Thank Grog It’s Firday!
As a father of five, and a grandpa to seven, I am a veteran of dealing with kids and their propensity for over-anticipation. In the “Good Old Days,” you could count on the seasons. You could count on retailers sticking to an unspoken rule of when they would bring out Halloween decorations, when it was OK to start pitching deals on Thanksgiving Turkeys, and when we would see the huge Christmas catalogs from Sears and Montgomery Wards hit our mailboxes.
Yes. I am that old.
But today, the lines have become so blurred, so completely without real meaning, that we find ourselves anticipating events, and expecting instant gratification in ways that have blown the word “anticipation” out of the lexicon of our current culture.
We are so used to being able to click a mouse, or tap a padular device, and have something delivered to our house, that the very thought of waiting for something worthwhile is a thing of the past. The “Amazon Way” has given rise to year-around shopping…for anything…anytime…with shorter and shorter windows for delivery. And concurrently, out of survival, many of the largest Box Stores have mimicked this culture with “Same Day Grocery Delivery” and “Bonus Reward Deals” available only for “Drive Thru Instant Delivery Pickup.” You don’t have to shop around people anymore. You don’t have to wait for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade for Christmas to officially start. You don’t have to wait for anything.
And then…there is the “EA Way.”
Like many of you, after almost two weeks of “barely tapping” while we flew through the less than super “Super Hero Mini Event,” I was ready for something new.
Yes. I was aware that the calendar was not on our side for anything great, as the math seemed to favor another week of stalling before EA finally gave us the most epic, most amazing, truly incredible Halloween update EVER!! (OK…so maybe I am building it up a bit in my mind. )
But, I didn’t expect this.
A tent.
And, a chance to buy a single Premium character that may or may not be useful for anything coming in the real Halloween event.
I have to say…that once I figured out that all we got was the tent, and nothing else…except more time to wait…that I felt like a kid who was promised an ice cream cone if I was good for a couple of weeks…and then was handed a tiny little sample cone of vanilla by the lady at the counter, and was then told to go home and wait.
A tent.
And not even an original tent. Just one of the old tents from Stonecutters, with a different color. Sheesh. Even worse than a mini scoop on a mini cone of a flavor that we didn’t ask for.
And then, I realized what was really happening.
And, quietly thanked EA.
In fact, I was so thankful, that I realized that this turn of events deserved a “Special Thank You Note” for the lesson and reminder that the tent gave me.
“Dear EA,
Thank you for helping to remind me what a petulant, ungrateful, impatient child I have become. I don’t take full responsibility for my actions, as you have spoiled me rotten with great content, funny quest lines, and more than half a decade of entertainment for next to nothing. But, I do take responsibility for taking you for granted.
You have made it so EAsy (see what I did there?) to expect a regular onslaught of “amazing,” that when it doesn’t happen when I want it to happen, I can be prone to throwing a bit of a hissy fit, and throwing you under the bus (Who is driving that bus anyway? And why is there always a bus around to be thrown under? And why don’t we have a bus in our games yet? Does Kesey own the rights to the bus?).
The simple fact is, after getting the tent, and having a couple of days to ruminate on “why just a tent?” I realize the wisdom of your ways.
You are old school. You believe in a set standard of logical patterns for the seasons. And to start the huge Halloween Update that you have been working for months to create, when it is still SEPTEMBER, is just nuts!!
I get it. I really do. You see the slippery slope that can happen when people keep moving the holiday goal posts. And you realize that we are only a white beard hair away from losing control, and finding ourselves buying Halloween costumes of Santa Claus wearing a Turkey Hat, in AUGUST!
You, EA are wise. When we peppered the “TSTO Open Comments Section” with “When is Halloween coming???” knowing full well that Halloween CAN’T COME until at least October…you did the right thing!
You gave us a tent.
And, not just any tent. No…a secret fortune teller’s tent that inadvertently reveled our inner children, and reminded us that “anticipation is spice of reward.”
Yes. I was ticked off…and didn’t buy the Fortune Teller…and vowed to just keep KEM farming until you gave me something good. But that is the child in me. The petulant child that wants something well before it deserves to have it.
So, THANK YOU! Thank you for making us wait another week, and giving us time to rearrange stuff in our cluttered towns, and being able to relax and enjoy what we have, before you hit us with another huge fustercluck of clutter that we have to try and jam into the space you will give us with Free Land Tokens, and Item Limits. And that the Item Limits are all for the greater good of the game and all who play, and will help sustain the life of the game, even though they are really, really, really annoying now. It’s all part of the life lesson you are teaching us, right?
And, that this is going to be a GREAT Event…well worth the wait… because we deserve it…right? After all…we hardly complained at all when you gave us the tent.
It’s gonna rock. Because YOU rock, EA! You are the best pretend gift giving Uncle a kid could ever have! Thanks for giving me stuff…and reminding me that I should be grateful…and that the best things in life are free. Even if they are just a tent.
Your friend,
Patric (CrankyOldGuy)
So…we’ll wait another few days. We will survive…and the anticipation will be worth it…because the tent will just become another decoration in the wonder and amazement that will be “The Halloween Event.” Which should come in October…not the last week of September…even though Costco has had Christmas decorations for sale since August.
Have a great weekend. Enjoy the tent.
OH>>>>>>> And speaking of waiting for good things to happen…
WE HIT OUR GOAL.. and then some!
Thanks to all of the kind, generous tappers who made this happen. We slid in just under the wire, and I’ll post pics of Emma and the kids soon!
Tappers rock!
One other memory:
Vacuum Tube testing machine.
Pop those suckers out of your TV, bring ‘em into the store and test them. If it fails, buy a new tube from the sales rack and replace the burnt out tube and start watching tv again. Maybe even UHF Stations.
Yes, every drugstore had a vacuum tube testing machine. No need to buy a new tv because it would cost more to even get an estimate on fixing the old one. We could usually do it ourselves with just a screwdriver to open up the back. Of course, we needed to carefully place people in the room to watch fuzzy black & white tv (all three channels) using rabbit ears draped with aluminum foil.
And when I taught electronics, we had to teach both both transistors and vacuum tubes because a lot of lab equipment was old. I spent a lot of time hunting through the physics department for 12AX7 vacuum tubes (an increasingly rare species) for my students to use in lab experiments.
I am so old that I was using slide rules to check the new-fangled hand calculators that came out in grad school. Loved my log log duplex decitrix slide rule, which was huge, but also kept a little six inch one handy that I used all through high school science classes. Actually, my uncle gave the big one to my brother because he was “ the boy”, but “the boy” can barely add and subtract single digits and it was too high tech for the Luddite, so I “borrowed” it and never gave it back. Slide rules deserve love and attention.
I had to solder my first hand calculator together, they came in an unfinished kit to lower the cost. And before that, I punched cards for a computer that occupied an entire room. Then I carried around rolls of yellow punched tape for the new-fangled PDP-11 terminals we could use instead of walking across campus to the computer room. Much later than that, when personal computers with GUI (graphical user interface) came along, I remember when a 2400 baud modem was fast.
Ah, the simpler days of yore.
Christmas wasn’t my favorite holiday, now a days I get really down. It’s kind of nice living in NYC. You can go the whole season without knowing its Christmastime.
I was in France this summer and while we were in a cab, the driver mentioned Christmas. It occurred to me that they don’t have Thanksgiving to “kick off” Christmas, so I asked him when Paris starts the Christmas season. The cabdriver said they start putting Christmas decorations up Early- mid November – he was very adamant that four- five weeks of Christmas time is much too short!
I am definitely putting up my stuff earlier this year. The way I think about it, the earlier I have my decorations up, the earlier I’ll be in the holiday mood (and share that mood with others.) 😜
I’m a grinch and don’t do anything for Christmas but futilely wait for the cats to say something at midnight on Christmas Eve, when animals are supposed to be able to speak. Mine never have anything to say.
But I’ve always wished people would keep up Christmas lights all through the dreary winter. They don’t, so I decided to at least keep the Springfield Christmas decorations up all year round.
You are not old as neither am I at 65 just a kid at heart. I remember when the sidewalks were rolled up at sundown. nothing open at night except a corner store till 8 or 9pm. Remember the days when Black Friday did not start till 6am that morning. And I could go on and on. Yea seasons, I remember doing Halloween in the snow. Lived in Michigan as a kid. Now retired to Florida and 2 seasons hot and hotter – lol. Season decor and candy is always in the stores usually Valentines day and easter together and Halloween and Christmas together. Here it is end of Sept and the temp is mid 90s with heat index 100 – 105. Sometimes I miss the good ole days when it comes to holidays and shopping. Now businesses fight over sales with who can sell the most and have the cheaper prices. Millenials do not understand. They only know high tech and no verbal communications. They had on the news the other day with a family sitting at the dinner table and texting each other instead of talking. COme on get a life. Tech was supposed to make life easier. It made thing worse in some cases. Kids do not play out side got to have the high tech that is play time. Bah humbug.
Now who is old and cranky Patric – love your posts coming from someone my age
Nice rant!!!!
Thanks!
One of my favorite memories of ‘those’ times of rolling up the suburban sidewalks…..
Being sent down to the grocery store late Saturday afternoon to pick up milk. Why? Because by 6:00 pm Saturday the store would close and would not reopen until ~8:00 Monday morning.
And mom wasn’t about to pay the exhorbinate price at the 7-11 store,
Which was open seven days a week from 7am until 11pm
(And y’all wondered where 7-11 name came from)
Life was slower then.
Tracy
aka – Saturday morning cartoons and toys galore in the back of the Sears winter catalogue
Some of us do have verbal communications. Some of us do go outside. The important thing is to have a balance. I use technology all the time. Yet i eat dinner with my family each night, without electronics. I’m a boy scout that goes camping, backpacking, and teaches others. I’m working on my eagle scout project. Don’t Bah Humbug us today because of stereotypes, unless you know us. We don’t just use technology all the time.
And then…there is the “EA Way.” 😂
Which is exactly why I decided to shrug off that free Fortune Teller Tent and kept Kem Farming (I’m actually taking another two days off from Tapping this weekend, so thank you EA for the extra break from grinding, and yep my Tent is purposely next to the Fortune Teller Building) 👍
Exactly.
Today is football day and book clubs. KEM farming will be sandwiched in between sandwiches.
Hahahaha you gotta love Patric!
No really. Ya gotta!! 🤘😆👍
Moment of sadness for the failure of Sears Canada and the loss of the Wish Book. My little nieces will never know the joy of scouring that thing for hours to pick out presents for or from out of province relatives.
That was so OT, I know, but your mentioning Sears made me sad all over again. That was a big part of my lead up to Christmas as a kid.
The Christmas stuff in August makes me mental. I try to stick to a no Christmas music or movies until after Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US) as our Thanksgiving is in October and not really a good kick off point, because, you know, Halloween. Not that the existence of Halloween is stopping Hallmark. I’m told their Christmas movies kick off October 26th.
I tend to look at the tent ‘gift’ like this: they couldn’t have literally nothing happen in our games for an entire week, but they didn’t want to waste actual effort, and then it turned out glitchy because the quest eventually continued even without the purchase of the fortune teller. Such is life in this game in the second half of 2018. They launch something, then they need a day or two to fix issues they should’ve realised were there in the first place.
Halloween shouldn’t happen until October. I could deal with Christmas right after US Thanksgiving but that could just be my devoid of markers for an extra two weeks Canadianness talking. Christmas basically starts Nov 12 in my world.
I too will miss the sears catalog. My family doesn’t celebrate Halloween, we do the Pumpkin Festival. We fix a bunch of yummy finger foods, and some desserts, and pick a few favorite christmas movies, pop popcorn and enjoy them. We do carve pumpkins but that’s about it. I agree with holidays coming too soon. Don’t mind playing it on my game though. Happy tapping 🙂
Oh, my goodness! That sounds like so much fun! I’d never heard of anything like that until I read your comment but I would definitely be all over it. I feel like the odd one out in my family because I’m generally meh on Halloween but I could watch Christmas movies every day for weeks and be happy. Throw in fun snacks? Yep, I’m all for it. I’ll probably hand out candy at my sister’s while she takes her twins out. Does not sound nearly as fun as a Pumpkin Festival.
I loved getting the Sears Wish Book every year as an adult even though I don’t think I ever bought anything from it. I just liked reading it carefully from cover to cover, looking at all the toys. Don’t remember it as a kid, though. My mother had a tendency to order through the Green Stamps and Yellow Stamps catalogs (grocery stores gave out sheets of those stamps with every purchase and we had to stick them in booklets for redemption).
I might be personally responsible for the decline of Sears….
I agree and it is almost to the point of seeing decorations for all the holidays out year around, hell we already got Halloween stores open year around. I got at least 2 within 50 miles from me that are year round. Also got 1 Christmas store at Disney Springs open year round.
I don’t think we have any year round Halloween stores near me, but there’s a Christmas one 2 towns over. My mom turned errands for my nieces’ birthday party today into an excuse to spend forever browsing Halloween stuff everywhere we went. Getting what we needed? 20 mins (the stores were right across the road from each other), maybe. With travel time that’s an hour or so. We were gone 2hrs. It’s too much for decorations that are mostly only going to be out for the day.
The wish books were the best. So many fond memories.
And the excitement of seeing it come in the door because of what it meant? I can’t even think of a modern comparable to give those girls. They turn 2 tomorrow, so they missed out completely. “Here, let’s browse Amazon” is just not even close to the same.
Not sure if glitch or I’m too dumb and skim articles too quickly. Am I not supposed to be on the Fortune Favors the Bold Pt. 4 if I don’t have the fortune teller? I only have 150 donuts and know my balance, i didnt accidentally purchase her, but I’m on part 4. She is still available in my store for 90 donuts. On android, forgive me if I misread blog.
I’m in the same boat and also experiencing the visual glitch with missing building. There is a lot of info on this blog and I too have to ask now and then. They do an amazing job here!
That was a previous glitch that EA has fixed now so the quest continues without having to purchase the fortune teller.
Hey addicts, you do realize that your articles are now always blocked by your advertisements so we can’t read them, right??? I have stuck with your site since you guys took over tsto tips. I’m all for you guys getting sponsored by advertisements, but this is now ridiculous. Even when I try to close the ad your article is cut off so I can’t see the first several words on every line. Signing off after all these years. P. S. Even as I write this the reply box and my wording is cut off buy a Zales the diamond store ad so I can’t even read everything that I just wrote. Very very disappointed in you guys. You need to remove the ads from the sides,. At this point, all your work is in vain as we cannot read what you’ve taken the time to compose.
1. We never took over tips. Have zero association with that site then or ever.
2. We (unfortunately) have no control over the ads. Some readers are reporting it’s a browser issue. However, I recommend you contact WordPress as they control the ads and placement on this site. Your report to them will go further than mine as you’re having the issue and can send them screenshots. More info can be found here
http://tstoaddicts.com/2017/11/17/about-the-ads/
I can read it just fine. Bye Phil. ✌
just use control – (minus) or control + (plus) to change the size of what you are reading, the add will not move.
I read articles on iPad, Samsung galaxy phone and on a PC. Never ever any ads covered any content. More so, whatever store / product you are seeing is the one, you or your family googled for earlier. That is how ads work nowadays. If you didn’t look at the diamonds, but instead at the diapers, there would be diapers all over this (and all others) website. It’s always ridiculous to see readers complain about this stuff, welcome to the modern world, pal.
Right? I’ve never had an issue with ads on this site. I’ve had a few others where on my small BlackBerry Classic screen I couldn’t find the x to close it because the display dimensions aren’t meant for square screens, but usually zooming out solves any issues. But yeah, never ever a problem on this site. *knocks on wood*
Im on android mobile. And it can be very frustrating. I close out and log back on.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
All of a sudden every time I load the game it downloads a update. I remember this from some time back. Have uninstalled the game, reloaded, still the same. Have 4.9gb storage. Takes an age each time to download. Can’t remember the fix or have i got to contact EA?
Create more space on your device and you’ll have to download it just one more time
Why otto’s bus can’t count as a bus ?
Or the Sungazer Tour Bus? Or Brother Faith’s Bus? Or the Duff Party Bus?
It’s a school bus. Not a city bus.
..the cat bus..
It was a delayed push if the rest of the quest line. Just keep playing through Krusty.
And yes. You are lazy. 😵🔨
Because you don’t throw people under tour busses or school busses or Jebus busses. Only city busses..,or in a pinch, a Greyhound bus.
Agree
I didn’t mind not having more content for a teaser, but I was really expecting the season premier episode tie in. Not one at all this year. That’s it, this is the sign the game is ending! 😋
A tent, another tent….
Really all what we need, BUT, we didn’t have one in that colour yet.
The fortune teller, i skipped that one too. I’m like Patric farming and hoping there are some goodies coming up. And unless Gill comes up with someting REALLY good, i will skip his offer too. (I was kinda disappointed with Sarah Wiggum)
Maybe i go for some mystery boxes to get the things i never could buy when i was strictly freemium. Or for something new that helps with the quest
I hope we have a lot of mystery boxes
Widespread major graphical glitch with the Fortune Teller Gypsy Shop back from the 2013 THOH. Building is missing and replaced with texture glitch of severed floating heads! Widely reported on EA forums.
So that’s what’s floating around…
This only seems to apply when the building is facing toward the right. When it is facing toward the left, everything is ok, but when it is facing toward the right, the building is reduced to an invisible 1×1 item. When you find it, you can click on it to see how much time is left for the building task or rotate it into view.
Say what you will about EA, but they certainly come up with the most interesting bugs.
Sounds perfect for Halloween!
Yep…Thought it was just my old iPad glitchin’, ’cause it likes to do that, but…
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nznkdzy6poxmfov/IMG_3088_tsto.png?dl=0
Do not send Maude to her job there. It makes things worse. Now when I go to Maude my screen goes completely blank and if I Rap on it it lets me pick a job but my town diapers. Radio again and the town comes back.
Ahhh, Montgomery Wards. I haven’t thought about that store in quite some time. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
You mean…..MonkeyWards…right? Lol
MonkeyWards and their awesome Coffee Shop that rivaled Newbury’s / Woolworth’s, and MayTag Appliances galore!👍
The next generation had Mervyn’s.
is Krusty going to become IT???
Yikes….early release because of a cranky baby? “Did I do that?”
CRANKYOLDGUY strikes again!
My only complaint with this teaser is that you can’t continue the mini-quest without the fortune teller (though it’s not like you miss anything). Pretty sure this is a first.
But I need to remind myself to take the Buddhist approach: stop expecting EA to do what you’d like and just go for the ride. I am a leaf on the wind…
😄
And while we’re at it, let’s THANK YOU TOO Patrick! (and Alissa, Safi, the Wookie, of course)…
Very early Friday filler I think and a very cryptic tent I think, krusy turns into a monster that nobody likes or I probably missed the point lol.
Well done achieving the target great work. 🤩
Early because I have a crabby baby lol Couldn’t get anything else written
Thanks for the post Patric 😊 I agree with everything (except the premium character skip)