07-11. Bunter Calls A Friend

Bunter shares some scenes from his recent story line, a summary of events.

Bunter: Hello! Heard you'd been talking about me. All's well here. I thought I'd update you on what's happened lately in Rinn Fada. Maybe you already heard? Well, I'll be quick.

Bunter: His Lordship and Hera (now Lady Piers) got married and traveled to Al Medina for their honeymoon. A charming place!

Bunter: Her Ladyship soon had a beautiful little girl named Kathryn. Good thing I could use genie powers to help care for the babe. She was quite a stinker at times! But she's a toddler now and fully potty trained, thank heavens!

Bunter: Not to be outdone, Lord Piers cloned himself, so they have a little boy the same age as Kathryn. He's called Davis and is also a toddler now. A real chip of the old block--meaning Wimsel, you know. No disrespect intended to His Lordship, of course.

Bunter: Clouseau and Mulder are doing fine and still have the run of the manor. They're learning new tricks, still getting lots of attention from the household.

Bunter: You remember my brother Emad, the evil Djinn? He sure caused a lot of trouble around town looking for a rich lady to ensnare.

Bunter: Well, he finally seduced the likewise evil Bebhinn Walsh and married her straight away. They soon arranged for the, uh, sudden death of her father. But we couldn't have that sort of thing going on in Rinn Fada. 

So I exiled them to a new world with the help of enchantments. I do hope they're safe, despite what they did. Emad is my brother after all. Well, half-brother.

Bunter: As for me, I fell in love with the wedding planner, Caprice. Very glad she stayed around to serve as the children's nanny.

Bunter: Life as a valet and butler certainly has its perks these days!

Bunter: I don't know what the future holds for us, but I intend to enjoy every minute I have with my lovely fairy!

Bunter: Well, I guess I better let you go, my friend. Caprice is calling! Say hello to everyone for me.

01-06. Checking In With The Bay Watch Family

I had an update for my graphics card, so I opened my game to make sure everything was working all right (after fixing the options.ini file per NRaas instruction).

I decided it was time to say goodbye to the Castle family and move on to a new household. I left Aaron playing with his daughter, Lefay.

He also wanted to finish teaching her to walk.

The other three grownups were still watching TV, a romantic movie.

I chose the Bay Watch family for my next rotational check-in. Everyone was running around the world by themselves, except the toddler and the horse. Charlotte was heading for a garden on a paddle boat. In fact, all four grownups had bought themselves boats.

Even though they were involved in different activities, they were all hungry, and I had to make them find something to eat nearby--grilling and quick meals. Chris was playing an online social game at an empty pub.

Brigida was by herself, and I had to call a babysitter. The little tyke was also hungry and a little tired.

She headed for her toy box first thing.

Then the teen babysitter showed up wearing drab Medieval clothes and carrying a bright umbrella. The skies were still dark with rain and hail.

I didn't catch the sitter's name, but she was good with Brigida. I still told the household grownups to go home though. Derby the horse also needed some care.

I leveled some of the lot to make more usable space for Derby. I also built a small stall for him. In addition to the yard renovations, I knocked out a partial roof and rearranged the stairs on the second floor so that the middle room had access. It was totally closed off before.

Now the second floor has two bedrooms instead of one. I needed another double bed for the couples.

Clara and Daryl are Brigida's parents. They make a nice family.

Brigida survived her ghost beginnings and is now human, but for some reason, she still has lingering ghost sounds around her. I can't seem to completely convert her to a full human state. But she's doing fine otherwise.

The lighthouse style home has a special effects emitter in the top windowed tower: a strobe beacon that shows up after dark. I don't think it rotates, just flashes a bright green light.

Vacation Thoughts of My Sims

While on vacation this summer, I thought about Sims a couple of times. Once in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, I saw water taxis in the harbor. I'd never seen boat cabs before, and they reminded me of Sims water taxis.

Victoria Real Life:

Sims Life:

_____

In South Dakota, at Mount Rushmore, I wondered what a few of my Sims men would look like carved in stone.

So I tried a little photo editing just for fun. Rome Montez, Roy Thorn, Emad Faraz, and Marvin Bunter.

01-05. Two More Outtakes From a Recent Check-In

This summer has been busy for me, but I did take a little time to do some game maintenance and check in with my sims. See Moving Sims Files Using The Symlink Method for how I moved my Sims game files to another location in order to free up space on one of my desktop drives.

These guys were relaxing when they were suppose to be studying handiness. They were watching Medieval TV. Notice the program is in black and white, no color back in those early times!

Someone gifted my sims a phone. Purely decorative. It never rings. Silent as the grave.

Moving Sims Files Using The Symlink Method

I did something today that I've wanted to do for a while. I moved my Steam and Sims 3 installs off C drive to D drive. All my other Steam games are installed on D. I originally put Sims 3 on C because it's my SSD, and I wanted to make the game as fast as possible. 

Well, unfortunately Sims 3 takes up a lot of space, so I decided to move it. I also moved the Electronic Arts folder from Documents on C to Documents on D and created a symbolic link to the new location. That opened up even more space on C. 

I did the same for the My Games folder on C. It contained my Skyrim saves. I moved that folder to D and made a symbolic link to it too. In all, I freed up 51 GB on my C drive by moving these game files.

Creating Symlinks on Windows
"For example, let’s say you have a program that needs its files at C\Program. You’d really like to store this directory at D\Stuff, but the program requires that its files be at C\Program. You could move the original directory from C\Program to D\Stuff, and then create a symbolic link at C\Program pointing to D\Stuff. When you relaunch the program, it will try to access its directory at C\Program. Windows will automatically redirect it to D\Stuff, and everything will just work as if it were in C\Program."

Using Symbolic Links to Redirect The Sims 3 Folder After Moving It to Another Location