Sim City Let's Play Day 1

January 31, 2016

Good morning everyone! I'm back! Not daily like I used to be, but hopefully weekly from now on. I have a new schedule & a new plan & I'm REALLY excited about it! Normally this happens to me on New Year's Eve / New Year's Day, but this year there was nothing. I wasn't feeling it like I used to & thought maybe I was just getting older. It was kinda depressing not being as excited as I used to be ... but here I am, at the end of January & NOW it kicks in. Just a little late this year, but it did come. Friday was the big day of change & inspiration which also meant the day of rewriting / recoding my entire schedule in HTML grid format. As usual, I wanted to go to bed early & get a bright & early start to my "new life". And, as usual, I was so excited that I couldn't sleep & then overslept until much later than I normally wake up. ::: sigh :::

I watched a couple movies:

I checked out a work-from-home site called Elance. The trouble I have with these sites is that I'm not a salesman. I was there looking for other types of work, yet what do you need to do 1st? Sell. You need to sell yourself. Come up with a "professional title" & then write a nice bio about yourself & of course, the better the bio, the more work may come your way. What am I supposed to say? I'm an almost 50-year-old gamer that has cats? Seriously, what the heck am I supposed to say in a bio meant to get me paid work? I sat there & stared at the blank screen for a while & then just gave up on that whole idea.

I bought a few games:

Worked on a kit afghan I've been crocheting for a while called Ripple Afghan:

My personal Website has been offline for a while. I still own the domain name, but it was blind forwarding to a Wix site that I had build for my Minecraft server a while back. I just found out yesterday that the blind forward was only half working. The page was blank white except for a Wix ad at the bottom. That version of my server has been gone for a long time, so I removed the forward & tried to get my personal Website online again. Well, to do that I need hosting for it, which I currently don't have, so that's going to have to wait until Monday at the earliest. Besides that, I ran into other snags too related to my Website. I still have Paint Shop Pro, but Animation Shop was lost in a hard drive transfer (along with a ton of other files) & I have no way of making animated graphics now. I have to look into a whole new way of doing it other than how I used to & I don't even know where to begin looking. This is also going to require money since I'm sure I'm going to have to buy the software & those 11 years of Paint Shop Pro are out the window now. When I said I wanted to start over, I didn't mean I wanted to have to purchase all new software. :/

Of course I'm still playing Minecraft! Although my new plan won't allow for as much of it as I'd like. Raw Fish. Go kill some spiders, gather some string, make a fishing pole, find a nice spot on the edge of a lake, & go fishing! This is my favorite way to obtain food in Minecraft. I hate killing all the animals I come across because once you kill them all off, then what? I prefer to go fishing for my food, as that supply never runs out & then the animals can later be caught, fenced, bred, & their numbers increased before killing any.

This is the Streamwave afghan. My take on it anyway. This is one of my favorite patterns & I've crocheted several already with 2 more currently in the works. This rainbow version is my all-time favorite of any of them I've made though. 1 of the new ones I'm currently working on (no photo yet) is made with Simply Soft yarn & is solid lavender with black edging. There will be a photo ... eventually. :)

This is my temperature afghan for 2016. It's worked in Tunisian crochet & each row is a day of the year. Each row is 3 sections: The low for the day, the average temperature for the day, & the high for the day. The section you're looking at is the high temperatures for January up through January 30th. The rows that appear white are actually pale yellow. I'll get a better photo when I finish today's row & then I'll post the entire month of January on my Ravelry page.

Besides my own Minecraft server, I also enjoy logging into other servers. One of those other servers is called VitalCraft. Check them out! They're a friendly bunch & the owner was online along with a Moderator, so if you have any questions, staff is usually available to help.

Well, that's all I've got for this week. I'll be back next week with a WHOLE lot more to say. Have a wonderful week!

January 17, 2016

Good morning everyone! Only 2 months since my last entry ... not too terrible compared to the last time. So how is everyone? I'm going great! I stopped smoking!! Stopped, not quit. I have decided that there's a definite difference. When you quit smoking, it's a conscious choice you make. You decide that you're going to quit smoking & you set a date & on that date you hide all the ash trays, throw out your cigarettes, give away your lighters, etc. Then you stop smoking & usually take it out on everyone around you, much to their horror. I didn't do that. I enjoyed smoking & had no plans to quit. This whole thing happened over 3 days & went like this: Day 1. I woke up, had a cigarette & it didn't taste as good as usual. Kinda like they were a little bit stale. I just assumed I had a cold. That night hubby & I sat down to watch TV like we always do & I made my usual bag of microwave popcorn. It didn't taste quite right either. Now I was almost certain I must be coming down with a cold. The next morning I woke up, again lit a cigarette & it tasted worse than the day before. Yep ... I have a cold. Strange though, I felt just fine ... but my taste buds were definitely "off". That night, TV ... popcorn ... tasted worse ... confirming this cold that I didn't "feel". Day 3: Saturday ... we went out, I lit a cigarette & it tasted FOUL! I mean horrible, nasty, licking an ash tray foul! It gave me a headache that lasted for hours & it took me a long time to get the horrible taste out of my mouth. That was the last cigarette I ever smoked in its entirety. That night I made a bag of popcorn & it was also horrible. That was the last bag of popcorn I ever microwaved. So you see, I didn't "quit" smoking ... I just stopped. Since that happened I have tried a couple of times to have a cigarette. I take a single puff & out it goes. I just can't do it anymore. Cigarettes & microwave popcorn are forever out of my life. Definitely a healthy thing for me! I have no idea what happened. Divine intervention? Your guess is as good as mine, but I'm not complaining. We've saved a fortune by not buying cigarettes anymore. As for the popcorn, another snack food has taken its place. Apparently I'm now completely addicted to Cheesy Poofs (Cheetos). They cost more than the popcorn! Ugh. Well, that's my huge news for the new year. I hope all of you are doing well. Until next time ... stay safe & be happy. This is the only life we're given, don't waste it being angry or sad.

November 14, 2015

Hello & yes, I know it's been a year & a half since my last blog post. I've been happily beading, crocheting, knitting, playing Civilization V, Minecraft, & a couple times a week, Sims 3. Life has been good! I like to use pony beads & make bead banners ... I bought the seed beeds & a loom, but they're so tiny ... I'm just too old to SEE them, never mind pick them up & use them. LOL! Crocheting, I still love the Bavarian afghan pattern & am always working on one of those along with other afghan patterns so I don't get bored working on the same thing every day. I've got some standard favorite patterns that I am always working on & pull a new one into the mix every once in a while for something completely different. Knitting, I don't knit much. I enjoy it, but not as much as crocheting. My thing recently is to watch Charmed twice a day while crocheting, giving me an hour & 20 minutes of crocheting per day. CivV is my morning game for an hour every morning & I really enjoy it but had never "won" the game (according to the game by turn 500) until a couple days ago. I was playing as Rome & I had more gold, production, food, military strength, & territory than anyone else. WOOHOO! I could have kept playing, but I was so happy to see the victory screen that I figured I'd stop while I was ahead. Minecraft, I still have my Minecraft server & have switched to a modded server. I had gotten bored with Vanilla Minecraft & modpacks were too overwhelming with too much to learn & do. I finally found the perfect happy medium for me ... FTB Vanilla+. I run that on my server now & I love it! Sims 3 is still the Sims 3 & I live vicariously through my Sims. Last night I played the rock star game & it's going well, but their house is a little small for all of them. I'm hoping the daughter who is in grade school will marry someone with a bigger house because if he's homeless (as some Sims you meet are), then we're screwed. There's just no more room. It's a nice house, but VERY small. 1 bedroom. I have 2 double & 1 single bed in that single bedroom already, if she has to move her husband in, I'm going to have to put a bed in the basement! No, I'm not kicking anyone out ... that's just not nice. "Hey mom, dad, meet my new husband. Now get out, you're in the way." Yeah, not nice. The big news of today is what happened in Paris last night with the terrorist shootings & bombings. Other than that, nothing new going on here. Hubby & our son are outside replacing the alternator in the Mustang GT convertible & everything else is as it should be. Have a great ... year & a half or so until I write to you again! Oh, instead of Blogger daily, I mainly just stick to facebook & Reddit now. Those are my 2 main social media sites, so if you want I'll see you there. I'm LizC864. :)

Forgotten Legend – Last Timelapse

Forgotten Legend – Last Timelapse

May 2014

Hello! Yes, it's been 3 months. :) All is good here. Since I have no idea what I've covered & what I haven't, I'll just tell you the highlights.

I switched to e-cigs. Best thing I ever did & SO much easier than quitting. No more stained walls, my sense of taste & smell is good, & I'm healthier. I'm a fan. I'm using V2, & have never had a problem with their products, so if you're in the market I suggest them highly. :)

Our daughter is coming to visit & attend our son's senior band banquet. She'll be here about a week & her flight will land in Dallas in just over 48 hours.

I finally got my hair straightened & it looks amazing! I found a GREAT place that does full service work. Hard to find these days because for years all they would do is spritz my hair & trim it. New place every time & that's all I could get done. Well, this last place I found does it all. Wash, cut, style, blow dry, & straighten. Not like I've had it straightened before. This won't come out in 2 days or 2 months. This is PERMANENT! Only the new hair growing in may be wavy & then I go back & have it touched up. All that amazing service & wonderful hair & guess what? It was CHEAP too! I'm now a customer for life & the guy who did my hair was exactly who I was looking for. I had 3 criteria for the PERFECT stylist & he hit 2 out of 3. I'm not sure about the 3rd because I wasn't about to ask him if he was gay. :) He's amazing though & I hope he never leaves there. If he does I'll have to track him down & hope he's still in the business.

Our son joined the Marine Corps. & ships out August 25th. Boot camp is in California & either he hasn't chosen a job yet or hasn't informed us if he has, so we have no idea where he's going after that. We plan on attending the graduation, so I get to see California for the 1st time in my life. :D

Yes, I'm still playing Minecraft ... a LOT & I'm going to ArcadiaCon next month! I have 2 servers now: lizc864.mcph.co & a Realms server. ALL of my work can be found on 3 different Pinterest pages:

http://www.pinterest.com/lizc864/minecraft/

http://www.pinterest.com/lizc864/lizc864-minecraft-realms/

http://www.pinterest.com/lizc864/lizc864-minecraft-server/

Hubby decided back in January that my truck was nicer than his Civic (duh!) & started taking it to work 6 days a week. Well, after 5 months of driving the beat up Honda (which I hate) I traded it for a Ford Mustang GT convertible! Straight trade, no cash. I KNOW I got the much better end of that deal & I'm loving my Mustang! Spring, the best time to buy a convertible ... I've been driving around with the top down & getting sun! Hubby told everyone it's the "Midlife crisis mobile", but I prefer to call it my "hubby stole my truck so I traded his car for something COOL mobile"

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/96827460713170653/

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/96827460713290353/

I stopped playing Sims for a while during my Minecraft intro, but have now started again & now play Minecraft & Sims equally. I don't screenshot in the Sims as much as I used to though as I'm not building there anymore. I save all my building for Minecraft, but that may change soon.

I was worried about losing power during this blog due to storms we're having today, but instead my computer crashed. I have issues with my video drivers & once in a while I'll get the black screen of death. The screen just goes black & there's no coming back from that. No Ctrl+Alt+Del, nothing. The only thing I can do is punch reset. Luckily though, Blogger is cool & saves your work as a draft often. I only lost about 1 sentence. Not bad!

The last of the news, but not least is a new puppy! Taz. Hubby, who is NOT a pet person ... especially when we already have cats & dogs, was coming back from a PC repair job at a business one night & while driving through downtown Dallas was stopped at a light & heard a woman crying. Sitting on the curb was a homeless woman crying & holding a TINY little puppy. She was promising the puppy that she would find him a good home. Hubby pulled over & asked her what was going on. She said that this little puppy (I mean he fit in the palm of my hand ... but was eating solid food) was lost & a bunch of mean people were yelling at him & scaring him. HOW can people do that?! How can people be mean to animals? Worse, how can people be mean to domestic animals? Even WORSE, a super tiny little puppy that was already lost & scared??? Sometimes I am SO disappointed in the human race. :'( Anyway, she grabbed the puppy & ran off with him. She was now on this street corner crying (I would be too ... people are so cruel!) & hubby did the unthinkable. He said he would be more than happy to give him a great & loving home & proceeded to tell her that we have other pets & that he would never be lonely. Well, he was going to surprise me but couldn't contain himself. He called me & told me. I of course did the girly "aaawwww!" thing over & over. When he got home & I saw this little guy, it started all over again. This was the CUTEST puppy I have ever seen in my life & we're talking almost 50 years of life here. O-M-G he's cute!!! It only took me a couple days to come up with the name Taz. He's got the wild energy of Taz! He's spoiled rotten & finally about the same size as the Chihuahuas but feels like he weighs 10X as much. He's one solid little guy. Out of control & destructive ... I have to watch him every second, but he bonded with me instantly & never EVER leaves my side. If I get up to walk into the kitchen (right behind me), he gets up from sleeping & follows me in there. Every step & he's right by my side. I'm not sure what he is, but I'm fairly sure he's not a mutt & also fairly sure he's a miniature dachshund. Everyone, meet Taz:

The full-size individual photos can be found on my facebook page @ facebook.com/LizC864

February 1, 2014

Good morning! I took yesterday off. I was too excited. I uploaded my 1st Minecraft map (6th pic) & I already had a rave review! If you'd like to download it, the link is: lizc864.com/Minecraft/2014_January_LizC864_Swampland.zip

After that I couldn't help it, I just had to start February's map! I welcome all suggestions as the maps should only get better with experience & your suggestions.

After uploading January's map I started February's. It only took 2 tries this time. The 1st try put me on the top edge of a mountain in an extreme hills biome. Not very useful for building anything. The 2nd try put me in a forest surrounded by trees & beautiful flowers. WIN! I created a Simple Suburban Train Station (5th pic) & then started building out from there. Unlike my 1st map, this one is more

organized. There are 4 tracks that branch out from the train station & the houses are spaced along the tracks starting out a bit from the station so you can still enjoy the biome. I didn't have to knock down every tree. The 1st house I created is the one I still live in, Alpine Retreat (2nd pic). Then I created the Candy Cane Cabin (3rd pic), a castle (4th pic), & 1007 (1st pic). Notice there is a lot of natural biome around each

house that's great for exploring & gathering resources. No matter which house you choose, you'll have space. The 1st map was more like being in a city, this is out in the country where you can barely see your neighbor's house. :) This is going to be a great map folks! It'll be uploaded on Thursday the 28th.