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Many of my Sims struggled to make friends in early stages of their careers when they had gruelling
grunt jobs with unsociable hours that left them drained. They needed to spend what little energy
that had left to build skills and any free time was usually in the middle of the night when other
Sims are sleeping or the middle of the day when everybody else is at work/school. 

We'll here's a little strategy that I use to get around this problem:

In The Sims each household is played separately but any social relationships developed with other
Sims affects every other Sim in the Neighbourhood. So lets say Mr Lonely is working 9pm until
1am - pretty tough schedule. Instead of playing Mr Lonely directly, go out to the Neighbourhood
screen and select the Friendly Household that you want Mr Lonely to make friends with. When you
call up a neighbour and ask him to come over, he wont be able to come over if he is at work at
that time. However, you can call him just before he goes to work and then he's yours for the remainder
of the day/evening until he gets too tired or whatever and goes home. This is the first thing you can
use to your advantage. 

If you played Mr Lonely and called someone up at 7pm, by the time they arrived, his carpool would be ready.
By playing with the Friendly Family they can call up Mr Lonely at 7pm and he'll stay there until 1am even
though technically he's supposed to be at work.

So far so good.... The second point you can use to your advantage is that when visitors come to your house
their motives are preset at a random value. For example they *always* arrive with an energy level at 35.
That allows for quite a lot of socialising as they won't leave until it drops to below -80 or one of their
other motives have dropped too far. So now Mr Lonely arrives with a nice high energy level and no requirements
to go to work so you can develop his friendship with the members of the Friendly Household from their point of
view without all the problems of unsociable hours etc!

Incidentally, motives like comfort, bladder and hunger are preset within a range when but hunger is always low
which is why visitors tend to head straight for the food when they arrive. 

Now, do this for a few days allowing Mr Lonely to make friends with several members of the Friendly Family.
To them, he is just one family friend but when you go back into the Neighbourhood screen and continue playing
Mr Lonely he is just where was before - tired and having to work unsociable hours but suddenly he has a load
of new friends! Cool eh.....

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How to keep a baby quiet: Feed, Feed, Sing! Works nearly every time and once the little blighter is asleep he/she shouldn't wake up for 6 hours. Generally speaking playing with the baby raises the fun score of the adult but keeps the baby awake which is not the desired result.
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I came up with this idea when I was thinking about making a family 
like the *Brady Bunch*!!
LIVE-IN MAID
When you first 'create' a family, make one adult in your family all 
*clean* and the other members of your family outgoing and stuff. 
Then when you move into your house use the super-clean sim to 
do all of the cleaning/cooking etc... If you want more income they 
can paint aswell, but dont make them get a job. It would be like 
having a *live-in* maid!!!!!
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