fractalnavel

huh ?  hey!  why is my phone bill so low this month ?  wow, check this out:

Credit for Service outage from Jun 09 thru                      2B-02
Jun 13.  We apologize for any inconvenience                         
this interruption may have caused you.               14.87CR        

well, i'll be damned !  that seems disproportionate for just a few days, but actually, service was out for a month or more.  i was thinking there may be scam potential in this sort of thing, but i guess they'd have to actually find something wrong.

the phone company giving money back, wow.  what next ?  a pacifist republican ?

heading up to tobermory to meet some family this weekend.  no takers on this end to join me on an extended road trip beyond that; seems a shame to be out that way and then just come home.  solo road trips are ok, but with the price of gas right now i think i'd rather share.  you never know, i could still get the itch to keep going.

oh, toys - what to bring ?  normally this would be a scuba trip.  “normally” ?  i dove in tob in '95, '96, '97 and '99, the first three times with a dive shop group.  that's always a good thing.  clear cold fresh water in the middle of a hot summer - yum.  clear ?  sometimes visibility exceeding 50 feet.  cold ?  40's at the bottom, 50's at the top.  when it's sunny and 80 or more topside, that can't be beat.  yet it's just as likely to be cloudy, windy and fifties.  that's part of the fun.  i always wish i could find such water around here when the temps hover near 100.

i was thinking of seeing if i could get a last minute spot on the shop's tour.  or i could grab a half-day charter in town and just do a two-tank dive.  the shop tour is appealing since the trip includes meals & rooms & diving.  yet the idea was to spend time with family camping.  and, well, my tanks need their annual inspection.  i could just use the air i have (i've got four full tanks right now), but no one will normally fill them without a current sticker.  last minute rush inspections are hard to come by. 

and then there's the question of whether my wet suit still fits.  those things are notorious for shrinkage ;-) (diver's in-joke; of course it's we who are expanding).  and, hmm - my equipment might raise some eyebrows now, since it hasn't been updated in quite a while.  it's in good shape though.

toys: bike ?  good for rides into town and around the tip of the peninsula from the nearby camping areas.  i never heard of any mountain biking trails area.  lots of national park land means hiking only.  good hiking too - along the cliffs of the niagara escarpment.

that's a great area for sea kayaking, but i never progressed in that.  it's also a decent climbing area, but it's the same story as with the kayaking.

toys: backpacking ?  i was thinking of maybe doing just an overnight trip on flowerpot island, or on the bruce trail.

toys: boat ?  oh, i could put it together in time to go, but i still haven't finished the sanding & stuff.  remember, i'm a pro crastinator.  tow it up for just the weekend ?  hmm.  i would have to cross into canada using a bridge, not a ferry, and the marine city to sombra crossing is so much more pleasant. but i should call and check, just in case they do allow trailers (called - not a problem; funny, though, putting a boat on a boat).

then there's the issue with a 14 foot day sailer in those waters.  it can get pretty rough out there, and weather can change quickly.  it'd be cool to actually sail over to flowerpot, but ...

one of my brothers is taking his boat, a 20 foot 200 hp thing that he uses for fishing.  it's not a fishing boat, or a ski boat, and has a minimal cabin.  i probably won't go out on it; he scares me the way he camps.  then again, he could be free transport to the islands.

not a toy, but an activity:  there used to be a nice stable up there at harmony acres, but like so many ranches over the last few decades, it seems they are now out of that business due to a lawsuit (i thought i remember a reference to that while browsing.  maybe i'm wrong - i hope so).  what a shame.  the same thing is what almost killed general aviation, and it's the one thing the scuba world lives in fear of, and has so far successfully protected itself against.

sounds like i need to stay a week.  it would be a beautiful place to live. 

or, really, i could just skip all the toys and just tag along with everyone else.  there's day hikes, geocaching, swimming (lake huron is much warmer than the georgian bay), sightseeing, shopping (the little tub harbor area, which pretty much is tobermory, has a lot of neat shops).

what haven't i done there before ?  flowerpot island & small boating.  maybe i should just focus on that.  and a half day dive outing.  something to consider.

ok, called the parks registration office.  flower pot has six spots available on a first-come, first-served in-person basis (up to 14 days camping allowed).  cool.  except they say that on this weekend they usually all get taken by wednesday.  they also say the island is only five km from the harbor.  if so, that'd be just perfect for a boat like mine.  gotta check the charts though; some road maps show the distance as more like 20km.  why are there so many free land maps, but practically no free marine charts ?  although i can't find charts, there is anecdotal evidence that the 5km distance is correct.  ok, a park map.

ok, now: decisions, decisions. 

update: added referral and trackback feeds

follow-up notes:

• i put in some minor changes to application logic that should prevent a good deal of trackback and referer spam.  just based on simple keyword patterns for now; that list will need to grow as we go along.
• i was wrong about urlscan capabilities as far as pattern matching in urls goes.  too bad, because that would be a perfect place for it.  i must have been thinking of something else.  for now, that leaves the server logs uncovered with respect to referer spam.

that's all for now.  i'm sure there will be many more rounds to come.  no good way of predicting the form of the next attacks to get through.

forced into action; i finally had to react to comment spam by putting in a minimal validation step (copied from craig).  crap.  but deleting all that stuff from the database and my inbox was getting tiresome.  now if only i could figure a way to block trackback spam without stopping trackbacks altogether.   and then there's referer spam, both in the blog database, and in the web server logs.  those seem to have dropped off lately.  knock on [something handy].

spoke too soon - the referral spam is pretty thick today and recently.

• the wedding was a wedding, nothing special (think of this statement from the couple's perspective!).  i was having a particularly blond sort of day; every one of my attempts at determining directions was wrong.  my sister was driving, so we got there in spite of my attempts at misdirection.  good thing, too - the ceremony lasted all of ten minutes - maybe.  the reception was nice, none of the “traditional” stupid wedding dances etc, just dinner and dancing.  my left-footedness continued, so i contented myself to sit things out as much as possible, considering minimizing damage to be a good thing. fun to watch the women though; one advantage of new glasses.
• intending on returning the next day, i got talked into helping paint a deck.  this time it was my sister's turn to be blond, going back and forth on stain color several times (with trips to the store for each) before settling on the original choice.  lesson learned: deck stains settle out quickly, making stirring well a constant concern.

  also managed to burn the soles of my feet on the hot deck planking.  the sun was intense, and i was sucking it up.  oops - sometimes damage can be done, that's what pain is for, a warning.  i forget that sometimes.  two days later, they're pretty much better now.

  we got dinner at a japanese place later.  somehow we got sushi we didn't order, but didn't question it quick enough.  oh well, good eating anyway.  had leftovers for breakfast ;-)  i've been feeling guilty the last couple of years about my unemployed status and everyone's generosity, so i've been “paying” for things again.  probably not bright, but the alternative is, “dinner ?  ok, how about hot dogs ?”.  sadly, there is truth to economic status affecting relationships.  when is that not the case ?

• spent late morning at a nearby beach the next day, before the afternoon clouds moved in.  nice scenery, these glasses do just fine (binoculars are just too obvious) ;-)  got a bit sunburned though, on top of what i got from the deck work.  i haven't been tanning like last year, and it is nice to have natural protection, but it's a pain to spend all that time just cooking in the sun.  driving home in an open jeep for four hours just got me more sun.  i was well cooked by the time i got home.  i don't know if it was sunscreen failure or what, but i need a couple days to heal now ;-)

so why aren't wedding photographers putting up websites as part of the deal ? in fact, the whole thing from planning to recording could benefit from being online.  sounds like a business opportunity.

this cycler's trip journal really hit the spot for some reason. a substantial but quick (day or two) read.

fine, you want to spam me ? you want advertising space on my web, in my inbox, or time on my phone ?  here's my rates:

• website: $10,000 per word for each of the first 100 words posted (by any means) for your product.  bulk premiums are available!  the rate for each additional block of 100 words is factor of ten times the previous block's rate.  applicable rates are calculated based on usage within the preceding 365 days.
• email: $1 for the first word, doubling for each additional word, rates based on 365 day usage as above.
• desktop (popups, etc.): $1 per pixel per event.  animation, color change or any other dynamic effect or movement will be calculated as new pixels appear.  example 1: 5 seconds of 30 frames per second for a 300 x 300 pixel frame is $13,500,000.  example 2: 300 x 300 pixel image moved 300 pixels, 1 pixel at a time is $9,000,000.
• telephone: $1000 / second.  times 2 for credit or vacation solicitations.  times 5 if it's a foreign national on the line.  times 10 if you can't get my name right.  times 100 if it's not even my name.
• instancing surcharge: notwithstanding content rates as set forth above, each actual occurrence of usage is subject to a charge of $10,000.
• miscellany: log file space, cpu time and other resources consumed by break-in attempts of any sort (by virii, worms, trojans, persons, etc.) will be charged at rates comparable to the foregoing.
• administrative charges: all clean up, log file analysis, research, communications or other activity associated with responding to the above will be charged on a time and materials basis.  hourly rates begin at $10,000, rising with each additional hour per event.  the nature and duration of an event, and the rate of rate increase, will be determined according to my whim.

rates are subject to arbitrary change without notice or logic. for instance, i think i'll use bytes instead if words in my calculations. apply a factor of ten for anything concerning drugs, gambling, investment or sex.  audience for and duration of placement of content will be minimized and will be zero whenever possible.  usage of any of these resources constitutes acceptance of these terms.  please remit payment at .  late fees are 20% of the total outstanding charge per day. payment is due at the time of event; prepayment is accepted.

this is not a solicitation for business nor an advertisement of goods or services.  in the spirit of “you break it, you buy it” these are the costs for intruding on my space.

as for “existing business relationships”, if i in my sole discretion have explicitly requested (as determined by me) or posted the above materials, any fees are waived.

so my landline was fixed today.  i know the exact moment i was connected - the junk calls started.  next step: cancel service.  know how i discovered the phone was out ?  a storm came through a few weeks back, knocked out broadband, so i tried dial-up, and discovered that the line was dead.  it occurred to me that i hadn't heard it ring in quite a while.  i figure there's no sense in paying for a service that i don't miss when it's gone, and isn't there when i want it.

and didn't i post at least part of this before ?  maybe i just meant to...

in other news, it appears there may be a family get-together in tobermory this year for the fourth of july weekend.  already?!  where is the time going ?

i have a nephew who is coming down for several days in mid-july for a goalie camp (hockey in cincinnati?).  he's bringing his mom and sister with him.  looks like i'm getting packing help.  now i need a destination ;-)

i normally get my binaries from bt, but a couple of things have been taking their time showing up, so i checked the binary newsgroups.  now, i never do this, so i have no idea what i'm doing.  first i had to find a news server that i had access to. luckily, local roadrunner has one, albeit with low retention times (3 days for binaries).  then i tried to use outlook express, which was quickly apparent to be a losing proposition.  so i went ahead and downloaded a trial binary grabber; i should look around for something open source, but i'm not planning (for now) to be doing a lot of this, so any old thing would do.  works real well, and the nice part is that because i'm using the rr news server, i can saturate my bandwidth.  beats the crap out of tweaking bt to try and get max throughput, and still rarely getting to the edge.  ftp from someone's personal server would be even worse, with the asymmetric broadband speeds we have (5mbps in / 384kbps out).  next i had to learn about incomplete files and parity / repair files.  that takes yet another program.  again, it worked pretty slick, and i ended up with workable file sets.  next step is to unpack / combine them, which is something i do have the program for.  of course, the last step is to clean up all the excess intermediate files that get tracked through all this. 

this is only the consumer side of things; good thing i don't have to deal with the production end.

no, i don't think i'll create torrents.  or will i ?  hmm...

amusement park conversations between my brother and i always seem to take a particular twist.  i'm going to need a new blog category.

end of day amusement parks are fun, it seems there are never coaster lines in the last hour or two.  (hmm - why bother showing up until a couple hours before close ?)  anyway, this time it was the “wicked twister” that we ended up riding over and over.  i think my niece got in nine rides.  the last one we waited to get into the first seat, whch is something i normally avoid because the lines are alway much longer for that in every ride.  it was worth it ! 

had a great day as usual, but the logistics were torturous.  drive out four hours, spend 12 hours walking around, then another four hours back home.  and i was still sore from working on the jeep all day the day before.  so i wimped on the way back & stopped halfway to take a nap and put up the top, since hypothermia on top of all the other aches & pains was getting to be too much (my coat had gotten dampened in a short downpour while we were in the park; i thought i could get away without a drybag - not).

the day started off in the 90's, good enough for water rides.  the rides shut down for periodic rain later, for maybe an hour or two.  which is the (a) cause of the above referenced discussion. well, ok, it probably would have happened anyway ;-)