a rephrased question:: do any keyboard characters slow the loading of SC4 files?

some follow-up questions::
if 2 or more young adults of the same household have the same time left, would they leave together or separately?
graduation parties; are each for just the sim that hosts it?
can semesters be skipped through any means? if so, how?

Separately.
Graduation parties only invoke the video for the sim who hosts. It is possible to run two grad parties at the same time, but if the party timers run down too close together, you'll get conflicting videos, which your computer may or may not be able to handle. It's like having two sims blow out the candles at a birthday party at the same time.
You can use the testingcheats to spawn something called the Semester Tester, which will let you manipulate the semester clock. I had to do this recently with a sim who, instead of graduating, kept reverting to the beginning of senior year. When he came back from what should have been his final final, I spawned the tester, set him to graduate, he left for the final again, and this time came back graduated.

The college adjuster from Simbology lets you choose the semester you want and a ton of other useful things. I never play uni without it!

I recall having a grad party once where the fellow college students invited all showed up in cap and gown, but for the last 2 parties I had, the student guests just wore regular clothes. Anyone know how to get all the students into cap and gown?

Dormies show up in caps and gowns; playables do not.

If you have Seasons and the weather is such that they arrive in outerwear, the coding conflicts with the graduation outfit and they don't wear them. Anything that causes them to change clothes nixes the graduation outfit, same as the togas.

There's a glitch some of us get, especially but not exclusively with Secret Society members, that interferes with special outfit coding on University lots for some sims, even playables. Such sims won't be able to don togas or caps and gowns, even at their own parties. I don't know of anyone who's tracked down the source of this glitch.

If they are playables on the same dorm, can you use one of those dressing up trunks to change them all into caps and gowns? I seem to remember doing that once.

I just found this mod so all grads will wear gowns at parties, yay!

Whats the easiest way to retrieve a tombstone? (Without reviving the sim and killing them again) I seem to have one that's gone missing

I do hope you have no unlink on delete and no corrupt death mods.

Boolprop testingcheatsenabled true. Teleporter. Either the batbox or the tombstone of L&D or maybe you have to shift click the sim, I can never remember.

Summon/Default/desired dead person. Pause immediately so they don't vanish. Make selectable. Shift click things till you get the option Item/Spawn Tombstone. Do so. Unpause game. Let them fade. If tombstone didn't spawn, repeat - it doesn't always take the first time.

I'm gonna have to do this a lot in Drama Acres soon. Almost every tombstone in the place has vanished. Sigh.

I do! Unfortunately it wasn't until I had another tombstone go missing early in my game that I learned about those. I'm sure I've done plenty of other things in the beginning of my hood that were VBT before I learned what they were.

I'm more concerned about having all my sims in my cemetery than corruption at this point.

Is it possible at all to age Servos down or up? Or does that just not work... or is the option there but potentially game-breaking?

I must know... ... For science.

Servos have only one life stage, an adult one and skin is made only for adults. If you age them up or down they will revert into default sim skin, thus I think borking the game too. There will be no way to get servo skin back.

I did this about 7 times and nothing

Edit: Never mind, I guess 8th time's a charm. Thanks Peni, also its the batbox.

Edit: Interesting...his tombstone is now at the cemetery but another sim's tombstone isn't showing up anymore. And I know it was just there because I made my sim go there to double check that Sims#1's tombstone wasn't there. Oh well, I'll troubleshoot later I'm taking a break lol

One of the graves in one of my hoods went missing once. It was never found by anybody. The hood still works, though

Try the batbox> nuke-global urnstone tokens. Then re-summon the sim. That usually works for me when all else fails.

So the sim's urn would come up but for whatever reason when I send it to the cemetery it won't get there.

There's nothing new in the lot so I wonder why its acting up. I'm going to try to just have my sim take it to the lot and hope it stays that way.

Edit: It worked!

Pescado recommended giving the dead sim a couple of orders in its queue ("go here", "do this", "look at that", etc.) before adding the "respawn tombstone" action. It does help to do that, but sometimes they still won't take, which is why I got The Urnstone Spawner. It takes a bit of practice to get used to, so I recommend playing around with it in a test hood first.

Thank you - mine also vanished when I sent it to the graveyard. Only one in the game.

Thanks @RoxEllen1965!

I have a few sims who are about to die so I'm hoping their tombstones don't give me anymore trouble, those two were plenty!

Why can't I just play my game instead of troubleshooting it? Why?

Okay, so I installed a lot stupidly without Clean Installer and it came with a custom default replacement mailbox that messed up apartment mailboxes. I found a way to delete said mailbox but after I did the Main Street Mobile Homes lot will not load. That unfortunately was the last apartment lot I was playing when I deleted the custom mailbox. As soon as I rent an apartment there, it crashes. Every single time. I've crashed 5 times this evening. And yes, this is a lot fresh from the bin.

So is there a way to fix this problem? Or is there a clean Main Street Mobile Homes I could download? I really love this lot and I want it to work. Please help. What do I do?

Main Street Mobile Homes that come with the game are borked anyway, they will decide to simply not load anymore. So it may simply be the game bug and not be related to your mail box incident at all. There is a remade uploaded version on here.

How odd that it starts this problem right after I fixed the mailbox problem. I've never had a problem with this lot before in all the years I played it. Hmm, the things you learn.

Well, thanks anyway I just downloaded a bunch of mobile home lots so hopefully I find one I like and works properly!

The remade Main Street Mobile Homes lot is available here:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=368265

neighborhood templates.
how many shipped version ones do the packs add?
and how many of those are named after shipped version neighborhoods/sub-neighborhoods?

custom sim parts.
from past times playing, noticed that Townies and various NPCs could get custom hair (at least binned hair). is there a way to limit custom sim parts to only playable characters?
can unbinned hair be genetic? if so, how?

Custom content that can be randomly assigned to townies has a property known as "Townified." Use an editing tool such as Wardrobe Wrangler to de-townify any custom content that you don't wish to see on townies. It's a matter of checking a box.