This week on Off the Beaten Track, a review of Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen [requires RealAudio to listen].

The award for best integration of a popular song into the fabric of a television drama goes to The West Wing for this week’s episode, Somebody’s Going To Emergency, which used the song New York Minute by Don Henley to excellent effect.

CatherineHennessey.com went live to air a year ago today. Or rather, as seems appropriate, it went to air on February 29, 2000, a date which doesn’t happen to fall this year. In any case, it has been an interesting ride acting as Catherine’s computer doula. Catherine has honoured the occassion, unwittingly, with flurry of new posts today. Tune in.

My friend Oliver casts aspersions on me whenever this website turns overly geeky (or ginky, as my friend Catherine would say). So I will be quick. I’ve upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000; early results are promising. Windows 98 needed about 5 reboots a day; so far I haven’t had to reboot Windows 2000 once in a week. There was some early weirdness caused by an old Contour Design mouse driver hanging about, but I’ve switch to a PS/2 mouse, and everything’s purring along fine now. Speaking of Contour Design, they make the best CSI-deying computer mouse I’ve found yet; they come in several sizes, and in right- and left-handed models. They’re about $90US, but worth it. If you ever have need to convert from, say, Microsoft SQL server to Sybase ASE (or Oracle, or DB2), you can’t go wrong with DBArtisan from Embarcadero. It’s expensive, but boy does it save a lot of time when you’re doing database migration. We’ve had a Siemens Gigaset 2420 wireless telephone system for almost 9 months now; we had to have a couple of handsets replaced initially because of freaky digital interference, but since then the system’s been a dream. Two lines, 4 cordless handsets, digital answering system, intercom, etc. Only downside is that it’s range is pretty well in-the-house. Recent technical support experiences: Microsoft (excellent and free, which is very unusual), Dell (horrible and free, which is also unusual; tried to get hard disk specs on an existing system; they could figure out whether it was a sales or technical support issue); Purity Dairy (excellent as usual; called from the milk aisle at Sobey’s wondering if 3.25% = homo milk). Okay, that’s it. Cast your aspersions.

My brother Johnny has the distinction of having been on the periphery of the season’s biggest earthquakes, one in Guatemala on January 13 and the other yesterday in Vancouver. Could Johnny be some sort of earthquake-attracting superhero?

We bought groceries at the big, newly renovated Sobey’s in Charlottetown today. One interesting feature of the redesigned store is that there is a woman who’s only job is to wander the aisles making sure that you can find everything you’re looking for. This is a welcome change from having to bother the stockboy who’s trying to navigate 320 cases of apple juice through narrow aisles.

Flying from Boston to Charlottetown on Sunday, my flight was delayed by mechanical problems for 3-1/2 hours.

This wasn’t a huge problem, as Logan Airport is only 15 minutes from downtown by subway, and so I could find things to occupy my time, but it did keep me from home. And had the potential to be yet another log on the bash-Air Canada fire.

Imagine my complete surprise when the letter pictured here (click on it for a larger version) arrived today — 4 days after the flight — offering an apology and 2,000 Aeroplan miles. I’m impressed!

Air Nova obviously understands that unusual episodes of customer service are opportunities, even if they are episodes of bad customer service. Here I am, basking in the glow of my 2,000 Aeroplan miles, quickly forgetting how they fumbled the announcement of the delay, how they kept people from meetings and funerals. And the utter insanity of having to fly mechanics and parts from Toronto to Boston to fix a plane. They made the best of a bad thing. I wish more companies would follow their lead.

I take note of the fact that local CBC website addresses across Canada are formed by placing the name of a location in front of .cbc.ca: toronto.cbc.ca, halifax.cbc.ca and so on. However the address for CBC Saskatchewan is sask.cbc.ca, which would seem to suggest a lack of confidence on the part of CBC mandarins that we citizens can spell the word Saskatchewan.

Earlier in this space I talked about how I’d been turned off by Hertz and turned on by Alamo in planning to rent a car this week. Well, Hertz came through in the end, responding personally and completely to my email about wanting to be able to rent a Subaru Outback. And so I cancelled the Alamo reservation, and I’m driving the Subaru. What a wonderful car it is: solidly built, handles like a dream, smooth ride, very logical controls. Only problem is that I bump my knees on the steering wheel every time I get in. And it insists on giving a little horn honk every time I lock the doors (nice in the light of day; annoying outside the B&B at 11:00 p.m.).

Good things are found in strange packages in strange places. There is a restaurant called Lee and Mt. Fuji in Keene, New Hampshire. It is located in a ramshackle old New England house, on the side of the highway on the outskirts of town. There is a roaring fire in the middle of the restaurant. The walls are stencilled tole-painting style. There is Mozart playing in the background. The washrooms are grotty. The staff is average. And they serve the best tasting, most interestingly presented Chinese and Japanese food I’ve ever had — including an overly complete selection of sushi. Thursday we’ve plans to go back to Martino’s — a great Italian place where we ate a couple of years ago — right in Keene; stay tuned for a full report.