Perhaps this is in the “things everyone else has known about for years” class, but I just discovered, by accident, that when viewing a web page in Camino if I just start typing, the page will automatically just to the first occurence of what I type. For example, if “FOAF” is halfway down a page, by the time I’ve typed FOA, “FOAF” is highlighted and the page has scrolled down to that section of the text.

This may also work in other browsers, I’m not sure.

There are two types of people in the world: those who listen to the spiel about the Empire Theatres Stash Your Trash program and think it’s a good idea, and obey by placing their cinema trash in the containers provided, and those, like me, who refuse to act as a corporate shill, and enthusiastically leave their trash under the seats as God intended.

If the full trash cans are any indication, mindless conformity is winning, and few are profiting from the ironic delights of disobeying corporate garbage policy.

After watching David Neeleman on Charlie Rose and finding his approach to customer service interesting, I went to the JetBlue website, and used their web form to ask David to lunch.

Now I’m pretty certain that (a) I will never get a response and (b) David Neeleman is too busy and important to have lunch with the likes of me.

Which got me wondering: who isn’t too busy and important to have lunch with me, and where is the cut-off line?

For example, I’m pretty sure that if I invited my local City Councillor, Clifford Lee, to lunch, he would come. Same thing for my local MLA, Bobby MacMillan. If I made a compelling enough case, and took advantage of some connections, there are a couple of members of Cabinet that I could probably get to the lunch table. But I’m pretty certain that Premier Binns falls in the “too busy and important” class.

I’m pretty certain Dave Moses would come to lunch. But probably not Brian De Palma. And somewhere between the two of them is a dividing line that separates the lunchables from the unlunchables.

In music: Sally Taylor, Jane Siberry, Stephen Fearing, Lucy Kaplansky, Garnet Rogers, yes. And James Taylor, The Dixie Chicks, Bono and Mick Jagger, no.

I could probably swing a meal with Ian Hanomansing, but not with Peter Mansbridge. Dick Gordon, yes. Noah Adams, no.

That all said, I’m reminded of the wise words of a former teacher of mine, Judy Libman. She went to the huge University of Minnesota and took first year psychology with hundreds of other students in a large lecture hall watching recorded lectures on closed-circuit television. One day she decided to go and seek out the professor on the television, and when she found him she was amazed that she was the only student who had done so. And he was amazed to see her, and compelled by the notion of meeting a real live student. He asked her if they laughed at his jokes. They got on well. And both profitted from the meeting.

And I recall the experience a professor from Trent who got into Harvard mostly because he bothered to apply when so many others didn’t even try, because they assumed it was impossible.

So maybe David Neeleman will write back, and maybe we will go to lunch. Never hurts to ask.

I’m unclear as to the mechanism by which this plan to outfit concertgoers with PEI potatoes is going to work. Are they expected to take bags home with them?

Oliver and I were down by the docks tonight drinking lemonade, and I spied Anne MacKay and Wayne Barrett across the way. I did some work for Wayne and Anne’s photography business when Oliver was still still in the womb, and this was their first meeting.

Oliver, true to form, grabbed ahold of Anne and Wayne’s daughters’ hands and took them off into the depths of Frosty’s Finds to try on hats, look in mirrors, and generally get to know each other.

His social skills at age 2 have now surpassed mine at 37.

On my July 9 home telephone bill from Aliant there was a $28 charge for a 9 minute call I made with my calling card from a Bed & Breakfast in New Hampshire to home. That’s about $3.00 a minute, which is crazy.

The call was noted on my bill as being processed by ZPDI.

I called Aliant (listen to the comical audio of my first try), and talked to one of their operators and learned, much to my surprise, that all “calling card” calls are not created equal, and that the actual rates charged are not necessarily Aliant’s rates.

The operator suggested that, when in doubt, I call 1-800-555-1111, which is a toll-free call that connects directly to Aliant’s long-distance network, and ensures that calls placed are billed at Aliant’s rates.

Added later…

I just received the following email from ZPDI:

Thank you for your inquiry. You have reached ZPDI which is a billing clearinghouse that processes records on behalf of operator service providers and long distance carriers that provide service for hotels, motels, payphones, and correctional institutions. The operator service provider who processed the collect call is NCIC. The collect call was placed from a phone located at the Peterborough Manor on 50 Summer Street in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Mr. Rukavina, I realize you were not aware of the rate, however, rates for carriers are designed to recover unique expenses associated with the telephone from which your call was placed. In addition, rates are available upon request and each carrier is required to identify them selves prior to connecting the call. Mr. Rukavina, I am able to offer you a one-time complimentary credit for $10.04 in American funds. The total amount of the calls is $19.50 in American funds. Please let us know if you would like this credit applied to your bill.

As much as a laud them for their quick turnaround, I am suspicious of the quick rush to offer me $10 American. I’ll take it, and be happy, but I wonder if they’re just trying to shut me up.

Just a note about a couple of minor renovations to the website here.

First, you’ll notice that you can now enter the address of your very own website when you’re responding to a note here using the DISCUSS link. Not only will this get your post linked back to your own home base, but the automagical system will go looking there for a FOAF file, and will incorporate your FOAF into mine if it finds one (watch the Reinvented Labs space for results).

Also, I’ve cleaned up the display of discussion items a little — to separate your text into paragraphs you can now simply leave a couple of carriage returns (aka “press [ENTER] twice”) between each paragraph. No need to insert your own paragraph or line break tags.

If the preceding has left you dazed and confused, please ignore and continue on as you ever have, as things are mostly same as they ever was.

I had lunch on Monday with a small group of Island entrepreneurs. At some point in the conversation we realized that none of us had completed a university degree — we had each started university, but left early to do something else (for me it was “wander around for a while, and eventually start a business” and for each of them it was “ramp up the business”).

We compared notes on the flack from our parents brought on by our “early school leaving” decision. While it varied in intensity and duration, each of us experienced some variation of the “you’re ruining your life” treatment. Let’s just say that our decisions to drop out weren’t warmly embraced by our parents.

It has been 17 years since I left university, 4 or 5 since they did. We agreed that none of us have regretted the decision, and that, perhaps because we’ve achieved some business success, our parents have eventually come around.

I’ve obviously had some time to think about my decision, and our conversation crystallized some of that thinking.

Here’s the thing: for us, sons of upper middle-class professional parents each with a university degree of their own, the great roles that university played for our parents — establishing their credentials, outfitting them with professional skills, and, most importantly, bootstrapping them up a social class or two (or three), with all the self-confidence that such a change brings — are no longer of any relevance to us.

My father, for example, was born to working class parents. My grandmother worked in restaurants, grocery stores, and tractor and blanket factories. She used to tell stories about working during the depression for 25 cents a day. My grandfather, whose immigration records list him as a “farm labourer,” worked in the gold mines of Northern Ontario, and later for Massey-Ferguson.

For my father, university was, in no small way, his ticket out of a working class life: he became a professional, a scientist, and as a result lived a life completely different from that of his parents.

There’s no way that university could affect such a profound social transformation on me because I was already among the “university educated” class, and had been treated that way all my life. Combine that sense of entitlement with the work ethic that my parents inherited from their parents, and I inherited from them, and suddenly university becomes mostly about, well, learning. And if you’re sick of learning, at least in the “listening to tweed-suited people expound” way, the motivation to stick around isn’t great.

Add to that the world of technology offering exposure to interesting people, projects, and ideas, exposure previously unavailable to people like me without education or experience, and university never stood a chance.

For the longest time after leaving university I was convinced that there was something inherently wrong with formal education; looking back, I realize that sort of thinking was necessary to make leaving possible, especially because I was leaving, against some resistance, something concrete to enter something of a void. And I needed a reason besides “well, that was boring wasn’t it.”

From the more rational perch of later life, I realize the short-sightedness of that point of view. I don’t regret my own decision to leave, and would do so again if I could go back in time, but I realize both that there are people who actually enjoy structured learning, or at least require the skills and approaches it offers to be able to follow their dreams, and also that university continues to afford people the same socially transformative opportunities if offered my father.

What I’ve really come to understand, and I would hazard a guess the same would apply to my luncheon colleagues as well, is that my opportunity to thrive without a university degree is something I was able to do almost entirely because of the determination of my grandparents and parents. It was only through their efforts that I gained the self-confidence, the understanding of the pleasures of hard work, and the ability to learn on my own that I was able to do what I did. In a sense, the echoes of their university educations were powerful enough to let me ride on their crest.

My brother Johnny has been without reliable DSL service since Sunday — he’s had periods of 12 hours without any service at all, and it has been on and off at random intervals otherwise. His service provider is Telus in Vancouver; Telus technical support has told him it could be a couple of days before they solve the problem.

By way of trying to help Johnny self-diagnose, I came across this this page at Telcordia, which summarizes the technical challenges for telephone companies providing ADSL service. My favourite paragraph is:

It’s been much smarter, so far, to not even try to sign up any customer whose loop is the least bit questionable, even though you’ve already invested the cost of qualifying that loop. And if such a customer asks for ADSL, it’s smarter to just say “You can’t have it” and let the customer’s frustration end there. You’re in the very awkward and unwelcome position of having to try to discourage customers from buying a service they want and you want to sell them. You’re lopping off chunks of your customer base at both ends, maybe losing a quarter to half of your potential ADSL market before you’ve started.

David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue is scheduled to appear on Charlie Rose tonight.