Lemon curd

Ahh, there's nothing like a nice breakfast of lemon curd on buttered toast with a cup of tea. Say what you will about British cuisine, they sure know how to handle toast.

Anyway, so ends my lazy month away from blogging. A lot has happened:

1. I went to Las Vegas (again) on business (again) but this time with my partner in crime Dr. Knapp. We had productive meetings (ETIPS is about to turn into a rocking application) and we had a hell of a time at the craps tables. The trip ended with dinner at Rum Jungle. The rum drinks are delicious, but you go there for the meat. They serve you an endless rotation of pork, beef, chicken, and fish. It was intense.
2. Solveig and I spent two weeks in Vermont, and loved every minute. While we still love living in DC, we're both starting to think we're country folk at heart. We had intended to stay for only a week while house-sitting for the Knapps, but we kept extending our trip (first for Rise of Nations, then for music, then Counter-Strike, and finally for work).
3. The Cherry Blossom Festival came and went. We missed the fireworks, but we did take in a lot of art and, of course, cherry blossoms.
4. We witnessed drag show bingo at Titan. Good fun. But unfortunately the Star Trek pinball game is gone.
5. I just got a scanner (an Epson, because they actively support Linux) and a shredder (cross cut, of course), and am now on my way to the paperless office! I've been turning physical pieces of paper into bits of data by scanning the pages and then shredding them. It's a thing of beauty.
6. Anthony Preston was in town and introduced us to Fox and Hounds where we met Matt Cloud and, fueled by the strong drinks, spiritedly discussed and debated the Pledge of Allegiance, the upcoming election, Martha Stewart, gun rights, constitutional law, and so on and so on. The Fox serves it's mixed drinks without mixing them, so if you (for instance) order a gin and tonic you'll get a glass of gin on the rocks with a bottle of tonic water on the side. Which is great if you're going out for a quick drink after work, but can be... unfortunate if you're going to spend four hours there.
7. I started work on Katachi, my all-singing all-dancing CMS/weblogging-tool/template system. It's a tiny CGI script with minimal dependencies that has all it's functionality defined by plugins. By adding one set of plugins you have a blog, a different set gives you a wiki, a different set still and you have a full CMS. Or mix and match. Or go miniamalist and just use it to style your website. Pretty soon, Katachi will have all my favorite features of Blosxom, Wiki, and Mason together in one easy-to-install, flexible package. When that's done, I'll move this website from Blosxom to Katachi and release the code as open source.
8. Solveig and I spent Sunday afternoon walking through the aquatic gardens, which was amazing. It's basically a user-friendly swamp, which puts you very much in touch with the incredible diversity of life present. It's also out of the way, which made for a pleasant Sunday cruise in the RX-7.
9. The Powerbook died. Yes, that's right, 3.5 months old and it's short life has come to an end. When powered up, the hard drive makes clicking noises and the boot loader can't find the operating system. "At least it's still under warranty" I thought. Hah! Apple practically refuses to service it, all because I didn't sign up for AppleCare, their expensive telephone support for Mac users who are in need of help for software configuration or hardware installation or advice on how to best worship Steve Jobs. I don't want software support, I just want my warranty to be honored. But they won't honor my warranty unless they diagnose the problem with me on the phone, and they won't talk to me on the phone unless I have AppleCare. Well then, this is the last Apple product I'm buying, at least until this policy changes. Anyway, in desperation I finally agreed to pay their one time $50 charge for a single support incident, but then they couldn't actually sign me up for it because (get ready for it) their systems had crashed. Karma. So let's see here, $50 for support, plus over an hour of my time on the phone, plus it a couple of weeks before I have a working Powerbook again, after they've mailed me their special packing box and I've mailed them the Powerbook in it and they've fixed it and mailed it back. Sigh. A replacement drive would've cost me only $102 (with shipping) and been here the next day. Next time someone tries telling me that Apple is a high end "boutique" brand that makes quality products and prides itself on excellent customer service, I'll calmly explain how IBM, Dell, and practically every other PC laptop vendor will sell me more computer for less money, and if it breaks they'll fix it on-site within 24 hours.

So that gets us more or less to the present. Oh yes, I also just picked up Games, Diversions & Perl Culture (Best of the Perl Journal), which has proven very enjoyable so far. Highly recommended to all Perl programmers who were too late to the party to bear witness to the original Perl Journal.