#ktar rambles

[ktarsims]

Fixing Things...

First: I've removed a bunch of hairs and clothing that I've never used, and had various issues. Like, when I had three different retextures of the same hair installed... (I only really want to do that if one is braids, one is dreads, etc.), or the five-head was especially egregious, or the bottom caused a weird waist seam, or the clothing had weird shadows even in live mode, etc. I took out all the DR retextures of official hairs too.

Second: I axed the 30k hair by finding a lower poly replacement. I removed a bunch of S-Club and Ersch accessories I still had installed... T_T LOVE S-Club's gothic accessories set, but a lot of them are 10k or 20k poly. LOVE some of Ersch's accessories too, but once they moved to primarily Second Life, a lot of their stuff was high poly too. (I didn't remove them all though... T_T. Most, but not all.)

Third: Realized that for SOME REASON EA's SP was turned on, and turned it off. I'm using Awesomemod's SP now, with all my sims households marked as chosen. Fixed a couple of other settings for AM. ALSO, changed my settings in NRAAS Traffic, because every time I looked at the streets there were a million taxis everywhere.

Fourth: Fixed all of Candace's outfits to apply the new lower poly version of her hair. Fixed one of Lucia's outfits because that hair was removed too. Fixed Candace's swimwear, because WTF are jeans even doing in the swimwear category? Fixed Sharona's sleepwear outfit (it must've been removed, because she was in the default outfit for that category).

I might be getting close to being ready to play again now. First I need to back everything up. If I lose all this work, I will be SOBBING for a week.

Still to do:

Find Candace a new necklace. I've been experimenting, but haven't quite come to a decision or decided to fix all her outfits with one of the options yet.

Fix Christel's formalwear (it's using an accessory that's super high poly). I don't have the faintest clue what I can replace it with, but perhaps I'll just go without.

Decide whether or not to keep LD's Lot Population mod installed. It's awesome, but... the babies get abandoned at home while all the adults get teleported away...

[ktarsims]

Life Updates and Things...

This year has been a weird year of playing catchup from things that were put off last year while we were under ‘shelter in place’ mandates.

This may get a bit rambly, so I’ll put the rest under the cut.

I’d barely got my first vaccine shot when my work decided to go back to full-time on the job hours, and I had to ask if I could possibly wait another week so I could at least have got my second vaccine shot beforehand. The work I do puts me in close quarters with at least one other person for most of my work day, rather unavoidably.

So after getting fully vaccinated (at which point I was back to full hours at work and exhausted all the time), I had to catch up on doctor appointments (get this exam and that exam and the other exam, most of which only have to be done once every several years). Then there was sorting out my car, which developed a ‘check engine light’ error right before work went back to full time, and also just needed general maintenance that I’d put off for a year like oil-changes and things... And currently I’m working on catching up on dental appointments (which were also skipped last year due to the pandemic). I have a few more dental appointments to go before I’m caught up. (My teeth have just always been bad, though I do my best to take care of them.)

Then last week, I had Jury Duty.... y’all, this was the most excruciating and slow jury selection process I have ever been through. I’ve been summoned a few times, though I’ve never served on an actual jury. It’s never before been four days before I even got to say one word. I could say a lot more, but of course I’m not really supposed to talk about it, so I’ll just summarize with: The US Jury system seriously screws over jurors or even potential jurors. They pay the equivalent of 1 hour of minimum-wage work per day, plus some cents per mile from your home zipcode, and there is very little consideration for those summoned.

In a time when the pandemic is clearly better but not yet gone, in the courtroom the only people who weren’t spaced out and divided by plexiglass were the jurors, who were crammed like sardines in a can. (And so far as I’m aware, there’s no vaccination requirements for jurors.) I seem to be fending off a cold this weekend... it’s the first time I’ve been sick in about three years, and there’s no doubt in my mind it’s from those four days of jury selection before I thankfully was dismissed.

Anyhow... I’ve managed to queue up about 20 days of posts between yesterday morning and this morning, so hopefully I’m at a point now where I’ll be able to play a bit more regularly and stop going missing so frequently. For now, it’s just a single sims post per day, and a single flower post per day... I try to keep the flowers coming, because several people have said they look forward to them, and we’re still in a time where we all need bright things to look forward to.