Hey guys. Another pattern, this one a request from my sweetie. It’s shiny Mew!

I’m on a Pokémon kick at the moment, courtesy of my sweetheart & the release of HG and SS. I’ve got HG, surprised at how much fun I’m having. I used to try and make (and fail at) pokémon patterns when I was in school. Now of course, I’m older, wiser, but still a kid at heart. So without further ado, I proudly present a ponyta pattern. I haven’t actually sewn it yet, so I’m not sure if the colours are right. If you download & sew this, please send a pic!

My sweetie surprised me with Design and High Tech Stuff for TS3 yesterday. He’s such a darling! Since then, I’ve gone back to playing with my explorer legacy.

Alice is the founder, she’s an adventurous sim, every opportunity, she’s out in China, Egypt or France making friends and exploring tombs. She’s gathered quite a collection of gems. She met her husband, Phillipe in France and has two children by him, Bobby and Bella. She’s expecting a third. I’m hoping to keep the alphabet part of the legacy going right up until Z (wish me luck, never done it before!). Here’s some screenies of them.

As I often do, this legacy is a matriarchy. Bella, the eldest born daughter will be the heir, assuming she lives that long. Phillipe is a bit odd. Just before his wedding, he ran to play in the sprinklers, then proceeded to get married in his swimming trunks. There’s nothing I could do! He also gets out of bed, points and laughs at his wife every time they woohoo. I haven’t got a pic of Bella yet, I’m in the process of redesigning their house. Not quite sure what I’m doing there yet, but until then they’ll probably live in a basement.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with TS3 lately. For all I wasn’t keen on it to start with, it feels more RPlike than the others, it detracts some of the charm of TS1 and 2.. the RPG aspects are appealing to me in other ways. I love the traits and ‘opportunities’ (basically, quests) that came with WA. Also love the new customisation. It’s just not as..wacky and silly and fun as TS2. Still..

I’ve been browsing challenges, I never managed to complete a legacy challenge to date, thanks to bugs in TS2 and TS3. Generally around generation 4 everything goes kaploofie.

With TS3 I’ve started a royal legacy, an adventurer legacy and my own little challenge: Operation Population.

Operation Population is as it sounds.

All adult males in Riverview are mysteriously dying. Funny, that. In comes my sim, in an attempt to seduce every woman of Riverview and populate the town before he reaches his old age. I haven’t decided on a name or traits for my heart breaker/throb/idiot yet. But I’ve already started killing off the men.

This is gonna take forever….

While killing two men in one house (in a lady’s bedroom)..they collapsed, died..she woke up, shooed them out and went back to sleep.

Pictures from our two visits to Birdland. An awesome place!

Apologies for the lousy pics, only resizing done here, no editing at all.

Well, the guppy female I was given recently turns out to have fungus. A day after she arrived, she had small spots on her caudal fin. I assumed it was white spot and turned the tank temp up. The spots appeared to clear. Today I came into work to find her with larger spots on her caudal fin, pectoral fins. anal fin and belly. It looks like fungus

I’ve done a 40% water change (they were due one anyway) and removed the carbon from their filter. Then I added 2mls of Methylene Blue (2.44%). The medicine that puts the fun in fungus! The tank’s now a dark blue & I occasionally see a fish swim past. It’s made the fungus on her stand out. Thankfully, none of the other fish are glowing with fungus although I’m worried about the two other adult guppies; they have slight tears in their tails from when I had to change the filter last, there’s a chance the fungus might affect them.

Dosage is 1ml/2 gallons every 4 days until symptoms clear so we’ll see how it goes. It’s a pain because I was hoping to take the baby guppies to the petshop this week. Hoping the methylene blue won’t harm the fry. They seem full of it so far!

My new book arrived yesterday too, Holistic Care For Birds. An interesting read so far (about 4 pages in -.-)

Phew, it’s been awful busy this week. Work has picked up again, thankfully, though right now there’s not much to do. Nice sunny afternoon though

I’m working on a rather..interesting website for a customer; Stone The Devil. It’s based on a series of books he’s written. You’ll be able to read the books online when he’s done, as well as discuss them. I really don’t know how to describe it..when the site’s up and running I’ll post a synopsis.

Jake’s being..Jake. He’s been fairly good this week, he went through a phase where he was grabbing lips and ears but that’s starting to wear off now. Had some fab photos of him recently during playtimes. He looks like such a cutie when he’s caught on camera, it’s hard to believe what a monster he can be.

In those pictures he’s playing with a teething rattle I bought in Morrison’s. He lurves it!

I can’t remember if I mentioned it but I joined a choir (thanks to my lovely) back in the spring. We’re doing our annual concert (raising money for the alzheimers association). It’s my first big concert with them and I’m nervous as hell. We’re a female choir and aim to raise awareness about the welsh language but we also sing in English. Saturday’s programme includes:

Hafan Gobaith (appropriate in this case)
Ysbryd Y Nos
Fields of Gold
Calon Lan
Mamma Mia!
The Battle of Jericho
You Raise Me Up

I’m sure I missed one, but there you go. Really can’t wait. And it’s nearly home time! Off I go!

I am the worst at updating things. Have you noticed?

My office Biorb has been up and running for 4 months now! I haven’t had a single problem with ammonia, nitrites or nitrates so far, fingers crossed it’ll continue that way. I started with two pretty female guppies. Silver except for a light blue scripe stripe (I can’t spell) on the top and bottom of their tails. Had them from Fforest Mill Garden Centre in Swansea. They weren’t particularly young, both had big bellies and were pregnant again. A fortnight after my sweethaert sweetheart (can’t type either) bought me a gorgeous black tuxedo male. By the end of the month they’d dropped 40 babies between them and were pregnant again. I’ve kept two from that first batch, a male and a female. They look nothing like either parent. They have red, yellow, pink and blue on their sides. The male has black spots on his dorsal fin and black stripes on the outside of his tail, with blue stripes just inside as well as black spots on his body. They’re really coming pretty now.

The largest guppy died recently, looks like it was age. The second is still going strong, she’s just dropped some more babies and TuxedoGup is busy chasing her again. I’ve currently got about 20 babies in the tank. Perhaps more, it’s hard to tell.

Yesterday my father bought me what appears to be a neon blue (I’m not good with guppy mutations) guppy female. She’s very pretty, pregnany, small and has no belly so chances are this is her first batch of fry. She’s settled in quite quickly, TuxedoGup doesn’t know who to chase next. Spoilt for choice!

I’m surprisingly impressed with the Biorb. I’d heard a lot of ..not so much bad things but..they’re looked down upon by sirius serious fishkeepers for not having a proper filter and being bowl shaped.

The filter’s basic, but so are most others in small/starter tanks. It sits in the bottom and has charcoal, ceramic chips and a sponge. It appears to be doing it’s job, it needs a regular clean and the chemical levels are all stable. The tank isn’t that dependant on the filter for bacteria, the ceramic media that you use in the biorb (don’t use gravel!) provides a good home for it. Plus it’s perfect as a maternity/nursery tank as the substrate gives fry plenty of places to hide. There’s also a bubbler beneath the filter to keep the water nice and oxygenated. Now and again I drop in an oxygen tablet for good measure.

The only thing I don’t like is the heater stand. It’s not the right size for a baby biorb, it’s sodding useless. It’s all very well in the large biorbs where they’re tall enough to take a heater stand without it bending. They’d have been better off designing one especially for the baby Biorb. It’s the only thing that lets it down. The heater itself isn’t a ReefOne official heater but a small 25W one from what was the Garden Site and is now Aquarium Site. I buy everything biorb from there. They’re not especially cheap but they are good to deal with. I haven’t had a single problem. And my biorb box had a slip in it that informed me that everything had been checked by a gentleman named Tom. It’s a nice touch, so much stuff is sent straight out without being checked these days.

So, my biorb inventory to date:

1x Baby Biorb (15L)
1x Biorb Heater Stand
1x Theo 25W heater
1x ReefOne Submersible Digital Thermometer
1x BiOrb Magnetic Algae Cleaner
1x Biorb Ornament Tower and Bonsai 5.5″

I can’t say I think much of the range of ornaments for the baby biorb. I liked the Biorb 30&60’s grecian ruins. But the castle was the least tacky of all the ornaments. The others available includ a No Fishing sign, strange mushroom covered tree & a garish coral garden, none of which are particularly appealing.

My birdroom is still in the process of being built. It needs painting, wiring, cupboards, aviaries, cages, birds…
When it is all done I’m hoping to get a small tropical tank to raise the guppy babies in. Until then they’re being given away to anyone who wants them.

Speaking of birds, my fids are as noisy and demanding as ever. The cockatiels are forever eating, playing and sleeping. The latest batch of babies aren’t really bothered about me, unlike their parents. There’s enough of them now to have a proper flock without the need for human interference.

Barney’s still shy as ever. For all people say that Barnard’s Parakeets are demanding..she’s lovely. Rarely hear a peep from her. She’s not tame, but still enjoys human company. She’s timid and afraid of new toys, except for her sandy perch which got beeped at and bounced on as soon as it went into her cage. She’s happy to sit and talk to the ‘tiels all day. She’s had quite an exciting time lately. Twice, a sparrow has ended up in my birdshed (I don’t know how, I don’t see it go in, only open up to find it bombing about. Barn sits and scolds it (and me) until it’s gone.

Jake’s..Jake. He’s currently moulting and it makes him a grumpy bird. He’s a typical Hahn’s, nippy, noisy, demanding, ever so loving and incredibly playful. His latest annoying trick is grabbing my bottom lip with his beak and hanging on. His latest neat trick is waving. It’s still a work in progress along with giving me a high-four. His newest mastered word is boo! He’ll sit and play peekaboo for ages. He’s also trying to say ‘where’s Jake?’ and ‘There he is!’ He’s got the sounds of the sentence right but not the actual words. He still can’t say Jake but instead says -K!

I actually managed to get a recording of him the other night, although no luck with a decent photo.

Listen to Jake!

Work’s pretty dead today, hence the update. I feel awfully guilty because I’ve missed so much lately. Had an allergic reaction to the bandages I have to wear for eczema. Leg came up in blisters, looked like a burn. Had to take a lot of time off work through not being able to put/wear anything on my legs.

Did have a gentleman in recently who cracked us up. He informed us that he was going to forget about the router and buy one of those wireless “dougals” instead. It’s such a nicer name, I’d love to have a USB Dougal!

Now here’s one that’s really given us a headache at work.

So you bought a new laptop with a 2007 trial on it.  Or you decided to try out the beta, just for larks. It’s not what you wanted (in fact, I abhor office 07’s new GUI). So you uninstall it, and install Office 2003 instead. All looking good until you try to open Outlook. Uh oh.

Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have
been caused by installing other messaging system. Please reinstall Outlook.

Now what? You try deleting the file but it won’t delete or keeps coming back. Insert witty pun about the curry and pints you had last night.

This really did give us hell in work. And I’ve finally gotten around it.

1. Uninstall Office 2007
2. Restart PC
3. Rename c:\windows\system32\mapi32.dll to whatever you want. I went with the classic MAPI32.DLL.OLD, but I’m sure fuckoffmapi or ihateoffice07 would have been adequate.
4. Download the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility
5. Run cleanup utility, making sure you tick any references to Office
6. Install Office 2003

Et voila. Who’d have thought the solution was so simple? Not I. Especially after I tried every solution suggested online that I could find.

Hope this fixes everyone else’s problems!