Last night, coming out of a showing of the Tom Hanks movie Terminal, Dad and I ran into an older couple who had come into the movie late, and wanted to know what had happened at the beginning. They were a well-bred couple, he born in Croatia and she in the U.K., both Oxford-educated. When Dad revealed that his father was from Gospic, the man´s response was “oh, you come from serious Croatia.” We weren´t sure whether that was a compliment or an insult, but it sounds pretty good to me.

Today we left the gentle confines of Zagreb in search of family. We headed east on the E-70 to Kutina, and then off the main highway into a smaller, but still rather substantial village. All we had to go on was a name — the married name of my father´s cousin Regina.

By some miraculous series of events that involved a trip to a bookie, a trip to the police station (for information, not arrest), and about a dozen extremely helpful Croatians who sent us “up the hill, to the right, until where the pavement ends and you come to a vineyard,” at 4:00 p.m. we found ourselves driving our little Renault down a rough country lane towards a fedora-wearing man leaning on a fence. Dad asked, in his best Croatian, “can you direct us to Manda´s house?”

“This is Manda´s house!” was his response. We had found the house of my step-great-Aunt Manda and her husband Ivo. Manda´s father Stipe is my great-grandfather. We were invited into their humble farmhouse, fed a meal of cured ham and whisky (Dad drank the whisky — I was driving), and Dad pulled off an amazing facsimile of a native Croatian speaker to engage them in conversation about family connections, family history, and their life.

I think Dad and I are still both in shock — especially him, for I think he completely exhausted his brain by dredging up the 60-years-latent Croatian from the depths. I can only imagine what Manda and Ivo are thinking about their strange relations… especially me, the strange one who doesn´t speak at all and refuses a fourth helping of ham.

We´ve come back into Kutina for the night, bedding down in the oddly palatial Hotel Kutina, which has an Internet terminal in the restaurant — 40 lipa a minute for very fast access. Tomorrow morning we´ll had back out and try to find our cousin Regina, who wasn´t home today. Amazing.

Lots of little technical items to take care of otherwise here in this Internet cafe in downtown Zagreb, so this will be quick.

As helpful readers (Nick and Foog, if I recall) suggested, it was very easy to get my borrowed locked-to-Rogers mobile phone unlocked: the first place in Ljubljana we stopped in would do it for 2500 SIT, or about $15 — a much better deal than the Rogers offer to not do it for $250. I dropped the phone off this morning at 9:00 a.m., and they met me at the train station at 2:00 p.m. with a working phone. I dropped my Croat VipMe SIM card in and, presto!, I was live and wired. If you need to get in touch while I am in Croatia (until Oct. 12), you can call (from Canada) 011 385 918810854 (no cost to me — you pay international rate to Croatia).

Trip is going very well: Dad and I met in the airport in London, had a shower, caught the bus to Stanstead where we caught an EasyJet flight to Ljubljana. The Hotel Park — pre-booked by Dad — was clean and central, if a little pricy. Our 24 hours in the city were great: we rode bikes through Tivoli Park, had a great supper of gnocchi and a great lunch of pizza, and got a good taste for what is arguably the most beautiful city I have visited to date.

Dad and I have yet to kill each other, which is positive. We have not even come close. You will notice the complete lack of apostrophes in this post — cannot figure out how to type it. Had the same problem in Thailand. Makes for more formal sounding writing, so not all bad.

Off to find a hotel for the night.

On May 22, 1928, my grandfather, Dane Rukavina, received his passport in Karlovac, Croatia. On June 2nd, 1928 he boarded the Empress of Australia in Cherbourg, France and he arrived in Quebec City on June 8th, 1928. And so started the history of one branch of my family in Canada.

Tomorrow my father and I will take a trip in the opposite direction, flying first to London, then on to Ljubljana. We’ll take the train from there to Zagreb, and then we’ll drive south to my grandfather’s birthplace in Konjsko Brdo.

There are many reasons for the trip. It’s an opportunity for my father and I to take a trip together, something that we haven’t done for 25 years (our last trip was a bus trip around the United States in 1979). It’s an opportunity to see if we can make contact with other Rukavinas in the old country. And a chance for me to see the where part of my roots lie (I was there in 1972, but I was only 6 years old, and remember only vague impressions).

I’ll report in from the road as often as Internet and inspiration present themselves. Back in Canada on October 15th.

Here’s some more fun with the The Old Farmer’s Almanac RSS feed and NetNewsWire:

I’m headed to Croatia on Monday, I’ve got myself in a cell phone pickle, and I’m wondering if anyone in the readership can help with advice or pointers.

I’ve a borrowed Sony Ericsson T68i GSM cell phone. I originally thought it was unlocked — that is, not tied to a particular cell provider and thus capable of accepting SIM cards from any. I went ahead and purchased a SIM card from the Croatian VipMe provider (from the helpful folks at Telestial), a mobile charger, and a Bluetooth gizmo for my laptop.

It was only yesterday, when I was able to power on the phone for the first time and put all the pieces together, that I found that the phone was, indeed, locked to the Rogers network, and incapable of accepting SIM cards from other providers.

I spent a good part of the day on the phone to various parts of Rogers, and found only that (a) I could get the phone unlocked for a fee of $250, but only if (b) I have a Rogers account that’s been valid for a month or more. In other words, Rogers claims it’s impossible to help me by Monday, and even if it was would charge me $250 for the privilege.

I don’t have time to get an alternative phone, I don’t have access to a T68i “service cable” that would allow the phone to be unlocked via one of the various online services that advertise this.

It’s not vital that I have a phone while I’m away, and I do have the option of picking up a cheap phone in Europe or renting a phone once there.

But if any of the smart people in the readership have any suggestions, I’m open to them. Deadline is Monday at 2:00 p.m.

Someone found an LG-brand cell phone battery and left it in our vestibule at 100 Prince St., Charlottetown this afternoon. It has the following information on the back:

• Model: LGLI-ACGM
• CGMILL
• 03Y26M

It’s a silver battery that would clip on to the back of a cell phone, about 2 inches by 1-1/4 inches and 1/8 inch thick:

If it’s yours, or you know who owns it, please email me at foundbattery@reinvented.net. Pass it on — I have great faith in the six degrees of Island separation.

I made the mistake of listening to Island Morning on CBC Radio this morning from 8:25 to 8:30 a.m. and heard plenty of banter between host Karen Mair and news presenter Andrew Sprague related to some sort of “road trip” that Andrew is about to take. But I missed the back story, so it was all very confusing.

I made a quick call up to the station just now, and found that Andrew is about to head off across the country to parts unknown.

I’ll miss Andrew’s dulcet tones every morning on the air, and I’ll especially miss him at the New Year’s Levies come January.

Rock on a travel well, Andrew. We’ll be waiting for your triumphant return.

Update: Andrew himself just called: he’ll be back for Christmas, and the Levies; no worries.

Even if you’re not a regular customer of Shoppers Drug Mart, if you have any interest in the future of retail design you should really pay a visit to the new location on University Avenue in Charlottetown: it is truly a sight to behold. The design makes every other drugstore in the city look like a relic from the 1970s: the store is bold, bright, airy, and dramatic.

Whether or not we should be making our pharmapurchase decisions based on retail design is another issue entirely (certainly The Friendly Pharmacy, which went in an entirely different direction, emphasizing service over design, would have us not).

For me what’s important about the new store, though, is that they sell my absolute favourite iced tea, that being the product of the Honest Tea company of Bethesda, Maryland. This bottled iced tea is almost perfect: not too sweet, not too tart, and in a good range of natural flavours (my favourite is the Peach Oo-la-long). There are five bottles sitting in the fridge here at the office, waiting to fuel my trips into “the zone.”

You can find the Honest Tea in the new Shoppers in the “natural foods” section, right at the back of the store on the right in the cooler. Enjoy.

One of the features of NetNewsWire is that it can show you the changes that have been made to a post if the author makes edits after originally posting. For the Old Farmer’s Almanac feeds, which get completely regenerated each day, this is somewhat less useful, but also occasionally interesting. Witness:

What a day in history!

If you’re a regular reader of these virtual pages, you’ll notice that there’s been a rather dramatic re-branding here.

After a little more than five years writing under the Reinvented corporate banner, I’ve relocated my writing under a non-corporate banner that you can variously call ruk or ruk.ca.

How come?

Back in 1999 when this weblog sprang to life, Reinvented was just me. In recent years I’ve been joined by others: my brother Johnny is a fulltime programmer, and my partner Catherine is a part-time jack of all trades. Who knows: someday there might be others!

So where it used to be true that “Reinvented = Peter,” this is no longer the case. And it didn’t seem fair to be making broad pronouncements about important issues (or irrelevant blather, as the case may be) using a “royal we” that is no longer just me.

There’s a slightly more verbose explanation for the move on the About page. You’ll also find a neat little visual trip through website history there.

Some important things to note:

• The old trifurcated “Reinvented,” “Reinvented Labs” and “Reinvented World” blogs are gone, the posts from each aggregated under this new site. The “Labs” and “World” sub-blogs were drafty places that never got the attention they deserved.
• I’ve ditched the Google AdSense ads. While I was deriving some income from these — about $140US a month — I decided that I could no longer conscience having random ads, not under my control, appear associated with my writing. If I run ads in future, they’ll be for products and services I would use myself.
• There’s a somewhat more minimalist design to this site. I’m sure things will get more cluttered with time. Type and headlines are also larger; I’m getting older and feeling bolder. Thanks to Steven for some tricky CSS debugging help with the new design.
• Links to posts on the old blog should get auto-redirected here. There’s some chance that quirky links and images might be missing or mis-directed; I’d appreciate a note if you notice anything awry.
• The URLs for the RSS feeds have changed: read posts via RSS at ruk.ca/rss/index.xml and read comments at ruk.ca/rss/discuss.xml. The old RSS addresses will redirect (if your reader follows redirects), but please update addresses as required.
• The “Search” feature has disappeared for a bit; it will return. Same thing for the “audio comments” feature.
• I’ve succumbed to conventional usage, and that formerly known as “Discussion” is now known as “Comments.” I still think of it as discussion though and welcome you to do likewise.

I’m sure the design and features of the new site will evolve over time, much as they did at the old home. The Reinvented.net website will [eventually] become a “who is Reinvented and what do they do site” but for now it’s serving mostly as a redirector to this site.

Some welcome to the new place. Make yourself at home.