You never know where the internet will take you...

Paid a visit to Chizumatic just now. And found this:

20070517.2355: These are really cool: Zoomquilt and Zoomquilt2. Some (well, a lot) of the art is pretty eerie, but it's a neat idea and executed well.

I clicked the Zoomquilt link and got a 404 page from a company that many people have never heard of: EMBARQ. In certain locations it's the post-Sprint/Verizon merger name.
That's why I recognized the name right away, they send me the landline/DSL bill every month and it's promptly paid (They have indeed provided me with excellent service).
When I clicked on the ''Why am I here?'' link on that 404 page it lead me to the customer service page. It didn't really explain why I got that 404 page but it did tell me that they have quit contracting Earthlink for ISP services and are now doing their own. A pleasant surprise indeed, I quit using Earthlink for email due to poor service and had to go to yahoo mail and all the handicaps that 'free email' entails (like no POP/SMTP and lousy spam filtering).
I'll giving EMBARQ's email the beta run [qwikhitz AT embarqmail DOT com] and I'll let you know how it goes.
UPDATE: I did indeed check out Zoomquilt2 (that link worked fine). If you like trippy, Eicher/Daliesque art (as I do) it's well worth a visit.
UPDATE II: Not all of us have a desire to DIY when it comes to blog hosting Steven:

20070516.1100: Hold on there, pardner! Bob's blogspot blog is gone, which is unfortunate. But the Blogspot 404 page that comes up is in Japanese, which is extraordinary! (Did Virginia become part of Japan without my noticing?)

UPDATE: Bob writes:

Blog's not gone. Google, for some reason, flagged it as a 'Spam Blog'. I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion, but there were a bunch of verification steps I had to fill out to get it reactivated. I'm told it should be back up within 24 hours. Perhaps I should rethink hosting it there. I'm not too fond of their v2 Blooger engine, which makes formatting posts very time consuming (IMO) - one thing I do not have in abundance.

Blogspot is a lot like training wheels for a bicycle. A lot of people find out about blogging and decide they want to try it. They may make a few posts, and then lose interest in it. Blogspot is a good place for someone to try blogging out, but if they turn out to be serious and to really want to keep it up, then they should move on, because in the long run Blogspot is worth what you're paying to use it.

And we still don't have an explanation for why Google decided to replace Bob's blog with a 404 page written in Japanese.

I've seen Google put blogs ''under review'', to me it looks like they're doing some ''housecleaning''.
They've not bothered either of my blogs (as of this writing) which is rather surprising.
Apparently they consider removing the ''Blogger Bar'' at the top and replacing the address bar icon with one of my own is not a problem to them. Nor do they FORCE advertising on me. They encourage me to run ads but they allow me the option to decline them.
As far as the Blogger 404 page in Japanese is concerned, I'm as baffled as he is. They have an English-language 404 page after all...