thanx a ton. now I can leave joints all over the place. my sims thank you 

I'm looking for a mod to prevent the game from selling the furnishings when a family moves out. There's some things that can only be added to lots by having a sim move in and manually place the items (stuff that only appears in the simventory for example). My current technique has been to create a disposable character to place them and then killing them off but I'd rather do it more "cleanly".
(ps how odd. the spell checker in here doesn't recognize the word "sim")

The dissapearing content is a poorly programmed anti-piracy feature. It's SUPPOSED to check your custom content for EA made pay items, cross-reference it with the launcher's list of what you've paid for, and block anything by EA you didn't pay for. But it doesn't work right so lots of random custom content is blocked. Any custom content made in the first month or two after Sims 3 basegame came out is blocked from what I hear (due to the first version number of the tool used to make it being on the blocked list).

this is normal. EA has malwared your game. It's a standard feature on patch 1.8/2.3
It's SUPPOSED to check for EA made pay items, crossreference it with the Launcher's list of what you've paid for, and block any EA pay items you haven't paid for. But of course it's badly programmed. So it blocks all sorts of stuff it's not supposed to (anything made before a certain date, new pay items that you've paid for, etc). You need to uninstall and reinstall to the earlier version number (remember to tell it to keep your save games and custom items) or figure out how to fix the malware (there's a way but the site I heard about it on didn't bother to explain how to do it, just explained the logic behind it (you find the file that's got the list of stuff it's looking for and change it somehow)).

Hate to tell you but the puddingface is on purpose. It and the lack of custom skin ability are a response to that crazy censorship lawyer attacking them last year (or was it the year before?). He tried to say the Sims 2 custom sex stuff that some people have on their computers is standard with the game. He lost of course but he threw a scare into them and so Sims 3 has been formulated to try and make sex mods impossible/harder.
So no, they won't add more sliders because they're purposely trying to make Sims look kinda crappy like that.

well in case you haven't heard there's a horribly programmed anti-piracy thing included with the latest patch (1.8/2.3 new as of Dec 15 2009). It's SUPPOSED to check your custom content for pay items made by EA, cross-reference it with what you've bought thru the launcher, and block anything you didn't pay for. But it doesn't work right. So it blocks massive amounts of fan made custom content too (as well as some EA stuff you DID pay for).
Obviously I'm not willing to upgrade until there's a fix for this malware but I want to try Create-A-World soooo bad! Does anyone know how to fix it? I heard on a site there's one paticular file that you have to change (I assume it's the list of what it's supposed to be checking for, so if you change it it thinks it's looking for zero items and doesn't do anything) but that site didn't bother to give any instructions.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEEEASE someone tell us how to fix EA's latest catastrophic mistake!

apparently the download link went missing when this article moved to the adult site

now if only you could do multiple floors in one unbroken motion when there's stacked circular stairs. Imagine 14 floors of that!

Apartment Life added an exterior decoration called the Molded Cornice, but it's "lot impostor" equivilent flashes blue (I've seen this formally listed as an AL bug so I know it's not just me). I saw a fix for it before but stupidly didn't get it (I don't use the cornice), but a few lots I've downloaded use the Cornice so now I'm stuck needing the fix.

Rahne is a scottish girl's name. Found out about it from X-Men comics. The 13 year old werewolf girl on the 80s junior team (New Mutants) is named Rahne Sinclair.

Just wanted to point out another example of when the game counts community lot time: vacations!
If you leave your hotel at 10am and go on a community lot until 2pm then return to the hotel it'll still be 2pm...other family members left behind at the hotel will be doing something different. AFAIK their bars haven't counted down any (otherwise there'd be a risk of starvation) but I'm not 100% sure about that. I was playtesting a vacation community lot (trying to carve a barely climbable path up the side of a cliff) and had my town's token lesbian couple individually visit that lot 8 times before I got it right. Hmmmm...come to think of it they might still be on that vacation with 1 day left...

Have you ever read a subject line and thought it meant something else? Somehow I was invisioning a mod to allow your toddlers to ride on the backs of the puppies or kittens

great chair but I must admit every time I look at that screenshot I think of the comic villain Joyboy from Excalibur...here's a link to the little baby alien thing's team:
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/t/technet.htm

now flip between the pic of him and the screenshot of the chair...it's not just me that sees an alien baby thing in that chair right?

Perhaps this should be stickied. I bet this will end up being the #1 question for Apartment Life.

I just built the first floor of an apartment complex vaguely like my old one (U shaped, with a hallway running down the middle with apartments on either side). I was planning to make it 4 floors before I realized I might have a problem. Just the first floor is 16 suites! I'm guessing 64 suites is beyond the limit. Heck I'm wondering if 16 is already past the limit.
(Yes, it's a 5x6 lot)

On another note, is there any way to build taller buildings (like more than 4 stories)? Don't worry, I'm not planning to use it on a 5x6 lot!