mods that do and don't work

[U_Dog_U]

JMs Stereo Hack.  It prevents naughty sims from randomly turning the stereo off, turning it back on, deciding to take a nap spontaneously, being awoken by the music and pitching a fit, then turning it off again, all the while another poor sim is trying to get their groove on with their special someone.

What it does is stop them from autonomously turning it off altogether.  I haven't known sims to turn it on autonomously, so it works well.  If it were possible to actually cancel out of the autonomous "Turn Stereo Off" action, it wouldn't be so bad, but once a sim has decided to do so they will from whatever range they may be, regardless of how I feel about it.

Preliminary testing (ie. using the old version and playing vaguely normally) indicates that the Stereo Hack is working in terms of making the sims slightly less neurotic in their music hardware power choices.  If anything weird starts happening (that isn't a result of me being a dork and messing with things in SimPE), I'll let you know.

My sims turn the streo on autonomously all the time. Strangely though, a lot of the time they do it just before they sit down at the piano.

[simposiast]

My sims can certainly turn the stereo on autonomously as well as off.  In fact chintznibbles said

randomly turning the stereo off, turning it back on,

, just before saying they don't turn it on autonomously.

Most of my sims haven't discovered television, so they are more likely to turn the stereo on. I get the impression active sims with low fun are more likely to turn it on, and tired sims are more likely to turn it off.

I suspect some of my sims just turn it off to spite me though.

[Bangelnuts]

How about "Nowhatsthis?"  Does it work?  That's one of the most annoying things that JMP had fixed for me, and now that it's back, well, it's annoying!  LOL

Yep it works fine  no problems in my game with it

[radiophonic]

Yeah, I wasn't expecting "what skills do you have?" to cause my Sim to develop a crush. I didn't bother with any of the other questions after that.

For me, it was throwing food at another person at the table.  Oh yeah, I get a crush when that happens fo sho.

[radiophonic]

This was originally under "buy drink for..." which was supposed to set the crush bit (like buying a drink for someone at a bar or club).  I've asked the design team and we are going to change it.

I was wondering why there was a 'buy coffee for' but not a 'buy a drink for'. Look forward to that, it makes more sense.

[witch]

I wondered why my sims couldn't buy someone a drink at the bar, I clicked on all sorts of things looking fro an option.

[knitro]

My Elders don't seem to be dying properly either with or without the deathfix. It makes no difference.

I had the death bug bad, and it seems to be gone now, without the fix in.

[Brynne]

I noticed they don't run to turn off their computers now. That drove me crazy in Uni!

my sims still run to turn off computers even in nightlife. it drives me batty!

This was one of those hacks that I added before I saw the necessity of it. Now that I took it out for NL, I see the necessity of it. I use Inge's locking doors in all the bedrooms, and all the bedrooms have computers. I'm constantly fighting off sims trying to turn them off. I've had guests lingering outside the doors, as well. When I made them selectable, I saw that, yup, they wanted to turn the computer off. Who in the world turns their computer off, anyway? I leave mine on all the time.

[Motoki]

It sounds like something my mother would do. She is utterly convinced that electronics need a "rest". 

[Brynne]

My grandma is convinced they'll all catch fire.

[ElviraGoth]

Funny.  I don't understand why anyone would leave it on all the time.  Memory can only properly be reset and cleared by turning it off.  Not to mention the waste of electricity.  Learned that years ago.

And now that I have a cable modem, I certainly wouldn't want to leave my computer open to attack by some malicious hacker by leaving it on or the network cable plugged in all the time.  Even with three firewalls and anti-virus software.  I'm way too paranoid for that.  I had a telemarketer call recently trying to sell me something that would stop a hacker from taking control of my computer while I was away.  I told them "You have to leave it ON and plugged into the modem for them to do that."

[Shivani]

Funny.  I don't understand why anyone would leave it on all the time.  Memory can only properly be reset and cleared by turning it off.  Not to mention the waste of electricity.  Learned that years ago.

Because I (for one) would rather not deal with the metal stress (or whatever it is) that comes from heating up the innards, then letting them cool, then heating them up, ad nauseum.  I've lost components that way when they finally cracked from the expand/contract stress.  So long as I turn off my monitor, I'm good to go.  In fact, I only reset when the computer starts acting a bit dodgy, or shut it down when I must change something, or move it.  Besides, I let our laptop share drive space on my desktop so I can work on my stuff anywhere in the house and not have to be tied down to the desk.

[Brynne]

I definitely didn't mean that I leave my cable plugged in all the time! Just leave my computer on, unless, like shivani said, it starts acting up on me and needs a reboot.

[witch]

If a PC cools properly before being turned back on, ie overnight for me, it is unlikely to cause any more metal fatigue than leaving it continuously running. I always think of; hackers, electricity, overworked fans/harddrives etc. I reckon I'll get a much longer lifespan from my PC if it is only turned on when I use it - about 3-4 hours a day.

Also we get electrical storms here, there is no circuit breaker in the world that can stop a lightning strike, even having the cable plugged into the phone socket can ground a strike. I physically unplug my power and Internet cables when not using the PC. I've seen plenty of burned out PCs that were plugged in and not even turned on.

[Brynne]

Yes, but there is no lightening in the sims 
I do turn my laptop off occasionally, but mostly I let it hibernate or go to standby. It stays pretty cool that way. But no constant internet access! That cable is unplugged the second I'm done online.

[Hook]

My computer stays on 24/7.  Now, if I only used it a couple of hours a day, maybe turning it off would be appropriate.  But it would never stay off for more than a couple hours (my son gets on it when I'm asleep).  One company I worked for only turned off the computers over long weekends.

As for lightning, I have more problem with power outages.  I bought a decent IBM branded unterruptable power supply, which also provides surge protection for both power and phone lines, and has some unreasonably high equipment replacement value if your computer fries due to lightning strike.  And it wasn't very expensive.  Which means it only runs about 15-20 minutes after the power quits.  Next time I'll splurge for the 8 hour backup.

When I was connected to the internet constantly, I used a decent router with a built-in firewall. This blocked intrusions quite well, and had a good working stealth mode so people couldn't just probe my ports.  It wasn't very expensive either.

That full time internet connection was through a microwave link:  a microwave antenna on a 30 foot pole mounted on the top of my roof.  I've always been afraid it would attract lightning, as by definition it has to be higher than the trees in the neigborhood.  But it's been there several years without incident.  Even after my broadband ISP went bankrupt, with no one to replace them, darnit.

Disclaimer:  just because I've been lucky doesn't mean anyone else will be.  But at least there are precautions you can take for most of the problems.

Hook

[witch]

Well I bailed the techie b/f about whether to turn PCs off or not. He came down firmly on the side of keeping them on 24/7. He agreed with the poster who said the warm up / cool down period was the most wearing, explaining that solder is made of lead and tin, often connected to copper and other metals, all of which expand and contract at different rates - therefore creating movement of parts.

He said fans are cheap to replace and harddrives nearly frictionless, so the wear and tear of constant running is negligable. He sees more problems with machines that are turned on and off than ones that are kept running. Although he reckons the biggest PC killer is dust. And Linux is truckloads better than windoze for running long periods at a stretch without problems.

He turns his PCs off at night purely because they are in the next room and some of them are noisy.

[Shivani]

Oh definitely.  We also use a router and firewall, plus UPSs.  I never disconnect from the internet...unless I'm moving the laptop from one location to another (I refuse to use wireless because of the transfer rates, at present, anyway). The only time I've ever seen something nasty was coming in through email, and there's AV for that.  Granted, I let my husband do the configuration for the router/firewall, since I haven't got a clue (ignorant through choice, though).  The biggest trick in my opinion is making sure you have a UPS that's rated properly for your machine.  Otherwise, it's the next thing to useless.

[Shupinola]

The clothing tool so far seems totally functional.  I've tried it with many different age groups/lots and haven't glitched yet.   Did I mention that it also uses the new clothing selection interface?

There is one problem with this though and I think it's more to do with Nightlife than the hack.

Prior to installing NL, I used this hack in conjunction with InSIMinator so that I could alter Townies (it really the only reason I use InSIMinator). I would use the 'Career Adjuster' function to make all rewards available and then get the Home Plastic Surgery reward. Then I would use the 'Summoner' function to bring various Townies and NPCs to the lot. Another InSIMinator function allows you to make visiting Sims selectable, so I would do that. With boolprop, I'd boost their Aspiration to Platinum and get then to do the plastic surgery thing. Then I'd use the clothing tool to change their clothes (not with NPCs - just Townies) and set their make up and hair.

In less than a couple of minutes, each of those Townies and NPCs that looked like they were the offspring of John Merrick and had bought their clothes at the local charity shop where given a whole new look.

So, with Nightlife installed (and having to start the game from scratch all over again), I prepared to start doing some more Townie/NPC makeovers. But not so easy! All went well until I used the clothing tool. I selected an outfit for a Townie and clicked on the tick to confirm and it went to the screen to choose the outfit. But their was nothing in the inventory - not even the clothing they had been wearing and the option for choosing between tops, bottoms and full outfits was greyed out. So the Townie ended up walking around naked ... and stayed that way when she turned up next time. I eventually had to use another InSIMinator function to age the Townie to Adult and then drop her back to Teen. She was then dressed in a different Maxis default outfit, but a better one than she had been in originally. Thankfully, the part of the clothing tool that works the same as a mirror for changing appearance, worked fine.

I know JM doesn't support or favour InSIMinator, so I'm not expecting him to look into this particular problem, but it would be nice if someone would create a tool for changing Townie clothing which allows the use of custom clothing. I was disappointed to discover that you can't buy clothes for other people like you could in Hot Date in the original game.

[Motoki]

Shupinola: A solution I found to that problem is to use Inge's teleporter shrub. Temporarily move the townie into your household, use J.M.'s clothing planner to pick their outfits (the money will come out of your sim's household funds so I kaching them 1k first then buy about 1k worth of outfits for the townie), then use Inge's shrub to move them back out into the townie household.

If you use Insim, you can also use spawn the family tree adjustor and move a sim out into the townie or npc household.

I've been using this method now and it's pretty easy and straightforward and you don't need to make them selectable because they automatically become selectable when you temporarily move them in.

[Shupinola]

Shupinola: A solution I found to that problem is to use Inge's teleporter shrub.

Thanks for this information. Is the teleporter shrub at Mod The Sims 2 or Various Simmers?

[Shupinola]

I have found that run to class works. and now after a few hours of testing no eat crap does as well

Excellent! I'm really missing the no eat crap mod. Adding it back to my hacks folder right now.

The one I'm currently missing the most is the stereo hack. I'm absolutely pissed off with Sims who are a little way past half their energy turning the stereo and/or TV off when another Sim is working out. Grrrr!

[RainbowTigress]

Shupinola: A solution I found to that problem is to use Inge's teleporter shrub.

Thanks for this information. Is the teleporter shrub at Mod The Sims 2 or Various Simmers?

www.simlogical.com.  Look under Sims 2 - Teleporters.  You'll want the Teleporter Plus.  I like the shrub better because I play with the walls down and have trouble getting the painting where I can click on it.

[Brynne]

If you are still using the insiminator, make the townie selectable, then use the dma npc clothing thing from (oh no! I forgot the name of the site! anyone?), and have them buy an outfit. They can then go to any dresser and change into it. I had the same issue with the clothing tool. Now I use the dma npc clothing changer to give my townies makeovers. It lets you change their facial structure and appearance as well.

Or, duh to me, the dma lets you change the appearance of any visitor on your lot. No need to even make them selectable. I make them selectable if I want them to also change their swimsuits, formals, etc. But you can have your own sims buy the clothing, then click "change outfit" on the dma thingy.

[Motoki]

use the dma npc clothing thing from (oh no! I forgot the name of the site! anyone?),

valdea.com

I think it's the one in the Woohoo sims pack. The base pack is still free, but you do have to register there to download it. If you don't want the npcs, you can install it to a different directory and just fish out the controller package file.