A small rant, sort of…

For long time readers, this may come as a shock because I’m going to try and briefly set aside my usual “if you don’t have something positive to say, don’t say anything at all” point of view.

I’m feeling a little bad already and I haven’t even written anything yet. It’s because I’ve been thrilled with almost every new addition to TSTO. It’s almost like EA have been reading my mind (or something like that).

Yeah, then there’s the fact that lots of Tappers don’t have the donuts to spare and it really was thoughtful for those folks to receive a free premium item.

Plus it’s also sends out a nice message that good things do come to those who are patient. “Patience Grasshopper”, has always been my motto!

So what was I going to rant about, oh yeah – I paid donuts for the Wailing Wall! Now I have two. My town’s design theme is like me and is reflected clearly in this blog’s tag line ‘Nothing Special…’ I only want one of everything ~ not two! Except maybe for items that I use for fun… for instance, over at Tapped-Out UK some of us hide rabbit hedges around our towns for our neighbor-eenos to find in a game called SUBS.

So okay, now I feel completely petty and selfish but that’s not a bad thing IMHO. Because it shows me that I’m grown-up enough be able recognize the nature of these (or almost any other) feelings

Thank you Zen!
😦 😐 🙂 😀

About Unmoderated Comments…

A quick word about unmoderated comments on this blog:

1 … I’m a ‘rules geek’ when it comes to playing any game (or in life, in general, for that matter). So while I’m not judging, at all ~ I will not moderate any comment that mentions (or has links or any ties) to hacking, cheating or even glitch exploits. In cartoon terms, I’m a Dudley Do-Right. Yes, I mean I’m a (sometimes) bumbling fool (Dp. 63) who always tries to do the right thing. Heck I’m so straight-laced that I don’t even exploit glitches in the game to gain extra swag that was not intended by the game’s creators. I’m not being high-handed here, everyone chooses their own path. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations or in less geeky terms… It’s all good 🙂

2 … Comments that are unrelated or that contain references (or links) that I simply don’t know anything about (and more importantly don’t have enough time to research). I strive to keep all material on this blog relevant and family-friendly ~ meaning within US TV-PG guidelines content-wise. I’m truly sorry about not moderating these comments but I only have so much time. Plus I’m easily distracted and really need to try and keep the focus on my chosen topics ~ which I can more effectively manage.

For more please read my http://drewdabble.com/about/ page.

Miscellaneous TSTO Speculations

Is “Cheese it” a Futurama reference? It’s one of my all-time favorite Bender sayings

Outside of old 1940’s and 1950’s black & white gangster movies, the only other place I ever recall hearing “Cheese it” was Katey Sagal as Peggy Bundy in Married with Children. Sagal is the voice actor for the character Leela in Futurama. That’s what Kelly Bundy would call a ‘coinkydink’  😉

So anyway, if you think that was speculative, I’m just getting warmed up… How about the possible return of the Mapple Store?

The next new episode of the Simpsons “Four Regrettings and a Funeral” is airing Sunday after next – November 3th (in the US). This is apparently the episode where someone dies. Folks are sharing regrets at the funeral. Homer’s is about selling his Mapple stock to buy a bowling ball. This would seem to be a perfect opportunity for a TSTO tie-in bringing the Mapple Store back for a very limited time. Please EA – oh pretty please! It sure would be nice to finally be able to do these locked tasks that have (excuse the Halloween pun) haunted me since I started playing the game in late February 2013…

And now I’m going completely farfetched…  Actually it’s more like I’m still really enjoying the TOH XXIV Couch Gag. Every time I watch it, I see something new. Like this ‘Krusty.. Now Doing Funerals’ billboard.

It was also in Season 20 “Take My Life, Please”

Could we be getting this Billboard or maybe a Funeral Home in TSTO?

Dabble Dog Down

I think EA’s done a pretty good job responding to TSTO character imbalances lately. For instance, they’ve started giving us many more female characters ~ four in Halloween 2013 alone. We got  Ghost Maude Flanders, Booberella, Senile Zombie, Susane the Witch!

Hopefully now it’s time to deal with the fact that Springfield has gone to the dogs 😉

Not sure if this is complete, but there’s plenty of K-9’s these days. We have lots of interesting dogs roaming around alone, being walked by characters – even a puppy, robot & zombie dog.

Now we get a cat to wander round our Springfield’s – but an undead one. Very cool though. Thanks EA and the Global Goo Tapping Communtiy!

Warning, Wild Speculation: So, it’s early Thursday morning and I would normally be anticipating a possible new update… Level 36 ~ maybe. However with Halloween 2013 going on right now, who knows. Anyway, what would I like to see in Level 36? Glad I asked… a character that not only would bring more cats to TSTO, it would also bring another female character. Crazy Cat Lady (aka Eleanor Abernathy).

With EA having put us on notice that they’ll be feeding out the game info, I’m wondering if they might be leaving clues in the game dialogs (dialogues). For instance in Level 33 Sunsphere quest Bart references ghosts and now we have ghosts! With that in mind, I noticed that Frink mentioned SHROOOEdinger recently…

This is probably just classic Geeky DrewBabble goofiness. Now on to a half an hour of tapping towards the Global Goo Effort, then some ZZZZZZZZZZ’s ~ aka: Dabble Dog Down 🙂

Closure: The References in Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXIV

This amazing video brilliantly points out most (if not, all) of the references in this epic couch gag! Closure at last, thank you, moviepilot…

http://www.moviepilot.de/news/alle-filmreferenzen-in-guillermo-del-toros-simpsons-intro-125247

This site is in German, so I fired up the ‘ol universal translator
(aka translate.google.com)  Click for full-res version…

I’m glad I did not stick my neck out (speculatively speaking) any further than I did…
I said maybe! Rod Serling –LMSMAO– Jonathan Harris   But still…
Besides, I’m an ‘OG Space Cadet’ and sentiment & wishful thinking may have prevailed here. I would love to watch some Space Academy episodes again.
Anyway, considering the vast and bottomless information well, that the Internet is, it is scary how quickly things can go ‘Beautiful Mind‘… Maybe 😉

Share this via Google Goo Link: http://goo.gl/5HLiQm

Being A Good Neighbor-eeno

Nearly overwhelmed by ‘real-world’ work and blogging related stuff, my TSTO playing has suffered. My second (100% non-premium) game is forming cobwebs.

My vising of friends’ towns is lagging also. I’m nearly maxed out so that’s almost a hundred.  I haven’t timed it, but it takes a long time to visit them all. It’s giving me flashbacks to Whacking Day, when TSTO became a part-time job. I for one, was relieved to see the laidback pace of Squidport.

Now that we can see who has visited us (except for vandalism) I’m going to try my best to reciprocate with Tappers who visit me. However, with no ability to ‘sort’ or ‘favorite’ on the Friends Screen this is somewhat laborious. Seriously, I’m getting guitar players’ callus on the end of my tapping finger from scrolling back and forth so much.

The best solution would be if EA just automatically sorted the friends that have visited your town to the front of the list on the Friends Screen.

This would give us the ability to manage more friends. Which I’d very much like – because (true story), I’ve been struggling to find a few friends to remove from my Springfield. I had nearly decided on a short list when one of them visited my town.

I’ll end by dusting the cobwebs off my second game and showing it some love. Here’s a screenshot from it. What is the rarest thing one could ever glimpse while visiting someone else’s town?  I’m thinking that would be witnessing a crop of Perfection blooming. I’ve tried several times going back and forth between my two games with no luck. Not sure if it’s even possible with the lag-time involved in syncing with EA’s servers. So here’s one I grabbed directly from my second game. I’m tellin’ ya folks, it’s even hard to make a screenshot and then harvest Perfection before it rots.

Hail Ants Sign in TSTO

One of my favorite decorations in TSTO is the “Hail Ants” sign.

Because it’s from one of my favorite episodes Deep Space Homer.

This is my favorite scene. The music is The Blue Danube which you may recognize from such movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It also explains the first two videos.

DrewDabble is a big fan of Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve read most of his books and will be posting about some of them soon.

Is the TSTO World Getting Back to Normal?

A few thoughts before heading off to work… Looks like the tide may be turning for the good guys. As I hope all Tappers already know, there were several exempts yesterday to make fraudulent posts over at the bad guy’s camp. However, three smelly posts were removed within hours. Yes three – a fourth bogus post got deleted before I could even read it – trying to work the “EA Servers Are Down” angle. The only one remaining is that fake Mr. T post by ‘you-know-who’ titled “I’m Sorry” – and boy ain’t that the truth!

The Internet’s ‘New Tips’ blog TSTOTopix.com is coming along nicely – Piling on over 30,000 hits this weekend… they are off and running!

And when you’ve had your fill of playing TSTO, blog surfing and commenting don’t forget to check-in at Tapped-Out UK. The best description of this site: It’s like your favorite ‘real world’ hang-out, only out here in ‘The Cloud’ 🙂

I’m sorry about all the comments still in moderation. I promise to respond to them as quickly as possible today. Also thanks to mastersneasle over at the awesome Pokémon X and Y Stuff  blog for pointing out that I haven’t stated the ‘Rating Level’ for language in comments here. For the record it’s in the PG-13 neighborhood…  Or, pretty much anything that would be allowed on The Simpsons or Futurama TV shows (or TSTO) I’ll add, DrewDabble is impressed by comments that creatively express their point without excessive ‘potty-month’  😉

Now about my DrewDabble blog – I will be broadening its topic base – plus getting back to the original “Zen Geek” theme (originally envisioned for this blog) that has gotten drowned-out by my TSTO obsession.

So I’ll end on a geeky note by saying how very much I dig the Google Doodle today about Erwin Schrödinger. It never takes a gathering of geeks very long before someone makes a cat-in-the-box reference!

Good News, Everyone!

This is an update to my (possibly) misunderstood post… http://drewdabble.com/2013/08/09/we-must-be-cautious/

The pre-takeover TSTO Tips Team is regrouping and can be found here. Hopefully they won’t change the URL again 😉 But if they do, just check back here because I will have probably tracked it down and posted about it. Anyway Mike, Mickus and most of gang are there and hopefully more will be joining soon.

Plus, and this is a BIG PLUS, (also long overdue) they finally have a female voice! Her pen name is minicha or ‘Em Cha’ as she’s known at Tapped-Out UK which is kind-of an online version of ‘Cheers’ (you know, like a pub where everyone knows your n…) Just create a free account and join in on the fun! BTW: Please add an account pic, this helps the more ‘visually oriented’ of us keep track of your shared TSTO insights.

OK, so maybe now I can get back to making this a ‘Multi-Topic’ blog.  Woo Hoo 🙂 To which Professor Farnsworth is a clue (but not in a bad way, like his ‘good news’ usually is on the TV Show)

What new TSTO / TV Show tie-in’s does Fox have planned for us?

The new Simpsons TV season is just around the corner. I’m thinking there’s going to be tons of TSTO episode tie-ins. For most of the summer re-run season here in the US, Fox has been hammering the tie-in episodes. Lots of chances for DrewDabble to lament not buying a Moe’s Limo (or three) and The Swanky Fish 😦

What could be next?  Well the upcoming Level 33 (click here for the Spoilers) might give us a clue. So far the seemingly most tangential TSTO character or item, is (correct me if I’m wrong) Honest Abe. http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln and his cabin. However there is the fact that the real Abe did live in the real Springfield (Illinois). Was this supposed to play off of the long running gag about the real location of The Simpsons’ Springfield?

Frankly, I’m open to anything at this point. Went surfing for some ideas and ran across this fantastic site… http://www.antesydespues.com.ar/en/famosos-al-estilo-simpsons/ with a well done and thought provoking list of real-world celebrities that have been seen on the TV show. Here’s four I’d shell out serious donuts for and would be honored to have wandering around DrewDabble’s Springfield. Just imagine a hilarious dual task… Like Nimoy confronting ‘Cosplay’ Comic Book Guy about copyright infringement issues, which by the way – this blog has no intent of, at all – just a fan 🙂

To keep this wishful train of thought rolling just a bit longer…  With Futurama’s final season on Comedy Central finishing up soon, I hope to see some Futurama characters showing up in TSTO. Truth is, what I really want is a full separate Futurama Tapped Out game. Alas this probably isn’t feasible because Futurama just doesn’t have the huge world-wide fan base of The Simpsons. However a good compromise would be to do a Kustyland-like expansion featuring the Planet Express crew.
This could be awesome paired with a Simpsons-Futurama-TSTO tie-in TV episode where Frink is tinkering around in his lab and accidentally zaps himself to New New York in the year 3013. He then runs into professor Farnsworth, who helps him get back to Springfield using his time machine. Then the time machine could become the “Shuttle” to the Futurama expansion.
I could go on for pages with this Futurama stuff (and will in future posts), so I’ll end with this; here’s two decorations I’d buy in a heartbeat…

– Tickle-Me Bender – in TSTO when tappped he’d say “Quit tappin’ my junk pervert!”
– Planet Express Ship balloon (like Blinky the three-eyed fish).

We must be cautious…

To borrow a great Obi–Wan line from Star Wars:  “Mos Eisley Spaceport (by this, I mean the Internet)… You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

It would seem that in the wake of the mega-hit blog TSTO Tips’ demise there are many websites and blogs scrambling to become ‘the next’ TSTO Tips (and some for profit).Not me, I’m a just a huge fan of Matt Groening (and the pre Level 30 Mr. T). I’m blogging to be helpful in a just-for-the-fun-of-it way and to enhance my (and other Tappers) enjoyment of the game. But since I’m not getting paid to do this (like others on the net seem to be, legally or otherwise), I’ve got to go make a living out in the ‘real world’. I’ll be back later with a lot more – including a full post clarifying this blog’s purpose(s)….

Until then Happy Tapping 🙂