AOL suspended my instant messenger account today for supposed violations of their terms of service. No idea if I'll get it back. If not, I'll probably go register for Yahoo's IM service, or something similar.

So I was searching Google for "Gondwanaland", the huge southern supercontinent from long ago, and noticed that somebody had actually bothered to buy ads for that keyword. Maybe a museum or a science book publisher? Nooooooo....

Somebody needs to scrub their geographical location database a little better, methinks.

Those of us on the X Prize mailing list have received an invitation to the X Prize award ceremony. Truly a historic event to be a part of. And what would you expect to pay for such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Tickets range from $275-$750 per person, depending on how close you'd like to sit to the world's newest astronaut.

I guess that explains how they got the "backing" for the prize money. They'll tell you to just bring the cash to the event, which they'll put into a big box and present to Burt Rutan during the ceremony. Clever, eh?

So, every time you see a blog post or magazine review for some new tech device with onboard 802.11, the inevitable suggestion is that the usefulness of the device is substantially increased because now it can get online from the nearest coffee shop. "With onboard Wifi, the newest iPods can download tunes from iTunes Store while you're at the coffee shop!!" Huh? How is this a selling point? I'd much rather be able to download new music while I'm laying on the couch feeling too lazy to pick my laptop up off the endtable, which is a much more likely place to find Wifi anyway.

Does the coffee shop aspect of 802.11 connectivity really make that much of a difference to people? How much time do ordinary iPod-toting folks spend sipping lattes and wishing they could download the 839th Dave Matthews concert CD without having to leave the lively, stimulating environment of their local Starbucks?

Sheesh. Clearly these people need help to overcome their unhealthy addition to Wifi access and caffeinated beverages. I recommend a Bluetooth-enabled 3G cell phone and some Penguin mints.

The outlets in our living room and dining room are controlled via a light switch. All of them. In both rooms. From two switches. And I don't mean that the two switches control two separate sets of outlets—it's a 3-way configuration so all of the outlets can be switched together from either the living room or the front door.

I guess I know what tomorrow's project will be...

I just finished pulling network cable through the house from the bedroom, office and living room into the basement where the server farm will live. With any luck, all the runs will be good enough for gigabit.

I also had to install a new phone jack in the basement, because, oddly enough, nobody thought to put a phone down there before. Eventually, it will be the only jack hooked up to the Verizon loop once I get the VoIP service setup running, but for now I just twisted the new line onto the big wads of wires that are bypassing the nice 66 punch-down block next to the electrical panel. Everything was all nasty and corroded, so I figured I'd have to go back and fix it later.

After I finished installing cable, I plugged a phone into the new jack to see if I had wired it to the right pair. Even with a DSL filter, the dialtone sounded pretty noisy, but I tried plugging the DSL modem into it anyway. Synced right up. Huh. So I hooked up the server and booted. PPPoE came up. Pings worked; even flood pings only lost a few packets. Download speeds were around 180 KB/sec, right where they should be. Who'd have thought that a line too sketchy for analog voice would work fine with 1.5 Mbit DSL?

Charter One Bank has pre-paid MasterCards available online. Lots of people do that, I know, but Charter One does not charge a service fee, and they don't even charge you for shipping & handling. You choose an amount from $20 to $500, select a message to be embossed into the card, and enter the recipient's name and address. The payment is funky though—your only option is to take the money off an existing credit card, which presumably will be charged as a cash advance. Maybe using a debit card will work?

Some dude posted a tirade about the uselessness and banality of most weblogs, which obviously touched off some sentiments throughout the "blogosphere". (Yeah, it's from February 3; I'm not exactly Mr. Current Affairs, am I?) The article starts off attacking bloggers in general, then degrades to harsh criticism of Movable Type. I don't agree with his attacks on weblogging, which I believe rivals instant messaging as a revolutionary communications technology, but I'm more than happy to add my piece about Movable Type.

This sentence sums it up: "Movable Type is written by web designers, not programmers." We all know how well web designers can program. Most of them are even honest enough to admit that they are not capable of producing code any more than I am capable of producing a decent-looking webpage. Not the oblivious folks at Six Apart though. To make matters worse, they've taken it upon themselves to lead the creation of new weblog "standards", such as the disgustingly-broken TrackBack mechanism. I could live with ignoring their bad code, but creating bad standards that other people have to conform to is inexcusable.

Maybe one day some sort of standards group will tackle the problems confronting weblog interoperability. It has already started, in fact, with the intention of developing Atom through the IETF. Until then, we'll be forced to put up with "standards" defined by a single, incompetent vendor.

Some minor changes to the weblog... I added a module that puts "last-modified" headers on the pages. Hopefully this will be easier on clients so they don't have to pull the same page so often, and with any luck it will fix the bizarre problems LiveJournal has in keeping track of whether the page has been updated.

I also added a new type of feed using the Atom format. Realistically, it's not much different from RSS, but I like it better so I'm trying to promote it. I have a long tirade half-written on why Atom is better, which I'll try to post soon.

For my birthday today Carson gave me a Makita cordless drill and a hammer, among other things. No more blisters when assembling furniture! My mother sent some of her delicious chocolate-covered cherries, which she's been making a lot of lately.

We also made steak for dinner, and for the first time ever the steak didn't come out too rare. Usually when we broil steak, I get too nervous about all the smoke coming out of the oven from the protruding parts that cook too quickly and end up undercooking it. This time, we actually left the oven shut and tried to ignore the smoke coming out, and the steaks were done perfectly. It probably also helped that the meat was room temperature instead of refrigerated.

Most of the time when I eat at McDonalds or Burger King, it's for breakfast. Their hamburgers and what-not are so disgustingly unhealthy that I try to avoid eating them very often, but their breakfast foods are rather similar to what I would eat for breakfast at home.

Anyway, it seems to me that fast-food places keep moving their end-of-breakfast time earlier and earlier. I remember back when I was younger, like 10-12 years ago, it was typical for breakfast to end at 11am. Then in high school, it was 10:30. These days, everyone seems to end breakfast at 10:00. A couple places I've even seen 9:30. (Like the Burger King at the Detroit airport. I flew red-eye flights from Alaska, and after having barely slept at what felt like 5:30am to me, I was told I could only order a burger. So I ordered a Whopper and told myself it was more like a late-night snack.)

So the question is, why are they doing this? Does their market research really show that what people want most at 9:30 in the morning is a burger, fries and a coke? Or, more likely, do they find that most people will give in and order lunch food anyway even if they came in to buy breakfast? Considering that their breakfast foods appear to be of higher quality and thus have a lower profit margin than lunch foods, this would be a good business decision. Then they're walking the line between higher profits and irritating their customers, which in the fast food business does not bode well for the consumer.

We finally bought a new dresser to complement the tiny one we're trying to cram our clothing into now. We splurged and spent almost $100; this one is made from high-quality pressboard. It's almost assembled now, although my thumbs are getting blistered from the screwdriver. Must get power drill before buying more furniture.

Carson's doing a Lord of the Rings marathon this weekend. Last night we watched Fellowship, the uncut version of course, today we are watching Two Towers, and tomorrow we go to Syracuse and watch the third one, whatever it's called. Last night my butt got numb before the end, I think tonight I need to drink more to help the time pass faster.

Need to think about what to make for dinner, since we're having lots of people over. I'm thinking soft tacos, which means I need to go shopping in the next hour or so. Mmm, tacos... (Y'know, I was in Mexico for 10 days and still didn't get sick of tacos. I wonder what that means.)

Next weekend I'll be in Minneapolis to see some folks. Hopefully I'll get some PGP keys signed as well. Send me suggestions for what to do in Minneapolis; I'll be there way longer than I need to be.

Also, stolen from mythago:

From the year's review of the law: in December 2002, a Palm Springs man pleaded guilty to smuggling protected wildlife into the US when he was caught with monkeys in his pants.

The monkeys were brought from Thailand and hidden in Robert J. Cusack's underwear. "In entering his plea, Robert John Cusack, 45, of Palm Springs, acknowledged that he carried the monkeys, called lesser slow lorises, in the crotch area of his underwear on a Korean Air flight June 13."

Justice Bedsworth, on appeal, commented, "There is no non-culpable reason for having monkeys in your underpants."

Well! Where to begin? Carson and I just got back from Cancún. We were there for the holidays as a gift from my parents, who planned the trip. My brother was there as well, who I don't get to see too often. We spent half the time in the "hotel zone", a day on Isla Mujeres, a couple of days touring ancient Mayan ruins in Chichén Itzá, Cobá and Tulum, and three days in Cozumel.

I love Cozumel. It's your typical tropical island paradise. Mostly it felt like a Mexican version of Hawaii, which suited me fine, especially since I speak a lot more Spanish than anybody else in my family. We went on a snorkeling cruise (with lunch and open bar), we played on the beach, we swam in the surf, and we ate at wonderful restaurants (Espacio's and Casa Denis). I could have stayed on Cozumel for another week and been perfectly happy.

Cancún is another story. There is absolutely nothing charming, cultural, or even attractive about Cancún. It was invented in the 1970's as a tourist trap (intended to be "an east-coast counterpart to Acapulco" says the travel guide) and activities seem to be limited to drinking and sunbathing. I guess that's enough for most people, but it seemed awfully boring to me.

The redeeming feature of Cancún is its use as a departure point for our tours of the Mayan ruins, which were quite interesting. Chichén Itzá is the site of the most famous Mayan pyramid, and its size can't really be appreciated without seeing it in person. I was somewhat shocked to see that they allowed tourists to climb up this thousand-year-old monument, but most of the structure has been restored in the last 50 years from being a pile of rubble so it's not like tourists are climbing on original stonework. I guess that makes it OK.

We did celebrate Christmas in Cancún though. We exchanged a few small gifts in our family. Unfortunately, my brother's gift to me was confiscated by customs on his way back from Germany, but I appreciate the effort. Apparently it was some kind of Czech sausage...? Anyway, I got some new tools, a really nice tie tack made by an Alaskan artist, and Digital Video Essentials to help me tune my new audio system. (Oh, before we left on the trip I got Pirates of the Caribbean from Nikki. Thank you, sweetie.)

This afternoon we arrived back home. Actually, we first detoured through Syracuse to get sushi, which turned out to be difficult on New Year's Eve. The sushi place we usually go to was only doing a $75/plate six-course dinner, and the other sushi place got rid of the sushi bar in an impending plan to convert the cuisine to Italian. As if Syracuse needs another Italian place.

Time for bed. I'll catch up on my 200 new emails tomorrow.

Just came back from a Christmas party (which was much fun, BTW) and on the way home dug a drunk driver out of a snow bank. It bothers me a bit helping put drunk drivers back on the road, but we didn't know he was drunk until after we started helping, and it would have bothered me more to say "I won't help you out of the snow bank, but I'll let the police know you're here."

This time of year is so busy. Gifts to buy, cards to send, parties to plan (and attend!), travel to arrange. I've been so low on sleep I'm starting to hallucinate. Fortunately, after this weekend, things should be much more relaxed, I just hope I live that long.

Off to bed...

The weblog's been quiet due to Thanksgiving and all. We saw Carson's family, which was fun, and ate a lot, which is always imperative for a successful Thanksgiving. The weather down south was a bit chilly, but still much nicer than the snow in central NY.

This week I need to get back on track with all the projects I need to get done. Apparently a school in .cz is running pTRTd on their border router, so I should probably spend a few hours tightening up the huge security holes in it.

Every time I heard Pink's "Trouble", I thought, "That sure sounds a lot like Rancid." Turns out it is Rancid, or at least several members of the band, with a little touch of Blink 182. Man, that takes me back...

Now, I'm not going to say Pink is particularly creative or talented, but she's really been able to adapt to a wide variety of musical genres. I just wish her songs weren't so trite.

Pre-made pudding tubs (Kozy Shack, for those who want to play at home) went on sale the week of Halloween. Carson laughed when I brought home ten pounds of pudding. She cried when I went back and bought the second ten pounds.

I was vaguely worried about eating it before it expired in the first week of December. Now there's only two tubs left, and I'm not worried any more.

I love pudding.

The blog looks a bit better now. I added a comment plug-in, which allows TrackBacks as well. You can use it to tell me whether you like the new HTML layout or not. :-)

This is the new home of my weblog, after my sadly neglected attempt to use LiveJournal. While I love the LJ site and its community, I was never inspired to post there. Why? I think it was mostly because I could never decide whether I wanted my journal to be public and anonymous, or private and personal. As a result, I could never decide what content to post. Also, I think I don't have enough friends who use LJ to make the access controls and aggregation worth the effort to put up with the slow slow slow site. (Yes, I am a paid member. It's still painful.)

This time around, I'm using Blosxom, which is CGI blog software done the True UNIX Way. So far, I quite like it, although many people have recommending using MovableType instead.

One of the nifty features of Blosxom is the namespace, which lets readers filter my posts based on the category I assign. Then those who only want to read about my new toys can use the URL http://www.litech.org/~lutchann/weblog/tech/toys/, which excludes posts about sysadmining and the flash movie of the day.

Soon I'll install a plugin that allows comments to be posted, too.