My wife and recently decided to develop the basement of our house. Interest rates are good, our mortgage was up for renewal, and construction costs are lower than they've been in years.

I'll go more into the details in another post. However, one of the things that we "discussed" often was putting in central air conditioning for the whole house while doing the development. She was for it, and I was against it. Well, not really against it, but I just wasn't sure we get enough hot days here to really justify the cost. And the fact that it has been raining nearly non-stop since March has significantly improved my case.

So, skip forward a couple more weeksto the point where I lost that argument, and the air conditioning is installed.

This weekend was the first time where we've actually had occasion to use it, since it hit 30 Celcius outside. And I must admit, walking inside after doing yard work, from a 30C backyard to a 22C kitchen is pretty damned sweet.

I'll never admit that she was right, but I'll certainly enjoy a good night's sleep without having to worry about open windows, fans, and how many layers of skin and bone I can shed before finally getting comfortable.

Have you ever gone so long without doing something that you have to make it REALLY REALLY good when you go back, to make up for being away for so long?

Well, this isn't that. But it IS an icebreaker so that at least making a post doesn't seem like such a daunting task. I've had things to blog about, but after not posting for over a month, it seems that the return would have to be something really good.

Instead, you get this. However, now that this post has broken the ice, I can add more later without feeling like I need to come up with some big, delicious story.

Whew. Glad that's over.

Have you ever been reading something on the internet, especially in a forum or message board, and see a ton of comments referring to something that everyone obviously finds extremely hilarious except for you?

Me neither. But some people have. They wonder who the lightning bolt guy is. What's OMGWTFBBQ? And what the hell is roller coaster chess?

Well wonder no more. Knowyourmeme.com is your secret handbook. It provides history, chronology, explanations, and examples of most internet memes. A handbook for uninformed, if you will. Now go forth my child, with the confidence that people won't be thinking that today is your first day on the internetz.

So you may remember that last year I started a book called Fingerprints of the Gods. The beginning started out pretty good, but I ended up dropping it for a few months because the middle section didn't appeal to me at all. And I was having a hard time getting interested in a book that had gone off on what appeared to be a relevant, but extremely boring, tangent. About a month ago I picked it up again and forced myself to plow through it, and managed to finish the book. And overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

I have to say that the ending really ties a lot of things together. It's unfortunate that the middle section is so dry, because it *is* somewhat necessary to complete some of the thoughts. And while the book doesn't have me completely sold, I certainly agree that it raises some interesting points.

The author makes the proposition that civilization in general is much older than what mainstream science currently believes, and raises some very interesting facts to support the conclusion. I think the reason this book (and the ideas) never really got traction in the mainstream community is because the book does get a bit "doomsday-ish" near the end (which does fall in line with some of the points raised), and because a lot of the evidence is somewhat circumstantial or at the very least undefinitive on its own. It's only when a lot of disparate pieces of information are combined in a certain way that some of the theories and ideas start to become somewhat believable, or at least worth more investigation. Some things like the fact that Antarctica wasn't discovered until the 1800s, yet there are maps from the 1500s with detailed drawings of it. Not only that, but the drawings fromthe 1500s actually show terrain - riverbeds, etc, which are currently under 2 miles of ice and were only verified with modern technology in the early 1900s. Not really any PROOF of anything, but certainly interesting tidbits of info.

Of course, like anything - reading a book like this is like going to a debate and only hearing one side before you have to stop. Anyone can string together a bunch of ideas combined with some evidence to support their conclusions, and sound pretty believable. I'm tempted now to look for some counter-point books, just to be fair. One that seems to be fairly blunt is "Archaeological Fantasies:How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public" by Garrett Fagan.

Of course, whether I actually get around to doing that is another story. There's probably a much higher chance that I'll just move on to read Homer's The Iliad, which is already waiting for me on my desk....

I caught this article about my country hosting the Olympics. Written by an American, and very funny.

Link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4906756

I was trying to find a section to quote, but it's not super long, and the whole thing is equally funny. Just go read it.

Alright, the site's back up for now. I actually didn't replace any hardware, all I did was keep the webserver shut off for a few days, and then forgot about it for a few more. I turned it back on, and boom, we're back in business.

However, the site might be a bit slower than usual, although I'm not sure. The machine is still on its last legs, but because it's such a pain to relocate everything to completely new hardware, I haven't started that daunting task.

I did make sure to take some extra backups, but this failure made me realize that I need to be able to move this to new hardware. In fact, I think I'm going to see if I can migrate the whole thing to a VM so that it's completely hardware-independant.

Of course, that will have to wait until after we win some more medals, because the Olympics are going to be all of my spare time in the next couple of weeks... 

Wow. I've never watched the TV show Mad Men, but I might start now.

Christina Hendricks.

Wow.