Graphics Tweaking
Working on squeezing a few more FPS out of my machine. Discovered the hard way that whilst my Duron 800 is happy to run at 8x100MHz, it's unhappy running at 6x133MHz, although the later does provide increased memory access speeds with my particular motherboard.

Installing DirectX 8 seems to have attached me to some totally poxy FTP site that's crawling along at 4KB/s. I really would have thought that Microsoft would have decent mirrors of their software.

Shadow
Last night Shadow discovered that he could climb over the carefully constructed barriers to prevent him from getting behind/underneath the fridge, and so we went a lot of time looking for him this morning before realising he was back in his old haunt. To make matters more fun, he also took a bite out of yet another phone cord. Luckily this bite only took off some of the insulation. It seems that phone-cords are thin and flat and hence the same shape as nice fat grass. Thank-goodness he's ignored power cords and CAT5.

Shadow's become a lot more confident and happy, and does less running away and more cute little grunting noises to signal his dissaproval. Whilst I appreciate his considerance in pooping behind the toilet door, I really wish that he'd use his litter tray for that sort of thing.

Shadow likes dandelion flowers. So do I, so once again we're competing for the same foods in the back-yard. Luckily there's enough to go around.

Games
Grabbed myself a copy of the much awaited Black & White, and spent the weekend playing it. It's visually very impressive, quite amusing, and the gesture interface is something very new and very good. I do feel that the gesture interface would be more natural with a dataglove, but it's certainly very refreshing not to be clicking on endless sets of icons. In fact, the game doesn't really have icons.

Rabbit
Went through two phone cords today thanks to Shadow. The first time we sliced through the cord moving the fridge so we could get Shadow out from behind it, and the second time Shadow bit through the cord seeing if it was good to eat.

Shadow is completely toilet trained, except for the little mess in the laundry that missed the litter tray, and the little mess in the lounge room. He is toilet trained insofar that he hasn't made a mess of the carpet yet, although that might be by luck rather than design.

Shadow has decided that I'm a good person to have around when it comes to cats, dogs, and other scary things. Today he heard Jimmy (kevinl's dog) and rather than running under cover he ran back to sit next to me. I feel quite useful. :)

Finance::Quote
Actually did some code clean-up yesterday, although I have a big backlog of mail to get through. Sorry to everyone who's sent me comments, code, or ideas and hasn't heard back from me yet. I am getting there.

Felt very pleased with myself when apt-get found and installed F::Q today.

Rabbit
We've decided that a good name for our rabbit/lawn-mower is Shadow, as he actively avoids sunlight. As a black rabbit, this makes a lot of sense from a staying cool/avoiding detection standpoint.

I'm considering investing in a water-pistol of some sort to give the local cats a bit of extra encouragement not to visit. I've always chased them from the yard as a matter of course, but now that we have Shadow I need to be particularly alert. It's a shame we can't let him roam unsupervised.

Jenni
jenni doesn't seem to be updating her diary at all, so I'll take this moment to do so for her...

Purchased a house the other day, big three bedroom thing with gold-embossed walls, marble statues, and landscaped gardens. It's much better than PJF's house (which I still haven't seen yet), although I did have to pay a little extra for it. Talking of PJF, now that I have a house and am feeling so rich I'll have to buy him lunch again.

Lawn-mower
After much talk of how long the lawn is getting, and after much prodding from Jacinta, I finally went out and bought myself a lawn-mower. It's low-maintance, self-cleaning, mulches as well as mows, and instead of producing grass clippings turns them into a high-grade plant fertilizer. It can be operated with minimal supervision, has big ears, and a cute fluffy tail. We got one in the stylish colour of black, and I've affectionately called it rabbit. Except for one small incident where its bladder control on the doona left something to be desired, we've been very happy.

Rabbit's favourite food is grass, favourite game is go-to-sleep-behind-the-cannas (where it's almost impossible to retrieve), and has made it quite clear to us that shredded newspaper is for its litter tray, and most certainly not a bedding material. Rabbit likes to chew on bits of pruned plum-tree.

I'm trusting Rabbit not to try and take a bite out of my network connection as I lie under my plum tree and work.

Ex-work
It would appear that JS, CEO of my previous workplace, has resigned. Interesting news.

Poker
Jacinta and I ran a poker night last week which was quite successful, and we're doing a similar thing tonight. Currently our friends are still a little hesitant to be playing for money, but I'm sure that we'll be able to overcome most of them soon.