Found at BoingBoing:

Yes, if you haven’t seen my previous Meerkat Manor post, I am a bit addicted. Either way, watch these promos for the third season of Meerkat Manor (which has already started). They are short and include Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears:

Last night, my Internet connection got very choppy. I couldn’t pull up any sites in the browser and couldn’t ping any IPs at all. Stuff happens, so I went to sleep thinking that it would probably be fixed this morning.

Around 11am this morning, I notice that the lights are all solid green. So I try to pull up some sites in the browser, and I keep getting sent to a static “Welcome to Comcast…” page. Calling the Comcast support line, a customer support rep tells me that they need to reprovision some of the cable modems and that my service should be back up in an hour or two, but definitely by 2pm.

Being one of those people who can’t seem to live without the Internet, I call Comcast back around 2:30pm when I’m still getting the same static page.

This time a different rep tells me that the first rep was wrong, and it could take about 6 hours, so I should have service back by 5pm. Ok, again I think, stuff happens, who knows.

While knowing that the front-line tech support does not always know what is really happening in the field, I ask the rep what the problem was. He told me (and I assume with a straight face), that I hadn’t logged into my @comcast.net email account for a long time and it probably triggered a security issue.

Yes, that obviously must be the problem.

Update: After being down for more than 24 hours, my Comcast service is back up. The last tech support rep I talked to said that Comcast does indeed check email logins as a security measure, but that wasn’t related to my issue. There was some kind of upgrade around the Atlanta area that required my cable modem to be provisioned again. On the upside, my speeds do seem better than before.

I’ll be in the Boston area for a few days this week for a wedding and trying to find some fun things to do.

So far these are items on the agenda:

1. Walk the Freedom Trail - the 2.5 mile self-guided tour of American Revolutionary sites. http://www.thefreedomtrail.org
2. Duck Tours - basically a tour of the city. http://www.bostonducktours.com/
3. Pier 4 - everyone keeps talking about this seafood restaurant on the Boston Harbor. http://www.pier4.com/
4. Fenway Park - even though the Red Sox are not playing, a tour of the ballpark should be fun. http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/ballpark/tour.jsp
5. The Salem Witch Museum - http://www.salemwitchmuseum.com

Since I got some good suggestions for my trip to Toronto earlier this year, I thought I would ask for recommendations again. What are some good places to eat, fun things to do and see in Boston?

If you’ve never seen the show and this doesn’t make you a bit curious, you have no heart.

Meerkat Manor

Narrated by Sean Astin (Sam from Lord of the Rings) in the US and Bill Nighy in the UK, the show is about a family of Meerkats in the Kalahari Desert. Its fascinating and addictive. Watch it. Now.

I’ll be in Toronto this week for a wedding. Lots of family will be there, so we would like to visit some of usual tourist spots.

We’ll definitely do the CN Tower.

Any recommendations on what else we should do? Restaurants and tourist traps are welcome.

With all the recent hoopla about people camping out for iPhones, I thought I would share a picture of folks camping out before the grand opening of a Chick-fil-a close to me. No, this wasn’t a Fry’s or some uber-cool computer store. Its Chick-fil-a, a fast food eatery:

Apparently, the first 100 customers would get a year’s supply of food for free. Still, camping out?

• Top 20 Temporary and Disposable Email Services - Description says it all. - (tags: web )
• Uncertain Principles: Many Worlds, Many Treats - How to explain quantum theory to a dog - (tags: science )
• Webby Nominees and Winners - 2007 Edition. Always a good place to find interesting blogs you’ve never read before. - (tags: web)
• SiteBar - The Bookmark Manager | The Bookmark Server - Use your own server to keep track of bookmarks instead of using something like google sync if privacy is important. Looks like its light enough that it can run off a shared hosting account. - (tags: web)

Check it out it here. There is some good stuff including development for the next release, Gutsy Gibbon, has started.

With Feisty Fawn coming out Thursday, I thought I would put out some recent Ubuntu/Linux links out there:

• Linux Distro Timeline | KDE-Files.org - Cool timeline of when the different Linux distributions appeared and from what. - (tags: [tag]software[/tag] [tag]ubuntu[/tag])
• Ubuntu Feisty Fawn: Desktop Linux Matured - OSNews.com - “With Ubuntu Feisty Fawn’s latest test beta –for the first time ever– …I was up and running with all the niceties I wanted within 2 hours.” Sweet. - (tags: [tag]ubuntu[/tag] [tag]software[/tag])
• a critical look at ubuntu feisty beta on an hp nc8430 laptop | cpbotha.net - Charl P. Botha installs Feisty HP NC8430 laptop. Unlike a lot of the reviews, he gives his honest opinion: “The Ubuntu people have done a marvellous job, but Feisty Beta (up to date as of 2007-04-10) doesn?t quite Just Work(tm) on the HP NC8430.” - (tags: [tag]software[/tag] [tag]ubuntu[/tag])
• Summary of New Feisty Features from Ubuntu Wiki - The Ubuntu wiki lists some of the features that will be part of Feisty once its releasesd. This covers whats been in the beta versions so far. It covers the Windows migration assistant, easey codec installation, diagnostic tools, desktop effects, etc. - (tags: [tag]software[/tag] [tag]ubuntu[/tag])
• Microsoft’s ‘Men in Black’ kill Florida open standards legislation - It was just a bit of text advocating open data formats that was slipped into a Florida State Senate bill at the last minute with no fanfare, but within 24 hours three Microsoft-paid lobbyists, all wearing black suits, were pressuring members of the Senate - (tags: [tag]software[/tag])