Here’s a paragraph from an email I received from CIRA this evening:

You are requested to confirm the Registrant merger of Reinvented Inc. with Reinvented Inc..

The email is valid — I’m consolidating several CIRA registrants with the same name into one. Webnames.ca has been quite helpful in this regard: so far they’re batting almost 1000 in customer service.

Will Pate now has an online photo gallery. My favourite photo so far is this one from the last University Ave. Formosa bloggerpalooza. Although it does make me think that my profile is more like a Triumph TR-7 than I am comfortable with.

When I write what I write here, I tend to think of myself as writing to an audience of about ten people: my mother, my mother-in-law, my brothers, my sister-in-law, and maybe Robert Paterson once in a while. Oh, and all the Ledwells and the Sandy Nicholson and her crew.

Them, and a bunch of random web surfers who end up here because they search Google for “I’m angry at my phone company.”

Recently, though, an interesting thing has started to happen: this weblog’s audience, combined with the compact “everybody is connected to everybody else” nature of Prince Edward Island, means that when I write things about Islanders and Island institutions here, somehow word gets back.

Yesterday I wrote about my car insurance; today, Fred Hyndman responded. Fred owns my insurance broker, Hyndman and Company (as did his father, and his father’s father).

Last week I wrote about the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Emergency Room. The next day, the Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine posted a comment, followed shortly by his predecessor.

I cautioned new anchor Bruce Rainnie about over-Boomering on Compass. An hour and a half later, he assured us all he was mindful of the dangers.

I wrote about Marie Brine’s ergonomics auditing and got an email back from Marie several months later, and then, a few months after than, another one telling me a friend of hers in Taiwan had run across the post.

My initial negative review of Angels Restaurant elicited a phone call from Ken Zakem, the owner. And then a follow up from his father.

And the granddaddy of all of this, my open letter to Island Tel, which resulted in a lot of hand-wringing at the company, and a lot of interesting conversations with mid-level managers who agreed with me.

I point this out not as a prideful boast of my awesome media power, but from interest in what it says about weblogs, especially when they take place, out in the open, in a small place like this.

I’ve never been seated firmly on the ” weblogs are going to change the media forever and replace newspapers and television” bandwagon. That said, what happens here, and on other local blogs, does seem to more and more involve an interesting sort of feedback loop that you don’t see in traditional media.

Whether this is truly powerful and interesting, or a self-involved sort of virtual coffee talk, remains to be seen. In the meantime, it is lots of fun.

The hot and sour soup at Interlude (Kent St., across from the fire hall) rocked my world today. It’s one of those foods that can have you thinking “I had no idea that simple food could be combined into flavours like this.” Meanwhile, Ann is trying to convince me to go to the Golden Wok to try theirs.

Viva’s, nee Eddie’s Lunch, has a “new owner” sign on the front door. I must admit to feeling guilt pangs about leaving the place in a lurch after being a regular customer for three years: moving my office uptown has meant that it’s no longer in my eating orbit. Anyone know what’s up there?

A reminder that Campbell Webster’s favourite resturant, The Town and Country, on Queen St. beside city hall, is turning forty years old in April. My friend Gary revealed last night that back in the 1970s he took his meals there regularly, while squatting in Beaconsfield. Their big rounds tables are unique in Charlottetown. Wish them well next time you’re there.

Catherine and I ate at Angel’s (Belvedere Ave. across from the Superstore) again a couple of weeks ago, and had another good experience. While there we learned that chef/owner Ken Zakem provides a weekly free pasta buffet on Sunday afternoons, with transportation from Trius Tours, to clients of the Upper Room food bank; kudos to Ken for this brave and generous act.

Something appears to be falling apart at Timothy’s Coffee on Kent Street: the last two times I’ve been in, there’s been a line 5 or 6 people deep. Sunday was the worst, with customers waiting 10 or 15 minutes just to get a coffee. Perhaps I’m getting less patient in my old age. Perhaps they need to staff up. Probably a little bit of both. They still have good coffee and good food.

As if it was possible to have the Canadian telecommunications landscape get more complicated, Angus TeleManagement Group is reporting that Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) is acquiring Allstream (which used to be AT&T Canada). MTS is 21.7% owned by BCE, which also owns 53.5% of Aliant.

On some level, this is like Eatons buying Simpsons, but through a third party.

If you were going to design a bureacracy’s policies related to the free and public dissemination of information on the web, you could probably do no better than the U.S. National Weather Service.

They simply make reams and reams of information available for free. And they support this with reams and reams of supporting materials, like databases and GIS files.

Case in point: from this page on their website you can obtain RSS and CAP feeds of weather alerts for every U.S. state, or for the entire country.

That’s a good idea, a good use of open standards, and they’ve done a good job of it.

But it gets better: yesterday, in experimenting with the CAP feeds, I found a small technical problem (geeknote: they were using non-encoded greater and less than signs in their XML text). So I sent them a note. This morning, less than 18 hours later, I received a note back: problem fixed.

That’s good customer service, and it demonstrates care and concern for data that is sometimes sadly lacking elsewhere.

Compared to the National Weather Service, our own Environment Canada is a veritable locked castle of data. While they have experimented with XML forecasts (an experiment that appears, sadly, to have ended), they regard their data (as does most of the federal bureaucracy here in Canada) as a sort of digital crown jewels. They could learn a lot from their peers in the U.S.

Today in the mail I received a copy of the Annual Report for the Town of Dublin, New Hampshire, courtesy of my friend (and town resident) John.

Last week it was time for the Dublin Town Meeting, and after discussing this with John on the phone, and finding out about how New England town meetings work, John thought I might be interested in seeing one of the artifacts of direct democracy.

Here’s how the Highway Department Annual Report section begins:

The year started out with a lot of snow (like in the 70’s) and cold temperatures. There was no January thaw and it stayed cold all season. In April, we started out spring clean up of the village and sidewalk. In July, all the roadside mowing was completed.

Among other things, the report includes:

• A complete list of all building permits issued.
• The total number of books acquired by the Dublin Public Library (313).
• A list of the recipients of the Boston Post Cane, awarded to the oldest citizen of the town (Beekman Pool has held the cane since 2002; Beatrice Fairfield refused the cane in 2001).
• The minutes of the 2003 Town Meeting, which included a motion “to see if the Town will choose all necessary officers, Measurer of Wood and Bark and Memorial Day Committee.” (Brian Barden was voted Measurer of Wood and Bark).
• A list of all Town property.
• A list of all deaths, burials, marriages, and births recorded in 2003.
• A complete line-by-line budget for the Town.

The complete report runs 101 pages.

By way of comparison, I dropped by Charlottetown City Hall this morning to pick up a copy of the City of Charlottetown Annual Report.

Except there isn’t one.

The best they could do was this 2003 budget summary on the City website (they did offer to locate a printed copy for me.

Perhaps we should have one. An Annual Report from the City would be good for recording our history — a good snapshot of the City and its activities — and, even better, a way for citizens to understand more about the mysteries of City Hall.

If you’re going to fly in the US, check out SeatGuru.com, which rates the seats on most US airlines.

I’m in the market for competitive auto insurance, as Dominion of Canada has just raised my rates 15% for no reason.

• Car and driver in Prince Edward Island.
• One driver, born 1966.
• Licensed since 1982.
• No violations/convictions/accidents.
• One car, 2000 Jetta 4DR.
• $500,000 Liability.
• Collision - $250 deductible.
• Comprehensive - $100 deductible.
• Driven only for pleasure, approx. 8000km/year

Last year’s rate was $806. This year it’s gone up to $940. Can you do better?

Kent Street Pizza (in the space formerly occupied by Mr. Big Pizza at Kent and Prince) makes good pizza: thin crust, good ingredients, friendly phone staff. A little too much cheese on our test pizza, but we’ll ask them to adjust that next time.

Century City, the new legal drama on CBS set in 2030, is interesting, but I think they’re going to run out of interesting “future legal issue” plotlines before a single season is over. Suggestion to producers: if you’re trying to convince us that it’s 2030, don’t cast Hector Elizondo and Donnelly Rhodes.

TLC aka The Learning Channel, is now almost completely home renovations shows. In prime time you’d be hard pressed to see something that’s not Trading Spaces, While You Were Out, or some variation thereof. Prediction: in the next 24 months TLC will spin off a new channel, called “The Renovation Channel,” that plays nothing else but.

The Formosa Tea House in its new location is a rousing success. The Rice Topping (vegetables and mushrooms over rice) is the star of the new menu. The space is open and bright. New staff are nice. And the Wasabi Peas are back (25 cents a pack at the front counter).

The Taj Mahal, the Indian restaurant on University Ave., is now scheduled to open in April rather than June.

You can fly JetBlue from Denver to Boston for $79US. This is crazy.

You can take the Fung Wah Bus from Boston to New York for $10US. This is crazy too.

Prediction: within 12 months at least one hotel or B&B on Prince Edward Island will offer guests an optional goldfish in tank for the duration of their stay.

This House Has 22 Minutes is no longer funny. Monday Report is funny.

Bruce Rainnie is doing a good job on Compass. Prediction: within 36 months, I will be the only person left on PEI calling the supper hour newscast Compass.