I’ve spent the later part of this afternoon upgrading this server from RedHat 9 to RedHat Enterprise Linux. Expect possible breakage until the upgrade bumps are ironed out. Update: all systems appear to be operating well.

In a controversial drive to centralize operations of Trent University at its suburban campus, the administration closed Peter Robinson College and sold its buildings, including historic Sadleir House, one of the original university buildings.

Now Trent students have bought the building back. Amazing.

I took a lot of my meals at Peter Robinson’s dining hall during my one year at Trent, once I figured out that the food was better and the people more interesting. The following summer I had decided to switch colleges to Peter Robinson; abandoning the university entirely meant I never followed through, but my heart was and always has been there.

Sometime in the late 1980s — it was probably 1987 — I traveled cross-country from Peterborough to Vancouver in my little Datsun 510 with my friend Joanna.

Joanna and I had that kind of friendship bred from having “connective tissue friends” between us. In other words, a lot of my friends knew Joanna. And a lot of her friends knew me.

Which is not to say we were strangers: when I showed up at Trent, she was managing Trent Radio and I thought her unbelievably cool and aloof (or rather “caloof,” for they were inextricably linked qualities). I used to write for her zine. And I was her sister’s roommate for a time.

Joanna was best friends with my girlfriend of the day, and somehow it came to be that we both needed to go to Vancouver. I think we both needed to escape from complicated affairs of the heart.

In the case of Joanna, this involved an intertwingling with Louis Fagan.

I met Louis the day he arrived in Peterborough. He showed up in a huge American car with Northwest Territories license plates. He was cooler than hot shit.

I never really became friend with Louis, although because our girlfriends were best friends, we inevitably orbitted each other to some degree. I always found him quiet and imposing, although as I got to know him, some of the veneer rubbed off, which was both good and bad.

Before Joanna and I set off for the west, Louis made her a mix tape. It had a lot of Penguin Cafe Orchestra on it. And many other songs of the same ilk. As it was the only tape we had in the car, we listened to it over and over and over, up through the Sault, down into Minessota, and across the upper mid-west to Washington before punching back up into Canada.

The songs on the tape became welded to our DNA.

Joanna and I traveled remarkably well together, and I only have fond memories of the trip.

I headed back to Peterborough (in a marathon 4-day dash) soon after arrival on the coast; Joanna stayed much longer, then came back, then settled in Vancouver for good, where she remains.

Louis formed a rock band, called Born Again Pagans, that played to some critical acclaim in and around the Peterborough-Toronto musical axis. One of my later girlfriends used to sing with them. Eventually Louis migrated west himself. And in 1997 he died from an overdose.

I hadn’t thought of Louis for a long time. Today, though, I stumbled across this Born Again Pagans MP3 on Foog’s website. It brought back a lot of memories, and suddenly I was standing on the balcony at Peter Robinson College in 1986 as Louis walked into the room for the first time.

Rest in peace.

Here’s a paragraph from an email I received from CIRA this evening:

You are requested to confirm the Registrant merger of Reinvented Inc. with Reinvented Inc..

The email is valid — I’m consolidating several CIRA registrants with the same name into one. Webnames.ca has been quite helpful in this regard: so far they’re batting almost 1000 in customer service.

Will Pate now has an online photo gallery. My favourite photo so far is this one from the last University Ave. Formosa bloggerpalooza. Although it does make me think that my profile is more like a Triumph TR-7 than I am comfortable with.

When I write what I write here, I tend to think of myself as writing to an audience of about ten people: my mother, my mother-in-law, my brothers, my sister-in-law, and maybe Robert Paterson once in a while. Oh, and all the Ledwells and the Sandy Nicholson and her crew.

Them, and a bunch of random web surfers who end up here because they search Google for “I’m angry at my phone company.”

Recently, though, an interesting thing has started to happen: this weblog’s audience, combined with the compact “everybody is connected to everybody else” nature of Prince Edward Island, means that when I write things about Islanders and Island institutions here, somehow word gets back.

Yesterday I wrote about my car insurance; today, Fred Hyndman responded. Fred owns my insurance broker, Hyndman and Company (as did his father, and his father’s father).

Last week I wrote about the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Emergency Room. The next day, the Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine posted a comment, followed shortly by his predecessor.

I cautioned new anchor Bruce Rainnie about over-Boomering on Compass. An hour and a half later, he assured us all he was mindful of the dangers.

I wrote about Marie Brine’s ergonomics auditing and got an email back from Marie several months later, and then, a few months after than, another one telling me a friend of hers in Taiwan had run across the post.

My initial negative review of Angels Restaurant elicited a phone call from Ken Zakem, the owner. And then a follow up from his father.

And the granddaddy of all of this, my open letter to Island Tel, which resulted in a lot of hand-wringing at the company, and a lot of interesting conversations with mid-level managers who agreed with me.

I point this out not as a prideful boast of my awesome media power, but from interest in what it says about weblogs, especially when they take place, out in the open, in a small place like this.

I’ve never been seated firmly on the ” weblogs are going to change the media forever and replace newspapers and television” bandwagon. That said, what happens here, and on other local blogs, does seem to more and more involve an interesting sort of feedback loop that you don’t see in traditional media.

Whether this is truly powerful and interesting, or a self-involved sort of virtual coffee talk, remains to be seen. In the meantime, it is lots of fun.

The hot and sour soup at Interlude (Kent St., across from the fire hall) rocked my world today. It’s one of those foods that can have you thinking “I had no idea that simple food could be combined into flavours like this.” Meanwhile, Ann is trying to convince me to go to the Golden Wok to try theirs.

Viva’s, nee Eddie’s Lunch, has a “new owner” sign on the front door. I must admit to feeling guilt pangs about leaving the place in a lurch after being a regular customer for three years: moving my office uptown has meant that it’s no longer in my eating orbit. Anyone know what’s up there?

A reminder that Campbell Webster’s favourite resturant, The Town and Country, on Queen St. beside city hall, is turning forty years old in April. My friend Gary revealed last night that back in the 1970s he took his meals there regularly, while squatting in Beaconsfield. Their big rounds tables are unique in Charlottetown. Wish them well next time you’re there.

Catherine and I ate at Angel’s (Belvedere Ave. across from the Superstore) again a couple of weeks ago, and had another good experience. While there we learned that chef/owner Ken Zakem provides a weekly free pasta buffet on Sunday afternoons, with transportation from Trius Tours, to clients of the Upper Room food bank; kudos to Ken for this brave and generous act.

Something appears to be falling apart at Timothy’s Coffee on Kent Street: the last two times I’ve been in, there’s been a line 5 or 6 people deep. Sunday was the worst, with customers waiting 10 or 15 minutes just to get a coffee. Perhaps I’m getting less patient in my old age. Perhaps they need to staff up. Probably a little bit of both. They still have good coffee and good food.

As if it was possible to have the Canadian telecommunications landscape get more complicated, Angus TeleManagement Group is reporting that Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) is acquiring Allstream (which used to be AT&T Canada). MTS is 21.7% owned by BCE, which also owns 53.5% of Aliant.

On some level, this is like Eatons buying Simpsons, but through a third party.