Let’s start with monday.
Monday I did a bunch of cleaning. In the afternoon I was thinking about Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and remembered that there had been an old text game from 1984. It was Zork-like and I had never played it! So I did a quick google search and found this site: DNA/HHGG Infocom Adventure. It’s an in-browser java version of the game! But I don’t much like java, so I gave the link to people in IRC (got Peacimowen and Tsukiyo addicted for a bit) and began looking around for a downloadable version of the actual game. I found it but it was a a .z5 file. What the heck is a .z5 file? Apparently it’s a Z-code file, and this is what Infocom wrote their text games in. So I needed an interpreter so I could play. I discovered xzip in Gentoo’s emerge. While it’s pretty basic, it seems to work nicely, screenshot here. Also that afternoon I was sitting in IRC complaining about dvd region encoding. After someone mentioned that some dvd-rom drives might be region free, I realized that I had never even tried to mount a dvd, so I went downstairs to grab one. I was pleasantly surprised when it mounted with no troubles, so I tried to play it with mplayer.
MPlayer was compiled WITHOUT libdvdread support!
Oops. I recompiled mplayer with dvd support, and guess what? It plays my dvds %D! YAY!
Monday evening we had to take Caligula into the vet. The last time we went to the vet it was relatively empty, this time there was a big barking dog that Caligula did NOT like. He sat in his carrier hissing and growling at the dog! The dog was taken away within a few minutes, but Caligula was already puffy-tailed and scared. We opened up the top of the carrier and tried to calm him down. About 10 minutes later we got into the exam room and when I went to take him out of his carrier, he growled at me! He didn’t want to come out. Eventually I was able to pull him out and give him to the vet tech. He was all puffy-tailed again, and growling. They weighed him, 4.1 pounds! He had gained a pound since we brought him home less than a month ago. They then took him away to take a blood sample and give him his vaccination. Poor Caligula did not like leaving us, and when they brought him back he was all scared and unhappy. His stool sample came back fine, his FIV and Feline Leukemia tests all came back negative, and we were sent off with our healthy, albeit upset, little kitty.
Tuesday morning he was acting a bit odd. He stayed in our bed even after I got up, and when I got out of the shower he was sleeping on the couch. He was like this for most of the day and we figure he was still upset about the vet visit the previous night.
Nita came over around 11 yesterday. She had never seen the house before, so I gave her the grand tour, even showed her the basement, and the garage. Of course she got to meet Caligula, and he was good, even if he was still in a funny mood. A little after noon we decided to head out to the Swamp Pike Pub. Unfortunately, when we got there we learned that their site was incorrect about the hours, and it didn’t open until 3, arg! So we decided to head up to a little italian place that Nita knew about. The food was pretty tastey, mmmm pepper poppers. Their dessert menu was pretty lousy, so we asked the waitress if she knew of any “Dessert places” in the area, and she recommended the Dutch Oven Bakery down the road. Mmmm bakeries. This bakery smelled soooo good! So I picked up some chocolate chip cookies for Michael, Nita picked out me some “funny cake” which she said I had to try, we got a chocolate cake to eat, and some crumb cake. Ok, so it was a lot, but it smelled so good in there! We went back to my house and ate some cake and talked for a while. Caligula was so sleepy so he didn’t really want to play.
It was a good day, Nita’s r
eally the only person I ever spend time around without Michael, and I hadn’t really seen her much lately because we’ve both been so busy. Yay for having a real life friend %)
While she was here I went out to get the mail, and Caligula’s tag came! It’s a blue paw tag from http://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/idtags.htm, a pet site based in New Zealand. At first I was reluctant to buy from so far away, but it was only $13.50 USD, including shipping! So we figured it was worth a couple weeks wait. I took some pictures today, they’re here: http://caligula.bevilacqua.us/gallery/04072004.php
It’s nice out today. I’m going to sit on the roof and read for a bit. *climbs out the window with book*