Dunno About the Lawn…

Mwahaha, our constant badgering of Velius on TeamSpeak has prompted him to actually consider getting kittens! He’s got the house all to himself now, and keeps trying to convince us that there are these multiple non-talking guild members on TeamSpeak, even though we all know that he’s just logging in multiple times. We keep telling him to get some cats to ease the loneliness, so he won’t keep talking to himself and making more and more Guild Wars accounts to try to fool the rest of us into thinking that our guild has more than… 6 people. Unfortunately, I have this sick image of him somehow training these kittens to farm. It would be just like him to set up a kitten sweat factory, and I bet cats work for even cheaper than poor Chinese farmers…

I’ve only had Sydney for about a year now, but he’s super well behaved, so I think I can offer a little bit of advice. The biggest thing to remember is that if you train the cat well in the first few months, it will make your life so much easier later on. Think of it this way: don’t screw up in the cat creation screen with the skill points, because it’s really hard to get refund points in the game of life. It’s best to do some research and plan the skill tree and point distribution out in Excel first, especially if you want your kitten to eventually dual wield or something. Currently, Sydney is spec’ed for tanking (many of you have already experienced the buffing effects of his “shouts”).

If you end up getting a kitten, I think the main thing is to get the cat used to being handled. Always handle the cat with care, and make sure you pick up the cat a lot and handle his/her paws. This will ease the way into more advanced abilities like harness proficiency, scratchpost affinity, and clawclip diplomacy. Many people suggest multiple cats because it’s not much harder to have additional cats, but try to make sure they are adopted at the same time and preferably from the same litter, as cats do not PVP well (although as Kungfucius points out, some have tried). Also, I don’t recommend having your cats mow your lawn, because while they may love eating the grass, if you give them too much they will probably puke it all up on your carpet/furniture. There are many great strategy guides out there for getting a cat, but online information is pretty good as well. There just aren’t as many cute cat pictures in the online guides. Anyways, here’s some reading to get you started:

• Should you get a cat?
• Hmmm, CatFAQs…
• Some more kitten-specific information
• More about cat training
• Leash/Harness training a cat

Two final tips: please neuter/spay, and don’t declaw. If your cat won’t let you trim the claws, consider stylish nail covers instead. I’d also recommend not letting the cat out on its own, since that will really help your cat stay healthy. There are several ways to convert an outdoor cat into an indoor one, but this method is my favorite:

To turn a formerly outdoor cat into an indoor one (or to discourage a persistent one), you might try this, recommended by the San Francisco SPCA: Enlist the help of a friend to hide outside the door with a hose and spray attachment and have her or him spray the cat when you let it out. This may take several applications, over several days.

The best part is that you won’t have to worry about one of the biggest annoyances of having a kitten, i.e. them waking you up in the middle of the night. You know, cause you’d have to be asleep in the middle of the night for that to happen!

Holla Hellos

An interesting read about the various fundamental parts of a GvG team in Guild Wars. It was cool seeing how various builds simply don’t scale well from random to team vs. team to guild vs. guild competitions.

Put That Education to Work

Was reading this article, when I noticed the below quote:

“Building cases against groups who run burner labs can be tricky, because there are often not a lot of pirated discs on hand at one time,” Hausman says. “It’s a just-in-time business.”

See? JIT isn’t just for the drug dealers or the Japanese anymore! To the MPAA, I say that shrinking inventory is just weakness leaving the body!

Although of course decreasing inventory is more a side-product of JIT and not a goal. OMFG, ok I’ll shut up now.

Let’s Be Friends

In less tiring news, I took Sydney over to meet the landlord’s two dogs on Saturday (I’m doggysitting again). They’re both pretty old, and so not very excitable. They both immediately ambled over to Sydney and began to sniff him all over, and it was funny to watch him trying to walk away from the two dogs as they were intently sniffing at his butt. Eventually Sydney got annoyed and tried to growl at them, and give a little swipe, but he fell over on his back while doing it. I think both the dogs were really embarrassed for him at this point, so they just walked away and left him alone >__<.