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?

The CBC is reporting that technology company CGI will create 150 jobs in Prince Edward Island. Towards the end of the story it says:

The company is also creating about 300 jobs in Russell County, Va. and 200 jobs in Bangalore, India. George said India, where the company is constructing a new facility, has a lower cost of labour as well.

Is this what’s ahead for Prince Edward Island: taking the work from upstream because we’ll do it on the cheap? Has “Cheap Province” replaced “Smart Province” in the prospector’s toolbox?

You may have read this Globe and Mail story this morning, especially the part that says (emphasis mine):

Bell Canada’s wireless high-speed Internet service will be available in coming days in markets across the country, including Vancouver, Calgary, Hamilton, Montreal, and Charlottetown, the source said.

And you may have thought to yourself “wow, wifi all over Charlottetown — that’s cool.” You may have entertained visions of checking your email at the waterfront with your wifi-equipped laptop. Using [[Plazes]] everywhere. And who knows what else.

Alas, this isn’t wireless Internet as we know it. Here’s the real story, courtesy of Telecom Update:

Bell Canada and Rogers Communications have both begun offering wireless broadband Internet service in 20 cities across Canada, using “pre-WiMAX” technology developed by NextNet, a U.S. company owned by Craig McCaw. The underlying wireless network is owned by Inukshuk Wireless, a Bell-Rogers joint venture formed last year.

There’s more information about the technical side of this, from the source, in this Bell news release:

Sympatico High Speed Unplugged uses a small, portable wireless modem which connects to a customer’s computer. The modem, in turn, connects wirelessly to the Inukshuk network using Aliant cellular towers in the region - providing Internet connectivity. The service is an integral part of Aliant’s continued investment in its broadband and wireless networks, and related services, in the region.

This “portable wireless modem” isn’t the wifi card that you’ve got in your laptop that you use to jack into free wifi at the local coffee shop, it’s a $250 ($99 with a 2-year contract) proprietary device that’s about the size of a paperback book and requires a power outlet to operate. In other words, it’s not actually portable at all.

Oh, and it’s not free either: rates start at $45/month, which gets you 512 Kbps of bandwidth with a cap of 2GB combined up/down usage every month.

This distinction is important to note because, to the uninitiated (i.e. almost everyone) wireless is wireless is wireless. So when they read “Aliant Launches Wireless Broadband Service in Atlantic Canada,” they read “wifi, everywhere.” I know this to be true because, by coincidence, I was at a meeting this morning at [[Charlottetown]] City Hall to talk about the possibility of creating a free wifi zone in the city’s downtown core and the Globe article was brought out to demonstrate that “perhaps the market is taking care of this.”

Now I actually think that there’s not a huge rationale for the city becoming involved in publicly funded wifi, mostly because the problem seems to be taking care of itself, and free wifi doesn’t do too much for people who can’t afford a computer to begin with (which is the real digital divide problem that public bodies should concern themselves with). But it’s important to distinguish between “public wifi” and “proprietary for-fee Internet from a private company.”

The ability to roll out low-cost wireless networks using cheap hardware ([[Dad]] bought a wireless access point at Future Shop for $9.99) has been a revolutionary thing. Revolutionary because, at least in a small way, it’s moved us towards thinking of ubiquitous Internet access as we think about air and water, and not as we think about telephone and cable television service. When companies like Bell and Rogers make plays like this, it is, make no mistake, the dying attempts of legacy network providers trying to, yet again, attach proprietary meters to their pipes. The pipes might be invisible this time around, but the meters are there nonetheless, and that’s not a Good Thing.

If you surf eBay a lot, you inevitably run across the phrase “will ship only to PayPal Confirmed Addresses.” It took me a while, but I’ve finally been able to understand what this means.

When you first sign up for a PayPal account, and give PayPal your bank account information, you go through a process where you identify the amounts associated with two small deposits that PayPal deposits in your account, therein proving to them that you are the owner of the bank account. Once this process is complete, your account becomes “Verified,” and you can do certain things you couldn’t do before.

However this doesn’t mean that your address is “Confirmed” with PayPal. To get “Confirmed,” you have to add a credit card to your account, and then go through a similar “identify a code that PayPal includes in the transaction details on your credit card statement.” Because PayPal can tap into the credit card world’s address verification system, through this mechanism they can “confirm” your address.

Except when they can’t.

Address verification doesn’t work for all locations for all credit cards. PayPal’s help system says:

Please note that because not all credit card companies are currently able to confirm an address, only some UK and Canadian addresses may be confirmed at this time.

The confounding thing is that the PayPal website offers no way to tell whether your own address is, in fact, “Confirmed.” I emailed PayPal about this, and their reply was:

When you view past transactions, if you look at the details of the transaction, it will tell you if your address is confirmed.

The problem here, of course, is that if you don’t have any recent transactions, then you’ve got nothing to look at. And this is a problem if you want to buy something from someone who ships only to “Confirmed” addresses. A chicken and egg problem, in other words.

The email from PayPal also told me that my address is “Confirmed,” so it appears the only way to get this information otherwise is to email them with this question. Odd.

Courtesy of [[Dave Peck]], I’m wearing a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones. Dave scored a pair on eBay after the <a href=”http://ruk.ca/article/”3556”>jackhammers started and brought them down for me to try out.

Today is a light day for the parkade construction sounds, so there are really just basic office sounds here in the office. There’s a switch on the side of the headphones that allows you to turn them off and on; turning them on, but not plugging them into an audio source otherwise, is a good way to judge how much noise they’re actually cancelling.

As it turns out, there’s quite a lot of background “rumble” here in the office that I wasn’t otherwise aware of. Here, I’ll switch them off now. Okay, they’re off. Suddenly I hear the fan inside my iMac, the rumble of the air conditioner and servers coming through the floor from the server room upstairs, the occasional footfall, and the low diesel sound of a bus driving by. The sound of my own typing (on an admittedly noisy Microsoft keyboard) is much sharper sounding.

Switching them back on: it’s not “total silence,” but all the bass-end rumble is gone, replaced by a faint white-noise hum. My typing sound is dulled (although still very noticeable). I can still hear Johnny typing in the office next door; when he says something, I can still hear it, although it sounds like he’s two or three rooms over.

Obviously a lot of the utility of the QuietComfort’s is intended for airplane use, and it seems, from the noise they’re cancelling out here in the office — the sort of throaty, engine-like low-end sound — that they would indeed be very good in that environment. Every time I put in a pair of regular foam earplugs on an airplane I’m reminded just how much stressful sound there actually is there.

Alternating back and forth between headphones on and headphones off, I am struck, even here in the office, with how much calmer it seems with them switched on. Would that play out over the long term? Is the benefit they provide worth $300, $400, $500? I’d better give them back to Dave before I’m tempted to find out.