Compare this to this. Spot the difference. I’m sure Simscape is a very good company — I’ve heard people say good things about them — but, honestly, from their corporate profile I come away having absolutely no idea what it is they do or why I would hire them over the next guy. Of course I suppose you could say the same thing about me. But I’m still wondering what a truly realizable opportunity is.

Kevin O’Brien joins the world of the weblogged today with the launch of KevinJOBrien.com, using software which is now officially named The Catherine Hennessey Engine.

My God Dell is good. I figure that over the last 5 years I’ve guided the purchase of about $100,000 worth of equipment from Dell for various of my clients. Dell servers run the www.gov.pe.ca, www.Almanac.com and the www.NewEngland.com websites, for example.
So it’s 7:35 p.m. here in Charlottetown, and I need to spec out a new server before the night is out. Oliver’s just had a bath. All the computer stores in Charlottetown are closed. I go to Dell’s website and price up a PowerEdge 2500SC. I’ve got some questions. I phone Dell’s toll-free number and talk to an account rep, who answer them all quickly. She then gives me a delivery date, and emails me a quote.
Everything I’ve ever ordered from Dell has arrived on time, and exactly as ordered (with the small exception of a missing SCSI cable a couple of months ago; forgiveable). They are quick, efficient, and friendly.
There goes the email gong — the quote has arrived. Off to purchase…

The court case Peinet Inc. v. O’Brien (c.o.b. Island Services Network (ISN)) reflects an interesting part of the history of the Internet on Prince Edward Island.

It’s only when you try pushing a stoller around for a week that you realize just how hostile we have designed our world for people who aren’t walking through doors on two feet. Oliver and I spent last week roaming in and around Summerside while Catherine was in hospital and I was shocked by just how non-accessible the doors of the city were.
We encountered everything from the front doors at the Linkletter hotel, with no automatic door openers at all, to the County Fair Shoppers Drug Mart which had broken automatic doors.
Worst of all, however, is the Blockbuster Video location in Charlottetown which has two sets of automatic doors going in, one of which is broken (leaving one trapped between two sets of doors), and no automatic doors going out (leaving one trapped inside the store).
Automatic door openers are readily available. If you run a business that doesn’t have them, please have them installed; if you don’t, you’re inconveniencing many people, turning away customers, and just plain not doing the Right Thing.

It occurs to me, as I sit here in my office with the din of Trinity United Church-goers leaving the Sunday service, that I have spent the vast majority of my life in very close proximity to one United Church or another. My only memories of ever actually having been inside a United Church, however, are at the funerals of my two grandparents in Cochrane, and one rainy Sunday morning when my parents decided to drag me through a muddy field to attend my first and only Easter service. I’m foggy on the muddy field part.

One of the inclinations that web designers have to fight with clients about is the use of gratuitous animation on websites. The client request is usually worded something like “could you jazz that up a bit?” and usually what they want to see is their logo spinning around in 3D. This is almost always a bad idea, mostly because such trinkets do little or nothing to enhance the web experience, and quickly become distracting and annoying.
There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule and one I came across today is on the front page of Tim Hortons, pictured in part here. This little pouring-coffee animation is a perfect illustration for their front page, and a rare beneficial use of animated graphics.

We’ve had an Island Tel single business line for 4 or 5 years now. The monthly fee for the line is $54.25, which includes the line and two “custom calling features” — call display and distinctive ring.
Interestingly enough, I was able to convert this to a “Centrex” line this afternoon. The result? I have exactly the same phone number, phone, and features. But my month rate is $43.80. In other words, I save $10.45 and don’t lose anything.
If you run a small business, perhaps you should call the Island Tel business office (1-800-565-4287) and do the same.
By the way, the business office people I dealt with were very friendly, efficient and helpful.

Like many people on the Island, we’re struggling with keeping water out of our basement (thankfully we don’t have the 6 or 7 feet that some people do — including the unfortunate lads a Sumner Plumbing, who sold all their sump pumps before stashing one for their own basement!).
Every sump pump, it seems, needs a check valve, which is simply a plastic doo-hickey that screws into the pump; it has a trap door which opens one way only, which prevents water that’s being pumped out from flowing back in.
However, for some reason check valves are something you have to buy extra, on top of your sump pump purchase. Every sump pump needs a check valve, so you’d think, logically, that they would be included in the package. But they are not.
So today here in Charlottetown we are in the troubling and frustrating situation of having too many sump pumps and not enough check valves. Canadian Tire, for example, has its shelves literally lined with many varieties of sump pump. I would hazard a guess that there were at least 500 of them ready and waiting when I visited this morning.
But as of 4:30 p.m. today, Canadian Tire has no check valves. Nor does Home Hardware. Nor Schurman’s. In fact, the word on the street is that there are no check valves left in Charlottetown.
How could this happen?
There was an inordinate amount of snow this winter. Everyone in our hardware community knew this. Indeed that’s probably why Canadian Tire’s shelves are lined with sump pumps.
But where are the check valves? Is the assumption that every house has a couple squirreled away for a soggy day, like fuses atop the fuse box?
I am perplexed by this odd system failure.
Thankfully, spurred on by a generational tick which infused my DNA with water removal savvy, I was able to rip the check valve off the old failing sump pump and graft it on to the shiny new one I purchased today. With that baby running flat out, and me on snow shovel feeding the newly-dug sump pump cavity with a steady stream of water, I was able, in the post ER glow late this evening, to take the water in our basement from 5 inches down to 2 inches.
It is now time for sleep. I am afraid that when I get up in the morning I will awake to a world where locks are sold without keys, frying pans without handles and keyboards without keys (or at least without the keys D through L).
ave a oo nit.

Just a small update on the Island Tel technical support debacle I suffered last week, and reported in detail on this page.
Other than a brief and cordial note from an account rep at Island Tel, I received no other communication from the company on my problems: no follow-up, no apology, no “how can we serve you better the next time?”. Nothing. (Should I send them a collection of Tom Peters’ books?)
Eastlink reports that they’ll be ready to serve my area “sometime in the next couple of weeks” (I should hope so, given the proliferation of their fibre-laying trucks in the neighbourhood last week!).
I got an call and email from a Qwest sales rep earlier this week trying to sell me data services. Much to my surprise, when I asked about services to PEI (which are usually missing from U.S.-based providers’ offerings), he reported that they could sell me bandwidth right now via frame relay, and in May or June via ATM. Of course they might just be reselling for the telephone company. We’ll see.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this entire episode is that just about everyone I know — and a few I’ve just met — ended up reading my tale of woe. Unprompted. Lots of people at the CBC. Lots of people in my neighbourhood, at the Farmer’s Market, and somewhere in the ether via email. Somehow, more than anything else I’ve written here, my experiences seemed to have a viral quality.
Attention Island Tel: wouldn’t it be better having people around town — your customers — talking about what great service you offer? Good service stories work virally too. I’d be happy to post anything you might offer in your defence here.
End of story.