Rob’s online course The Customer Revolution has a long thread of discussion in response to an assignment about the CARI pool and its failure to perform as hoped.

Ironically, if you search Google for “cari pool”, the first search result leads you to the selfsame discussion.

I stumbled across this when looking for the CARI website. Suggestion for CARI: ditch the meaningless name, and call yourself the “Charlottetown Swimming Pool” and set up a website at www.pool.pe.ca.

Oliver and I have been swimming at CARI every Wednesday since Christmas. When we go, during the supper hour, we usually have the pool to ourselves. It truly is a great resource, something that the “customer perception” of which does, indeed, demand study. Perhaps part of the challenge is that Islanders don’t know quite what to do in a leisure swimming pool, especially without kids. Float around?

Television views do travel in packs. Look at this mediocrity wavelet (red markup is mine):

Original link from kottke.org.

If the on-shore flurry activity and general slush are getting to you, take a look at Air Canada's seat sale, announced today. There are quite good fares: Halifax to London return for $448, Halifax to Bermuda return for $358.

Globe outs CBC “Promo Girl”. The CBC’s Norma Lee MacLeod has the interview.

Today is day one of an exclusive 15-day “Oliver and Peter without Catherine” engagement. Catherine flew to New Orleans this morning (she reports light rain, 17 degrees Celcius, and palm trees in the courtyard of her hotel); Oliver and I are on the Island until Sunday and then we fly away, albeit to the somewhat colder and less exotic Hamilton, Ontario. Our small family doesn’t reconvene until March 29th.

For an idea of how things will be radically different under the reign of Pete: here’s the book we returned to the library and here’s the book we checked out. Gers are much more interesting than Scoop and Wendy!

Post-supper diversions with Catherine include making healthy cookies. With Pete, it’s wall-to-wall Nanaimo Bars.

In other words, we already miss Catherine desperately, and will likely be admitted to hospital with either sugar shock or Mongolian horseracing-related injuries before the week is out.

If you’re a business-curious Charlottetown blogger willing to cross the divide into being “one of the media,” you may be interested in the Media Sneak Preview of the new Sears store on the Malpeque Road:

Greg Paterson, General Sales Manager, Atlantic Region and Anita McGlashon, Manager, Sears Charlottetown will lead media through a tour of the store describing its unique features including its design, merchandise assortment and services.

The Grand Opening (which Sears calls a “Major Photo/Interview Opportunity”) is Thursday, March 17 at 9:00 a.m.

Apparently Sears is now inside something called the “Royalty Power Centre.” Who knew?

Travel agent to the stars, George Stewart, has moved from Admiral Travel in downtown Charlottetown up to the new Sears store on Mount Edward Road.

I’ve written about George in the this space several times:

• It must be hard to be a travel agent
• Admiral Travel

Ian’s post about baby readiness this morning prompted me to dig this photo out of the archives:

That’s Oliver’s room in its “he’s about to be born” state: the photo was taken on September 24, 2000 and he was born six days later.

It’s so clean and non-chaotic. There are so few stuffed animals in it. The laundry hamper lid hasn’t been ripped off yet. We haven’t had to have the plaster stripped out because of flood damage yet. He still has a door handle. And that car seat is so, so tiny.

In related baby sentimentality: Dave Hyndman has a great photo of his on his blog this morning.

In yet another hip, down with it, rad attempt to get all funky and props in the youths, the CBC has a rad cool new web effort called Buzz that seems to exist to promote trippy youth-type events happening over the March break.

Like the far out Rotary Regional Library Bird Presentation and the Fiddle Doo & Pot Luck.

To attract said youths, the CBC has recruited some hot young media superstars, one from each province:

Anyone who’s been using a Mac to make the web for a while will recall the venerable Fetch, the granddaddy of Mac FTP clients.

Fetch gradually fell out of favour with Mac web developers as the world migrated from the “hey, Internet, here’s my password” world of FTP to the more secure SFTP. Many of us left Fetch aside with considerable regret, as it had a very robust feature set.

It seems that Fetch 5.0, now in private beta, will introduce SFTP support. So perhaps Fetch is back?