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

Still no sign of land. How long is it?

I didn't really do any editing for TD over the weekend like I thought, although I did get some more S&S college played. Some folks are graduated. Some have a bit longer to go. Should be able to do it fairly quickly next time I load up the game.

Skipped Simming yesterday because I felt a little burned out on the concept of college, and because, honestly, I've been dithering about something in the script for TD#5. It's a scene that would be much easier to convey in a real anime, where I could have sound effects and stuff, and I'm worried it's going to come out a bit confusing. I might throw in some description about it to help. Also, I just edited the pics and text for the the first scene and ended up almost completely rewriting the narration in it, hopefully to better effect than what was in the script.

I also tweaked a couple of the standard slides. The title screen didn't look right to me so I redesigned it with the flow from logo to title in mind; the preview page frame got a layer effect to make the frame stand out better; the pre- and post-commercial shots had their colours tweaked. There's going to be a second set of those in the second half but I'm keeping these for now. Also I already put together the commercial, and actually am pretty pleased with it. I think the legacy writer in question will like it, but I'm never sure.

The next two scenes have some heavy graphics editing to do so I'm taking a break, but I am going to try to get some more done today. I don't know if I'll finish, though if not I think I will tomorrow.

An Open Letter to Frank Gibeau

As cited on a gaming blog I sometimes read:

EA Games president and God of Mountebanks Frank Gibeau recently said:

"We assumed that consumers understand piracy is a huge problem - and that if games that take 1-4 years to develop are effectively stolen the day they launch, developers and publishers will simply stop investing in PC games."