Today was supposed to be [[Oliver]]’s big kindergarten trip out to the woods for a winter sleigh ride. As the house driver (and having been away for the fall apple picking field trip) this was to be my first chaperoning experience.

So Oliver and I woke up at 7:15 a.m., got breakfast, got all bundled up in several layers clothing, brushed off the car, and headed over to the school to rendezvous with the other kids and parents.

Alas when we arrived we found a sign on the door saying that the trip was postponed until Tuesday. So my chaperoning will have to wait until next week.

The irony is that after a January that was more spring-like than wintery, it actually snowed last night, and the woods, I think, would have sparkled like Narnia. It’s the bitter cold that’s calling things off, I guess.

All of which led to the following instant message exchange between [[Catherine]] and me when I got back to the office after leaving Oliver for a normal school day:

catherine: where are you

peter: Here on the sleigh.

peter: They have wireless Internet access out here in the woods.

catherine: i couldn’t sleep

peter: It’s very cold.

peter: And my fingers tire easily.

catherine: oh

peter: But I’m getting lots of work done.

peter: The kids make too much noise, though.

catherine: did you take the camera

peter: I did, but it fell off the sleigh and the horses stepped on it.

peter: Damn horses.

This marks only the second time in our almost 15 years together that I’ve been able to deceive Catherine, albeit only temporarily. To her credit, she had just gotten up, and it’s entirely believable, given my history, that I would choose to work wirelessly from atop a sleigh.

Thoughtful comments from readers. Thank you. If you’ve not been following the story on the CBC, the latest is that David has been removed from his teaching position.

The reaction from the University of PEI reminds me of an episode at the public debate held by the CBC on the bootlegger issue several years ago: a local restaurant owner stood and spoke about all the “negative publicity” the issue was creating for the city in the national media. Say what you will about bootlegging, the publicity it gave Charlottetown was net positive; not only because “any publicity is good publicity,” but also because it telegraphed to the world that Charlottetown is, well, unique.

David Weale’s actions, taken, he says, to focus attention on large class sizes, are, if anything, a net positive for UPEI too: they telegraph to the world that professors at the institution care about teaching so much that they’ll go to great lengths — crazy, outlandish lengths — to point out the extent of the problem.

If the University was smart — and could muster a sense of humour — it could have effectively handled this situation by admitting that David’s concerns are real, laughing off “the 70% deal” as a publicity stunt, and promising to work to address the situation. As it is, the administration comes across as a group of dour prigs, obsessed with an artificial “excellence” construct that is appealing only to passionless technocrats.

I really like the way that the developers of Adium, a Mac OS X instant messaging application, put an alias to the Applications folder right in the install disk image:

The result is that all I need to do when installing the application is drag it into the alias; otherwise (and much more commonly with OS X applications), I need to open up another Finder window, position it so that I can drag and drop from the Adium install window, and then drag Adium into Applications in the second window.

It would be nice if all OS X developers did what the Adium developers do.

In the meantime, something that can make application installing a little faster is to drag the Applications folder into the documents section of the OS X “dock,” so that you end up like this:

Now installing apps is as simple as draging them from the install image onto this icon on the dock.

Ever since I switched my business telephone account over to Eastlink several years ago, I’ve been frustrated that, on the business side, they don’t support online bill payment. My natural inclination would be to jump ship back to Aliant. But they spent 10 years pissing me off, and I’m not ready to make up just yet.

As I abhor writing cheques (too many steps required, and who has stamps just lying around?), my billing relationship with Eastlink to date has gone like this:

• Bill arrives.
• Bill placed aside.
• Month passes.
• Another bill arrives.
• Another bill placed aside.
• Month passes.
• Another bill arrives.
• Another bill placed aside.
• Friendly Eastlink clerk calls and leaves a “we are going to disconnect your phone” message for me.
• I call clerk back, ask if I can pay the bill online.
• Clerk tells me “we’re working on that” and I pay by credit card over the phone.
• Repeat.

Today, though, the pattern broke: apparently I can pay my Eastlink bill online now, using a kludge that they’ve worked out:

• I need to select “Eastlink Long Distance” as my payee.
• I need to pad my 6-digit account number with an initial four zeros because a 10-digit account number is expected.

I’ll let you know if this works.

I didn’t think I’d be able to get over Tom Cavanagh doing those icky CIBC commercials. But I have: I really like his new CBS show, Love Monkey.

(Updated later in the day…) Things I like about the show:

• Jason Priestly. Yes, Jason Priestly. I’m as amazed as you are.
• Judy Greer playing the “best friend” (i.e. George Costanza) character. Finally a mainstream show with a no-sexual-tensions man-woman friendship.
• Jokes about grammar. This could get tiresome, but it’s funny for now.
• Eric Bogosian. Yes, Eric Bogosian.
• Good interiors; good exteriors; good music.

It’s possible that the show could crash and burn: introducing “new love interest” thing so early in the series means that there’s a lot of “will they or won’t they” sexual tension; I hope that doesn’t become too much of a focal point (remember Anything But Love?)

And while you have to appreciate the anti-corporate “indie” attitudes espoused by Cavanagh’s character (complete with “you worked for a multi-national corporation for 3 years — you are a suit” retorts from his friends), the whole “it’s all about the music” thing can’t be the bedrock on which the series is mounted either.

If things succeed it will be because the series pulls off the “ensemble comedo-drama” thing much in the same way that Ed and thirtysomething did. Indeed it occurred to me that Love Monkey might be a just heir to thirtysomething’s throne; we’ll see.

At long last I was able to get Kismet running on my [[Sharp Zaurus SL-5500]] (these instructions did the trick). For the uninitiated, the Zaurus is a little handheld computer that runs Linux, and Kismet is a “wifi sniffing” program that lets me walk around with my wifi-equipped Zaurus and lists all of the wireless networks it encounters along the way.

So tonight I did a simple walk around the block to see what I could find in the neighbourhood.

To my surprise, there was a lot to be found:

• 15 wireless access points
• 9 of 15 were using WEP, 6 were free and open
• Manufacturer breakdown:
• Linksys: 4
• D-Link: 4
• Netgear: 2
• Gemtek: 1
• Zyxel: 1
• Siemens: 1
• Global Sun: 1
• SMC: 1

That’s 15 networks detectable over about 2 acres of land. This is about as close to “open wireless access everywhere” as you can get, I think.

Dragos posts a useful table, charting the costs of living in Bucharest. I would find it very useful to have a chart like this for every major city in the world. Dragos based his chart on a similar effort for Prague.

I have been reading the Disease Outbreak News from the World Health Organization’s Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response group for the past while. Like today’s Avian influenza – situation in Indonesia - update.

With all the “we’re all going to die” media hype surrounding avian flu, I find the style of the WHO bulletins pleasingly straightforward. Not that their contents are pleasing. Indeed, absent of hype as they are, the simple stories are starkly depressing:

The first patient was a 13-year-old girl. She developed symptoms on 6 January, was hospitalized on 12 January, and died on 14 January. The second patient was her four-year-old brother. He developed symptoms on 8 January, was hospitalized on 14 January, and died on 17 January.

Two other family members, a 14-year-old sister and the 43-year-old father, remain hospitalized with respiratory symptoms. The sister was hospitalized on 14 January and the father on 17 January. Samples from these cases are being tested to determine whether they were also infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

Investigations conducted by the Ministry of Health and WHO found evidence of a large poultry outbreak in the family’s neighbourhood. Chickens kept by the family began to die three days before the first patient developed symptoms. All family members had close contact with the diseased chickens and assisted in the removal of dead birds.

Regular readers will know that, although I am a staunch [[Formosa Tea House]] regular, I occasionally divert to [[Interlude]]. Indeed “Gong Bao Thursdays” have become a regular outing for the [[usual bunch]].

Today I decided to mix things up a bit and go to [[Interlude]] for lunch on a Monday. And, Gong Bao not being on offer on Mondays, I opted for my old standby of the Buddha Special and an order of dumplings.

And I gotta say, the dumplings were fantastic today. They’re usually pretty good, but there was something about them today that sung.

Throw in a Ginger Black Tea (guaranteed to knock out any mid-winter-blah you might be feeling and fill you with summer sun), and it’s a solid Monday lunch.

Catherine and I showed up at the polling station at Holland College right on the stroke of 8:30 a.m. this morning, voter cards in hand, ready to exercise our franchise.

Unfortunately things didn’t go according to plan.

One of the pages in the register of electors — by chance the one containing the Rs and Ss — was missing. As a result, even though I had my card, and I appeared in the duplicate copies of the lists that the party representatives had on hand, I was forced to re-register as if I was a new elector.

I fear that my R and S brethren in poll 60 will suffer the same fate.

So I waited in a new line, waited while the registrar filled in a new form, and then picked up where I left off.

Which just goes to show that you can invest millions in a National Register of Elections, but if one link in the chain falls out, it’s all for nought.

The rest of the process went as planned; indeed I think, for the first time in my life, I voted with feeling.