It amazes me that completely automated airline ticketing can still screw up a simple flight arrangement. The Continental folks (including my boarding pass) were completely convinced that I was scheduled for a different flight, despite my itinerary (and memory) having the correct flight. Thankfully there was an open seat on the right plane (well duh, it was my seat to begin with) so I made them give it to me.


In the process of designing an experimental little web service, my friend Mike suggested making an AIM bot to go along with it. So to test out simple bot making with Twisted I made a little bot called Find Case People, which took about ten minutes before I added some features. It's like the Case phone book with the minor advantage of also searching e-mail aliases, and might be quicker if you happen to be using AIM. You can tell it who you are and have it list your screen name in search results as well (although there's nothing to prevent hijacking entries currently). Give it a try.


I split the cost of a five piece drum set with Mike and Spiros. We got it for $225 from a girl in Providence using craigslist. Now we have an instrument or two for everyone to enjoy and can participate in totally rocking out which I hear is popular these days.


You should see Patty's hair.


I am now banned from OiNK, including their IRC server. The admins enjoy being huge jerks, apparently. Here's a hint, guys: BitTorrent is designed to work better with more people. So don't ban people when they're seeding.


Laptop Linux woes: framebuffer won't start with 2.6.14 kernel, so I just have to guess at what's scrolling by and that I'm logging in and starting X without typos. Also, after spending all night updating all my packages, I realized that somehow the random mirror I had synced from was out of date, so all those "fresh" packages were actually all outdated. I didn't even know this was possible... thanks, portage!


I stayed up until 10 AM traversing this list of 2005's Best Links. Maybe you will, too.


Here are some of my favorite songs of 2005, in no particular order:

  • Did You See the Words (Animal Collective)
  • Patriarch on a Vespa (Metric)
  • TV Dogs (Jackson & His Computer Band)
  • It's 5! (Architecture in Helsinki)
  • Come on! Feel the Illinoise! (Sufjan Stevens)
  • Dilaudid (The Mountain Goats)
  • Sweet Spots (The Fiery Furnaces)