neuracnu or if it's because I drank so much last night, but everyone else was awake and ready for the day at that point. I made quick work of my shower and shave, and once I had pulled on some clothes we all piled into the Expedition for a trip to BD's. On the way out we stopped at the leasing office to talk to them about the stray kittycat we have taken on, but they were closed until noon.Lunch was really good. We had Sarah as our waitress again (she traded her pickup in for a car we didn't recognize in the parking lot, so it was a surprise to see her) and saw a number of our other staff friends there like Colin, Joe and Pat. I made a large bowl of sirloin with plenty of pepper (cayenne, crushed red pepper, Frank's Hot Sauce, Tabasco and a few others) and got whined at by Sarah since she was also working the grill. I guess since the lunch rush hadn't appeared yet she wanted to do something to keep busy, but she should have known better -- my bowls are laden with spice! I wanted to get a bandana for Neuracnu but they were sold out... so he'll just have to wait until he's back in town this November, and we can try again.
We lounged around the restaurant for a while after we finished eating, then drove over to Wal-Mart to exchange the water cooler that
roho had bought which not only didn't cool but leaked! While in the store I stumbled across a number of DVDs at very reasonable prices and I ended up buying quite a few. In no particular order I purchased The Matrix Reloaded, the second collection of AMC's "Cult Classics" (Dementia 13, Frozen Alive, The Screaming Skull, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter), the premiere movie of Samurai Jack, The Lost Boys, Stephen King's IT, the original TV miniseries V, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, The Addams Family, Street Fighter, Bedazzled, Fatal Attraction, Paulie, ten episodes of the 1950s "Dragnet, the 20th Anniversary Edition of TRON and a 2-disc boxed set featuring 6 hours of Red Skelton. I dig on Red as a comedian and actor, but I know that he was one of my grandfather's absolute favorites, so I'll be giving him the box set for a Christmas present. Shop early, shop smart, that's my motto. So yeah, I bought around 15 DVDs for about $140, which isn't too bad in terms of price. I had a couple that were $14.99, a bunch that were $8.99 and some that were $5.99. I think the DVD bargain bin at Wal-Mart is a vastly underutilized treasure trove.After shopping and exchanging at Wal-Mart we drove back to the apartment and stopped at the leasing office again. Roho and Kestral went in to talk about the cat with the office folks while Neuracnu and I stayed in the truck and talked for a bit. Kestral came back with some rather upsetting news about the cat which she posted in her journal. It's sad that people can't respect the animals they bring into their homes. The responsibility for the care and well-being of the pet doesn't end the minute it becomes a nuisance or an inconvenience. Look at Ra -- he's cost me well over $3,000 at this point and I just keep putting more money into him. I imagine a lot of folks think I'm a fool for doing so but I have an obligation to fulfill
Kestral and Roho stepped out to get some things from Bed, Bath & Beyond and a new printer cartridge so that we can print up some flyers for distribution in the neighborhood. I took a couple of photos of the cat we've dubbed "Marcus" with my digital camera and now I need to go through and crop the images for use on the posters. I think we'll probably be ready to print them out and copy them before I go to bed. Part of me adores this cat and wants to keep him -- he has a wonderful personality and a charming meow. The other part of me knows we really don't have room for a third cat and worries about how we'll manage things since Ra seems to absolutly detest the presence of a new male cat. I guess we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. If things go well the owner will step forward to claim him and we won't be faced with any difficult decisions. While Roho and Kes were out shopping Neuracnu and I sat in the living room and watched the Packers play the Rams. While the game was on I introduced Neu to LJDrama.org. Around 4:30 Neu decided he better pack it in since he's got a rather long drive back to St. Louis, so we wished him a good trip and sent him on his way.
It's nice having company as energetic and amusing as Neu, and I hope that we'll see him again soon.
A bit of my time was spent tonight working with the other staff members of FrostFire MUSH. Since I've gotten most of my services stabilized I figured now was as good a time as any to migrate the game to the new server at ValueWeb. Things didn't go quite as smoothly as we planned, for some reason the FTP transfers that
shaddragon performed caused the files to get corrupted. I had to step in and move a few files about by hand, but once I did that things finally seemed to settle down and start working. I updated DNS to point to the new IP address of the server and installed a port forwarding program on the old server that will seamlessly redirect users to the new location until such time as the old "panther" is powered down. I don't expect to need the proxy program for very long, I've got the frostfire.net zone configured with a ten hour expiration stamp. It should propogate out into the wild in a fairly short amount of time because of that, so I imagine within the next 72 hours we'll see people coming in off the proper IP address and not off the proxy. It is amusing for now, though... I do a "WHO" on the server and almost everyone is connected from panther.black-panther.us because of the port redirector.Ra got into his food again and ate a completely ridiculous amount which he proceeded to unload all over my floor about 20 minutes ago. Three different spots he threw up in, and each spot held an amazing amount of undigested cat food when he was done. I don't know why exactly but tonight it was particularly offensive-smelling and I had to light a candle to combat the odor once I was done cleaning things up. I hope that this episode of vomiting was due to his uncontrolled eating earlier today. If it's a nervous reaction to Marcus's presence I predict that the next week will be particularly interesting.
Tomorrow it's back to work, so I probably should start getting ready to put myself in bed. All told this has been a rather interesting and unique weekend... and things don't show any signs of slowing down soon.
Well I ain't got a witness and I can't prove it
