Lets hope I have better luck than the last time I tried to sell a laptop on eBay.

In what can only be described as a bad omen, eBay actually suspended and blocked my account soon after I first listed this item! It took a few hours to try and work things out, but things seem fine now. But Jesus, what a pain in the ass.

I've never seen such a dramatic collapse of the quality of storytelling in a series. As you may recall, I loved this show... But my, how far it has fallen.

But with pride comes complacency. I got a little impatient decanting the latest batch. The latest batch was special because I ground up an apple and put it into the mix as well as ginger, so there were lots of little apple bits in it. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It went prompt critical around 11 pm last night, while Sophia was working on the wedding invitations.

The thing erupted when the cap came off, sending a maelstrom of ginger-infused apple-bits everywhere. The mess was epic. I still haven't found the cap.

I've noticed that some have speculated that Scientology may be to blame for his death, due to withholding of medication and/or appropriate medical treatment. Despite my feelings about Scientology I believe that this speculation is misguided.

I'm disgusted and ashamed to live here.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you probably don't live in California. For your benefit, here is a quick explanation: Proposition eight will outlaw same-sex marriages, which are currently recognized by California state law. By voting "NO", I am voicing my opinion that same-sex marriages should have all of the same rights and privileges as a heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law.

Proposition eight is a step backward for civil rights. If you live in California, I beg you to please vote "NO" on proposition eight!

Oh yeah, and I'll be voting for Obama too.

The kits are selling for $75 each, and include all of the parts required to build a functional ybox2.

Here is the cool part: You don't need any extra tools to reflash the firmware! The EEPROM in the kit comes preloaded with an ethernet bootloader I wrote, which allows you to upload new firmware to the device over the network! This works so well that over the past month or so I've used my prop-plug only two or three times. 90% of my development—including development of the bootloader—has been over the network.

More information is available in the FAQ.

UPDATE: The ybox2 made it on Engadget!! w00t!

This should put a stop to that.

For me, I always imagined offering a custom-designed one-of-a-kind ring to my love. A unique artifact which no other woman would have on her finger.

Sophia was quite fond of Tacori's elegant and sophisticated designs. However, by buying one of the existing Tacori designs we would be certain that the ring would not be of a unique design.

So... What do we do? Have Tacori make us a custom-made, uniquely designed engagement ring?

Yep.

More details to follow.

Of course, there are plenty of other pictures from my steamboat trip. Read on to take a peek.

The com.google.android.xmppService package has been replaced by the com.google.android.gtalkservice package. This is driven by the fact that the GTalk API is not XMPP compliant, and will be less so going forward. The reason is that XMPP is too verbose and inefficient for mobile network connection, and the GTalk API will be moving to a binary encoding for the protocol between the client and the server.

I'll enumerate the implications and conclusions:

1. XMPP is verbose.
2. XMPP is inefficient for mobile networking.
3. A proprietary binary protocol would be more efficient for mobile devices.
4. The former Android xmppService API will diverge away from XMPP.

I think that this direction is unfortunate, and the reasons misguided. Read on, and I'll elaborate...

After playing around with it for a few days, I have come to a few conclusions about the device. And, for my own amusement, I'm making this post entirely from my XO-1.