Because I’m involved in local elections administration work here and, before that, was contracted to the Province of PEI, I’ve made a point of refraining from political commentary here in the weblog and in public otherwise, so as to avoid problems of real or perceived bias.

But there’s another half of me, the half born in the USA that remains a dual citizen, that can freely participate, without problems of perception or bias, in the American political process.

And today, for the first time, that half of me donated to a Presidential campaign: I made a $50 donation to Howard Dean’s campaign.

Why?

Well, the immediate impetus was this email from Gov. Dean this morning (which I received because I’d subscribed to the Dean for America mailing list before heading down to New Hampshire last week):

The entire race has come down to this: we must win Wisconsin. We must launch our new television advertisement on Monday in the major markets in Wisconsin. To do that, I need your help to raise $700,000 by Sunday…

…We will get a boost this weekend in Washington, Michigan and Maine, but our true test will be the Wisconsin primary. A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2-and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race.

I was impressed with the directness of that request: give us money and we’ll try to win Wisconsin; if we don’t, it’s over.

I wasn’t prepared to see Dean lose in Wisconsin without contributing at least something myself.

More generally, after a week in the eye of the New Hampshire Primary storm, I came away actually believing that Dean’s approach to the Presidency is different than Kerry, Edwards and Clark.

Not because of the Internet, or blogs, or bringing new electors into the process (although those are all impressive).

But because he has convinced me that he’s not a bullshit artist.

I watched John Edwards’ victory speech on Tuesday night in South Carolina: it was brilliantly executed, and should go down in the annals of speechcraft as one of the best.

I spent a week in and around the Kerry campaign, and came away having absolutely no grasp of the man or his ideas, save the fact that he can skate.

I sat in the 5th row in Nashua while Wes Clark tried to convince me of his humble beginnings, his military service, his three religions, checking off a demographic scorecard as he proceeded.

But what America needs is not a motivational coach.

We need a doer.

And when you strip away the talking points, and the position papers and the TV ads, Howard Dean has convinced me that’s the primary skill he brings to the job: focused, deliberate, results-oriented leadership with an eye on achievable goals.

I wouldn’t mind working for a company where Howard Dean was the boss.

Combine that with his approach to the issues, most of which I agree with, and you get my vote.

I don’t think Dean’s a revolutionary.

I don’t think the Dean campaign is a quantum leap foward, and that politics has been “changed forever.”

I simply think that, of the candidates in the field that have a chance of beating George W. Bush in November, Dean will do the best job. Both for America and, ultimately, for the world.

If that’s not worth $50, I don’t know what is.

Much to my surprise, I realized this afternoon that I have never been to France. I would have thought that somehow in the last 37 (going on 38) years I would have ended up in France, if only by accident. By no, I have never been to France.

I came to this realization after following the link to world66.com’s tools for traveller page on Scripting.com.

Here’s a map showing the countries I have visited:

I’ve got a lot of countries left to visit, and not many years left!

I do better with the US states:

A couple of trips on Southwest Airlines and I could complete my game card.

I had always considered Nature’s Harvest, the “health food” store in the Confederation Court Mall, to be a place best avoided. Most of what they sell is pills of various sorts, not unlike the new “improved” Root Cellar. And I’m not a big pill guy.

Recently, though, I’ve been stopping by several mornings a week at their juice bar, and this has given be a chance to wander around the store a little. There are still lots and lots of pills, and weirdo products with names like “Fat Burner” and “Nutrobooster.” But there’s also good whole-wheat bread — the same bread you can otherwise buy at the Farmers Market — and, in the cooler, some low-fat snacks (vegetables and dip, yoghurt and granola parfait). And they do make a mean juice.

The staff are very friendly too.

So while I’m not converted over to the pilly dark side, I have become a regular customer.

Online Mapping: What happened to MapQuest? It used to be a very flexible, free online mapping service. It’s still there, but it has been severely pared back feature-wise: it’s missing things like “make this map bigger” and “add an icon to this map” and “save this map.” MapBlast, from Microsoft, has better maps and more features, but it’s still not where MapQuest used to be.

Air Canada: Although flying Air Canada these days is the travel equivalent of buying generic “no-name” peaches, at least it’s cheap. Catherine, Oliver and I are flying Halifax to Montreal return for $58 each way. That said, the cheapness disappears if you’re trying to fly from Charlottetown, where the cheapest equivalent for our dates was $286 each way. For the extra $684 I’ll defy David Malahoff and drive to Halifax. By the way, JetsGo, WestJet and CanJet were each more expensive to Montreal from Halifax, and only CanJet flew direct.

Photo ID: How is it that we can be almost 3 years into the new airport security regime and people still don’t understand about the need for photo ID at the airport? I think you could improve the efficiency of air travel by at least 15% if people simply had their ID at the ready at every turn. As it is, I’d say about 25% of the traveling public act surprised when it’s requested at the gate (despite the “please have your photo ID ready” announcements), and about half of them take 2 minutes to root through their purses or wallets, slowing up the lines and frustrating the gate agents (and the people behind them).

Alamo: About two years ago, I registered with Alamo, and went through the rigamarole required to sign up for their Quicksilver program. This, in theory, allows me to reserve online, and then quickly check out my car from a kiosk once I arrive at their airport location. In theory. The problem is that in half a dozen visits said kiosk has only actually worked once, and even that time it mysteriously “upgraded” me to a Chevy Astro Van from a Toyota Corolla. Every other time I’ve had to get in the regular line because the machine has been completely or partially broken. Their cars tend to be horrible GM proto-cars like the Chevy Cavalier, and are often dirty, have filled ashtrays, and are missing ice scrappers in winter. I think it’s time to go back to Hertz: although they have a poorer reservation engine, I’ve never had a bad car from them, or a bad experience renting.

Ted Williams Tunnel: The opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston, which runs from Logan Airport in Boston under the harbour to downtown Boston and the I-93 north and south, has made it extremely easy to travel by car to and from Logan. But if you’re Canadian, it’s important to remember to have your $3.00 in US dollars with you before you leave the airport: the best I had was $5 Canadian, and they wouldn’t accept that. As a result, I had to wait for 5 minutes while the toll booth clerk filled out an invoice for me, and collected everything from my driver’s license number to the license plate of the car. I have 14 days to mail them a check for $3.00 or they’ll fine me $250. I’m not complaining, just warning you to be ready.

The Inn at Jaffrey Center: I spent seven nights last week at the Inn at Jaffrey Center, an 11-room inn just south of Yankee in Dublin. For most of the week I was the only one there. Beds are comfortable, staff is friendly and helpful, and rooms are clean and well-appointed. Breakfast isn’t exactly splendiferous, espcially if you eat neither eggs nor bacon, but it’s nice to have included, given the Inn’s remote location. And in the winter the pipes do knock a lot. And they’re really, really loud. But all in all it’s one of the nicest places to stay in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire.

Beverages: Regular readers will know that I love iced tea. The Dublin General Store now stocks the T42 brand, which is a happy medium between the syrupy overkill of the standard gas station Liptons and Nestea and the stripped-down unsweetened goodness of Honest Tea. The beverage highlight of my trip last week was a bottle of POM Wonderful pomegranate. It’s expensive as hell ($3.98/bottle), but boy is it ever good.

Here’s the terminal manager of the CTMA ferry that runs between PEI and the Magdelan Islands commenting on a recent crossing that took 16 hours (instead of the usual 5), as reported by CBC:

“The passengers are quite comfortable,” he says. “They’ve got plenty to eat and they’re warm. It’s a closed-in ferry so everything is very comfortable for them. It’s just that it takes so much longer to get from point A to point B, and it’s kind of boring because you can only go so far on a boat.”

A couple of weeks ago was the anniversary of The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919. It’s one of those historical events that is so bizarre as to be almost unbelievable. But it happened.

The lords upstairs mentioned last week that they had noticed a proliferation of Really Bad GarageBand-generated music on the net. Not wanting to be left out of this orgy of badinosity, I present my first GarageBand mixdown.

Notice my subtle blending of 4 or 5 genres in one fantastic power ballad.

Peer1, the excellent colocation provider — Yankee runs out of its colo facility in New York City — has a blog. All Internet Service Providers should have a blog.

Which reminds me: Kevin, can you please set up an RSS feed of this page (probably only accessible if you’re an ISN customer)?

Roy Neel, the new CEO of the Dean Campaign writes a very interesting post about where the campaign will go from here. After seeing three of the seven candidates in person, I would have voted for Dean in New Hampshire. I still might do so, logistics willing, in the New York Primary in early March.

Several years ago I was called to participate in a session at Holland College where a new e-commerce course was being developed. As is the tradition at the College, various industry people joined with various educators to develop the curriculum, with an emphasis on the practical.

During the introductions, several of my industry colleagues described their professions in such an acronym-laden way that I had no idea what they did: ERP, MIS, EDI, CRM and the like. I protested, and suggested that we all endeavour to not use acronyms for the rest of the session. The reaction to this was not positive: you would think that I had asked people not to talk at all.

People who speak in acronyms claim that they’re a “handy shorthand” that allows conversation to proceed more efficiently. While that may be true, what goes unspoken is that they are also used, whether conciously or not, to construct a wall between those “in the know” and those not.

You’re at the hospital and your doctor orders a “CBC and Chem 7.” What does it mean? Who knows? The doctors and nurses are speaking a foreign language, in plain hearing of those most deeply affected by their mumblings, and this acronymania, while it lets them zip around more quickly, serves only to further elevate their position as all-powerful medical gods. Which isn’t good for anyone.

I remember talking to a colleague several years ago during “IT Week” on Prince Edward Island. She had been telling her mother, over the weekend, that she was going to be presenting at an “IT Week special event.” Her mother wanted to know what “it week” was — what was the “it” she was talking about?

People in Government are fond of talking about the RFP (Request for Proposal), the RFQ (Request for Quotation), the RFI (Request for Information). They rattle off these terms like they know the difference between them. I once asked someone what the difference was, and they couldn’t tell me. Apparently nobody actually knows.

The worst offenders here are my friends in the federal government: during a trip to Elections Canada in November, I sat back and watched several colleagues there have a conversation that consisted almost entirely of acronyms. When I asked them to speak in plain language they reacted much as my Holland College group did: “that’s just how we talk!”

So here’s my humble request: if you’re an acronymaniac, take the next week and try and speak acronym-free. Treat it as a game if you wish: see if you can actually pull it off. I think what you will find is that you can speak to a much broader range of people, with greater clarity and understanding, than you ever imagined.

Let me know what happens.

Sitting in the lounge at YHZ, waiting for a flight to YYG after leaving BOS this morning after a week in NH at YPI where, in my off hours, I revelled in the games of the DNC. Looking forward to seeing CLM and ODLR.