First of all Deejay, there is no need to apologize. These forums are here to help you get your questions answered.

Second - Arnie is exactly right. The game does shut completely down when you turn it off, and when you open it, it calculated everything that *should* have happened in the time that passed while it was closed - which is why you will end up with 48 4 year olds. The game determines how many children should have been born, and spawns them all at the same time.

If you cannot check on your game frequently, I suggest running it on 1/2 speed, to help reduce the effect on your village.

VV defers to other programs running on the computer, that is very true. When you are running several programs, VV will sometimes appear choppy because of this.

As far as I know, there is no way to disable the shoutbox.