Sim Test
Topic: Posted by Andrew
Day Zero: I created all four of the original roommates, and all four of the girlfriends, to see if life would imitate art. Seven out of eight look surprisingly convincing, Esther not so much. When they say "The Sims" they really mean "Europeans".

Correct pairings:
Andrew - Karen
Hassan - Lauren
Sean - Esther
Rich - Kate

Day One: And it gets off to a horrible, horrible start. Hassan and Lauren hate each other, Rich keeps eyeing Karen, and Kate won't even come to visit any of us. Even worse, my character is completely fine with Rich trying to take my girl, while those two are dancing my guy is patiently waiting to compliment Rich.

Day Two: My character might be gay. Not only did he dream about Sean, but he also brought home a "friend" that looks exactly like Sean. Plus all of his friends are girls, yet he doesn't have a crush on any of them! Not even the weird alien girl who's green!

In a related note, I've played the game at least three times, and each time Rich has chosen the "Slacker" career path. Weird.

Day Three: My character has been doing himself no favors by dancing with Sean and constantly gossiping on the phone with Lauren. Hassan also seems to care more about work than anything else, which is funny because he's still at an entry level position.

Day Four: Making progress! Well, sortof. Everyone's relationships are starting to heat up, Lauren seems to be in high demand, with both Hassan and Rich trying to be her friend. Hassan is rather along, matter of a fact Rich seems to be having trouble socializing with ANYONE. He keeps trying to compliment Karen, and each time it backfires. At this rate he's two days away from climbing up to a belltower with a rifle.

Meanwhile, Kate has still not shown herself.

Day Five: In an effort to get Kate to show herself, and maybe even make my character a little less gay, I combined the two houses to create one superfamily. At first this was terrific, everyone was talking, things were heating up, and Rich and Kate even seemed to be getting along.

Man, I long for those days when my character was just gay, as opposed to depressed, sleep deprived, and, well, dead. Three of us hit the dust within a day of me combining the houses, probably because I didn't have the money to buy half of them beds, or let them eat. Karen was the first to go, having not eaten or slept since the day before, but then Esther bit the dust. Not to worry though! My character came to the rescue, and challenged Death to a game for the life of Esther. Which I promptly lost and was killed too. Whoops.

So in an effort to recreate the group dynamic, but without everyone dying, I'm going to combine the houses BUT cheat to give them lots of money. I'm moving them into a swanky pad with four bedrooms, study, living room, and a hottub. With all eight people living in one house, it has a definite "Real World" feel to it.

Day One (redo): After the disaster that was the last superfamily, I tried to put them into a nice place to allow them room to grow. This has worked out a lot better, as everyone has been actually getting along, to the point where things are showing potential.

Kate is actually the most interesting character so far, mostly because I gave her the "family" aspiration. Because of this, her goals are (I'm not making this up) learning how to cook, and learning how to clean. Apparently her next goal is to "make a time machine back to the 1950's".

So naturally during her first attempt to cook she sets the kitchen on fire. This causes everyone to rush into the kitchen and panic about the blaze, except for Rich. Rich instead merely looks at the fire, gets irritated at Kate, and wanders into the bathroom. Thankfully I put a smoke detector on the wall, and the firefighters extinguish the blaze before anyone gets hurt. But not before Lauren, who is scared of fire, flips out and goes into shock.

Meanwhile, Sean is a pimp, having already made friends with half the house, and Andrew won't stop playing chess. Its at the point where he fell asleep by the chess board. This is, of course, keeping with the theme of my digital self embarrassing my real self.

Day Two: With everyone's first day of work, it was also also the first opportunity for people to bring home friends from their work. Lauren brought home a guy who looks Hassan (good sign), Rich brought home a girl who looks like a blonde version of Kate (good sign), and Sean brought home a guy who looks exactly like him (bad sign).

Sean 2, as I've come to call him, actually gets along with everyone in the house, which is more than I can say about Rich's new friend. She alternates between insulting various members of the house, and eating all our food. And while nobody in the house can take their anger out on Rich's friend, they sure can take it out on Rich. Poor guy is one insult away from going crazy. Literally, the game built that option in.

Everyone has also shown themselves to be inept at job promotions. Only Andrew and Karen have been promoted, the rest are more than happy with their entry level jobs. Efforts to get them to improve themselves have failed, for example Kate needs one point of cleaning to advance. So instead of cleaning the bath or the toilet, she plays pirates in them. Best part of all is that nobody in the house calls her out on this, except for Rich's new friend, who promptly insults her.

Day Three: Of course it had to happen. It was just bound to. Andrew brought home THE EXACT SAME GUY as last time (the Sean clone), and immediately became buddy-buddy with him. Once again, my digital self is hell bent on embarrassing my real self. I can't win.

On a plus side, because both Sean and Andrew keep brought home Sean-Clones, there are three guys who look like Sean wandering around the house. This has to break some law of sim-space/time continuum.

Day Four: Nothing too big to report, the only thing mildly amusing is that I accidentally sent Lauren to work without letting her shower, so when she came back she smelled bad.... and brought home a hippie. EVERYONE'S comfort went down.

Day Five: Ok, its been like five days, and NOBODY has even gotten a crush on a roommate! This is unreal! Half the house hooked up on the first night of The Real World, and I can't get one person to even try a romantic hug? Nuts to this.

So, breaking my own rules, I'm going to micromanage the family. Before I was just trying to make sure they all got to work, and didn't starve, but now I'll be controlling every motion they do. They won't blow their nose without asking for permission. And anyone who knows me knows that two things are about to happen: I'm going to get tired of managing eight people at once, and my first official action will be to try to make lesbians.

To my surprise the venture actually works, you CAN make same sex relationships in The Sims. While this makes me infinitely more worried about my own cyber-self, its refreshing to have this kind of power. The first two people I turn are Esther and Lauren, mostly because they were the closest to becoming lesbians anyway.

However, it turns out that my fear of nobody voluntarily entering into a relationship was poorly founded, as Sean managed to net both Kate AND Esther. Keeping both around tends to be tough, and Esther soon catches Sean and Kate making out, and becomes enemies with both. I'd also like to imagine that the whole experience turned Esther into a lesbian.

Andrew and Karen have also hooked up, mostly to try to reassure myself that my character is straight (never should have made him that nice and that clean!). Also I found out that you can "WooHoo", which I assume is sex, and spent the rest of the day trying to get Karen into bed. Life imitating art?

Five Reasons I Can?t Wait to Get a Wii
Topic: Posted by Andrew
1. Mess Up Whoever’s Playing Me
Whenever you play a person in video games, your close proximity to your opponent makes it tempting to physically prevent them from playing the game, whether it be by slapping the controller out of their hand, pushing them off the couch, or gong for it and turning off the TV. With the Wii and its motion sensor controller, I’m fairly certain I can raise this to an art form. I might even punch the person standing next to me, and be able to claim its all a part of the game.

2. Be Able to Throw my Xbox at the People Who Honk at Three in the Morning
The Wii’s sleek design contrasts sharply to my current bulky Xbox, which will come in handy when I throw the thing out of my 12 story window. Once I get a Wii I will no longer need the stupid thing, and will use it as god intended: as a projectile.

And there are plenty of people who deserve my wrath. How about any car that decides to honk after midnight? You sure that’s a good idea? Want an old Xbox through your windshield? I thought not.

3. Make up Stupid Theme Baseball Teams
My favorite ever was when I did the presidents, and George W Bush hit .400 for the season, with FDR batting cleanup with over 150 RPI. That year the Washington Presidents went 122-40. Other favorites include New Jersey Mobsters, 1994 New York Rangers (I had to drop Messier to 9th), and that one time I did all my friends and won 45 games all season.

4. Check the Weather
It’s a feature, you know.

5. Find Out if I’m Worse in Wii Madden Football Than I was in Real Life
I was pretty terrible in High School, and I’m just curious if I’m any better at the Wii version. Personally? My money’s on the high school days.