DIE STUPID COMPUTER!!!

I'm just about fed up with my computer. Less than 6 months ago I purchased a very expensive, top-of-the-line Alienware x51. It was just such a pretty computer, all shiny and new. Everything was so perfect...until now. In the last 3 days I've spent a grand total of 14 hours on the phone with their technical support and I'm still not quite out of the woods yet.

At first it was taking over an hour to start up the computer, and then it began crashing. I ran a diagnostic on my computer and found out that the error the hard drive was displaying actually meant that the hard drive was shot already. Apparently it had a small manufacturing error that caused it to crash. So I got a new hard drive and had a technician from Dell come by to swap it out. First off, the guy had NO IDEA what he was doing. Couldn't get the computer open, couldn't find the hard drive, just no clue. Then he finally got it swapped out and left. First problem solved!

I started everything up and immediately found out that my graphics card wasn't working any more. Yay. So I called them back and told them about my new problem. They had me take my computer apart to make sure their technician hadn't accidentally disconnected it. So I took my computer apart and found out that the technician had actually put the whole thing together wrong. The clips that held certain parts in place were all screwed up, I'm missing multiple screws, and one of the cooling fans was blocked. Weirdly enough, the graphics card was actually still connected. So then the technical support person told me that meant that my graphics card had also gone bad and they would send me a REFURBISHED one! Not a brand new one, but someone else's old one! So I got off the phone with them and looked up my problem online. Fixed it. Turned out I was missing the driver for the graphics card as Dell hadn't taken the time to download it onto my new hard drive. Second problem solved!

Then I discovered yet another problem. The eject button on the CD drive wasn't working. If I wanted to eject a CD, I had to go into the computer folder and left-click and eject it manually. This time I was smarter though. Didn't call technical support, nope. I looked it up online. Again it was a missing driver. Third problem solved! So after all that work and hours on the phone, the computer runs again.

Unfortunately, running doesn't mean it's just like it was. Since my old hard drive completely crashed, I couldn't save any of my files. The new one is a blank slate. That means I have to reinstall everything. I'm so mad that I lost all my Sim stuff. It's going to take me forever to redownload the games themselves and all of my CC! Hopefully I can get it done within a day and be back to playing soon.

Welcome to the new world...are you ready?

Wow, where in the world did 2013 go? I got all caught up in school and haven't updated in months, and somehow the end of the year just kind of slipped by. Oops. Well I'm determined to have some fun in 2014 and The Sims will always be a part of my fun. Here's to me hopefully updating more often in this lovely new year!

Unfortunately there's a very important Simmer who's decided to call it quits this year. :( Twallan is such an amazing modder and I'm really going to miss him. He'd already announced that he wasn't going to make any mods for The Sims 4, but that really didn't matter as it's still the era of The Sims 3. However, Twallan has decided to retire sooner than that and announced a few days ago that he's retiring now. Doesn't seem like all that big a deal since there are no new EPs or SPs, but EA announced that they have at least one more patch in progress for The Sims 3 so...crap. If anything major changes with this patch, all Twallan's mods will be broken. I urge anyone who would like to keep their mods intact to turn off their automatic updates now!

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So anyways, I'm kind of considering changing from Twallan's mods to AwesomeMod. I actually used to use AwesomeMod way back in the beginning of The Sims 3 era, but switched over because Twallan tended to update much more frequently than Pescado. Now I guess there's very little reason to worry about updates though since The Sims 3 era is almost over.

There's also a really big reason I'm thinking of making the change. AwesomeMod has an option to enable Sims 2-style aging, where only your active household ages. I've always missed that, and with my remodel of Sunset Valley this style of aging would be incredibly useful. That way I could age up the Sims I wanted without affecting the rest of the world. I don't like turning aging off, and I don't like missing other Sims aging up. Sims 2-style aging is really the perfect compromise for me. So I'll be mulling that over as I get everything all set up to start being active in the community once more!

Happy 2014! It's great to be back! :)