I have a mysql table. When I try to insert, I get this:

Warning: Incorrect string value: '\xAE</...' for column 'value' at row 1

mysql> show create table Configurations;
| Configurations | CREATE TABLE `Configurations` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `title` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `ckey` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `value` mediumtext,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `ckey` (`ckey`),
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=29 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 |

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'coll%';
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name        | Value           |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8_general_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+

I googled the hell out of the error, and it all seemed to boil down to utf8 being set as my default character set. I've been like that for a while. I'm not sure what else to do. Help?