Here’s what appears on the botton of the CBC Charlottetown home page:

What I am wondering is: couldn’t all come to some general consensus that we’re all not responsible for the contents of the sites we link to. I mean, doesn’t this just make common sense? Who would assume that if the CBC links to www.Evil.com that the CBC has come out in favour of evil?

And, while we’re at it, can we also come to an agreement that if coats and other personal belongings hung on a restaurant coat rack are stolen, it’s not the restaurant’s fault?

And that you can’t park in somebody’s driveway unless they have a sign that says “it’s okay to park here?”

We might put some sign painters out of work, but we would relieve the world of a lot of visual pollution.

The worldwide operations of Reinvented will be closed from 5:00 p.m. AST on December 24, 2001 until December 27, 2001 at Noon. You’ll be unable to reach us by email or fax during this time. In case of emergency, give us a call at (902) 892-2556. The computer is getting shut down as soon as I click Submit on this item. I promise. Merry Christmas, and to all a good night.

At long last, Maritime Electric has announced the details of their Green Power Program, and they’ve sent application forms out with the December bills.

They’ve choosen a rather confusing method of running this program: you must purchase green power in a regular monthly purchase of one or more 50 kWh blocks for $1.75 per block.

In other words, there’s no way to just say “I want all the power I use this month to be green power” and to be billed appropriately. I imagine this is due to some sort of data processing challenge on their end. I wish they’d put more effort into this.

But, nonetheless, you can now buy wind power for your home or business, and that is a wonderful thing indeed. Yes the power is “virtual” in the sense that wind-power electrons probably won’t make it your way unless you live in the North Cape, Tignish or Alberton area. But this is a concrete way of saying, with your pocketbook, “I support wind energy.”

We’re signing up today, buying five 50 kWh blocks a month for a total of $8.75 plus GST. Based on our monthly usage, this will cover about 33% of our energy usage.

I’d like to challenge anyone in “my industry” — designers, consultants, web hosts, ISPs, and so on — to do likewise. If we work together, we’ll be able to stake a valid claim on being a “wind powered industry” here in the Island. You can read more, and download a copy of the application form, from our Wind Power Page.

My brother (and one of wee Oliver’s skilled team of uncles) Steve finds himself in Saskatoon this Christmas, the only one of our ever-growing family not somehow temporarily tethered to others for the holidays.

And so from our small cabal here in Charlottetown, a special Christmas greeting to Steve and his fellow Saskatooners.

You can hear Steve host Radio 101, a “two hour salute to Reginald Fessenden, the true father of radio” on CBC Radio One on Boxing Day at Noon, across the country and around the the world via Internet.

Peter Coyote is not an actor to be dismissed.

Which leads me to the question: why do Islanders say “keye-oat” while seemingly everyone else in the worlds says “keye-oat-ee”?

Speaking of which, is it “creek” or “crick.” And is it “craw-fish” or “cray-fish”?

Catherine Hennessey, Charlottetown gadabout, was born a Smith. As were her sisters Betty and Mary Clare.

For the first time since 1957 (they tell me), all three sisters, along with brother-in-law Claude (Betty’s husband) are in Charlottetown for Christmas.

So for the next several weeks your chances of bumping in to one of the Smith sisters in and around downtown Charlottetown triples. It’s like one of those rare meteor showers that happens only once in a blue moon.

This can only be considered a benefit to us all, as they are all charming and interesting and a credit to their Smith parents.

It’s amazing the things I remember from childhood. I can’t remember how to calculate the circumference of a circle (or, for that matter, I can’t remember if circles even have circumferences), but I do remember that when you are placing a ladder against the side of a building, you should go one foot out for every four feet up.

I know this from a campaign from the Construction Safety Association of Ontario that must have run in the 1970s and 1980s on television in Ontario.

I also remember, from an Ann Landers column I read a long, long time ago that when you are driving at night and are approaching a car coming the other way, you can focus on the white line on your side of the road to prevent your eyes from focusing on their headlights (and, presumably, therein increasing the danger that you will drive right into them).

And although I didn’t have a farm upbringing (something my farm-raised partner Catherine often points out), I know that you’re supposed to avoid getting your hair caught in the PTO shaft. I learned this, of course, without knowing what a PTO shaft (I figured that out later).

Finally, I have avoided for many years buying gas at Sunoco (which is easy to do here in PEI, admitedly, as the brand doesn’t exist here) because I have a foggy memory of my Dad telling me that his friend Tony said not to buy gas there because they sold “bad gas.” My Dad has no memory of this, and claims it’s not true.

The corporate history of Island Service Network is a valiant one. Started by Kevin O’Brien and a ragtag bunch of supporters, along with a loyal and ever-growing customer base, Kevin has, literally out of nothing, and with no Government money, created a successful, responsive Internet Service Provider from nothing.

In an environment where there are very few independent ISP’s left standing, ISN has survived and thrived. Kevin built the business on personal service, and has always stood behind it. His customers know that they can call 892-4ISN and ask to talk to Kevin, and he’ll take their call. This is unprecedented customer service for any business, and especially for the Internet business.

No matter where you are, as an independent ISP one of the Big Challenges you face is dealing with the telephone company.

The root of the challenge is that while one half of the telco is providing service to you — loads of incoming telephone lines — the other half is competing with you by offering Internet service of its own. This has been ISN’s challenge, and I’ve heard the same story from others, including, ironically, Downeast.net in Ellsworth, Maine, who have to compete not only with their local telco, Verizon, but also with Prexar, the oddly-named New England outpost of Aliant, Island Tel’s parent company. Prexar had its own dance of sucking up many independent ISP’s in Maine and New Hampshire in Borg-like fashion.

Kevin details his latest battle with Island Tel cum Aliant in a recent post on his website. Not one to “go public” with his frustrations until there is no other choice, Kevin relays the political and technical details of a problem which suggests that, at best, Aliant is being ungentlemanly and, at worst, they are behaving in a strongly anti-competitive fashion.

I would urge anyone from the Aliant family reading this to assist in bringing this matter to a quick closure. The Internet cannot work without cooperation, and the survival of ISN is too vital to the Island economy — to say nothing of the survival of Kevin and his employees and their families — to let “turf battles” prevent this.

I am willing to give Aliant the benefit of the doubt in this regard, and will assume that this entire issue is the result of a procedural or technical oversight on their behalf. If it turns out that the company is doing exactly what Kevin suggests they are doing — playing dirty ball — I’ll have no choice but to immediately terminate all of my Island Tel accounts, as I simply can’t conscience dealing with a company that doesn’t play fair.

Not many things surprise me. Well, actually, many things do surprise me. But not many things when it comes to the minutia of U.S. - Canada differences — the Z/Z thing, the different Thanksgiving Days, miles vs. kilometres, honour vs. honor and so on.

As you might imagine, then, I was flummoxed to learn this afternoon, courtesy of my all-seeing, all-knowing colleagues at Yankee Publishing that in America they don’t have Boxing Day.

In America, the day after Christmas, it seems, is known simply as “the day after Christmas.” It isn’t a holiday.

I was therefor embarrassed when said American cousins asked what exactly Boxing Day is and why it’s called that. I didn’t really know. And so here, for their benefit, is the best answer I can find:

The day after Christmas, the Feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is better known as Boxing Day. The term may come from the opening of church poor boxes that day; maybe from the earthenware boxes with which boy apprentices collected money at the doors of their masters’ clients. Nowadays, we often see, in certain families, gifts (boxes) given to those who provide services throughout the year. “Boxing Day” is listed in the Canada Labour Code as a holiday.

So, Canadian readers, think of your poor American brethren on December 26, as you gaily celebrate the festival of the cardboard container, and they trudge back to work, ever so wishing that they lived a couple of hundred miles to the north.

Geraldo Rivera gets a lot of flack. I find him essentially unwatchable, but mostly because of his subject matter rather than his approach. However I also count myself as among the few that have read his [now out of print] interim biography Exposing Myself. If you ignore the “and then I slept with [insert name of alluring beautiful powerful woman]” references which litter most of the book’s chapters (or perhaps don’t ignore them), he’s actually had an interesting life. He is not someone to be dismissed.