random family I made, the Autonomous Family. I was going to just set them up and let them do whatever they wanted, with very little help from me (except for on things like having kids, doing homework, and other important things that they won’t do automatically). The family consisted of Lana and Dale, their daughter Dana, her husband Winston, and their three kids, Tara, Paul, and Sera.

Anyway, they immediately had another kid after they moved in, another daughter named Kira. They started off pretty well. They kept their needs fairly satisfied and even some of their wants. Tara and Sera even got into private school.

Then things slowly began to fall apart. Dale’s aspiration score began to just stay negative and he started flipping out and talking to a volleyball.

Paul started to flunk out of public school because his fun level was never up so he never wanted to do his homework. Dana was going nuts trying to take care of all the kids. And then for some reason they just completely stopped taking care of themselves. No one would go to the bathroom when they needed to, so they peed all over themselves and then refused to take a shower. With eight people all doing this, I was about to go insane. I had to intervene a little. They wouldn’t even go make food so they could live.

After I got them sort of back into the green, it was almost time for Tara to grow into an adult. Except right before the start of her birthday party, Dale and Lana both died of old age. What a way to start a party. Kira grew up into a kid, but she had been sort of neglected as a toddler (since no one would even take care of their own needs) and she has the lowest aspiration score possible and is sleeping on the floor. After Tara grew up, she immediately moved into a tiny shack in the woods to get away from her crazy family.

Also, here are some shots of my parents’ house that I built (perhaps I should have taken them during the daytime):

And here’s how Pleasantview is looking at the moment (you can sort of see Trent’s mansion in the upper left hand corner there):

Okay, I’m coming up for air.

So, I got Sims 2 a little over a week ago. It’s been a busy week since then. I’ll try to recount some of my Sim tales.

First thing I did was build my parents’ house. I was never able to fully accomplish this in Sims 1, due to building restrictions such as a set number of floors, not being able to build on hills, etc. I still wasn’t able to fully recreate the house (due to restrictions on staircases) but I was able to do a much better job. I moved my parents into this house along with my brother Steve and me as teenagers. I was actually going to do my other two brothers later, like they had already moved out of the house, but one silly thing about the game is you can’t create relationships (siblings, children, etc.) with people who are not in your family when the family was created. Anyway, so here we are:

Teenagers are a lot harder to raise in this game than in the first (well, they didn’t really exist in the first, but anyway..). Steve never wanted to do his homework and I liked to sneak out of the house with my best friend Meadow. The first time I snuck out, I got brought home by the cops. The second time, I died of hunger the minute I got back home. I don’t know what I did when I snuck out, but eating apparently was not involved. Anyway, the Grim Reaper showed up, and Steve ran out of the house to plead for my life. The Reaper made him play the pick-a-hand game, and Steve chose correctly. I got to live.

Shortly thereafter, Steve and I grew into adults. Steve grew up badly since his aspiration score was low since he never did his homework. This sent our parents’ aspiration scores into the red and they were thoroughly depressed for awhile. Steve’s social also got really low at our birthday party and he started hallucinating and seeing a huge bunny. He danced with said bunny. None of the other people could see it, so we all just think Steve is nuts now. I, on the other hand, grew up well. After our party was over, I immediately moved to the other side of town.

Now that I was an adult, all my friends were still teenagers. I was going to play them and make them grow up, but apparently they were all Townies and didn’t actually live in this neighborhood. So I had to set off on a goal to make new friends (especially since I chose the Popularity aspiration).

So I made a variety of other families of people I know. From left to right, we have the Manplex Family (Ben, Sam, Fjord, and Kris), the Sloffer Family (Matt and Sabrina), and the Anderson Family (Drew, Samantha, and Liliana).

The Manplex Family is actually Ben’s creation. He built their duplex and everything. Ben chose the knowledge aspiration for himself so he really likes to gain skill points. One way of gaining a logic skillpoint is to stargaze through the telescope. Except the first time Ben did this, he got abducted by aliens. When he came back, he was pregnant and three days later gave birth to a baby alien girl named Leia.

Back at my parents’ house, my brother was still living at home. At our birthday party, a cop had showed up to break up the festivities. I couldn’t get her to leave. She stayed there for about five days before finally dying of hunger. She now haunts my parents’ house.

After a few Sim-years, Steve developed a crush on the maid that came to clean the house everyday, Kaylynn. He slowly started talking to her and they fell in love and got married (my parents had grown into elders by this time, as you can see with the picture of my dad toasting the new couple).

After their honeymoon, they moved into their own little house and had a kid named Seth. They then immediately had another one named Adam. Steve grew into an elder when Adam was still a baby and Seth was a toddler.

Meanwhile, Ben had gotten me pregnant and I had twins, Eric and Jewel. Never try to raise twins on your own. It’s not fun. Especially when everyone has the flu and the kitchen is on fire.

After that, Trent Reznor and Maynard James Keenan moved into the neighborhood. Trent opted for a large mansion on the edge of town, while Maynard chose a small place in order to blend in. They immediately started wooing (and woohooing) every woman in the neighborhood. No one could resist. Well, except for me, of course. I have twins. Who has time for that sort of thing?

Anyway, that’s basically it. I need to remember to take more screenshots, cause I never really remember when the good stuff goes on.

Tomorrow the game I preordered months ago will arrive.

Yes, that’s right. UPS will be delievering Sims 2 to my doorstep tomorrow, hopefully when I am at home. If not, they can expect me to go live at the UPS building until the truck gets back.

In celebration of this, I am cleaning my apartment. Okay, so maybe I’m really cleaning because (a) pest control is coming tomorrow, (b) I need to get rid of fleas, (c) I’m having a board game party in a little over a week, and (d) when I get Sims 2, I’m really not going to want to do anything other than play it. Either way, it’s not looking to be a fun night. Of course, on Saturday, I get the joy of giving Lydia a flea bath. Fun. I always wanted to have no skin on my arms.

Also, the Halloween costume dilemma has been averted, since I have already been invited to two parties. If I get invited to any more, there will be decisions to make.

Six Flags has been planned for the next to last weekend in October. I still need to locate some season passes before then.

Well, at least I’m alive.

I was driving down the Interstate last night, around midnight, with Ben and Sam. It was lightly raining, and I was going about 55 mph. Suddenly, my car starts spinning. It spun to the left and then back to the right. Around and around. I think I was screaming. Finally, it stopped. I had gone in circles around on the Interstate through every lane.

Luckily, it was late and no one had been near me when it happened. And I didn’t hit the big concrete things on either side of the road where there was construction. I took a deep breath and continued on my way. That is about the scariest thing that has happened to me in a long time.

I desperately need new tires.

It’s that time of year again.

I got to go on the best kind of shopping excursion there is today. Remember when I said that there was nothing better than dying your hair? I forgot about Halloween costume shopping.

As I was driving to Blockbuster today to switch out my movies (got Mulholland Dr. and SLC Punk), I saw a billboard for Party City advertising Halloween stuff.

Flashback to last year.

I was really wanting to go to a costume party last year, but hadn’t gotten any invites, so I never got around to buying a costume. Then on October 30, I was invited to one. Way to be short notice. Except Party City was out of costumes. At least, good ones. So I didn’t go and sat at home and Tera’s hard drive died.

I’m determined not to let that happen again. So after I went to Blockbuster (and then to Fazoli’s because I was uber-hungry), I drove down the street to Party City. Ah, no noisy and annoying crowds like there are when you are trying to find a costume on October 30. Everything was in stock. I had my choice.

First, I picked up an Evil Pixie costume and tried it on. I really liked this one, just not how it fit. Extremely tight and short. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it was also strapless and I could just imagine all the bad things that could occur with a strapless costume at a crazy party.

Next, I tried a Gothic Pirate costume. It was cute, but it didn’t exactly look right on me.

For my third choice, I found a Midnight Priestess costume (see left). It’s bascially just a velvet cape, but it looks pretty cool on. I held on to that one.

I was about to just get that one when I saw the Gothic Temptress costume (see right). Velvet with lace sleeves. Pretty cool looking. It comes with this massive choker, but I like it better without it. I ended up holding on to that one too.

So, really, to make a long story short, I ended up with two costumes. I better get invited to some parties this year.

I did get the DVD finished last night. At, like, 2 am. But finished.

And now for a song:

Pearls and swine bereft of me
Long and weary my road has been
I was lost in the cities
Alone in the hills
No sorrow or pity for leaving I feel

I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky

Friends and liars don’t wait for me
I’ll get on all by myself
I put millions of miles
Under my heels
And still too close to you I feel

I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night

Audioslave, “I am the Highway”

This is probably going to become a three-day project.

I keep screwing up.

And because I’m sure you are all dying to know, an update on the DVD burning.

I haven’t gotten it burned yet, but I’m definitely on the right track.

Since tmpgenc wouldn’t open my avi file (and since the other program I had put a watermark across the entire video), I had to find another program that would that could convert it to mpeg-1 (or mpeg-2 without audio if possible since I already have my audio file). Took me awhile to do that.

Finally found one, just got done making my mpeg-1 file, which I am now converting to mpeg-2. Then hopefully I can burn. What a process.

.avi file -> MPEG4 Direct Maker -> .mpg file
.avi file -> tmpgenc -> .ac3 file (audio)
.mpg file -> tmpgenc -> .m2v file (video)
.ac3 and .m2v files -> DVD Author -> VIDEO_TS folder
VIDEO_TS folder -> Nero -> DVD (yay!!)

This has taken over 24 hours.

When did burning a DVD get to be such a headache?

Time: Last night.

Okay, I had two files that I was going to burn onto a DVD. One was already in DVD format, with the whole VIDEO_TS folder and everything. The other was an .avi file. Okay, this shouldn’t be too bad, right?

First things first, I have to convert the DIVX file to an mpeg. Load up TMPGEnc. My trial has expired. Okay. Go to the other computer. Download it. Copy .avi file over to that hard drive.

Ugh. It won’t open the file. Says it can’t or it’s unsupported. Google. Need some random codec to use instead of the DIVX codec. Whatever. Okay. Installed. File loads. Great. Set it up to make an .mpg file and go back to my laptop.

Two hours later, it is done. Good. Load the first file into TMPGEnc DVD Author. Wonderful. That works. Load newly made mpeg. No go. Audio is all wrong. Needs to be the same thing as the other file, which of course was made with a different program. No problems. I still have that program. Make audio. Now need separate video file.

Go back to desktop computer. Set it up to make an .m2v file. Go to bed.

Time: Today

Yep, the .m2v file finished overnight. Good. Load it into DVD Author along with audio file and other DVD file. Yay it works. Make menus. Start to make new DVD file.

Two hours later, it is done. Good. Make sure it works. Load up WinDVD. Oh, great. The file I just made (the m2v file) freezes after about 10 seconds. I check the actual m2v file. Freezes. Check the avi file. Freezes. It was just working before I started all this!!

Google. Need DiVX codec. I have that already. Thinks. Removes other random codec. Ah, avi file doesn’t freeze now. Good.

Go back to desktop. Remove codec. Oh yeah, now I can’t load the file. But if I have that codec installed, the m2v file freezes. What to do?

Right now I’m converting my avi file to an mpeg-1 file and seeing if that will load up on TMPGEnc without that other random codec. We will see in another two hours.

Another Saturday night of burning CDs…

I was at Hastings today, and I saw a Tool CD case. Had to get it, of course. So, I moved all of my CDs that I listen to regularly into that case (since it only holds 24) and keeping my other CDs that I don’t listen to as often in my 96-CD case. I have far too many CDs.

Tonight I am trying to catch up on my CD burning, since I haven’t done it in awhile. I’m making another copy of my Audioslave CD, since I gave Ben my other one. Also burning: Deftones - White Pony, Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue, Live - Throwing Copper, The Strokes - Is This It, QOTSA - Songs for the Deaf, KMFDM - Retro, Prozzak - Hot Show, Orbital - Blue Album, Porcupine Tree - Up the Downstair, Sublime - 40 Oz. to Freedom, Infected Mushroom - Classical Mushroom, and Infected Mushroom - IM the Supervisor. Whee. Lots of new things to listen to in my car now.

Knoxville is celebrating Boomsday today, so I’m not venturing out of my apartment tonight. I can’t take the traffic.

Last night I went and saw Requiem for a Dream at the UC on campus. I dragged Ernie along with me, since he’d never seen it. And he said it was an excellent movie, but he never wanted to see it again. I vaguely remember saying that exact same thing the first time I saw it. They are showing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas next Wednesday and Shrek 2 on Friday.

I’ve decided I want to redo the look of my bedroom. It’s had this yellow and white look to it for three or four years now, and I just want something new. Maybe posters. Hmm.