An abbreviated report tonight, as exhaustion fades me quickly soon.

Up at the crack of dawn. Sophie and Oliver find they are moving to North Carolina. Pick up Sophie at UC Davis and head, in the rain, into Berkeley to the chocolate factory. Much chocolate consumed, and I decide that 70% cacao is now my personal minimum. Indian fast food for lunch. Into the hills for verdant memories of [friend, not son] Oliver’s childhood. Across the Bay Bridge for supplementary chocolate and wardriving with my iBook and Sophie’s Pocket PC (very cool). Rendezvous with silverorange boys and two browser savants from the Mozilla Foundation for dinner at the Betelnut on Union St. (recommended by Ian).

Taxi to the hotel. Settle in, only to be summoned to the promise of fun by Dan. Drive Nick to the airport. Only small fun. Drive around in suburbia: many big box stores and fast food restaurants, but little fun. Daniel and I get hit with the bowling bolt at the same time, and we undertake a short but very complicated diversion into alley location, which ultimately fails, but is somewhat fun. Back to hotel. Deep sigh and resignation to sleep rather than Big Fun. Have to live purely on the residual joie de vivre of the futility of it all.

At the Pan Pacific now, tucking in for the night. Tomorrow my last dash of warm coastal freedom before the insane redeye return to snow, snow, snow.

As previously reported, this is a out-of-order episode in my western adventure, stretching back two days to Saturday night.

Saturday night we hooked up with the silverorange boys after all and, based on a recommendation from Peter Burka (present only in spirit), we walked into up, up, up to a Japanese mall food court for sushi in boats. But there was a long and confusing line, so we headed back out into the neighbourhood, and finally settled on a Japanese restaurant across the street.

The general consensus was that the food was excellent. I had a combination dinner of salad, soup, sushi, and tofu steak, and a glass of Kirin beer. During the dinner, a plan to engage in some variation of drunken karaoke emerged, so when we finished at the restaurant, we scoured the neighbourhood for an eligible location. Alas we came up dry, and so walked, somewhat sullenly, back down, down, down towards our hotel.

Once at the hotel, a small burst of new energy pushed us back out the door. There was an aborted flirt with a raucous Irish pub, followed by some aimless wandering. Somewhere along the way, the Burka boys secreted themselves off, no doubt to attend some late-nite Mozart concert. Finally, realizing that the End Was Near, we made a last-ditch attempt to rescue the night by jumping on the Powell-Hyde cable car.

At this point, somehow, I was nominally in charge of the event, and there were many sceptical looks my way as the cable car drew further and further from our starting point, and the Fun Night Activities appeared to be whittling away to nothing. We finally reached the other side of the mountain and, as luck would have it, a jazz lounge winding down for the night presented itself. We had a drink, entertained by smooth piano stylings, and then, satisfied that we had done our best to achieve maximum levels of fun, ventured back out to find our way home.

Serendipity struck as, amidst a “we’re going to need two taxis” conversation, Dan flagged down a mini-van taxi that neatly held us all. It appeared, from my backseat position, to be driven by Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. But we got there in one piece, and a much better piece it was than the crazy NASCAR-inspired taxi ride from the night before.

This morning we wrangled ourselves up for 9:00 a.m., and by all appearances our young colleagues were either all out and about, or still asleep (the only one with concrete plans was Stephen, and I’m sure he’ll report his exciting activities here). We had a moribund breakfast at a deceptively well-decorated café around the corner, walked around Chinatown for a while (our weather has been fantastic, and there’s no salve to the frigid snow-pummelled Charlottetown soul better than a warm morning walk in the sun).

And then suddenly it was time for Johnny and Jodi to head back to Vancouver, and for me to do a complex Bart-to-train dance up to Davis to rendezvous with Oliver and Sophie. By the clock on the wall, the train upon which I write this note should arrive in Davis in 20 minutes. More on our exciting Davis activities, and our chocolate-drenched Monday morning, when next the Internet strikes.

This will be a little disjointed: I’ve already written up a post about our exciting Late Nite activities Saturday, but it’s on my laptop, and I’m writing this on [friend, not son] Oliver’s desktop. So Sunday will come before Saturday night.

We got up lateish this morning, and found the silverorange boys either asleep, off to start their day, or simply not taking our calls. As such, we proceeded to a rather moribund breakfast at a place with an excellent veneer of sunflower goodness and abysmal food. This we followed with a mandatory make-up coffee, and a walk through Chinatown on a sunnny Sunday morning.

Then it was time for Johnny and Jodi to take their leave back to Vancouver, and for me to head northeast to Davis to rendezvous with Oliver and Sophie.

I took the stunningly efficient California transit system [at least by comparison to PEI, with transit that is stunningly absent] — a BART subway to the Amtrak train — from downtown San Francisco to Davis, and arrived around two. Oliver was there at the platform to meet me, and we had a pleasant lunch on the patio, followed by a strong [at least for me] cup of coffee.

We dropped in on Sophie for a bit, and then took a walk through an interesting prototypical community called Village Homes that borders their house (an interesting “backwards” approach to urban planning, with all of the houses facing a common, and the streets a secondary rather than primary feature) and the Davis Wetlands, which uses natural features as part of the city’s sewage treatment process.

Back at Oliver and Sophie’s, we had a dinner of fondue, and then sat down to watch the DVD of Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me, a film by our oddly mutual acquaintance Tessa Blake (for those of you playing the home game: I came to know Tessa through Ian; they came through PEI on their honeymoon, and then came up to Zap Your PRAM; Oliver knows Ian because he followed a link on my website way back when, but also because Sophie’s sister in law used to date Chip, one of Ian’s best friends. It is as complicated as it sounds. And more.)

Tomorrow we’re off to Berkeley to the chocolate factory. It’s also the day that Oliver and Sophie find, by virtue of VIRMP, where they’ll be moving come the end of June.

Stay tuned.

We all woke up at the crack of dawn this morning — me because I’m on Atlantic Time, and Johnny and Jodi because they’re normal. We hooked up with Steven and Stephen for breakfast, and were later joined by Dan and Daniel and Nick.

While the silverorange boys headed off to Monterey to hook up with the elusive Tom for lunch, Johnny and Jodi and I walked down Market Street to the Ferry Terminal, and took the ferry to Sausilito (a Dave Hyndman suggestion — thanks!). Once there we had fantastic lunch of sandwiches at Venice, followed by a candy orgy, fuelled by a broad selection of candies purchased from a bulk candy store that encouraged (against our disbelieving protests) free sampling.

The ferry experience, as Dave mentioned, is heightened by the presence of a full bar on the ferry, offering spirits, wine and beer. As most of our fellow tourists headed to the outdoor deck, we were left with the bar to ourselves, and had a glass of wine (beer for Johnny) on the way back to the city.

Back in the city, we managed to figure out the trolley car system (note to fellow travelers: if you take the ferry, your trolley ride is free — just get a transfer at the ferry terminal before you exit), and rode the entire length of Market Street to Castro Street, heart of the gay village.

Along Castro we had an excellent cup of coffee, met many well-tempered dogs, and were handed pamphlets by supporters of Kerry, Edwards, and Kucinich (it’s Super Tuesday here on Tuesday; listen to Main Street on that day for my report from the ground). We walked back down Market Street and stopped in at Crossroads, a used clothing store. I found an amazing pair of red, yellow and turquoise shoes which, alas, Johnny and Jodi vetoed the purchase of (in retrospect, the turquoise was a little too clown like). Jodi did, however, snag an excellent pair of red shoes and a pair of jeans.

Further along Market Street we found Get Lost Books, a fair to middling travel books store (with an above average selection of travel accessories), and then the pinacle of my shopping day, FLAX, which is. bar none, the best art supply store I’ve ever encountered. I bought an amazing fountain pen (there’s nothing like buying a new fountain pen to enliven the soul) and we headed on our way with minutes to close; I could have spent hours and hours more there.

Back on the trolley to Powell Street, a brief stop at the Apple Store (it opened this morning at 10 a.m. and when we passed by around 10:30 a.m. there were, quite literally, about 2,000 people in the line to get in; at 6:00 p.m. we walked right in the door) where I got to fondle the new mini iPod, and we’re back to our hotel.

The silverorange boys are, at this hour, missing in action, and we may be forced to head out for nighttime Maximum Fun without them.

Tomorrow Johnny and Jodi are, alas, back to Canada, but their absence will be salved by Oliver and Sophie when I travel up to Davis. More later.

5:00 a.m. — Got woken up by Rainbow Connection, instrumental version, on the CBC’s early morning service. Someday we’ll find it…

5:32 a.m. — Dan arrives in a truck to drive to the airport; early signs of blizzard on the roads.

5:41 a.m. — Arrive at airport. Perfect timing. Dan claims he is emulating my one-knapsack “extreme packing” lifestyle, but yet is weighed down by unwieldy multi-bag system that could never qualify as true “extreme packing.”

6:10 a.m. — Air Canada flight to Montreal leaves on time.

6:30 a.m. — Flight attendant announces that somehow the plane has been left without food. This later turns out not to be completely true: there are about a dozen Peek Frean cookies.

7:45 a.m. (EST) — Arrive Montreal. Make our way to the U.S. Customs pre-clearance. Dan, weighted down with his luggage, and not possessing a U.S. passport, ends up hours behind me. I browse for magazines, buy extra food, talk to home on the cell phone while Dan stews in line.

9:00 a.m. — Flight delayed 15 minutes to “wait for six late-arriving passengers.” These phantom passengers never arrive. Mysterious. Dan and I both seated right behind the first class section, and we both have weird padded seat belt that the flight attendant explains contain tiny little air bags. Presumably, in case of accident the air bags inflate and prevent us from being flung into first class, where we would have access to cookies and ice cream and special chi chi washroom.

10:00 a.m. — Movie on plane is School of Rock, which I’ve already seen. No matter, as it’s playing on a tiny video screen almost directly above my head. I remember when they had real 16mm projectors on airplanes.

12:20 p.m. (PST) — Arrive San Francisco. Meet up with Nick Burka, who has flown in from Ottawa. Dan and Nick head south to rendezvous with the other slices. Minutes later, Johnny and Jodi arrive.

12:50 p.m. — AirTrain to BART. Figure out how to buy BART tickets. Take BART to Powell Street and find our hotel (nice, clean, free Internet).

2:00 p.m. — Excellent Thai food for lunch; best since Bangkok. Nice walk down to Union Square. Nice and warm here — jacket/sweater weather; paradise.

3:30 p.m. — Get half-price tickets to see improv tonight at Fort Mason.

4:30 p.m. — Mandatory rest period.

5:30 p.m. — Exciting cable car ride to Hyde Street Circle. Somehow we are exempt from payment for ride (either that, our we are about to be arrested). Guilt pangs.

6:30 p.m. — Dinner. Forgettable. For future reference: avoid all faux 50s style diners unless they are inside Harrod’s.

7:30 p.m. — Bizarre trek overland to Fort Mason Center, through dark and scary park, down endless stairs. Improv at Bay Area Theatre Sports tonight turns out to be “Improv Shakespeare.” This is alternatively funny, monotonous, impressive and perplexing, but ultimately a good night out.

10:00 p.m. — (now 2:00 a.m. AST) Insanely fast driving taxi back to hotel. Meet heavy-packing Dan trolling for WiFi in the hotel lobby (he was the only slice to exempt himself from the loud rocking the others indulged in). Breakfast plans concluded.

10:30 p.m. — Johnny and Jodi go forth to procure Yugoslav wine for night cap.

Must sleep now.

I used to think that Island Tel Advanced [sic] Solutions was the only company of PEI that wouldn’t accept online payment of bills through my local Credit Union. But I was wrong. Regular readers will recall that we switched business telephone service from Island Tel to Eastlink back in December. While Eastlink’s service has been excellent, I found today, going to pay our bill online for the first time, that they don’t support this.

When I called their customer service centre, I was told that “we really wish we had it” but that “we’ve stopped telling customers it’s only going to be a couple of months because we’ve been telling them that for a year.”

Online bill payment is, I think, a very basic “price of entry” for any utility, and I’m frankly amazed at this oversight by Eastlink. Ironically, they accept online payment for cable television and for high speed Internet, just not for telephone service.

While this isn’t enough to push me back to Aliant, every month when I have to call them up to pay by credit card, or write them a cheque, I’m going to think a little “boy these Eastlink folks don’t have it together, do they” thought, and that can’t be good for business.

I’ve decided to use my trip at the end of the week to San Francisco as an “extreme packing” experiment. Rather than taking my usual business travel luggage — a full-size frame backpack with clothes, plus a large briefcase with laptop — I’m trying to pare down into one medium-sized carry-on knapsack.

As such, I welcome any tips from seasoned travellers on how to discard all but the essentials. What can I leave behind?

Update: here my report on how things went.

Back in 2001 I wrote about switching my domain name registrar from Network Solutions to a small Edmonton company called Trinic. After dealing with the non-responsive behemoth that was Network Solutions, Trinic’s lean, mean interface was a pleasure, and for a long time I was pleased with their services.

Starting in early 2002, I encountered some customer service problems with Trinic. Then, later that year, I heaped some more praise their way.

Since that point, however, it has been mostly downhill. When their services work, they work well. When they don’t work, it’s almost impossible to get a human being on the phone, and email response time has gotten longer and longer. Their web-based systems are “quirky” at best, and often contain incomplete information, and there have been several instances where domains have become “stuck” somehow, and have required them to clear something manually. With the exception of some outages in their DNS services, I’ve never encountered a serious service-affecting issue; that said, I’m gradually lost faith in the integrity of their systems.

All of which has led me, this week, to switch registrars again. This isn’t something I do lightly, mostly because of the amount of work it takes to transfer everything — seemingly endless streams of confirmation emails to go through, mostly, punctuated by waiting times for various third parties to do things.

I choose Webnames.ca as my new home. This company is an outgrowth of the original “dot ca” domain name registry at the University of British Columbia (back in the days when registering a .ca name was as simple as sending off an email message to John Demco). I first used their systems several years ago, and I wasn’t impressed: I ran into frequent problems, and found their customer service lacking.

I revisited them this week, and found things had improved dramatically. They have just unwrapped a new web-based management tool that is, in large part, intuitive, fast, and easy to use. In transferring a menagerie of 30 .ca and .com domain names this week, I ran into a couple of problems, mostly CIRA-related, and I never had to wait more than a couple of minutes to talk to a real, live, helpful person. The kind of person that could actually fix my problem, not simply take the details and promise to call me back.

I had a longer conversation yesterday with the company’s Business Development Manager, Rupert Lindsay, yesterday, and found him knowledgeable, helpful, and willing to answer almost any question I had.

I’m going to be sending more business their way in the days and weeks to come; if you want to register a domain name yourself, early indications are that Webnames.ca is a good destination.

My re-entry into the world of print has required finding good printers. This week I found two.

As much as I am firmly against casual mis-use of the letter K, Kwik Kopy, in its new location at the corner of Queen and Euston Streets in Charlottetown, is very handy, and thus was my default choice. They’ve been running some colour copying on coated card stock — business cards and posters — and the results have been excellent. Not only are the copies good, but I’ve been able to email PDF files to them, and their staff, including Shawn MacKenzie, the owner, have been good about getting back to me. I’ll use them again.

I also needed some larger versions of the poster produced, and for that I turned to Atlantic Digital Imaging at the corner of University and Kent. They work in large-format printing exclusively, and they do good work. They ran a proof copy of a 22 x 34 poster for me this morning, and the results were better than I expected. It’s not cheap (one copy of the poster is $49), but for small quantities it’s the only thing going. As with Kwik Kopy, they have no trouble accepting files by email, and have been very responsive.

Having good printers is like having a good ISP in the digital work. Fortunately, I have both now.

On Friday I will wing west by aeroplane, joining Steven, Daniel, Stephen and Dan (all being members of my landlord Borg collective), as well as Johnny and Jodi, in San Francisco for a 4 days of high-level corporate discussions and strategic planning exercises.

I’ll also get a chance to see Oliver and Sophie, and to tour the Scharffen Berger Chocolate plant in Berkeley.

Although others have asked the same question, it bears repeating: if there’s something in San Francsico you think I should see, let me know!