browsers, lack of simming, blather

So, okay. I got sick of sites telling me how horrible I was for not upgrading to IE7, and tired of Windows Update trying to suggest it, so I did.

Boy, was that a mistake. I now understand why so many people dislike IE these days. IE6 was fine. IE7 is a piece of crap.

Microsoft has Star Trek syndrome. For those of you who aren't geeks, Star Trek Syndrome is this thing where the Star Trek movies tend to alternate between good and bad releases. (You might find some argument about which is which, mind.) Microsoft has apparently developed the same problem. For instance: XP? Fine. Vista? Piece of crap. IE6? Pretty good. IE7? Piece of crap. Luckily that means chances are whatever's after Vista and IE8 will both be fine.

Anyhow, I am now using Firefox. Reluctantly, but I am.

You might wonder, why am I reluctant? Because I am sick of people telling me how fab00 and absolutely better than anything Firefox is. Because it's not magic. It still has CSS display issues (every browser does). It doesn't magically protect you from spyware and malware, despite what people claim. (Ask my sweetie.) It's not that I think it's a bad piece of software; there's definitely good points about it, and there are ways in which it is stronger than IE... but it's not magictabulous. (I've been infected by Miranda, I think.) And I'm sick of people who think that it's okay to code for one browser and not care about others. (That applies to people who do it for IE, too, yes.) And I'm sick of Microsoft bashing. They're not perfect, no, but they're astoundingly better than they used to be, and I think that some people refuse to even consider that. Their problem, I guess.

Anyhow. I'm keeping IE7 installed and using it for sites where I have multiple logins as my alternate (Neopets is the main one for that), but I'm setting Firefox to be my default for now.

I haven't even tried reinstalling Sims yet. I wanted a break. Part of the problem is if the reinstall doesn't fix my problems I'm still not sure what I want to do. The issue doesn't make the game unplayable. It just makes it laggy in certain circumstances. So, um. Yeah. That and I don't feel like digging out and reinstalling all 9000 discs. Next week, I think.

thank you, and other things

Thank you for the folks who left a comment on my ER trip post. Yeah, it was kinda scary. I'm just old enough and in bad enough shape to honestly be at risk for a heart attack, so that's ultimately why I went to the ER. They don't know what happened, and neither do I... I think maybe just a blood pressure spike or something, though, since my BP and heart rate were so up, and once they dropped I felt tons better.

Yesterday I slept a large chunk of the day and today I spent half the day running errands trying to get local county or state insurance so I don't have a huge bill waiting for me (they'll retroactively pay for an ER visit). Maybe I can also get back on real meds for the other health issues. It's the first time I've left the house for that long in ages, and my ankles and legs hurt like hell because I had to wait in lines, but it also means I now know I can probably deal with trips to the doctor, as long as they're infrequent. Yes, that really was in question; I have a hard time standing for long. I'm also waiting to fill my prescription to see if I can get it covered under that insurance, but future father-in-law has offered help paying for medical stuff so I might just go get it anyhow if it's not too pricy.

As far as Sims goes, I'm going to uninstall everything and try a fresh install. I have narrowed down the problem further to something bizarre involving windows or doors and lighting (there's a visible hitch on the lighting coming on on those returns, although that doesn't, alas, account for the community lot lag), and I'm vaguely wondering if it might be a corrupt file somewhere, or else some sort of bizarre incompatibility with my current video drivers. I did try changing a bunch of driver settings but none of that helped. So, if reinstalling doesn't work, I'll drop back one version of driver to see if that does. If that doesn't work, I really, really don't know yet what I'm doing. Taking a break, maybe.

Tonight I did not have a heart attack...

...but for a while there, I wasn't so sure.

I've had chest muscle pain before, what with being amply endowed and all, but this was different. Plus this time, aside from the chest pain, I had arm pain. And then tingly arm. And then numbish arm and tingly the rest of me. And moving around made me feel like I was going to pass out. Plus either the temperature dropped or I was having chills.

When the arm numbness and the tingly and the chills didn't go away, even though the chest pain had, I decided calling EMS was not a bad idea.

EMS was iffy. They said the little porta-EKG said I was fine aside from a too-high pulse (not unusual due to taking primatene) and BP... but that if I wanted a hospital trip, they would happily take me. Leaving those decisions up to me usually would result in me not going to the hospital, but in this case, because of the potential seriousness, I elected to go after dithering about it about 10 minutes watching my heart rate not drop.

Full-scale EKG showed no obvious problems, and by the time they got around to the slightly incompetent blood draw my heart rate was much lower, if still high-ish. Then there was a lot of sitting around, because that is what one does in the ER. They also took a chest x-ray. About 3 hours after I arrived I asked the RN if she had any idea how long it'd be, since my sweetie was with me and if it was going to be a while he should go home. She said it would depend on if they wanted to run a second set of blood tests, but went and found a doctor (shift change seems to have happened or something) who took a look at the lab work and chose to send me home, as it was also normal. She also said it was good that I came in anyhow, because it's better to be sure, which was the first time I didn't feel I was wasting people's time the whole night, really. Not that they weren't nice, but... even aside from the cost and lack of insurance issues, I don't like to go to the ER unless I'm like, dying.

Anyhow, I'm fine, and by the time I left, my heart rate and BP were really quite normal. No prescriptions except the one for Combivent I cadged so I had a better alternative to Primatene.

well, that narrows it down for sure

First off, kudos to EA for finding yet another way to be completely incompetent and non-user-friendly. Uninstalling a game warns you it will delete your "saved game files". What it means is "Will completely obliterate your EA Games directory and all its contents." Yes, I had backups, but I pity the poor person who doesn't realize "saved game files" is a code phrase for "all related files at all, in an unrecoverable manner".

Still no sign of fixination

So, I'm still having serious animation lag and freezes.

Maybe I was unclear in my last post, I don't know, but yes, the hacks were updated except for ones that didn't seem to have updates (mostly animation/movie-making things) and I had already found an update to one of those which fixed one problem, but not the one with the cars that prompted the post. And as I said, I had already tried pulling one set of hacks from the game to see if that helped.

problems with Free Time

I found one fixable problem (jump problem that turned out to be from an outdated hack that I didn't realize had a newer version) and did a bit more testing with the test neighborhood with regular gameplay, including some hobby objects. Everything was looking okay...

Until I loaded my Simself's house. I did some building additions to add hobby objects, gave her some aspiration reward thingies including a secondary, and then went to go take her out to buy a video game. She froze in the car and wouldn't drive anywhere.

free time, body shop, and misc.

I've got Free Time installed and so far everything's okay, in that it seems to have loaded everything, but I haven't done any real playtesting. I'm playing around in a test 'hood right now, and if nothing is obviously screwy I'll go load my Simself's house in S&S and see how that's working. CC is showing up (including object recolours) and I can spawn an ACR adjuster and inSim items are findable, but I haven't really tested anything further than that, although as usual the custom cameras aren't working right, because they never do the first time. I always have to clear and reload the files for some reason. I'll do that and put custom music back in later.

anime, j-dorama, nihongo ga wakarimasen

So, this is some blather about anime and Japanese drama shows and my inability to speak Japanese and something to do with Twilight Dreams, but it's mainly blather, so feel free to skip it.

i made you an anime but time eated it

Okay, but, srsly, I've got some Twilight Dreams stuff, yay!

Omake (Extras) for Volume 1:

DVD cover: Front - Back
Twilight Dreams Revised Opening Theme (video)
The Prequel that Wasn't Made Opening Theme (video) (There's some notes in the summary post which are also posted on the boolProp thread.)

And then there's the actual episode. Episode 5: Tests