If you have a slow connection to the Internet — or even if you don’t — having two or three browser windows open can help keep you occupied while surfing because you can read a finished web page in one window while another window’s page is loading.

How do you do this mysterious thing?  It’s easy: in either Netscape or Internet Explorer, just hold down CONTROL and press N (think “n = new window”).  A new browser window will pop up, and you can enter a new web address or click on a new bookmark, even as your original window is busy off loading some other page.

I mean, Andy Richter?  Wasn’t he Conan O’Brien’s inane sidekick?  One step above that guy that Tom Green pours molten Jello on?  In my mind he was no more than a latter day David Caruso, going on to seek fame and fortune after living under the wing of someone more interesting (Dennis Franz) or at least more successful (O’Brien).

Well, I was wrong.

Andy Richter Controls the Universe, is actually quite a funny and delightful show.

It’s covering some dangerous territory, too.  Other “gimic” shows, like Herman’s Head and Dream On (and “gimic” here means, among other things, “main character talks directly to the camera”) have been almost unwatchable.  Once in a while there’s been a good show in this genre: It’s Gary Shandling’s Show was very funny, largely because it was so good at taking itself not seriously at all.  But it’s hard to depart from the standard sitcom format and introduce wacky elements without failing.

The Andy Richter show isn’t perfect — I would scale back the fantasy sequences by maybe 10%, for example — but the production values are great, there’s a good solid cast, and, perhaps most surprisingly, Richter himself carries the show well.

The new series picks up where the original Danger Bay left off: Doc Roberts Sr. is killed in a horrible whale accident and his long-lost son, Doc. Jr., returns from the Amazon rainforest to continue his work on behalf of the biologically underrepresented.

Mike will be joined on screen by original cast members Ocean Hellman, (recently seen with Morgan Freeman in Along Came a Spider) and Susan Walden (see in the recent movie of the week Taking Back My Life: The Nancy Ziegenmeyer Story).

Filming starts off the coast of Nanaimo, BC in May.  Pictured above right is a publicity shot of Mike, high over the rockies, taken during his audition.

Fidel Castro has 26 acting credits.  He has, of course, been busy running Cuba.

There’s a service charge added to every calling card call you make, and they can add up if you’re calling in a lot.

It turns out that if you get yourself a toll-free number, you don’t pay the surcharge, and the long distance rates are the same.  And there’s no cost (at least from Island Tel) to install the toll-free number, and no monthly charge for it either.

I’m on hold right now signing up for mine.

Distance of the Charlottetown Polyclinic to our house: 214 m.

Places in the Charlottetown Polyclinic that we’ve visited in the past 8 years: the doctor who helped me with my first bout of carpal tunnel syndrome, Catherine’s OB/GYN during her pregnancy with Oliver, the surgeon who performed my colonoscopy, the surgeon who repaired the cartilage in Catherine’s knee, the clinic where we got our immunizations before our trip to Thailand, the place where we both got new pairs of glasses, Catherine’s physiotherapist, Lawton’s drug store.

And now, our new accounting firm.

I suppose you can consider income tax an injury.

Friend Steve has an nice article on the Bangkok Post website today called Ever Think About Living on your Own Boat?

Catherine went to Action Press this afternoon to get a colour copy made.  Their colour copier was busy, so they sent her across to the Dominion Building (aka “the old Post Office” / aka “where all those DVA people work”) and the Commissionaire there led her down a hall to ePrintIt’s Charlottetown office.

They made her copies, but seemed confused as to how much to charge her.  She said “I have three dollars.”  That seemed to make them happy, and they took her $3 and that was that.

Looking at their website, their quite technically sophisticated, and can accept documents for printing over the web.

Catherine Hennessey

Or rather she does have one, but it was built in 1972, weighs about 75 pounds, and doesn’t fit into her aesthetic.  I think she stores it in the barn at Cranberry Wharf.

Tonight the Discovery Channel is showing a documentary on the Hillsborough River, and Catherine wants a tape of it.  We have a VCR, and so she asked me to record it. 

She dropped off a theoretically blank tape in our vestibule this afternoon, and then left a phone message later on: “you might want to check that tape I left, I think there might be something on it.” 

It turns out that the “something” was “only” the tape of her induction into the Order of Canada last July.

We’re on the way to Shopper’s Drug Mart to buy a new blank tape.