quick, before its august

Well then. Whats been going on in bill-land?

Much. Much stuff and much thing-age.

I’ve recently had my programming urges rekindled. I have done some work on a RPG Game, which will be playable on a PC Computer (as opposed to an ATM Machine which takes your PIN Number). That’s in C++. In perl, I’ve written a new IRC dicebot, to replace the old mIRC one. That’s nice because it’ll let me add functionality over time, as opposed to the other one which was just lame and required Windows. In Gambas (a Visual Basic work-alike) I’ve begun work on a program that’ll work on Linux and Windows (and prolly MacOSX) which will let me post diary entries on my new self-hosted journal. Speaking of which, I’ve also been working on the (perl-CGI) backend of said journal, and I’ve managed to get Apache WebServer running well enough to suit my standards on a stand-alone server computer. Last but not least, I’ve also been tooling around some more with SDL in C++. Eventually I’d like to take what I’m learning with that project and add it onto the RPG I’m writing.

So lets see, what else. I have the dubious honor of being the owner of an $850 cat. Jealous? I thought you might be. It was actually way back like a month or two ago, now, but Kal’El had some serious liver problems, lost a lot of weight and had to go into the vet for some (apparently inconclusive) bloodwork, some antibiotics and an IV drip. He was not pleased, and he’s extremely unhappy about his shaved belly and shaved wrist (where they put the IV). Don’t pet either spot, he’s a little sensitive about it and very touchy. He’s quite fine now, though. Well, I should mention that he’s still rather stupid. But he wasn’t exposed to any Gamma radiation while at the vet, so its hard to expect a miracle.

I have a new baby sister coming, which I haven’t mentioned on here yet, but I’ve known about for quite some time (though in all fairness I knew about it long before I was supposed to tell anyone, so I had to force myself to hold back). Her name will be (when she’s born in Novemberish) Sarah. Sarah Ashley Sanders. Everyone is pretty stoked about that, and I’m enjoying the idea of Jill baby-proofing her exquisitely decorated home. She has lamps that have no light bulbs and aren’t plugged in, but they look nice. She also has multiple clocks in the house which are stuck and reading the wrong time (in the case of the living room clocks, they read the *same* wrong time, which is eerie). Etc, etc. It’ll be interesting.

I finally got to play DnD again last night. I’m working on a new campaign. I obviously can’t give away details here, but its pretty interesting, I think. Anyway, there were only 4 of us last night (Clare, Chris, Tristan, and Katie) but it was sort of a last minute get together. If everyone plays that’s said they wanted to, it should be a 10 person game. Just how I’m to manage 10 players (among which are the unmanageable likes of Tres “I-found-a-new-feat/class/race/prestige class-I-want-to-try”, Tristan “I’m-going-over-here-on-my-own”, Chris “I-slap-bears-whenever-encountered” and Timmy “shit-do-I-even-need-to-go-there”, not to mention the at least 4 players who have next to no experience with DnD) is beyond me. I’m hoping I can add a lot of functionality to dbot.pl to answer basic questions and do some bookkeeping for us. I also might be enlisting Tres as a co-DM.

Mollie set up her goldfish in the 50 Gallon in the living room. Despite a few sad die-off’s its looking really nice now. I’ll see what I can do about getting a couple pics. We also have a new fish setup in a little 6 Gallon take. He’s a betta named “Bird”.

My room is clean, for the first time in… well… since we moved. Clare helped me clean it, and then we vacuumed and had the carpet cleaned. I took the oppurtunity to move my bed. And now I’m contemplating getting some posters and maybe a hamper or two for it, so it looks a little nicer. I’ve been looking at some Demotivational posters from Despair.com. That’d be cool. In an odd sort of way.

Work is going pretty good. They went ahead and promoted me, after about 2 months or so of working there. Kinda cool. The high school kids there definitely come and go.

School is looking to be interesting… I’m taking the Cisco Certified Networking Associate classes, semesters 3 and 4, CSIS 111 (which is Networking Fundamentals, should be a breeze, especially after CCNA 1 & 2… and its with the same teacher I took that for), CSIS 280, which is C++ programming, and History 102 with a teacher who’s had great reviews on RateMyProfessor.

I’ve been spending a crazy amount of time with Clare lately. Like… as in… three, four, sometimes five days a week. She makes me happy in ways I didn’t know existed, and just having her smile at me can brighten my day.

In other news, I’m probably geekier than most people who read this.

40.23669% – Major Geek. Though apparently I don’t watch nearly enough Star Trek or read as many comics as I should. But I most certainly know of 7 or more card games that can be played with a standard deck. Hell, I think I know 7 or more gambling games and 7 or more non-gambling games that you can play with a standard deck. Lets see…

Non-gambling: Rummy, Cribbage, Mao, Three Card, Speed, War, Hearts, Spades, Crazy 8’s, Screw Your Neighbor, Bridge
Gamblinkg: Acey-Ducey, Black Mariah, Chase the Queen, Harem, 7-Card No Peak, Pass the Trash, [Midnight] Baseball, Texas Hold-um, Thirty-one, Black Jack, Lowball

Am I forgetting any?

Hey, I should make a page on my journal describing various card games…

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