I found a vestigial electric outlet inside a cupboard in our library, and thus was born the data closet.

It houses an AmpliFI wireless access point, the Raspberry Pi that feeds our water and electricity consumption data to consuming.ca, and the PoE connection to the Nanobeam in the works that feeds the Internet into the house from across the street.

Brandon writes:

I didn’t realize that we all must make a conscious choice to invest in things or not to. In my mind, once you liked something, you liked it for life. There was no such thing as growing out of something or something serving a purpose. Each hobby or interest was part of your DNA, and you must find time for it.

That’s a freeing revelation. I stopped horseback riding mid-summer, choosing to prioritize summer relaxation; ever since, I’ve had a nagging feeling that I failed at riding a result. But I rode when riding was what I needed, and I’ve simply moved on to other pursuits.

The fog horn blared as we woke up on New Years Day. Outside it was rainy, unseasonably warm. Not ideal leveeing weather, but certainly better than those years when it was minus 20 degrees with snow banks.

We started later than usual, with less breathless rushing. Olivia and I drove to City Hall, attempting to pull off a rare “City Hall first, then Government House,” doing them out of the traditional order. It was not meant to be: lacking umbrellas we were reluctant to join the line at City Hall, so we redirected to Fanningbank and found it pleasantly free of outdoor lines, walking right in and joining a small collection of those waiting to greet Her Honour Antoinette Perry; she is a delightful and engaged vice-regal, and it was the right way to start the day. The apple cider and the Christmas cake that followed were welcome, and we enjoyed them on the less-COVIDy front porch of the house.

From there it was to City Hall, still long-lined, but we’d gathered umbrellas from the Other House en route, and so were better prepared. It was a long 30 minute wait to get from the street up to the third floor council chamber. We passed the time eavesdropping, and doing some last-minute schedule-updating on my phone. Once we’d snaked our way up, we were greeted by the Chief of Police, fire department senior officials, and then by Mayor Brown and councillors. Standing in the hallway outside the council chamber in anticipation, I realized an important thing about the Mayor, something he shares with Councillor Jankov who stood beside him: they truly enjoy being on City Council; they’re almost always smiling. It’s not a bad characteristic to have as a city official. Through the receiving line and into the antechamber, I was happy to find that John Pritchard was doing the catering: there was a healthy spread out, and excellent coffee.

From City Hall we swung round to pick up Lisa and L., and headed to HMCS Queen Charlotte, on the waterfront. We enjoyed excellent chowder, the special feeling that comes from being inside a rarely-visited inner sanctum, and, especially, spotting the game Siege in the Reserve’s collection: it was good to know that naval training involves old school board game action.

Stratford was our next stop, a rare one on my usual levee train, but a special one inasmuch as Lisa’s sister Jill is a newly-elected Councillor in the town. After stopping for photos with Jill, we enjoyed a light lunch in the council chambers, including samosas, an excellent punch, and a healthy collection of sweets. The Stratford levee was arguably the most social of them all, with plenty of friends and familiars in attendance, including my annual levee happenstance meetup with Leo Cheverie.

We returned home for a repos next, and then, thinned out by one, headed to the Premier’s Levee at the Confederation Centre of the Arts. Despite our earlier 2:30 p.m. arrival for a 3:00 p.m. start, the line had already grown to the length of the concourse, with the danger of spilling out onto the street. Fortunately estimable protocol chief Debbie Atkinson was on the job, and barriers quickly assembled to ensnaken the line so all could wait inside.

At 3:00 p.m. the line started moving ahead, and it wasn’t more than 15 minutes until we were shaking hands with the Premier and members of his caucus. The Premier was amiable in his reaction to Olivia’s request (née demand) to have photos taken in all possible configurations (her alone, her with Lisa and I, Lisa alone, me alone). Amiability is one of the Premier’s strong suits, and it was nice to see it live.

The Premier’s levee has traditionally been the most well-endowed with lavish food (one recalls the “make your own mashed potato sundae” at Premier Ghiz’s 2014 levee); this year, however, was clearly an austerity year, with a simpler spread of cookies and squares. They were good cookies and squares, don’t get me wrong. And the coffee was hot and strong. The highlight of the Premier’s levee was getting to chat with Chuckie, personable owner of Chuckie’s Sports Excellence, and a genuinely curious and engaging student of many disciplines, including Charlottetown retail history. 

By 4:00 p.m. we were walking back home along Richmond Street in a now-worse-than-ever mix of rain, sleet, and snow, happy to be able to lock the door, make a fire, and savour the new year in a quieter setting.

Beyond the neighbourly collegiality that the levees always bring, and the pleasure of attending with Lisa, L. and Olivia, my favourite aspect of this year’s levee day was the many positive comments I received about the levee list. One of my goals when I set out to bring slightly more order to the levee calendar 18 years ago was to work to broaden the swath of Charlottetown society who considered themselves eligible for levee attendance, and the evidence suggests that it’s an effort that continues to pay off.

Happy New Year!

This is the 2023 levee schedule for New Year’s Day, January 1, 2023 for Charlottetown and Prince Edward Island.

Show levees that are ages 19+ Show only Charlottetown-area levees

The levee schedule is covered under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike License.

Wouter writes a loving elegy to generalism, terrain I’ve been foraging through my entire life.

My stock self-description is “Writer • Printer • Developer,” a variation of what Wouter references as the “Slasher” (although, by using a dot instead of slashes or commas, I attempt to avoid a ranking).

I’ve earned my living for the last 40 years as a coder, but my zone of genius is not in the writing of code, but in lateral thinking. I love making connections, transferring knowledge learned in one domain to another, introducing people who would never otherwise meet. Perhaps the best description of what I do for a living (and what I do for living too), is I ask questions.

I am, in other words, very much a generalist.

Studying improv, as I’ve related here before, has been a tremendous boon to my life: it’s evolved me in a whole host of ways, and I’m the much better for sucking up my courage and walking up those stairs at the Haviland Club in the fall of 2021 and diving in.

Laurie Murphy’s improv classes are back for a new season starting Monday, January 2, 2023 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Benevolent Irish Society.

I encourage you to try it out, even if—especially if—you turn white at the thought of getting outside of yourself to the degree that improv requires. Laurie is a patient teacher with a great capacity for stretching people. The saving grace of improv, and what makes it possible—indeed, optimal—for introverts is that we’re all in it together: being silly together is nothing at all like being silly alone (or being silly in front of a group, by yourself), and there’s a tremendous feeling of safety that comes from the shared vulnerability of it all.

Classes are $35 each or 5 classes for $150. If you have any questions or concerns, you can ask Laurie.

Krista-Lee starts her post A reason for silence and remembering:

Some things are just too hard to write about when they are happening. When you are in the midst of chaos, heartbreak, survival, and trying to find some order to life, you just can’t put it all into words. Really, beginning last November – but mostly since January – we have been living beside disaster and trauma but not wanting to touch it directly. Writing about it is certainly putting your finger right on it and pushing to see if the bruise still hurts. It does still hurt, but we’ve put enough distance between us now that we can manage this pain when we feel it.

Olivia and I stumbled across Swenn this afternoon, a delightful new shop in the Confederation Court Mall:

In 2017, Kristell Geffroy, an explorer from Brittany (France), criss-crossed the Maritimes in a van. On Prince Edward Island, she discovers herds of sheep, raised in the open air, with fine and soft wool that give birth to an idea. It is there, facing the mysterious and deep waters of the North, that Swenn was born.

Back in Montreal, carried by the salty air that has forged her character since her birth, Kristell decides to launch her brand. SWENN offers « beautiful ocean-inspired clothes made from natural, organic and/or recycled fabrics, in accordance with the principles of fair trade. »

In 2022, Kristell and her family decided to move to Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island. The Swenn adventure now continues on the shores of the Maritimes.

The mall downtown has been so populated by listless phone-it-in retail efforts for so long, it’s remarkable when something so obviously heartfelt and genuine appears. More like this, please.

Parker Higgins, whose path I crossed at SoundCloud more than a decade ago, has become a crossword puzzle constructor. This month one of his puzzles will appear in the LA Times; he’s written a detailed post about the process.

I am an unrepentant fan of Shoppers Drug Mart: as Canadian Tire is to Armor All, so is Shoppers to shampoo, toothpaste, soap: they own the category.

Yet I’d held out until this week on the PC Optimum (née Optimum) loyalty card: my relationship with Shoppers, I thought, was more than that. Deeper. Longer-term. I didn’t need the promise of points to bring me in, as our love was pure, organic.

But I caved. Vertical integration did me in: Shoppers is now a branch of the Loblaw Companies, the parent that owns the Atlantic Superstore. I’ve been shopping there at least some of the time, prompted by their delivery offer, and could only stare at the empty “Enter PC Optimum number” field door so long until I caved.

So I’m in. Loblaws can track my purchases of pubic desiccant as well as my purchases of Ace Bakery baguettes and apply AI to prompt me with tasty offers for fava bean chips.