boredom

so apparently i get bored easily with my sims and delete entire neighborhoods on a whim.

the family i'm currently working with has a lady who wants to be level 10 in the culinary career track. the guy wants to be popular or something... i don't really remember. but what i really wanted was for him to run a daycare business out of his home. last time i tried this, i only got to the point where i was taking in 4 toddlers. now my guy has progressed to the level where he has some toddlers and a kid who comes after school!

i started my sims out by following a guide i found to optimize their skills. the lady getting to the top of the cooking career was easy. i made her good at cooking and then made her spend every waking hour studying cooking and practicing cooking while at work until it was maxed. then i had her socialize with her coworkers/boss during work hours from there on out. once she was maxed at cooking, i made her start working on writing. i figured it might be a good way to rake in some dough. she made it to level 10 of that pretty quickly as well.

the guy i had be charismatic to help him befriend the kids when he started his daycare job. i maxed him out on charisma in just a week's time, then started him on gardening and logic. i also made him nurturing. this seemed to help a lot, too. after just 2 or 3 days, he got promoted.

the one major downside to my sims working so hard on their skills is that they have not really developed a relationship with each other, despite being married. they both want to have a kid, but whenever i try to make them, they reject their partner. maybe they want kids, just not with each other.

i really really want to get my guy to the top of the daycare career, but i get so bored with doing the same thing. i guess because my real life is all about doing what i do and not wildly changing professions, etc. i don't want my sims to have boring lives!

ipad

i tried out the sims 3 ambitions for the ipad/pod. it's... interesting. not at all the same as far as game play. there are things i like better and things i dislike. for instance, when traveling from home to the town or vice versa, there is a loading screen, much like in the sims 2. however, the load time is really short, so it's not that big of a deal. also, when traveling from home to town or vice versa, the time goes to speed 1 automatically. for most people, i'm sure that's not a problem. but i'm a micromanaging nazi. i don't like any seconds wasted. so i like to pause and queue things up.

oh, yeah, and pausing. it's not so good. when you unpause, it launches you into the high speed! ahhh! wasted seconds! and you can only queue up 3 actions, so that sucks.

i do like the gardening aspect of things. you have a little plot that you have to buy seeds, fertilizer and a watering can to use. you can sell your produce to the grocery store or use it in recipes that you can buy at the corner bistro. no eating out in this game!

the inventory is silly. you can have all sorts of things, but a limited quantity of certain items. like i max out on green pepper storage at 10. each plant i harvested gave me 6, so if i already had 6, the next plant would max me out and i'd lose 2 peppers! traveling from home to town between EVERY harvest is obnoxious.

the job thing is different, too. at some point during work, they give you a challenge. my dude was an artist, so i got to color in a picture to earn a promotion. it's a little hard to do when you only have your finger and a screen, but i managed to get promoted after the 2nd try.

overall, i like the game and will continue to play it when i'm not playing the computer version.