Tuesday 7 March 2000

Pic of the day: How not to do it. Apart from the aparte placement of the microwave oven, it is generally not advised to place your head in front of it. In new microwave ovens there should not be enough leakage of microwaves to actually cook your brain, but it is supposedly not healthy either. (And I won't even mention her choice in clothing.) The Sims should not be played without adult supervision ... it doesn't much matter what habits your kids acquire regarding the treatment of trolls and dragons. Microwave ovens are another matter. :)

OK, I'm still not well, called in sick today, but I'm not dead and not rapidly degrading, so I remain optimistic. Despite my advanced age ... I am of the same age as the space age. I think my mother was pregnant with me when the first artificial satelite was launched. (Not to imply that one was the reason of the other - just trying to fix myself in time.) I think we shall admit that a lot of things have changed since. Human nature remains the same, but it has a lot more opportunities to show itself.

I can now understand those who dislike the game The Sims. It is the micromanagement, which is just a little too detailed. In particular, the bladder management seems aimed at a much younger audience than the complexity of the game warrants. There should be a choice to turn it off. It is highly unlikely that grown people make a puddle on the floor because they have been too focused on entertaining their guests. There should be a patch that turned it off (or at least made the Sims prioritize it higher) while keeping it for the sim kids, of which there are as many as you want.

Actually I hear that the various downloadable items contain snippets of program code, not quite patches, but parameters. So depending on how many goodies you download, you may end up with a diffent game. Well, unless they patch the game soon I hope they come up with downloadable diapers for grownups. (It's not like adult diapers don't exist, kids. They are just not talked about. If I live long enough, I may need them too. But not right now.)

The Sims did reasonably well while I was asleep. Except they cannot keep a job, and they do not socialize outside the family on their own. So my self-made bachelor male character (tentatively called Magnus) was very lonely when I came back. He was crying and throwing tantrums. So I made him call over to the neighboring bachelorette (tentatively called something else). She came over, but she brought a friend. A friend who was insulted by compliments, who clogged the toilet, and who ate his food while he was cleaning up. The two girls were dancing to the tunes of his stereo, while he was totally exhausted from preparing two meals and fixing the toilet and cleaning up. When they finally left, bushed but happy, he was as lonely as ever and completely exhausted too. I guess I should let this be a lesson for real life.

Apart from that, the two of them get along fabulously. As I hoped they would. She is active, outgoing and nice, and makes friends easily. It is my conviction that all men, simulated or otherwise, should have a friend like that. It certainly did improve my own life a lot. :)

When you play the Sims, you only control those who live in the house, and it can be hard enough to track those if there is a family. The guests behave according to their genotype, the 25 points you have distributed on various character traits. It was particularly interesting for me to see how my Sim-Magnus behaved when invited over by the girly friend. I almost laughed out loud when he hauled from behind his back the one packet after the other, four gifts in all. Got that one right!

Speaking of which, it is payday on Friday. I'm pretty much broke right now, apart from what I need to pay the bills. I had to pay for two months on that stereo. Yeah, just like the Sims, only they don't have credit cards for those special occasions. Credit cards are what really sets our civilization apart, you know. This fabulous invention has all the benefits of slavery, minus its ugly sides. The slaves live in comfort and can use their own insights and abilities to choose how to best serve their masters; but still they have to work, and work, and work. For each passing decade, Americans work longer. And now we go the same way here in Norway. We simply have to spend all our time working to pay for all the time-saving devices we drag home... I notice that people are willing to strike for more vacation, but when there is a chance to work overtime they jump to it. :)