I have to admit, this looked odd... since I do have a permanent cookie, I simply loaded a different browser that doesn't have the cookie, and I can't find an out-of-date monastery gates page for perlmonks.org, www.perlmonks.org, perlmonks.net, or www.perlmonks.net ... are you sure your browser cache isn't playing games with you? (Or maybe the expiry on the gates is playing games with your cache?)