Well, I managed to find Les enfants terribles without any problems last night: I faced up to my “discovering the rules of a complex new transit system” fears, figured out how to finagle a ticket out of the machines, and 10 minutes later I was walking down a dark alley across the river (or at least it looks like a river).

The the pre-conference wine-thing was full of stylish-looking geeks: think [[reboot]] but with better cloths and haircuts. I renewed acquaintances with Laurent Haug and Robert Scoble (is it just me, or do all photos of me in glasses make look goofy?), and met Ellen Wallace and fellow Canadian Thomas Purves alone with a host of others whose names just floated by.

Around 8:00 p.m., with my mind fading fast, I headed back out into the cool Geneva night and decided to walk back to the hotel. By 10:00 p.m. I was fast asleep, and I didn’t stir until my cell phone alarmed me up at 7:00 this morning.

It’s now 6 minutes after 8:00, and if I don’t hurry I’m going to miss the conference…

Arrived Geneva at 4:45 p.m. local time. Mild catatonia has set in from jet lag, but I’m determined to go to the “wine and snacks” across town tonight (I may end up sleeping on a park bench).

Best “Geneva fact” so far: the trains in from the airport have a volume control for the public address system.

I thought Air Canada did well by me yesterday, but their work on my behalf at the [[Charlottetown]] ticket counter doesn’t hold a candle to what they did for Jim and Helen Larkin.

Jim and Helen were originally booked on the same flight I was, Charlottetown to Montreal. From there they were scheduled to fly west, through some complicated and drawn-out route, to rendezvous with their daughter in Bangkok.

As they, like all others on the cancelled flight going west, had no hope of making their connections, it looked like the Larkins would be delayed by at least a day.

That is until the Reservationist Savant took on their case. This part-time employee at the ticket counter is reported to be a former travel agent. When the other clerks speak of her, it is with the reverence reserved for a master. And a master she was: in less than an hour she managed to re-book Jim and Helen through to Bangkok, going east rather than west, connecting through Halifax and London and then straight on to Bangkok on Thai Airways International.

Anyone familiar with the complexities of international travel will known that doing this sort of route planning is complicated at the best of times, let alone with weather bearing down and options quickly being eliminated.

So Jim and Helen ended up on the same flights I took: Charlottetown to Halifax, then Halifax to London. Of course, being upper crust Islanders as they are, they were in First Class while I was stuck back in coach (Jim’s explanation “we had enough points”). So I ate pancakes for breakfast after sleeping crooked in my seat while they undoubtedly dined on caviar and crumpets after climbing out of their sleep sacks.

By some miracle, their revised routing gets them into Bangkok 12 hours earlier than originally planned.

If you are ever in an Air Canada pickle in Charlottetown, it’s nice to know that there are miraculous skills available. Kudos to Air Canada. And to the mystery Reservationist Savant.

I just knew this wasn’t going to be a smooth trip. I’m on my way to Geneva for LIFT. I showed up at the [[Charlottetown]] airport at 16:30 for my 17:05 flight to Montreal where I was scheduled to catch the 19:55 flight to London.

Except the Air Canada flight “developed an electrical problem” that “couldn’t be resolved.” So the crew — presumably taking their lives into their hands? — are taking the plane to Halifax to be patched up, and the flight was cancelled.

Fortunately, I was one of two passengers that was going “backwards” to Montreal only to turn around and go east to Europe. We were pulled out of the waiting room and booked on a 18:45 flight to Halifax where, in theory, we will catch the 20:10 flight to London. I say “in theory” because of this:

…which is a “low pressure system developing east of Cape Hatteras” that will “intensify as it tracks south of Nova Scotia tonight.” I will consider it a miracle if I manage to get in and out of Halifax in the next 3 hours. If I make it only as far as Halifax, apparently there are no hotel rooms available, because of conventions and because of the storm. So I may be forced to look up long-lost friends.

Meantime, the remaining 40-odd passengers that were going to Montreal so as to actually go to Montreal — or at least to head there and then go east — are out of luck completely: the flight has been cancelled, and “because of crew shortages” will not run tonight, but rather sometime tomorrow morning.

So while I’m sitting here in the airport cafeteria with a bowl of soup, using Aliant’s free wifi (thanks, Aliant!), Shawn Murphy is trying to figure out how to get up to Ottawa so as to run the country.

Stay tuned…

• Chance that somebody you know will be waiting in the Charlottetown airport lounge to take the same plane you are: 78%
• Chance that that person will be Shawn Murphy: 37%

My [[Coop Taxi]] driver told me this afternoon that their ballpark figure for the number of taxis needed at the airport is 1 for every 10 incoming passengers.

If you scrape beneath the irony that the Capital Commission is making fake snow for a celebration that purports to be about winter, you reach even higher levels of absurdity. The CBC is reporting that the Capital Commission is preventing kids from playing in the fake snow:

“It’s amazing how many people have come down and looked, and kids… we’ve been having to chase them away because they’ve been wanting to come down and play in the snow,” says Green.

“We need the snow white and clean of debris, so we’ve been chasing them away continuously from the snow. It’s the snow and just the marvel of being able to make snow on the waterfront that’s attracting a lot of people.”

So not only is the Capital Commission hijacking winter with their fake celebration and their fake snow, but they’re preventing children from playing in the fake snow because they “need the snow white and clean of debris.”

What would good old Charlie Town think about all this? The mind boggles.

Today was the big public open house at the [[CBC]] in [[Charlottetown]]. It was a stunningly beautiful mid-winter day, and seemingly most every Islander decided to come into town to attend: by the time we arrived around 1:30 p.m., they were lined up out the front door and down the wheelchair ramp.

All due respect to the Radio Master Control and the like, [[Oliver]]’s raison d’etre at the open house was seeing [[Bruce Rainnie]] and [[Boomer]] from [[Compass]]. Truth be told, it was all about Boomer. And Clifford the Big Red Dog. Except Clifford wasn’t there. So it was all about Boomer.

But, as with the Santa Claus Parade, the main attraction was at the end and so we spent a couple of hours wending through the various radio and television studios, with Oliver checking in every couple of minutes to make sure that Boomer was still on the agenda (and checking with everyone else in line to make sure they knew that Boomer was coming up).

The pedagogical highlight of the extended wending was, of all things, Pat Martel. Pat was set up in the radio bullpen with a little demo of analog vs. digital audio editing systems, and in a few short minutes he gave a really concise “new vs. old” demonstration with audience participation.

From there it was the radio studio shared by [[Island Morning]] and [[Mainstreet]], where we got to see [[Karen Mair]] and [[Matthew Rainnie]] and Oliver got to sit in the big chair and do some studio work (hats off to Matthew, by the way, who has lost a ton of weight and looks like a million bucks).

Next was the [[Compass]] bullpen for an introduction to the VJ system by Laura Meader followed by a session next door with [[Clair Nantes]] (who, we learned from secret CBC bulletin boards, in addition to being Assignment Editor for Compass is also fire marshall responsible for the women’s washroom) and [[Mitch Cormier]] (responsible for the CBC website, but apparently without fire-related duties at this time).

As the afternoon was evaporating quickly, we skipped the TV edit demo and TV master control, and got in the long line to see Boomer and Bruce. Thirty minutes later, we were in the well-appointed TV studio (it’s about 1/4 the size you think it is when you see it on television). Boomer and Bruce didn’t disappoint: Boomer is, of course, Boomer, a delight for children and adults everywhere. And that Bruce Rainnie has more social skills in his little finger than I will muster in a lifetime, and was able to equally charm everyone from toddlers to fishermen.

Along the way, what with the entire Island turning out and all, we got to see lots of people we knew, perhaps most importantly Riley, who turned 6 years old today (Happy Birthday, Riley!). There were thousands of CBC-branded cupcakes available at the exit, but as Oliver was completely wound-up post-Boomer, we decided to skate by and head for the exit.

Despite the lines and the sheer exhaustion of it, the open house was a good show — way better than the opening of the GST Centre in Summerside! — and everyone at the CBC is to be commended for being so nice and hospitable with a bunch of stranger traipsing through their offices.

Special bonus intelligence finding of the day: buried deep behind several layers of old sets in the [[Compass]] studio, to the right of Bruce’s head as you’re watching, is the old giant wooden compass, once the focal point of the news set before the name of the show was mistakenly changed. This certainly bodes well for we in the movement.

I was mistakenly listening to CBC Radio Two this morning on my way around town, and overheard the announcer suggesting that listeners looking for more information about a Mozart-related contest they’re running “Google CBC and Mozart.”

This seems like an odd thing to do, given that the CBC (a) has no control over Google’s search results and (b) the CBC could have easily created a web address like “cbc.ca/mozart” that would have been just as easy to convey over the radio, and more reliable.

Speaking of the CBC, remember that tomorrow, Saturday, January 28th from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. is the open house at the broadcast building on University Ave. in Charlottetown. Word on the street is that there are door prizes galore.

After walking around the block earlier in the week, today I went [[warwalking]] from the office to home and back to see what sort of wifi saturation I would find.

I walked down Queen St. to Richmond, left on Richmond to Prince, left on Prince to Kent, left on Kent to University, right on University to Fitzroy, and left on Fitzroy back to the office. Here’s what’s out there:

• 68 wireless access points detected
• 56% open access (38 of 68)
• 44% WEP-enabled (30 of 68)
• Recognizable locations (from the SSID):
• [[Beanz]]
• The Dundee Arms
• [[Formosa Tea House]]
• Inn on the Hill
• Mackenzie Theatre
• Atlantic Technology Centre
• 14 access points didn’t broadcast an SSID.
• 20 access points supported rates up to 54 Mbps