Catherine and I survived the television drought of summertime by re-watching The West Wing. Every night at 8:00 p.m., Canadian Learning Television aired a new episode, starting from the very beginning and running right up to the Leo dies on Election Day episode that aired last Friday.

The series stands the test of time, and I’ve enjoyed the symmetry with the actual U.S. election campaign.

Alas they cut the series off with only six episodes remaining starting yesterday, choosing to air Judging Amy instead. So we devoted viewers, who have watched enough “Proactiv Solution” commercials with Jennifer Love Hewitt to become convinced it must actually be a magical elixir, are left hanging, never to know who won the Santos-Vinick election, never to see Leo’s funeral.

You think they could have hung on an extra week and let the series finish…

I’ve made a small update to the m.thebus.ca mobile transit schedule this afternoon, adding the “next stop” times for each stop, for both outbound (↑) and inbound (↓) runs right on the first page.

Charlottetown Transit is dramatically increasing the frequency on its main University Avenue route today, September 2, 2008: on weekdays there’s a bus leaving the Confederation Centre of the Arts going uptown every 30 minutes from 6:45 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., with buses continuing every hour until 10:00 p.m.

With frequency like this, gone are the days of the “can I afford to kill 90 minutes at Indigo waiting for the bus?” decisions.

I’ve updated the Charlottetown Interactive Transit Map with the new schedule, and I’ve taken the opportunity to roll out web-based scheduled targeted at mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Nokia Browser. Visit http://m.thebus.ca from your mobile device, and you’ll see something like this:

The garden at Yankee Publishing in Dublin, NH was dedicated to my late friend John Pierce on Friday. Here’s the stone placed at the centre of the garden:

I think of John every day.

Almost every speaker at the DNC this week used the same device at least once in their speech, telling the story of the mother with 9 autistic children whose house blew away in a hurricane, who was then diagnosed with cancer and then finally sent to Iraq to fight an unjust war. Or the story of the struggling auto worker who saw his job outsourced to Korea, lost his house in the mortgage crisis, and then lost out on the Supreme Court nomination he was counting on.

I’m sure there are “Making a Connection to the Everyman” chapters in every political speechwriting book. I find it hard to believe that it works, but it must.

Every time I hear the device used, I can’t help but thinking of the Dear Liar episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, where jealous newsman Les Nessman stole the story of Bobby from his colleague Bailey Quarters and read it on the air:

My tour of the wards was something I’ll not soon forget. Everywhere I looked were young faces, filled with promise that will not be realized, dreams that will never come true. But the event that summed up the experience for this reporter came as I was about to leave. I felt a tug on my skirt - at - at - at my shirt - and looked down into the face of a little boy named Bobby. He’s ten years old, and unable to speak, but he reached up and he handed me a picture he had drawn, a crude rendering of a flower… For in this primitive drawing, Bobby had managed to convey a sense of the true beauty that dwells within his soul. Speaking as someone who someday hopes to bear children - to bear children on my shoulders, men do that you know! - I would like to say that I’ll never forget little Bobby, and I’ll cherish his flower always.

Somehow I managed to convince myself that I’d made a Hertz reservation for our 4-day visit to Thunder Bay back in July. But I didn’t. Until 7:00 p.m. tonight, from Pearson Airport. Which doesn’t completely explain how my reserved “Hyundai Accent or similar” became a Chrysler Sebring by the time we reached Thunder Bay.

This is one of those times when the interesting button works its magic in less attractive ways: I don’t know what an Accent drives like, but I can’t imagine it achieves the ungainly boat-like qualities of the Sebring nor its genuine 1970s style discomfort seating.

Ah well, at least we’re in Thunder Bay. Tomorrow, great adventures begin.

I’ve used both my Mastercard and my Visa card here in the USA, in restaurants and shops in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and I’ve not once had to sign a credit card slip. Apparently, at least for purchases under $25.00, this is the rule here now. Weird.

Which is not to say that having to sign was ever a great security feature, but you’d think that the direction would be from signature to PIN (the model in Europe), rather than from signature to nothing.

Remember the Mustang and the Volvo I received last year from Hertz when I’d reserved a “Toyota Camry or Similar.” Well I’m on to their game: now I regularly reserve the cheapest car on offer, usually “Ford Focus or Similar,” and every time I get automagically upgraded to a more interesting car. Sometimes, of course, interesting has Ford Mustang downsides. But this summer I’ve received a very nice (though gas-poor) Subaru Impreza hatchback and, today, a Mazda 5 mini-minivan (very good on gas and surpringly fun to drive).

If I’d reserved either car up-front I would have paid twice as much; somehow my seemingly perpetual Hertz #1 Club Gold status means that they hit the interesting button every time I rent. I’m not complaining. But what if I actually did want to rent a “Hyundai Accent or Similar?”

Update: here’s a possible explanation for all this foolishness… I rent so often that I’m a “Five Star” member, which includes auto-upgrading.

I head off for a loop of travel tomorrow: first stop, Yankee, where I’ll head on the direct Delta flight Sunday afternoon, driving up to my usual perch at the Jack Daniels Motor Inn before spending two days with my colleagues there on part two of a site re-architecting exercise.

Tuesday night I’m driving down Route 3 to Burlington, Massachusetts for some morning meetings on Wednesday, and then, that afternoon, down to Boston Logan to fly up to Toronto.

In Toronto I’ll rendezvous with Catherine and Oliver where we’ll fly together up to Thunder Bay for Theresa and Brad’s wedding. It’s also a chance to show Oliver the birthplace of his grandfather and his great-grandmother, and to visit the gravesite of his great-great-grandfather.

After three days of wedding festivities, we’ll fly back to Charlottetown a week from Sunday for three more days of Maximum Summer Fun before school starts on Thursday, September 4.