So this morning, my Web site started notifying me of 404 errors from one user trying desperately to find this page. He or she was trying every possible spelling variation except the right one. Over and over again, thirty-five times in all, often trying the same invalid filenames (possibly under the belief that the system was just hiding it on them).

Being the helpful sort of person that I am, I added a special case to my error page, so that if another 404 error came in from this particular IP address, it would display a custom message providing them with a link to the page they were trying to reach, and indicating the correct spelling of the page's URL.

And they did in fact see this custom error message. FOUR TIMES. Rather than simply clicking on the link, they tried typing it in again, misspelling it three more times before they apparently hit on the right spelling (or just gave up and clicked on the link).

Ironically, the whois information on their IP address claimed that they were connecting from the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System. (I'd hate to see the result of Indiana's lower education!)

This summer, I think I officially become an old fart. And it is, in fact, a term of pride.

As people around the country are observing, today marks the six-month anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Across the nation, people are proclaiming that that fateful day changed their lives forever.

Why?

Certainly, it can't be the mere fact that people are capable of acting in so barbaric a fashion. Such heinous acts are perpetrated on a continual basis on this planet, as anyone who reads or watches the news should be well aware. People in Ireland regularly shoot, bomb, and beat other people simply for believing in the same God in a different way. South Africans shoot, bomb and beat each other for having different amounts of melanin in their epidermis. Palestinians and Israelis regularly shoot, bomb and beat each other over an arid patch of land. Every day, it seems, brings more examples of "man's inhumanity to man".

So what is it about September 11th that is so world-shaking to these people? Is it the number of deaths? Over thirty times as many Iraqis are estimated to have been killed during Operation Desert Storm, but people weren't agonizing over that to the degree that they have done over September 11th, so it probably isn't that.

Is it the fact that it happened to us that causes people to declare that their whole world has changed? A sad thought, if true — for it means that Americans can callously shrug off the deaths of others as meaningless occurrences, caring nothing for terrorist attacks upon other peoples, yet demanding sympathy from the world when the same thing happens on our own soil.

My world did not change on September 11th, for what played out in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania was no different than what has been occurring nonstop in the Middle East, or in South Africa, or in Ireland; only the location changed. I had already believed that humanity, despite its technological accomplishments, is a race of savages: given wholly over to bestial hatred in some parts of the globe, but in others possessing merely a veneer of civility which is quickly thrown off in the name of revenge.

This morning, as I got dressed, I put my Visor Prism in my shirt pocket, then decided I should HotSync it, in case any of the Web sites I download with AvantGo had changed. So I put it back in the HotSync cradle, hit the button and continued getting ready for work. And left without the Prism.

I feel naked without it. I ordered some merchandise, and couldn't log the credit card transaction in MyCheckbook. I don't have access to my "To Do" list, so I had to write something down on paper and hope I remember it when I get home. Ack.

I can't wait for the days when they can just implant an interface chip in my brain. Unless, of course, it's from Microsoft; I'm not ready for the Blue Synapse of Death.

Someone emailed me an interesting image last night. It's a scan of an article from an Australian computer gaming magazine which talks about a Stargate mod for Quake 3 Arena. Accompanying the article are two images, apparently screenshots from the game.

Only they're not from the game. They're images I created (originals are here and here). I'm not credited for these images in the article. A 3D artist is named, but it's not me. I am somewhat perturbed.

Time to begin researching Australian copyright laws, I think.

My mother came to visit last week, so I took some time off, expecting a little relaxation. More fool I; my mother, though retired, is still extremely active. We did a lot of walking.

One of the fun things we did was to go to an exotic cat retirement home here in Tampa. (Lions and tigers and bearcats, oh my!) I discovered that stinky housecat litterboxes are quite pleasant compared to the smell of ocelots, and that bearcats emit an odor that smells like popcorn to some people, and Fritos to others. (To me, they smelled exactly the way "Buttered Popcorn" flavored Jelly Belly jellybeans taste.)

I got to pet a Siberian Lynx (which seemed to enjoy it, and licked my hand a lot) and a bobcat (which started purring). We weren't permitted to get near the larger cats, but it's astounding how much their behavior resembled that of their smaller, domesticated kin. Except for the fact that the tigers really loved playing in water.

Saturday night, my friends and I dragged my mother along to a They Might Be Giants concert. The opening band, OKGO, was rather disappointing — though that may have been more the fault of the sound engineer than of the actual band; their vocal mics were set at a level much lower than the instruments, and the tone was extremely muddy as well, so their lyrics were utterly incomprehensible.

The pause between OKGO and TMBG was interminable (as most such pauses are), exacerbated by the hideous canned music (which stretched the definition of "music" to the breaking point). Finally, TMBG came out and put on a pretty good show, even if the vocals were just as muddy as the previous band's (I couldn't even understand them on the songs I knew by heart). John Flansburgh seemed fairly enthusiastic about the performance, but John Linnell looked like he was just phoning it in.

I also discovered that I've spoken to Mossad spies on a couple of occasions. One of the local "alternative" newspapers, The Weekly Planet, printed an interesting article on "Israeli art students" in Tampa who turned out to be spies. And I just thought they were scam artists.

Yesterday, I received a letter from VeriSign (motto: The Value of Trust™), labelled Expiration Notice - Reply by April 19, 2002. Inside, it contained an expiration notice and renewal form, indicating that www.shipbrook.com needed to be renewed.

I was somewhat upset, as last month, my Webhosting service had sent me an email giving me 24 hours' disconnection notice, despite the fact that I had just paid for two years' renewal. (That turned out to be a bug in the billing system.) Assuming that they had taken my money and not paid it out to VeriSign, I called them up again to inquire why I was receiving this renewal notice when I'd paid for two years.

It turns out that they have nothing to do with VeriSign. The fine print on the back of the renewal notice reveals that by signing the form, I'm authorizing them to be my new domain name registrar — a practice known in the long-distance telephone industry as "slamming", and illegal in the United States (though only telephone service is addressed by the law).

VeriSign has been taking some heat for this practice, which is incredibly ironic given that they were accusing their competitors of doing that very thing last year.

Apparently, the Value of Trust™ isn't very high.