( Four Bad Sims ep 7 )
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I've known this for a while but Youtube is going to force everyone to use their new layout tomorrow. The new layout is garbage, but they're going to push it through anyway despite how many people have complained. You should see the responses on their heads up video. It's one of the few times I gave a one star rating. I usually have a policy that if I don't like a video I just stop watching it. I don't give out low ratings, it's not nice. The person liked putting the video up and would like a full rating. Giving low ratings just seems spiteful to me. There have been lots of videos I didn't like. No one made my watch them so I just leave them be. I don't like it when I get a low rating so I have the decency to be this way with others in return for the same thing. But this video angered me so much I broke my rule. Some people had tried it early and they don't like the new look. I think Youtube is trying to look like Myspace. Nooooo!! That's the perfect way to ruin it. So I made a HUGE long screen capture of my channel before it gets destroyed tomorrow. One thing I already hate that I've seen on others' channels is you can't watch the video in its own page after you click it. Or I haven't figured out how. How is commenting going to work that way? I don't want to watch it on their page and be distracted by all their pictures. And supposedly there's some feature that friends can recommend videos and they appear on your channel. Talk about invasive. As a control freak I don't want anyone putting anything on my channel without my say so. I am not happy about this.

A bit of a budgie disaster again. Two days ago we had to spary the house for bugs. We had an invasion of seed moths and it was so annoying we couldn't stand it anymore. Seed moth caterpillars breed in bird food that's left open. Oops, yes we've been bad about that. But after freezing all the food to decontaminate it (imagine 100lbs of bird food in the freezer), sealing it safely and cleaning all the cages head to toe the moths were still everywhere. I have no idea what they were getting into. So I decided to put all the birds outside and let off a bug bomb. I knew the breeding budgies wouldn't like that. They are afraid of everything now since the snake fiasco. We moved the cage very carefully outside with the two eggs. But I think they remembered being out there when that happened. I left them out over night and when I went to bring them back in the next day the female had kicked out both eggs and broken them. So breeding has not gone well this year. I switched mates and hope this will help though the new female might not be better. She's another Gaus baby but has splayed legs. I worry she won't be able to mate because of this.

I tried to make a house for the Copes' yesterday. This second attempt went much better, but I didn't keep it as the whole basement thing didn't work out for me and I found some flaws in my original blue print design. Back to the drawing board. Literally. I was never good at technical, architectural drawings anyway so I'm not sure how to fix the problems. I'm not so good at drawing to scale.
I need to make an update for the sim stories too.
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I haven't had much to say which is why I haven't been making real posts. I transfered the handwriten part of my story to word yesterday and was happy to get that out of the way. I'm hoping today I can add a little more to it. It's high time I finish the darn thing and actually do something special with it.

The garden is a disaster. The weeds took over and because I haven't been well it fell into neglect. Seems the same thing happened last time around this time. I need to rip everything out of the beds and start over from scratch. I'm hoping the onions are still doing well at least but I don't know because I haven't been out there in days.

I made a post to cucurbitaceae about how I want to build an A Frame for gourds. It would be easier and cheaper to build that in the other side yard than the main arbor which is expensive and would take more work. I really want to have some nice gourds and luffas and something I can walk under that 's pretty. Here is the link for the inspiration.

I got the strategy guide for Sims 3 and it's been fun reading it. I am learning some new things. I need to read the chapter on how to build a house because I suck at that type of thing. I drew the floor plans and front of the Cope house ages ago and it would be cool to see it come to life in this game.

Oh and lastly, I put some young pigeons in the loft yesterday. So they'll settle for a week before they start flight training. I hope they'll be ok. That hawk has been hanging around a lot.
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( Four Bad Sims ep 6 )
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( Four Bad Sims ep 5 )
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( Stunt Sims ep 3 )
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( Four Bad Sims ep 4 )
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( Stunt Sims ep 2 )
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( The Four Bad Sims 3. A conversation with Davon, Solan and Cope )
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Happy 4th everyone. I didn't do much this year. Chris and I were home most of the time and we cleaned up the house. After that he played Fallout 3 and I was playing Sims 3. We did that for several hours then we lit some of those cute snake fireworks I love so much, and some sparklers. That was fun. One neighbor had a cool fire in his yard. I'd never seen anything like it before. And the backyard neighbors were setting off big fireworks. It was great. They're still exploding as I write and we probably won't get much sleep tonight.

I miss all my LJ friends. It's amazing that my whole LJ list is out of town or entertaining guests. I'm hoping I can still travel this month. Because there's likely no one around I won't be posting my Sim stories very much until the holidays are over. But I have made LOTS of screen caps. Things are better in my new game. I still can't place the Stunt Scabs. It would have been so funny to randomly run into them. But the game keeps eating them. At least they have their own game which I haven't touched yet.

I think it will be safe to let the pigeons fly on the 6th. Poor things have been cooped up for a week. Protist has been really friendly flying to me lately.
I made the last level 80 item for Talon today and all the level 70 stuff ProPhage was missing. Now I can just sit back for the next ten levels and have my guys produce for me.
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Well after thinking about it I started my game over again in Sunset Valley. I was not happy about it but I placed EVERYONE in the city this time. I now have the Stunt Scabs, Thanatos, Owen, The Cope Family, Chris and Des, and Solan and Davon. I played them all long enough to just get them jobs. I'll mostly be controling Davon's house, The Copes and Owen. Everyone else will be NPC's. So far no one's disappeared and I hope it stays that way. I do miss Riverview. It was so much prettier. I'm hoping it was just Riverview that has that glitch. I'm still working on having everyone meet and rebuilt the friends and enemies they all had. These scenes are from my old Riverview game but the story is progressing very similarly.

( Four Bad Sims 2 )
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I don't think the pigeon I have right now will work out. I think it's a male. Once his wings grow out I'l put him back in the loft to be a flyer. I will transfer the name Olney once I find a suitable replacement. I have that one baby that's Punkin's half sibling. Here's hoping it's a girl. I don't like nasty bites, threat displays and wing slaps when I'm servicing the cage or when I hold him. This is why male pigeons don't make good pets, unless you like fighting with your bird. I have a friend on Youtube that's halarious and loves fighting with his male pigeon. I had a pet male like that. Turbo was my male pigeon I used to fight with. He was great. But now I want a nice bird like I had with Punking so I really want a female.

Now that I've moved Peep out of Protist's cage she's gotten clingier which I like. She flies to me more. Today she landed on my head twice which was cute. I was doing dishes and she flew right in my face, did a U turn showing me her feet, tail and tummy then flew back to her cage. It was so fast and funny. She was inches in front of my face.

BTW, earthmother45 I sent you your seeds. Please let me know when you get them. I hope they make it there soon and you have lots of fun with them.

And I'm in a bad mood right now because of Sims 3. I have experienced the first bad glitch in the game. Grey furniture or furniture that doesn't load right away I can ignore. I put up with those kinds of bugs. But I get royally pissed when characters disappear. Here's how this glich goes. I had been playing with Davon and Solan and figured it was time to switch to Des and Chris. I've given into temptation and started to use the money cheat at least to help the families start out. Well I couldn't find Des. I clicked on all the houses and nothing. So I switched to Owen because he had met her and she should have been in his relationship list. She was. So I invite her with the plan to then tell her to leave and follow her to her house. That didn't work because she got in a car and was too fast for me to catch. YARG!

Well, I thought perhaps she had moved in with someone or Chris had died. So I clicked all the houses. Luckily they show pictures. I found that some guy had moved in with them and the house had been put in his name. WTF? So I broke them up and moved Chris and Des into a big farm house. There good! That's what I wanted to do anyway. So now I'm ready to go back to Owen and he's gone! AAARRRGGG!!! He wasn't in any of the houses, he was just gone. I replaced him and he couldn't aford the same he house anymore. Again WTF? Why not? That's the house I started in? So I put him in another house, used the money cheat and bought the original house back despit it being small. I wanted to finish there because he's nextdoor to Cope. Well all the furniture I had bought was still in that house and had raised the property value and that's why I couldn't buy the house. The worst part was it was like starting over. He had no skills and had lost everything he'd found. AAARRGGG. I had him befriend Des again. He even randomly ran into Fungus. So all should have been well now. It wasn't.

So I'm leveling him again and I decide to look in my relationships page. Des and Chris were gone again. So was Fungus. I checked the map and they were gone from their house to. This was DURING game play. I hadn't even switched families. I'm quite mad about this. I don't want to have to keep reloading everyone and restarting. I wonder if it's a Riverview issue. I responded to a thread that was started as two others seem to have the same problem. I didn't want to post on the forums but this has me pretty upset and I don't want to play if all my time and effort will be for nothing. I wonder if there are too many characters. Just when I was starting to respect PC games something like this happens. Missing main chracters? That does not happen on consoles! This is a major glitch that is like an unfinished game. How can they release a game with such a major problem? Yeah I could start again in the other town but the whole starting over is what I don't want to do. This would make my 3rd restart.
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Meet the Stunts Scabs.



Starting from Left to right we have Airball, Badyear, Fungus, Half A Mind and Lucky. Whiz Vid is the only one missing from here. The rest will be behind the cut and lots of pics from Ep one of the Stunt Sims.

( Comparisions and Episode 1 )
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I did waste most of today playing Sims. I'll talk about that last. No pics this time. Three posts in one day is enough. Well I have a bunch of baby pigeons I'm still hand feeding. Most have weaned but three have not. No flying for a few days. The fireworks are already flying and it's not even July yet.

I am finally starting to feel guilty about not working on any of my stuff. I do think about my Deathclaws from time to time, usually while I'm falling asleep at night. And poor Solan. I had started to ink his pic but stopped. And I'm thinking about both my stories, my main one and my Deathclaw one. YARG. I've been neglecting my dragons on DragonAdopters. But I got on and made a level 80 thing for Talon today. Now I just need one more, need to make three 70 items for Prophage and then I can leave them to just make resources.

And my email has been stuff with youtube responses. I had to clean it all out because I hadn't bothered in like three days. It's gettng rediculous and annoying. I must post some of those comments though.

Well new icon. Davon doesn't get enough attention and this is the best version of him I've made in a game. I was looking at him and he's so elegant and handsome in a powerful way. This was icon material. I also made one for Owen.

The biggest thing is that I have made the Stunt Scabs. I'm amazed how well they turned out. I put them up for people to download. I do hope people will like them, but probably not because no one knows who they are. But thier personalities are so different and dynamic it's funny to have them interact. One thing that's annoying though is since they have so many bad traits I have to keep up with them. They're like a bunch of kids. One was missing work and I had to send him on his way. But more on that once I make their post. It took forever to make them. And I didn't get to play with my four bad boys today because of that. So tomorrow I'll have to play them.
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I think I'll post episodes of my guys. I started over in the town of Riverview. I love the name because we have a Riverview here that we almost moved to. So the characters in my new game so far are Chris, Des, Cope, Caroline, Max, Owen, Davon, Solan and Thanatos. Thanatos came out horrible! He looks like Big Cheif Rain In the Face. I just couldn't get him to work for some reason and they only have one mustach style that isn't quite right. Yarg. My Saints Row 2 Thanatos is the best ever! It's funny how some games lend themselves better to some characters. While I can make Owen in almost anything his Saints Row 2 version is probably his worst.

I forgot to mention traits in the last post so I'll be posting them here.

Cope: Genius, Computer Whiz, Bookworm, Good and Great Kisser. Yeah who'd have thought that from a scrawny nerd? Life wish is to be able to merge robots with biology.

Caroline: Genius, Handy, Bookworm, Family oriented and workaholic. Life wish is the same as Cope's.

Max: Family oriented, Good and Genius. Kids only get three and no life wish.

Owen: Mean Spirited, Genius, Hot headed, Charismatic and snob. Life wish is to be a famous surgeon.

Davon: Evil, Charismatic, Ambitious, Snob, Genius. Life Wish. To be the Emperor of Evil.

Solan: Loner, Workaholic, Ambitious, Perfectionist, No sense of humor. Life wish is to have the perfect aquarium. Yeah I thought that was so funny and not what you'd think of a sun god that I HAD to pick it for him. It's something for his S type to go to town on.

Thanatos: Ambitious, Charismatic, Athletic, Snob, Good Sense of Humor. Life with, to be CEO of a mega corporation.

Eventually I'll start a game in the first town again with the Stunt Scabs. I have my hands full switching between five homes. Davon and Solan live together. Ok now onto the pics.

( The Four Bad Sims )

I got a bike wrack and a bike for Owen. I just don't know how to use it yet. :P Stay tuned for the next episode.
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So I have a new video game I'm playing that caused me to once again disappear. In fact I'm only just now popping in to make a post and say I'm sorry I haven't been commenting. I have read everything. I just need to find time to respond. Anyway, every since Cheesey has been posting pics I've wanted this game and I finally got it yesterday. We couldn't aford it but both Chris and I sold a bunch of our old PS2 games we no longer play. Some were really difficult to let go. We even sold our second copy of Fallout 3 which I REALLY struggled letting go. One thing that scares me about this game is how since I have been playing I have not once thought about my Deathclaws or felt the strong love I've been having for them. I'm so easily knocked out of obsessions be it for good or bad reasons. I fear I may lose it becuse now I'm so wrapped up in this game, though I'm playing with my own characters.

So anyway, onto the pictures then.



Here's Owen. I am amazed at how awesome he turned out in this!! I think that the Godfather Owen is still my best but this might be a close second. Man he just has the look of an asshole about him doesn't he?

( Many more behind the cut. Owen and Cope in Sims 3 )

That's it for now. I'm still learning how to play so I won't be posting the play by play just yet. I think I need to start from scratch too. I'm worried because I don't think you can reuse characters in new games. I need to find a way to save them. Sims since they are made by the same guy as Spore has a thing where you can upload them to the website. I will do that in case I need to redownload again. But I don't like their website. It's not user friendly. Spore's site was so straight forward. They have an FAQ for how to load your avatar and yeah, I had the same problem everyone else is having. I can't see the button. It just isn't there. I also did make Chris and me but I'll post those next time. Chris turned out pretty well. Me not so much. I have such a unique look I can never make myself right in a video game. My Saint's Row version was the best and she still was off.

Oh also I downloaded that free city Riverview and two hair styles. I found the hair, but I can't find Riverview. I worry it will only work with a new load and I don't think I could remake everyone because you can't see what features you picked and the sliders don't have numbers. I wish it had been like Saints Row and I would have writen all their formulas down. I still have to make Davon, Solan, Thanatos and all the Stunt Scabs. I think the main characters I'll control will be the Cope house and then switch between them and Owen. Oh and I don't know how to buy a new house and move my family to it yet. My biggest complaint again is the damned control or lack there off. I hate the keyboard. And when I hit the arrows on the keyboard or even click the arrows in the menu to rotate things it's unresponsive and I have to keep clicking really hard. Annoying. But I'm having fun. I'm sure it will be better once I get over my newbiness.
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Oh dear. With the 4th of July right around the corner it's time to keep the pigeons locked up. The 4th, Christmas and New Years are the holidays I can't risk my birds getting burned or shot with fireworks so I only fly them in the morning. No more evening flights until the skys are safe again. But perhaps the fireworks will scare off the hawks or they'll give up thinking I won't be flying my birds anymore. That would be good.

I have named the yellow budgie hen I put in with Peep, Lemon Drop. She doesn't know she has a name. She's an older hen and won't respond to it but I call her that so I know which hen I'm talking about. Anyway she laid her first egg today on the floor of the cage. It's her first time. I'm a bit worried though because despite having a cuttlebone she's been eating, her abdomen is big and swollen and I can tell she has lots of eggs backed up. Luckily this one finally passed and no prolapsed uterus like what killed Punkin. But I'm going to be adding lots of calcium to the water to help out. I don't know if she eats the pellets but they do have calcium too. Hopefully she'll pass the rest of the eggs and they'll all hatch into pretty Phage/Gaus crosses. As for my other pair...they aren't showing any interest in the nest box. I think they were pretty traumatized by the snake. If worse comes to worse I may repair the male with another hen. I don't know if he'd go for her. Sigh.

And in other bird news...Olney and I aren't working out well. She's gotten really mean and I suspect she may be a he. I didn't want a male because males are mean and not snuggly. She might be going through her terrible twos, but I think it acts too much like a male. Not sure what to do yet but this sucks. I feel like I'm dating after having lost a mate. Punkin loved me. I can't seem to find that again. BUT there is a new baby that is one of Punkin's siblings that looks promising and unqiue! I hope it's a girl I really do. I think this pigeon might be a half sider. It's all white but the left wing has a bit of normal grey. That's fine, but the right wing I think has cinnamon. If so that means she could be a half sider which is VERY rare. I've only seen it a few times in budgies where half the budgie is blue and the other half is green. Grey is the normal dominant color while cinnamon is sex-linked. Also this would be a half sider pied. Hum, I'm thinking this IS a female because none of the parents were visual cinnamons so that means the father passed it on visually only to his daughters. Olney might be losing her airconditioned cage and name if she doesn't straighten up. Having Punkin's little sister might be just what I need.

I have finished watching all the Darkwing eps. Now I can concentrate on Tiny Toons and Gilligan's Island.

BTW, I'm still offering budgie art commissions if anyone is interested. I could use the money. They are $20-$30 depending on how complex or if a background would be wanted. If you know someone that might be interested tell them about me. I take paypal.



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Got a teensy bit of writing done today. Not as much as yesterday but something is better than nothing. I really need to start to work on some art. I scanned the picture of Solan, now I just have to open it in Illustrator and start to ink it.

Cheezey has been posting some funny pics of Sims 3 and it's really making me want to get the game. If I did get it I'd crate Davon, Solan, Thanatos, Owen, Cope, Caroline, Max and possibly Destina. Or may-be Leroy my cowboy that I never talk about and have the computer control him. Actually who I'd really like to try that aren't my own guys would be the Stunt Scabs from Stunt Dawgs. What a hoot to have Fungus and his five villains all running around causing trouble. What's weird is that they are humans in the cartoon but some where shaped so weird that I don't think they'd look right realistically. Still it would be fun to try. I don't know if my PC could handle that game though. It has a hard enough time with Spore which I haven't played in ages. I don't even remember what I was doing. If I ever play that again I may just delete and start completely over with a fresh planet. I don't know. I may uninstall the thing too to make space. Heck I'd love to get the PC version of Fallout 3 just to get a Deathclaw follower. I know I'd hate to play a game like Fallout on PC because of the darn keyboard. That's the main reason why I don't like PC games. And controlers never work for me. PC games just never work for me. Consoles are better since they are machines made JUST for gaming.

I've been cleaning up around the house and the place is looking much nicer. I'm currently hand feeding five baby pigeons. I've been feeding them for almost a week now. I really didn't want to handfeed any more birds but I had to because they were starting to walk around in the loft and the older birds were pecking them. One had been hurt pretty badly, but he's recovered now. Had I not pulled them they would have been killed. I don't know who the idiot was that said pigeons are the symbols of peace. Pigeons and doves are very aggressive birds. The males are just plain mean and they love to fight. That person didn't understand that they are animals and can behave as such. So I'm stuck with some babies.

Well here are my dragons. Long time no post. I need resources which means I need to have them grow a little faster so they can level. Kotic hit 30 today and it was odd not getting another dragon. Now I'm selling off all my level 20 stuff. I've realized that once Talon hits 100 there's no more passing down items and I have to buy level 100 stuff four more times as each one gets there until I'm left with nothing in my inventory. That will be weird.


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I'm proud of my birds. The hawk attacked again but my birds were already in the air and split up in all directions. They were too fast in level flight and the Cooper isn't designed for open air chases so he gave up. All of them returned home safe and sound. I'm still feeding that crow the left over dove and pigeon eggs. I think he has a baby. The baby is afraid of me but the parent comes and waits for me to put food out. I put some pellets out today and he ate them. It's so cool how big and glossy he is. I think I could be friend this bird with some work.

I've been getting kind of nostalgic for the 90s. Chris and I have been watching Tiny Toons. I remember what I was doing the first time I saw each ep. Not only that but Acme Looniversity was laid out very similar to my high school. I was in high school when the show came out so I loved it because I could relate to the kids in class. I really miss my senior year. It was wonderful. When Chris isn't around I've been finishing up the Darkwing eps on the dvd set. I stopped watching them when I first got it and now thanks to Cheezey I decided to finish them up and watch them. That show was out the same time Tiny Toons was so I remember my first time and initial reactions and thoughts too. So yeah I kinda wish I could go back in time.

I've been thinking a lot about my guys lately. I think tomorrow I'll try to start work on that drawing of Solan.
It's funny that on Da my most faved work is my SpongeBob/Star Trek TNG cross over. Now with the ST movie out it's been getting a lot more hits. I did a search for both SpongeBob and Star Trek TNG and my drawing didn't come up in the first five pages. I gave up so I don't know how people are finidng it and viewing it so much. I also think my art is crappy in that. Makes no sense why it's so popular. I bet I could redraw it now and make it loads better. But I'm not sure I want to do that. It's popular enough as it is.

I'm a bit annoyed right now. I attempted my first animation but I suck with gif programs. I hate them and they hate me. My original easy to use Image Ready wouldn't let me save my files. So after arranging 25 frames and setting their timing it didn't allow me to save. YARG!! Ok so now I have to learn to do it in Photoshop since it has an animation feature too. Ok. So I make this really cool pic of my Deathclaw, but despite it saying it could make it 39 KB It keeps making it bigger even when I pick original. It keeps optimizing it and adding quality or something to it. I even reduced it to 64 colors from 256 and it won't make it 39. And screw LJ for having a file size limit of 40KB. They should make it 50 and up the size of icons to 120x120. So I can't use it as an icon. I can only show you what I got.



But it doesn't end there. I decide to make a 50x50 since I'm FINALLY going to change my icon on DA. I love my budgie, everyone loves her too but I think it's time for a change. Espeically for my own art that I animated. But DA sucks worse, they always suck, because their limit is 15KB. I don't think it would kill anyone if they allowed images to be 30KB. Well I make my icon after many saves and deletes. Photoshop lies. And my icon is 15.6Kb. It's just mocking me. Can we drop the 0.6 please? Well then I went to upload these to photobucket and photobucket doesn't like my little 50x50. I even saved it twice with two names and it won't upload it. So I can't show you the little one. I'm a bit annoyed. It's lunch time. Guess I'll step away from the computer and grab something to eat.

EDIT: I got it to work!! Not sure what I did. There's a little quality loss. Mostly an annoying dot on his brow. But other than that it's not bad. Turned out to be 38.6 KB. Talk about cutting it close!! I also made a small one for DA at 12.6 but I can't upload it to photobucket still so I don't think it will work on DA. Sigh.
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