Our migration to a new data centre (aka our 175 year old basement) is complete, and www.reinvented.net and related websites are now hosted 7 feet below where I type this. As this move entailed a change in DNS, you may not be reading this until up to 24 hours after this move; apologies for any frustration.

So I’m looking for a lawyer whose last known location was in New Mexico. I track down his brother’s wife, who tells me that the lawyer now lives in Ireland. So I think “maybe he’s working as a lawyer in Ireland” and naively go to Google and enter irish bar as my search term. Only to find 382,000 results returned.

Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. I got a hankering to go to the drive-in. I checked the Brackley Drive-in website and found, to my dismay, that their first show was Jurassic Park III, a movie my brother Mike recommended against seeing. So I decided it was finally time to take the long drive up to West Prince to visit the Princess Pat Drive-in. The drive was so long (in Island terms) that we decided to drive up, watch the movie, and stay overnight in a campground. Wee Oliver’s first campout. This is our story:

3:15 p.m. - Find tent and sleeping bags in back room. Tent is musty smelling. Resolve to buy a new tent. Gather things needed for the trip; find that wee Oliver’s size to things ratio is still way out of proportion to a normal human being.
4:30 p.m. - Car loading, email checking, phone calls, all take too long. Finally load the car and head off.
4:45 p.m. - Buy a new tent at Canadian Tire (a very nice 4-person hexagon-shaped Woods dome tent). Get an air mattress too (debate merits of foot pumped vs. self-inflating vs. new-fangled Coleman ‘one use pump’ models; Catherine agrees to be the foot behind the pump).
5:00 p.m. - Start to leave Charlottetown. Realize we are hungry. Stop at Tim Hortons for drive-thru dinner of sandwiches and ice cappuccinos.
5:10 p.m. - Finally heading west. Smooth drive with the exception of some road construction on Rte. 2 near Emerald.
6:00 p.m. - Stop in Kensington at Malpeque Bay Credit Union to get cash (and see weird sign in parking lot: “Wheelchair ramp is not accessible.”).
7:00 p.m. - Arrive at Green Park Provincial Park to set up camp. Staff at the front gate are very friendly and helpful, and tell of secret back-way to drive-in. Get lost trying to find campsite. Finally locate campsite. Tent goes up easily on the first time (although I am wary of “before you use this tent the first time” directions, which we must ignore).

7:30 p.m. - Leave park for drive-in. Drive through beautiful Tyne Valley.
7:32 p.m. - Just outside of Tyne Valley see man in ditch waving hand back and forth. Stop. Man seems weak, but not dying. Asks if we can drive him home. Let man into car.
7:34 p.m. - Man seems to have little idea where he lives. Asks if I believe in God. Asks where we are from. Asks if I believe in God. And so on. Drive along Rte. 12 towards main highway. Try to extract from man where it is that he lives.
7:45 p.m. - Man mentions, in casual conversation, that he lives on Lennox Island. Realize that we passed turn-off to Lennox Island 10 minutes ago. Turn around. Drive to Lennox Island.
8:00 p.m. - Arrive Lennox Island. Man waves vague directions as to location of his house. Arrive man’s house. Help him to front door and up stairs. Ensure he’s okay. He tells me that good luck will come my way. Asks me if I believe in God. Etc. Say our good-byes.
8:05 p.m. - Back on the road to the drive-in. Think that we should call someone to see if they can look in on man. Try 411 for on the cell phone Lennox Island Police, but they have no listing for this (doesn’t inspire confidence in 411). Finally get through to Stewart Memorial Hospital in Tyne Valley. Cell phone breaks up. They cannot hear me. Drive further. Call again. Give details and they say they will take it from there. Think Island Tel should improve cell service in West Prince.
8:45 p.m. - Arrive Princess Pat Drive-in. Beautiful location right on the water. Wait 5 minutes at booth as owners are on phone trying to locate source of CO2 for the pop dispenser. Pay. Enter.

9:10 p.m. - Go to canteen. Impressed by dizzying array of food available. Pop dispenser still broken. Remark to Catherine that all employees seem to use crutches; Catherine assures me that there is only one employee, she just moves around a lot. Children running canteen are very efficient and friendly. We all have a good laugh when cash register totals $350 for popcorn and drink.

9:15 p.m. - First movie, Along Came a Spider starts. No trailers. Wrong lens on the projector makes everyone appear squished and tall. Cannot make sense of first 10 minutes of the movie. Second reel corrects problem. Enjoy the movie. Don’t see the surprise plot twist coming. Movie ends, or rather peters out. Seems to short. Should have been one more surprise plot twist?
11:00 p.m. - One trailer (for Down to Earth), then blam, second movie (Save the Last Dance) starts. Remark to Catherine that they don’t fool around at this drive-in, timing wise.
11:20 p.m. - Although movie looks promising, general consensus is that we are too tired to watch entire thing. Resolve to rent at a later date. Return to campsite. Sleep.

Night passes.

8:30 a.m. - Awaken at campsite. Shower, etc. Realize that this isn’t much of a bona fide first camping experience for wee Oliver. Resolve quietly that next experience will involve fire, stories, toast cooked on special grill, etc.

10:15 a.m. - Check out from campground (check out time given last night by staff: “no need to hurry”). Arrive Tyne Valley looking for food. Find that The Landing restaurant serves breakfast.
10:30 a.m. - Find that The Landing started serving breakfast today and we are their first breakfast customers, ever. Find also that The Landing is in a building formerly occupied by a coffee shop and laundromat, which we visited 5 years ago. The Landing is much, much nicer than the laundry coffee place: solid wood interior, friendly staff, interesting menu, live entertainment at nights. Good meal. Recommended!

11:00 a.m. - Return to car to find that temperature has risen to 40 degrees. Or at least what seems like 40 degrees. Go insane with heat in no-AC car, and end up driving straight back to Charlottetown, aborting plans to take in local colour for early afternoon, swim, etc.
1:00 p.m. - Find that home alarm system had gone off in our absence. Look for results of break-in. Find none. Call alarm company; they detected break-in, but have flaky notes about what happened. Confused.
1:05 p.m. - Fall fast asleep. Wake up 2 hours later and realize that, despite new tent and cushy air mattress, I didn’t get any sleep at all previous night. Probably worried about rolling over wee Oliver in the tent. Resolve that we must buy wee Oliver his own wee tent.

What’s going on at Island Tel? I’ve made three calls, on different matters, to various toll-free numbers for various departments of the Company this week, and all calls have been answered on the first ring, and the person who’s answered has had been able to provide me with all the information I need. This is a good sign.

Regular readers will recall that in this space over the past year I’ve related a series of frustrations with various aspects of Island Tel, culminating in an Open Letter to Island Tel.

Based on those experiences, I had pretty well made up my mind to switch my Internet connectivity from Island Tel to Eastlink, and, indeed, had begun discussions with their sales people about pricing and timing.

All of which might make it seem a little surprising that, at least for the time being, I’ve decided to stick with Island Tel and, indeed, to upgrade my service with them and consolidate all of Reinvented’s equipment here in the World HQ on Prince St.

How did Island Tel win me back? Here’s what they did:

1. Ron Waite, Regional Vice-President, (PEI), and Vice-President Carrier Services, Aliant Telecom, responded to my open letter. His response didn’t knock me over with its eloquence or attitude, but he did respond, knowing full well that his response would appear online, at that’s something.
2. An emissary from Island Tel’s sales force took me out for a COWS mocha iced cowpuccinno and, in a no-bullshit, frank and honest exchange, listened to what I had to say, and tried to explain the Island Tel side of the story.
3. A side-by-side comparison of Island Tel and Eastlink’s low-end dedicated IP products reveals that they offer about the same bandwidth for the same price. All things being equal, I’d rather be close (in IP terms) to my major PEI client, and Island Tel’s network gets me that.
4. Further experience with Eastlink’s customer service suggested that it wasn’t as different from Island Tel’s as it would appear: there proved to be just as many long telephone trees, unreturned phone calls, etc. at Eastlink as at Island Tel. My last call to Island Tel was answered, by a real person, on the first ring; this is a quick way to my heart.
5. I’d been promised a meeting with the Eastlink “Internet expert” for several weeks, but this was never arranged; and Island Tel sales rep was at my door within 20 minutes of an initial call to his cell phone, and he knew his stuff.

I am under few illusions that Island Tel has changed substantially as a company in the last two months, and a good number of the major items raised in my Open Letter are still not resolved. However they’ve done enough (and Eastlink has failed to sufficiently impress enough) to tip the scales in their favour.

I will continue to be their most challenging and demanding client, will continue to report on my challenges here; for now, however, they continue to have my business. Let’s see how it goes…

Regular readers will recall that I mentioned my surprise that a Tim Hortons Garden Vegetable Sandwich contains 23 g of fat.  I had been in the habit of ordering this sandwich as a “healthy alternative” without thinking about it (doesn’t garden vegetable sound healthly?).  I sent an email to Tim Hortons, and this is what they wrote me back:

Dear Mr. Rukavina,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding your concerns with the Tim Hortons Garden Vegetable Sandwich.

Tim Hortons has created a Nutrition Guide featuring a cross section of our products.  As you have recently viewed this guide electronically on our website, we hope that you have found the nutritional information useful in helping incorporate Tim Hortons products into your lifestyle.

The Garden Vegetable Sandwich is not advertised as a “healthy alternative” sandwich.  It is prepared with Plain Cream Cheese, Tim Hortons Special Dressing, Cucumber, Tomato and Lettuce.  The total fat content of this sandwich is 23 grams.  The areas of the sandwich in which the fat are located is as follows:

    Plain Cream Cheese, 13.0 grams
    Tims Special Dressing, 9.0 grams
    White Country Bun, 0.5 grams

To lower the total fat of this sandwich, request a sandwich with a Light Cream Cheese and no Tims Special Dressing.

Yours truly,
Consumer Nutrition Co-ordinator
Research & Development

That (a) Tim Hortons would respond at all, (b) they would take my request seriously, and (c) that they have a Consumer Nutrition Co-ordinator are all very heartening things.  Kudos to Tim’s for excellent service.

My ebullient brother Steve writes I have fond memories of several trips to the Clappison Drive-in (now closed) as a child, four little kids packed in the back of the car….

I have equally fond memories, and that’s what led me to hook up with Bob Boyle and the team at Brackley Drive-in four years ago to put together a website (we get paid with a seasons pass; paper ROI is about $50/year; actual ROI is immeasurable).

Steve explores the world of the drive in in Saskatchewan in a great CBC piece that aired today.

I ran the Island’s first webserver at the end of a 14.4 Kbps modem. It worked just fine. Although it took about 24 hours to download a CD-ROM’s worth of data over that line, it was more than enough for the traffic of that day (circa 1994). If memory serves, the PEI Crafts Council paid PEINet about $350/month for that connection.

Fast forward to the present: Island Tel or Eastlink will now sell me 1 Mbps (that’s one million bits per second, 71 times faster than a 14.4 modem) for half that price.

Sometimes, if you’re not watching the ball, orders of magnitiude can change and you don’t notice. Amazing.

I made two calls today, one to Eastlink and one to Island Tel, to ask about their low-end, static-IP “high speed” Internet products. Here’s what I found:

When I called Eastlink’s toll-free line, I had to wade down two levels through the telephone tree, then wait 4 minutes on hold before I could talk to someone. The person I ended up with seemed quite capable, and could answer all my questions.

Eastlink’s bottom-end service, branded Enhance, is $150/month, with an $89 installation fee. It includes 1 to 5 static IP addresses, DNS service, and 10MB of web space. Bandwidth is 1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down.

Island Tel’s toll-free number was answered on the first ring by a live operator. The operator was quite helpful, and answered my basic questions. When I had additional questions that were beyond her knowledge, she promised to get back to me, and approx. 1 hour later I received a call back from a very knowledgeable sales rep.

Island Tel’s bottom-end service, branded OfficeLink, is $199.95/month (however various discounts can take this as low as $139.95/month) with a $150 installation fee (no discount for existing DSL service switched over). It includes 5 static IP addresses, DNS service, 5 MB of web space, 15 hours of dial-up service an a Merx account. Bandwidth is 1 Mbps.

In a previous life I earned a small income training blind people to use computers with screen readers and voice boards. This was in the DOS era, and the word processor of choice — indeed about the only major word processor available other than WordStar — was WordPerfect.

At that time WordPerfect was still produced and marketed by its original maker, WordPerfect Corp., based in Utah (the product was later acquired by Novell, then sold to Corel; back in those days WordPerfect Corp. was well known for offering free lifetime technical support).

Anyway, whenever you started WordPerfect for DOS, the first screen you would see would flash by in a second or two, giving the program’s title and copyright; most people would’t ever see this, as it flashed by so quickly.

However screen readers “see” everything, so every time you started WordPerfect, the screen reader would dutifully read the entire mesage, including “Orem, Utah, USA”, which was the location of WordPerfect Corp. Except that the screen readers of the day weren’t smart enough to read “USA” as U-S-A, so they would read “usa”, sounding like “youse-ah”. So we would hear “Orem you-tah youse-ah”.

This little bit of audio is burned into my ears. And, no doubt, the ears of many others from those times.