Can someone tell me, in plain language, what “enterprise” means when used marketing technology products with phrases like “enterprise class?” Does it just mean “for business” or “for a whole bunch of people,” or is there some more subtle meaning?

Google unleashed Google Scholar today, in beta. Here’s a search for my Dad, the scholar.

If you’ve got the travel bug, it seems like this season is a spectacularly good time to take the plunge. In a half hour of light searching, I’ve found fares like Air Canada Halifax to London return for $458 CDN (leaving Nov. 22, returning Dec. 1) and United Washington, D.C. to Osaka, Japan return for $466 US (leaving Nov. 22, returning Dec. 2). Remember, from Charlottetown you can fly to Boston, New York, Montreal or Washington with only 15,000 Aeroplan miles, and from there you can jump off to pretty well anywhere.

For my money, the best standard regular everyday meal in Charlottetown — call it “comfort food” if you like — is the Boca Burger with vegetarian rice at Cedar’s. Cedar’s manages to achieve what few other restaurants do: they make good vegetable sides. The “vegetarian rice” is, in fact, plain rice with a vegetable side, the vegetables being a tasty melange of brocolli, carrots, and turnip. And they’re not mushy overboiled vegetables: they’re perfectly cooked, and hot. Excellent.

If you’re looking for soup to take the edge off a cold day, though, you cannot go wrong with the homemade chicken and rice soup at the Town and Country. Made famous by Campbell Webster, this soup is amazing, and will knock the wind back into your sails.

Up the road, at the corner of Queen and Chestnut, is the new Cool Dog Deli (thanks to A. for the pointer). This is a Cindy Burton project, and is, as the cashier told me when I asked, “just a simple little grocery store.” They sell fresh vegetables (organic garlic included), Karin La Ronde meals and sides, fresh bread, and various sundries. They also appear to sell some sort of homebrew dog biscuit. It’s brightly painted inside, and looks to be likely to develop into a solid almost-downtown food destination. They need to fill up the shelves a little more, get a better beverage selection, and finish off the decorating, but I’m hopeful.

There are a couple of new places to eat in town that I haven’t explored yet. Apparently there’s some sort of new waffle/pancake place at 92 Trans-Canada Highway, which I think is the plaze where Tweel’s decamped to out by Robin’s Donuts. And the space formerly occupied by the Anne of Green Gables Tea Room, and then by Manhattan’s, on Queen St. near Richmond, looks to be occupied by a new place. Details on either from readers with experience are welcome.

One more, so far uncorroborated, food note from a correspondent: “The Root Cellar has completely given up and will no longer sell food. They are just going to sell pills. I’ll miss the spices and the cheese.” Can anyone confirm that?

Apparently there is a translator shortage at the EU.

Cynthia’s post this morning made me realize that I don’t know what actually happened to Anne’s parents. How did Anne get orphaned?

I sent my mother to this Habitat thinking that I was sending her to this Habitat. For which I apologize.

Speaking of easyJet: they’ve now moved on to pizza. Really.

I’ve just finished watching two episodes of The Tube, a documentary series about the London Underground (downloaded from the excellent UKNova Bittorrent site). The series is in the tradition of Airline: a series of “behind the scenes” vignettes, focusing on workers and their jobs and the challenges those jobs present.

Airline spends days in the life of U.K.-based airline easyJet (there’s a U.S. version of the programme that uses Southwest). The Tube is about everyday life inside the London subway system.

I find both series extremely compelling. They remind me of a series of books that I loved as a kid, published in the early 1970s, by Arthur Shay, with titles like What It’s Like to Be a Policeman, What Happens in a Car Factory and What Happens When You Travel by Plane.

I love the world of “behind the scenes.”

I noticed that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was wearing a poppy during his interview on Meet The Press this morning.

Except his poppy didn’t look like a normal Canadian Remembrance Day poppy, it was longer, and had a bushy green extension.

I dug into the issue and found that, indeed, the Canadian and British artificial poppies used on November 11 are different. Here’s a side-by-side comparison, Canadian on the left and British on the right:

The Royal Canadian Legion and the Royal British Legion have considerable information about their respective poppy appeals, but, as far as I can tell, no information about the design of their respective poppies. There is, however, a Canadian law suit on their design.

In New Zealand, they use a modified British design. And I just can’t understand the American design.