as proof that the road is not the map and the blog is not the man, i offer up exhibit 'a'. a shiny 1965 galaxie 500 that i purchased back in august.

i think there may be only a handful of friends and family that know that i bought the classic muscle car, and i'm not quiet sure how it failed to make it into my online life.

perhaps it's because i originally intended to "flip" the car for some easy money and didn't think i was going to invest that much mental energy in it. i figuratively "stole" the car from a co-worker whose family had owned the car since it was purchased in '65. when he said he wanted to get rid of the car, which was sitting risking neglect on their napa valley property, i was smart enough to say i'd pay to ship it back to michigan. i was pretty sure i could sell it for more than what i was paying, so i jumped on the opportunity.

now, despite the fact that i spent 13 years in maine the grandson of a grandfather who owned a car dealership and helped-out behind the parts counter when i was barely out of diapers and despite the fact that i went to high-school "just outside" of flint, michigan and despite the fact that the pops is an engineering manager for gm - i've never considered myself a "car person". much to the chagrin of my dad, i'm all about automobile pragmatism which usually means buying foreign - mazdas, toyotas and vws have all been parked in my driveway. and after years of owning a toyota camry, i was completely unprepared for experience of driving the galaxie.

well, the very first experience was trying to get used to the "three on the tree" set-up where the the manual transmission is shifted on the steering column. but five minutes later, as i pulled into my driveway, i had what would end up being a commonplace experience - someone freaking-out over the car. in this case it was a couple of construction workers that tripped over themselves to get a closer look.

little did i know that there's a whole different world out there. a world of people who will yell out their minivan window, while you're driving down the highway that their first car was a galaxie. people with large, black muttonchops and blue coveralls that will bolt across the parking lot with their girlfiend in tow, just to get you to open the hood. people that will ask you if they can buy your car while you're idling at a light. people that stop the flow of traffic to jump out of their idling car to ask you when you're exiting a conveniece store where you get parts because it just so happens that they bought a '66 but it doesn't have a seat and "no shit" that's the original seat, i've never seen a '65 galaxie seat in such great condition.

of course, i can't just get rid of the car now. there's a whole winter's worth of work to done on her. maybe a new gearbox. maybe i'll put in "doolies" [ duel exhaust for the unitiated ].

who knows, but i hear this is how it starts. it's a disease that strikes the unsuspecting and if i don't keep it in check in ten years i'll have cars in various states of reconditioning up on blocks in the front yard.

are you worried yet? when you see plans to build an uber system to monitor the internet :

""Part of monitoring the Internet and doing real-time analysis is to be able to track incidents while they are occurring," the official said.

The official compared the system to Carnivore, the Internet wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: "Am I analogizing this to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, it's 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at the whole Internet.""

and you see that we're rounding up hundreds of immigrants :

"Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000."

does it worry you? will you look back in 2 years and say, "how come i didn't see it coming?"

my ibook woes continue. apple's dispatch database has been down and they've been unable to send out new parts. what did i do to so anger the mac gods?

after receiving a friendly reminder today that the maintainers of xml::rss would happily accept a patch to produce rss 2.0 output, my laziness homunculus reminded me that rafe was working on just such a patch. hopefully rafe still has it sitting around somewhere.

it's been nearly two months since we had to put harper down and in some ways kris and i have started to move on. at the risk of being gratuitously morbid, i thought i'd share a picture from a few shots i took a couple of hours before taking him to the vet, which i just developed after staring at the roll for months.

i think it only slightly captures how both of us were feeling that afternoon.

pets are amazing and scary. it's stupifying that i still occasionally think i can hear him roaming around the house.

i've been ruminating on putting together an rss 2.0 feed and was interested to see mark pilgrim's recommendation as to which feed format is appropriate in "what is rss?"

i went looking to see what the current state of affairs is with xml::rss , the perl module i use to produce this site's feeds, and was disappointed to see that the development version doesn't look like it's going to support the format. i suppose i could handcraft a 2.0 feed. or contribute code to xml:rss. or i could just stay with the status quo. hmmmm.

the folks at jabber.org are rightly concerned about the aol/im patent and have put together a dedicated website to serve as a repository for information and discussion.

i can't really tell from the claims on the aol/im patent what date would be suffient to establish prior art, but if it's based on their icq acquisition, then anything prior to 1990/1989 would be fair game - at least according to an informative thread on the jabber developer's list. the overworked, underfunded uspto strikes again.

you know you're a superdork when you consider "The case of the 500-mile email" an intriguing mystery worthy of development into a made-for-t.v. miniseries:

""We can't send mail farther than 500 miles from here," he repeated. "A little more, actually. Call it 520 miles. But no farther."

"Um... Email really doesn't work that way, generally," I said, trying to keep panic out of my voice."

Remote Application Development with Mozilla:

"This article will explore the uses for remote XUL (loaded from a Web server), contrast its capabilities with those of local XUL (installed on a user's computer), explain how to deploy remote XUL, and give examples of existing applications. This will give you a firm grasp on the potential uses for remote XUL, its current limitations, and how to start using it to enhance your Web sites and applications."

i often wonder if the masses of people googling for "strained calf muscle" are amused or aggravated at stumbling across my marathon debacle in the top ten results.

the ibook saga continues. i get it back today with the word that is ready to go with a brand new logic board. only it took me 30 seconds to figure out that it wasn't ready to go, since the power supply doesn't work and the wireless range had dropped down to 10 feet. all problems that i didn't have before it was "fixed".

more calls to apple and they have to send me a new power adapter before they can determine they can troubleshoot any further. maybe it'll get here in three days. this is really trying my patience. i'm sure there's a tech sheet that says after you replace the logic board you should perform a basic set of quality assurance checks before sending it back to the customer. i'm being advised that i should probably drive all the way back to the apple store in chicago and yell and scream until they give me a new one. normally, i'm not really moved to perform those kinds of acts in public, but i'm getting close.

and so, it's back to the trusty linux and wintel boxen.

throwing caution to the wind the folks at mozilla released 1.3a on friday the 13th, with loads of new stuff - including built-in spam filtering.

Beyond "Couch Potatoes": From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors:

"The fundamental challenge for computational media is to contribute to the invention and design of cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Cultures are substantially defined by their media and tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. New media change (1) the structure and contents of our interests; (2) the nature of our cognitive and collaborative tools; and, (3) the social environment in which thoughts originate and evolve, and mindsets develop."

why would i want to go to hotbot's updated site just so i can use google?