$25 more from this long time lurker as well.

The deed is hangable because - according to the Prima Guide - one of the ways that you can offer your business up for sale is to hang the deed out on a wall (or place on a surface) and mark it as for sale.  If it is purchased, then the entire business is transfered to the purchaser.  Otherwise, unless your Sim is giving the business to an heir, the deed should probably remain in your Sim's inventory.

Obviously, this is not what caused the lot to disappear (the uniform thing is probably responsible for that as you and others have deduced), but I thought I'd offer an answer to this question anyway.

What about a mod that would force divorced or absent parents (i.e. not living on the same lot as their child) to pay child support?

Well crudmuffins!  I'd come so far since then too!  Errrr.  Well, I might keep playing this Sim even if I have already lost, just to see how much further I can get him.  XP

I think I'm assuming that if it's portable, then it has its own power supply.  Like the electronic gadgets, yes, and the car (while not portable, it is mobile).  So, things like the Simvac and the fingerprint scanner and the helmet-thingy would also be allowed?  Or the remote control car if anyone still dared to use it.

By the way, after my Sim failed to sneak out on his bill at the restaurant, he learned how to steal people's food properly.  Simply lie in wait while others are ordering, and then click on their plate after the waiter brings it and before the other Sim starts to eat.  If your timing is right, your Sim will walk right up and take the plate out from under another Sim's nose!  Ha!

Not sure how many days my Sim's been alive now... maybe four or five, not quite a full Sim week yet.  But I can tell you this.... he's been spending a lot of time taking sponge baths in public restrooms!   

I'm almost afraid to ask, but is there a penalty for getting caught when trying to skip out on a restaurant bill?  *embarrassed*  Apparently, my Sim is no good at sneaking....

I believe the celebrity chef outfits look as they do, because Maxis was parody-ing the outfits that the Iron Chefs wear.  That is a "combat" cooking show very popular in Japan, and shown here on the Food Network.  It's actually a fascinating show that I quite enjoy.  And there are four Iron Chefs (each specializing in a different cuisine: Japanese, Chinese, French and Italian), which I think explains why there are four versions of the Maxis outfit.

I rather like the celebrity chef outfits myself.  ^_^

I had this problem back when Uni came out, where the lot I was trying to load would just hang.  The music would play and the little hourglass would go around and around, but nothing would ever happen.  After I'd done the Dance of a Thousand Installs to try and figure out where the problem was, but my lots would still not load, I looked for advice on the forums, and this is what I was told:

Once you're at the neighborhood screen and before you try to load a house, go into debug mode (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true... as I'm sure you know).  Then try to load the house.  When the game reaches the problem, instead of going into an infinite loop, it will pop up a dialog box telling you what the problem is and giving you some options on what to do about it.  Take note of what it says the problem is (in my case it was a custom career I didn't even know I had, even in spite of having been through my downloads folder with a fine-toothed comb!) and hit reset.  Hopefully then your lot will load properly.

Anyway, that's what worked for me.  Can't guarantee that it will work for you, but I suppose it can't hurt to give it a whirl.

Thanks friends, I really appreciate the replies.  I'm starting to think this might be unique to her game, but I'm probably still going to advise her to file a bug report about it over on the official site.  Just so someone knows.  She says it's more of an annoyance than a problem, but still... wild fluctuations like that sort of say "instability" to me.

Anyway, again - thanks for taking the time to reply!   

This is not a problem I am having, but rather a friend of mine.  She is not active on any of the forums, so I thought I'd look for her problem, but after a great deal of searching on a number of different boards, I have not found any reports of anything similiar to what she is experiencing.

Background:  Though she did play Sims on the Playstation, she is brand new to TS2, having gotten addicted to it while she was here visiting me.  *smirk*  She went home, bought the core game and both expansion packs and installed all three.  As yet, she has no custom content, though she's been eager to start downloading, but has been waiting until she had a few spare moments to download the Clean Installer and such.  I don't believe she's even created any Sims yet.  However, she has been building houses, just to see what she can do with the original Maxis content.  Here is what she says is happening:

Discussing a really elaborate lot she's making in attempt to recreate something from an anime series:

"...But could SOMEBODY please explain to me why it's worth less and less each time I look at it? XD Yesterday afternoon it was over $600,000. After adding a few flights of stairs and some other stuff, my next check from the neighborhood view had it worth about $420,000. I have added much more since then and now this morning it's less than $160,000! Man, that's some really severe depreciation. Does this mean I can finish it and then wait a few days and eventually I won't even need the motherlode cheat to move them in? XD I'm just wondering if this is a normal part of the game or if I've got some bizarre defect in it."

Discussing another lot she's making, based off one she made on the Playstation:

"I made my old Sims house from the PS2 to see how much it'd cost, and if it'd be possible for a standard issue family to move in without a cheat like they can on the PS2. Built it, saved, went back to neighborhood, and it was about $4,000 too much. I went back in, made it 22 square feet smaller, traded down some items for less expensive ones, saved again, went back to neighborhood, and the cost was now not under 24,000, but 63,375! From making it worth less! This house has no windows, no floor, and no wallcoverings. It was built on a small lot, and has inexpensive furnishings. It should NOT be over 20,000, let alone 60,000! Then at [husband]'s suggestion I went back in and just moved a bunch of stuff around, didn't delete or change anything except the location of the items within the house, and this time when I looked the price was around 32,000 e_e I think there's something wrong with my game."

I told her that if this is the worst bug she gets, she should count herself lucky.  *rolls eyes*  But, I'm interested in knowing if anyone else has experienced this, or if anyone has come across this problem on any of the boards anywhere (I've looked, and I've been keeping up with the NL bugs, but I may have missed something).  Any information anyone can point me to?  Thank you.

That's what I would have thought too.  Sedans are supposedly sensible cars, and the Knowledge Sim is supposedly the sensible Sim.  I noticed, however, that Popularity Sims aren't represented in the chart.  I guess they don't care?

From the Prima Guide:  (which I know isn't always the best authority on things, but... well, here it is anyway)

Tip:  Leaving for a date in the date's personality / Aspiration-preferred car is a Date Event and provides an increase in the Date points before your Sim reaches the Community Lot.  This isn't, literally, a difference in initial Date score, but an off-screen scoring opportunity.  The effect, however, is the same.

Here are the scores for each vehicle by personality / Aspiration, according the the Date Event chart on pages 37-39 of the Guide (numbers for personality affect Date Score, numbers for Aspiration affect the aspiration score of the Sim being picked up):

Hunka 711 Hwang Motors:
Base Score: 85
Personality Outgoing: 40
Personality Shy:  -10
Aspiration Fortune:  50
Aspiration Family:  -30

Landwhale by Haeveola:
Base Score: 45
Personality Shy:  30
Personality Outgoing:  -10
Aspiration Family:  50
Aspiration Romance:  -150  (ouch!)

Smoogo Minima:
Base Score: 10
Personality Sloppy:  20
Personality Neat:  -10
Aspiration Knowledge:  10
Aspiration Fortune:  -30

Smord P328:
Base Score:  35
Personality Active:  30
Personality Lazy:  -10
Aspiration Pleasure:  20
Aspiration Knowledge:  -10

Yomoshoto Evasion:
Base Score: 65
Personality Series:  30
Personality Playful:  -10
Aspiration Knowledge:  20
Aspiration Pleasure:  -10

What a fun story you've got going there, Baratron!  Both Mitch and Max are very handsome, though I have to admit that Mitch really is a cutie.  I'm interested in seeing what happens with them next.

I'll admit, I'm a compulsive downloader, but I also try to be a safe one.  I check everything through Clean Installer and get rid of anything that looks the least bit suspicious, and I have all of my downloads neatly organized into the proper folders, so that I know where everything is.  However, I've been noticing lately then whenever I open Clean Installer to move things around and do general housekeeping, I'll find a whole stack of packages in the top downloads folder that are categorized as "Empty Packages" (and thus marked in pink in Clean Installer).  The file names are always a string of senseless numbers and letters.  I always simply remove these packages, but being curious I have to wonder why they are there.  I thought maybe they were just corrupted packages, but none of the items that I've downloaded have seemed to turn up missing.  So, where have these Empty Packages come from?

I'm not looking at this as a problem, I'm simply curious.

I recently went on a townie killing spree.  I am moving slowly through my Legacy family story, and I don't want the same townies showing up in the family pictures generation after generation, so I decided to clean some house.  I have one special lot in my neighborhood where all the behind-the-scene townie aging, make-overs and clothing changes occur, and it is now also home to my townie cemetary.  Using the teleportation bush from Simlogical to get them there, I then put Rodney's Death Creator to good use for awhile, and had a cow plant eat some others.  Then, I felt impatient and wanted to see something really spectacular.  I used the bush to get Kennedy, Joe, Cristy, Andrea, Melissa, Marylena, and Sophie to the lot, got them grouped together and built a tight wall around them.  Then I used buyable fire and the intense fire hack and -- WHOOSH!  It was great, and very satisfying.

Are you asking if you should be slapped for fast-forwarding college, or getting your Sim engaged to Brandi LeTourneau?  If college - no.  College is tedious and boring.  If Brandi - yes.  A thousand times, yes.  A more snarky, moody, and simply all-around unpleasant Sim I have yet to see.

My Legacy founder was a fairly good-looking guy, though I specifically made him not perfect.  He mated with Brandi (unfortunately this was before I was familiar with her stellar personality) and not only were both offspring not very attractive, but she has passed on a very annoying pointy chin to all females in the family that I have been desperately trying to get rid of through selective breeding ever since.  Of course... I suppose it didn't help that I mated Brandi's daughter with Orlando Centowki, because now his nose is plaguing the males of the line.  He was such a nice guy though... I couldn't bear to get rid of him.  (And really, I'm not all that concerned about whether my Sims are gorgeous or not, but I just cannot handle that weird chin.  Orlando's nose... yes.  Brandi's chin... no.)

Brandi, however, somehow starved to death in a house with a fully stocked fridge.  Imagine that.... 

Is this true of boolProp-ing any two Sims of the same sex?  Will having two male Sims as the parents always result in a female baby, and will two female Sims as the parents always result in a male baby?  The reason I ask is that I have one particular Sim... a male... first he was abducted (obviously got a male PT), and he had a girl.  Then I used boolProp to mate him with the other male Sim in his household... the result was again another girl.  Then I mated a male Sim from a different household with him... and ended up with yet another girl.  Is this all a silly coincidence, or is that the way it will always happen?