My [[Dad]] is looking for a particular style of CD case. These are usually found a “dollar stores,” but he hasn’t been able to find any recently. If you happen across any, please email Dad — source located in Mississauga; thanks.

If I wasn’t otherwise engaged, I’d be seriously thinking about renting this house in the south of France this spring. I don’t know anything about the house itself, or about the owners, but we were in the same region last year and had a wonderful time. This house is even closer to Spain than we were (2-1/2 hours to Barcelona). If you’re looking for a spring trip, I highly recommend the area.

Rain. No, hold on, snow. Oops, rain. Add some wind. More wind. More rain. Okay, back to snow. Large flakes. Bit of rain. Lower the temperature. Nope, raise it up. Back down. Okay, there.

My grandfathers both died in their 80s, so, all other things being equal, I’m halfway to death today.

As chance would have it, I’ve been working heads-down for the last two weeks on a complex (but satisfying) new project for [[Yankee]], so I’ve had precious little time to consider the implications of this. As such, I haven’t had the opportunity to, say, rededicate my life to solving the African poverty crisis, or swear off red meats, or resolve to spend more time reading fictional works by obscure Canadian authors.

So, somewhat ironically, I find myself with nothing profound to think or say or do on this Important Day.

For the sake of posterity, let me record that I love my family, enjoy my work, and live in a community where I feel comfortable. That’s not a bad place to be at the halfway point.

I got a call here in the office yesterday. The guy on the other end of the line wanted to know if I was interested in blogging about his product. I can’t remember the name of the product — it was something like Morphotrax and Mingobot or Malapropzinger. It was a set-top box for Internet-delivered television. He spent 10 minutes singing its praises: revolutionize television, allow for true interactivity, etc. Will Change The World, etc. Resellers all over the world. Big into the Indian market.

Great.

Except that the product doesn’t practically exist yet. You can go to their website and see all sorts of snazzy PR and even pop up a “PC player” (no Mac version). But there isn’t anyone on the other end of the wire yet, no way to actually watch “Internet television.”

I told him that I didn’t tend to blog about “speculative products” that I couldn’t experience myself. He replied that there are lots of bloggers blogging right now about their World Changing Product. The implication was that I Shouldn’t Get Left Out.

Right.

So here’s my advice to you: if you want me to blog about your product, make sure that your product actually exists first.

I gassed up my Jetta this morning. It was only my second tank of fuel for this year. I hadn’t filled up for so long that I actually forgot which side of the car the gas cap was on.

Last night I filled in the last empty space in the air travel strands that are going to bind our spring trip to Europe together. Here’s a breakdown of what each chunk of our trip is going to cost (prices are for all three of us combined, all taxes and fees in, converted to Canadian dollars):

It’s costing is $838 each for air travel, which seems pretty good for travel to five countries over five weeks on four different airlines.

A testament to how little my finger is on the bleeding edge, until this morning I’d never come across the WebKit Open Source Project, described as “the system framework used on Mac OS X by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications.”

I was prompted to take a look by this post by Andrew Sutherland concerning the new “Web Inspector” feature. So I grabbed the latest nightly build and fired it up at YankeeMagazine.com, a site I’ve been re-conceiving in CSS over the last few days. Here’s what it looks like:

The “Web Inspector” tool (right click on an element, select “Inspect Element”) fulfills the same role as the Firefox “DOM Inspector” tool, albeit somewhat more beautifully. Here’s the same element being inspected in Firefox:

Regular readers will recall that, when I turned 39 last year, Catherine concocted a wonderful surprise for me, a worthy pillar in my family’s pantheon of surprises.

Well, this Wednesday I turn 40, and my family outdid itself.

[[Oliver]] and I got up Saturday morning and, as usual, prepared to carry ourselves to the Farmer’s Market. It was so warm and sunny out, that I developed a plan to take the bus out then walk over to the [[Formosa Tea House]] at Ellen’s Creek, then take the bus back.

At about 9:45 a.m., though, I got a call from [[Johnny]]: it looked like the [[Yankee]] webserver had crashed. I took a look, and Johnny was right: we could ping, but not connect otherwise, and the Yankee websites were down. I told [[Catherine]] and Oliver that I’d be back, hopped in the car, and came over to the office to investigate.

Twenty minutes of further investigation suggested that the server had, in fact, crashed. I got on the phone with Peer1’s Network Operations Centre (the server is based at Peer1’s New York City colocation facility) and they arranged to dispatch an on-call technician to go in and take a look.

An hour later (the trains from Brooklyn were slow on Saturday, apparently), the tech was onsite, the server rebooted, and I began a forensic analysis of what had gone wrong (this is only the second time the Yankee server had all-out crashed in ten years; as it turns out, a runaway Perl script had consumed all the server’s memory and brought everything to a halt).

I spent another hour or so continuing to monitor things, looking at the Tripwire and server logs and so on, just to make sure my diagnosis was right. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Catherine and Oliver helpfully brought over some food and iced tea to keep me going, and then disappeared into the sunshine again.

Just as I was satisfied that things were humming along again, I heard someone coming through the door into the office. I looked up and saw my [[Dad]] in the doorway. And then my [[Mom]]. And then [[Mike]] and [[Karen]] and [[Steve]] and [[Johnny]] and [[Jodi]] and [[Catherine]] and [[Oliver]]. I just started to laugh. I laughed so hard that tears fell down my cheeks and my face turned red; I couldn’t stop.

Through some miraculous feat of logistics, my family had assembled itself, from several points west in Ontario and Quebec, in my office on the weekend before my birthday. It was an amazing surprise, and the best present I could imagine.

We all decamped to Johnny and Jodi’s for a fantastic pierogi lunch, followed by birthday cake. We all went out to the Eliot River Dream Park in Cornwall to enjoy the sunshine, and then crowded into the [[Formosa]] on the way back for a drink (thus packing 10 people into a space meant for 4 and causing a dramatic upsurge in closing time business). We went out to [[Sirenella]] for an excellent dinner, returned to our house for a rousing game of charades, and then everyone repaired to their beds and fell immediately to sleep.

This morning we all had breakfast together, took some photos, and then Mike, Karen and Steve were off to the airport to fly home (Mom and Dad stay until Tuesday) and I returned here to the office to pick up where I left off.

Wow.

I often sing your praises, Charlottetown Airport, when talking to people from big cities: you’re so small, and handy, and friendly. It’s so nice to leave my house at 5:30 for a 6:15 flight, and have time to spare. Your staff are helpful, your waiting room pleasant, your service quick.

Which is why I feel so bad that you lied to me today.

This afternoon I dropped off some family flying back to Toronto. I wanted to give them all a hug, so I parked in the short-term parking lot.

Once they were all through security, I headed back to my car and, like every other time I’d done exactly the same thing in recent years, I made sure I had a dollar coin ready to put in the machine at the exit.

I made sure to drive up to the “Pay By Coins” exit — there was a big sign. I slid my ticket into the machine, and it beeped at me. But it didn’t tell me to insert my dollar. I did it again. Beep. Again. Beep. I carefully read over the instructions, instructions that indicated that I was in the proper line to pay by coin.

Finally, in desperation, I rang the buzzer for help. I explained my situation to the person whose voice suddenly rang through the speaker. They asked me if I’d paid for my ticket inside. I explained that I hadn’t and that I was in the line where I could pay by coin.

They claimed that I couldn’t pay by coin. I explained that there was a sign 3 feet from my head that provided a detailed explanation of how I could pay by coin.

They said that wasn’t true any more. I asked why there was a sign that said that it was true. They said I couldn’t pay by coin. They told me that there was a sign at the entrance that clearly explained that I had to pay inside; I explained that every other time I’d parked in the lot, going many years back, I’d paid by coin.

I asked what I should do. They told me to back up. I told them there was a car behind me. They told me that they would open the gate and that I should drive through, go back into the parking lot, get another ticket, get out of my car, go into the terminal, pay for my parking inside, get back into my car, drive around to the exit again, and insert my ticket into the machine.

Can you see anything wrong with this situation? If, in fact, it is no longer possible to pay by coin, you should change your signs. An additional “remember, you can’t pay by coin any longer” sign wouldn’t hurt too. Second, you should instruct your staff that if customers are the victims of your incorrect signage, they should offer apologies, open the gate, and let them go on their way.

As it was, you kept me at the airport for an extra ten minutes, frustrated me, and caused me to think ill of you when I’d done nothing but sing your praises for many years. Was that worth the 50 cents you got for my troubles?