It's real. That same commercial played on TV not too long ago and those Bump-Its are in stores now. I just saw them at Wal-Mart the other day.

Well, it turned out to be erroring on SkyCommon.ini which is a file I never even heard of, and since I never changed any of my files, I know I didn't do it. I'll grab the original file from the disc and hopefully that will fix it.

Edit: Well, I replaced the SkyCommon.ini with the one from the disc (the files were the same size, the only difference was the date) and the game patched. I still haven't tried playing, but at least I got that out of the way.

When I was looking for the file I had to replace, I noticed that there are config files for different sky states, like stormy, cloudy, etc. which makes me wonder if they started to put weather in, but in the end decided to take it out, just like they did with TS2.

My game won't patch. I tried several times, and I can't figure out why it's not working. The first patch didn't give me any problems. The first time I tried I got "Update Error: Invalid File Found" but it didn't tell me which file was invalid. The next time I tried, I got "The Sims 3 Update cannot continue because programs associated with The Sims 3 are currently running. Please stop these applications before attempting to update The Sims 3." At that time, all I had running was the launcher. I really can't figure out what's wrong. I haven't changed anything with any of the files. And I only have a few downloads, mainly AM and a few clothing, hair, patterns, and default skintones. I tried removing my Mods folder and trying to patch, but it still failed. Is there anything I'm missing that I should try?

The same happened in my game. I told the baby's dad to bring him to the cake since the mom was at work. The grandma was outside working in the garden, but once I told the dad to bring the baby to the cake, the dad went to get the baby then set it on the kitchen floor and then the grandma came inside and proceeded to take the baby to the cake. I wonder if the game picks the oldest sim on the lot to take the kid to the cake.

I was surprised there was no slider to make the eyebrows thinner/thicker or more eye sliders. It does feel like it's missing a lot from what we had in BodyShop.

Nouk's hairs were always my favorite in TS2. I'm glad we'll be getting them for TS3. The only other thing I'm really missing from TS2 is Bruno's makeup and lingerie.

Why are the install instructions for installing her files different than cc from other sites? The hairs and the lingerie on her site all have a resource.cfg file that you're supposed to put in the root game folder, but what's the purpose of it?

Would the Teen Style Stuff beddings work like this? I'd mainly like the butterfly and the silky quilted beddings that were from the goth and socialite sets. I haven't tried making any patterns yet, so I'm not quite sure how they work or if the patterns would convert to TS3.

Well, I just had it happen. I sent my sim to work and she went inside for a few seconds, then she came back outside and the work queue disappeared. Her husband has the same hours and is in the same career, but it wasn't happening to him. They're both in the culinary career, but the husband works at the cheap diner and the wife works at the nicer restaurant in Riverview.

I wonder if this is happening to some of my families. I play my families in 1 week (in-game time) cycles, and whenever I switched recently, all sims who work have horrible performance, while when I last left them, they all had the highest level of performance. They also all seem to get that Anxious To Advance moodlet, which I guess is because their performance is so low, they're not getting promoted.

I have no idea if this was caused by AwesomeMod or not, but my sims no longer have the option in City Hall to change their names. I've switched families, and it's the same for all of them. It worked fine until rather recently. Because of this, I've had to resort to using editsim to change names of sims. While I was at it, I did make a few tweaks to sims that were born in game (like changing a blonde haired, green eyed sim born to two parents with black hair and brown eyes so he looked more like he should have) and changing a few of the traits the game assigned them while I was away from the family. One sim, though, was born kind of fat, even though his parents are both skinny, so I changed his body to skinny with some muscle. But after I finished in CAS, he was right back to his old body. I tried it again, with the same results. Every other thing I've changed through editsim has stuck, but this won't. Is this how it's supposed to be? I've now gone to having him exercise everyday after school (he's a 12) but his body shape won't change at all. I'm guessing that the genetics in this game don't work properly because I've had lots of sims with hair & eye colors that neither parent has and body shapes way different from their parents.

Since I play with Story Progression off, I've avoided townie names for the most part. If I want a family to have a baby, I play through the pregnancy and name the baby before switching to another family. The only time I missed a baby being born, it was a girl and she was named Latisha. I've only ever known 2 people named Latisha in real life and both were black. This baby was half white and half asian. I just changed her name at City Hall. Of course, now I can't rename sims at City Hall anymore for whatever reason, so I'm more careful about making sure not to let the game name the babies. The only way I can change their names is through editsim. For whatever reason, when a sim who has kids from a previous marriage gets remarried, the kids in the family end up taking their step-dad's last name, which doesn't make sense to me. So I've had to change a lot of names, but now that City Hall doesn't have the rename option, I have to do it through editsim.

I tried rummaging for the first time last night, and the first house, no one came outside, but at the second house, a guy came out and yelled at my sim and it made him go home on his own. I had to drive clear back on the other side of town to continue my rummaging. But after that, no one else bothered him. And this was during the day. He works nights, so I can't send him out at night to do it.

I just went into my Sims 3 folder in My Docs to delete my cache files and I found a bunch of .MDMP and text files in there. Apparently they have to do with the launcher messing up when installing files. Because I just tried and failed twice to install two patterns before they installed successfully and there are two sets of those files that match the time that I tried to install them. I opened one of the text files and I don't understand what's inside, but it has my system info, build info and exception info.

The launcher has been acting weird for me, too. Before the patch, once in awhile, I'd go to install something, and the green bar would move a little, then disappear and the item would still be in the launcher, but not installed. I'd try it again, and it would install. But since the patch, it does that way more often and I usually have to try 20 times to successfully install anything. The other thing that happens, is it installs, then the second box that says it's installing gets stuck at 0%, but if I close it, it says it was installed. Either way, it's really annoying. I'm going to give one of the Sims3Pack installers a try.

I've noticed this with multiple pregnant sims. For whatever reason, while naked, they lose the baby bump.

Why would Prima print two different sizes of the same guide? Is the smaller guide at Wal-Mart cheaper?

Well, I'm still getting a black or gray screen in game after trying everything that's been suggested to me, so I contacted XFX support. They suggested I install and run 3DMark06 a few times in a row. I ran it 3 times, and it was fine. But an hour later, I ran it again, and just a few minutes in, I got this error:

IDirect3DDevice9:: Present failed: Device lost (D3DERR_DEVICELOST)

Does anyone happen to know what this means? I'm actually afraid my video card is dying. I've only owned it for 4 months now, but the fact that it didn't start messing up until 3 weeks ago and has gotten worse over that time makes me think so. I've tried everything else I can possibly think of. Later on tonight, my brother's going to let me try installing his 8800GTS to see if I can run TS3 with that. I guess if it runs, then it proves it's my video card.

I bought my copy of the Prima guide at GameStop and I can read the font just fine. In fact, several of my paperback novels have smaller font than the guide. I got it for 20% off and I had some money on my Edge card for some trade-ins I did awhile back, so I only paid like $4 out of pocket for it. I'm kind of glad I got it since I can't play the game until the crashing stops (I'm downloading 3dmark06 right now and I'm thinking of swapping with my brother's 8800 GTS to see if it's my card) so I've been reading the guide in the meantime. I know some of the info is probably wrong, especially if they wrote it using an earlier build of the game and EAxis changed things later. But it's still kind of interesting to read.

Well, I ran scandisk and it didn't report any problems, so does this rule out any hard drive problems? If so, that leaves just my video card. I just hope they'll still let me do an RMA even though I've removed the stock fan for a better VGA cooler. Of course, I'll put the stock cooler back on before I return it, but I just hope they won't notice/care.

I have Daemon Tools, and it's not doing that for me. And it was running while I installed and tried to play before it crashed. I didn't have anything mounted, though, so maybe that made a difference.

I can't find Scandisk. I thought it was under Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools, but it's not there. I did test my RAM and no errors were found. I'm going to try reinstalling DirectX (can I even go higher than 9.0c since I'm on XP?) and see if it helps. Another thing I'm going to try is running Disk Defrag too to see if it helps. I just remembered I haven't run it in a few months, so I guess it couldn't hurt. If none of that works, I have about 20 gigs worth of files that won't fit on my 2nd hard drive that I'll have to burn to DVDs before I can reinstall Windows.

I can test the memory with a program my brother has, but how do I test the HDD? So far, it's only 3D games causing the problems. Like I can play the ZSNES without any problems and I'm fine when just doing stuff on the net. I could do a reinstall of Windows, but I'm not entirely sure where I put my key. That, and it's a hell of a lot of work to do. But I guess I'll do it as a last resort.

I went and picked up my copy of the game from GameStop earlier and attempted to play it. After 10 minutes in CAS, the music stuttered for a few seconds and the screen went black. I couldn't do exit the game or bring up task manager, so I had to restart. So it looks like my problem playing the game is still here. I'm really getting frustrated because I've spent close to $300 already doing things that might fix my problem. I tried a VGA cooler, I bought a new power supply, I changed to a new case with great airflow and cooling, and even cleaned off the old thermal compound and replaced it with Arctic Silver 5 on both my video card and my processor. I'm just not sure what the problem is. I've tried everything I can think of and it's driving me crazy that I can't play TS3 or any other game without my computer freezing up on a black/grey/orange whatever color screen. I know I have the newest video card drivers. I completely uninstalled my old drivers and installed the newest ones just the other day. Any ideas what I should try next? Here are my specs:

Antec Nine Hundred case (It has four 120mm case fans, 2 in front, 1 on the side and 1 on the rear and a top 200mm fan.)
Windows XP Home SP 3
ASUS M2R32-MVP AM2+/AM2 AMD 580X CrossFire ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Windsor 3.2GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor
3 GB RAM (3X CORSAIR XMS2 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V PSU

I'm honestly not sure if it is a heating issue, especially since getting the VGA cooler and switching the case didn't help much. My new case has four 120mm fans, 2 in the front, 1 on the side, 1 on in the back and it has a 200mm top fan. All those fans have multiple speeds, so I could try turning them up if needed. I also have a rather large heatsink/fan combo over my CPU. I am pretty certain, though, that it is likely my video card and not my RAM because when the screen goes black or gray when playing TS3, or orange when playing Guild Wars, it tends to act a few seconds later like the monitor isn't connected, (I get the No Input Signal message on the monitor) while the computer is still obviously on. And if I try to just push the restart button, it won't always get the signal back right off, so I've been turning it off for 10 minutes or longer when that happens.

I posted on the tech forum where they told me it was the psu causing the problems and told them it was still happening, so they now want to know about my fans, what kind of thermal compound I used or if I used the stock stuff and they want me to check my voltage and temps in BIOS. So I need to check that. I'll probably check my RAM while I'm at it just in case, because they're still under warranty. I have 3 1GB sticks and 2 are only 3 months old and the other I just got yesterday.