I just got a call from a woman named Zuzana in Kosice, Slovakia, confirming a hotel reservation (we’re booking into City Residence). It still amazes me that it’s possible to place trans-Atlantic telephone calls without operator intervention.

Roy Johnstone has started posting PDF files of fiddle tunes to his website.

The Fitzroy Street Skyscraper may destroy life on earth as we know it, but there’s no denying there’s a certain beauty to its sky-scraping form as it rises, especially on a clear day:

Hon. Robert W. J. Ghiz and I are walking toward each other in the basement of the Confederation Centre of the Arts:

Premier (nodding head): Peter.

Me (nodding head): Beautiful day we’re having.

Premier: Chilly though.

When I was a kid I once, while visiting my grandmother, developed an inflamed spleen. This lead to the classic exchange:

Doctor: Have you had a bowel movement today?

Me: What?

Nana (whispering): He means “have you had a shit.”

Then, six years ago, my gallbladder made life a living hell.

Now, today, a visit to the doctor reveals that I may have an inflamed appendix. Not an appendicitis, at least right now. But enough to make life uncomfortable. Leading to the exchange:

Me: So if it does develop into an appendicitis, how will I know?

Doctor: You’ll know.

If I make it through this, I will have done battle with all of my vestigial (or at least non-essential) bits. At least I hope that’s all of them.

Update: White blood cells not elevated, so new thinking is that I have some sort of virus that causes abdominal pain that will “clear itself.” Hmmmm.

In Slovakia you get a free upgrade to first class when you travel by train.

Several weeks ago I fell prey to an urge to look up my credit profile — I think it was one banner ad too many noodling into my subconscious, with a dash of fear of imminent worldwide economic collapse. So I went to the TransUnion website and ordered their “TransUnion Credit Profile” product for $14.95.

After going through a series of identity-verifying questions (current address, former address, etc.) I was told that my identity couldn’t be verified, and that I’d be receiving a “Tracking Code” by postal mail that I could use to unlock my profile.

While I’m all for making absolutely certain that I am who I say I am, this whole process was handled clumsily, and there was no indication at any stage but the last that there might be a delay to wait for the post to arrive.

Today, seven days later, the letter arrived, and I followed the instructions to login to the account I’d created and “when prompted, enter the following tracking code.”

But I was never prompted: the website simply told me that I was going to receive a tracking code in the mail, but didn’t provide me with a place to enter it.

Fortunately their toll-free customer service line was still open so I gave them a call, and the agent had no information at all about why I couldn’t enter my tracking code and, indeed, seemed to dismiss the whole idea of a tracking code as unnecessary, but told me that if I answered some more questions over the phone he could unlock my profile.

So I answered a series of questions — credit card number, current address, former address, etc. Then, one question before payday, he asked me what the postal code was at the house where I lived in 1993. I told him I didn’t remember. He said “if you can answer this one question” then we could proceed. He asked me if I could look it up. I said that I could. So I went to Canada Post’s website and looked it up and, presto, I was me again in their eyes.

I was told to logout of the website, then wait a while, then log back in. A few minutes later I received an email with subject line “Your Identity has been confirmed”:

Wow, that was fast (I thought), and I clicked. Only to be told that my identity couldn’t be confirmed and that I had to call customer service:

But they closed 15 minute ago, and so I’m out of luck for another day.

Not only is this inept service, but it gives me pause when I consider that these are the folks responsible for maintaining the Big Credit Worthiness Database: if they can’t manage a simple web transaction, what else are they screwing up?

Update: Turns out customer service wasn’t closed — the letter said it was closing at 8:00 p.m. but the website said it was open until midnight. So I called back again, answered some more questions (name, date of birth), and then was told to, in series, (a) logout, (b) empty my cookies, (c) log back in, all of which produced the same result and then (d) try another browser (I had been using Firefox, I switched to Safari). And this final step did it. I have no idea why. You’ll be happy to know that TransUnion thinks my job is “S/E COMPUTOR CONSUTING” for Reinvented Inc.

I’m going a little unwild here with a move further into the depths of monochromism. Please bear with me. Blame this for my impulses (it’s brilliant).

Episode 68 of Spark is online now, and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One on Saturday. It incorporates slices of the why you should have your own domain name interview I did last week.

Some tiny updates on our upcoming trip to Europe:

• This is the first time I’ll be travelling across an international border with [[Oliver]] without [[Catherine]], so we need a Consent Letter, signed by Catherine and notarized by a lawyer. Campbell Lea comes to our rescue here.
• We’ll be in Nuremberg for two nights. I’ve never been to Nuremberg, but the allure of Playmobil is too strong to resist.
• Oliver is very excited about meeting Til in Vienna. But mostly because of the Count von Count overtones.
• Although it’s sometimes a little confusing, I’ve been finding bahn.de is a good general-purpose site for exploring rail timetables and fares. And I used it to pre-book our Nuremberg to Paris train.
• We’re spending the night of March 22 in Paris at Standard Design Hotel. We’ll be in Paris for about 24 hours. That hardly seems like enough time.
• We’re taking the Eurostar through the Chunnel to get from Paris to London.
• On our last night in Europe before flying home we’re overnight at YOTEL, right at Heathrow. I’m intrigued both by its microscopicness, and also by the pleasant thought of not having to battle our way to the airport from elsewhere for an 11:00 a.m. flight.