Back in March I wrote about Sports Night, a show on ABC that ran from 1998 to 2000. At the time, the boxed set of the complete series had just been released. Last night I was able to rent it for the first time from That’s Entertainment (our gem of an independent video rental store here in Charlottetown).

And last night, in an irrational display of stayupitude, I watched 9 episodes in a row, starting from the Pilot.

I was as compelled — maybe even more so — by the second viewing as the first. This is truly great television.

Am I deluded? Am I the only one that thinks the Sports Night raised the bar for situation comedies, and that nothing else since has come close?

Today, as Catherine is off in Orwell eating lunch with her weaving and spinning friends, Oliver and I have worked out a strict regimen of “one episode of Caillou, one episode of Sports Night,” interspersed with house cleaning.

I’m in the later stages of moving my operation 4 blocks away to the new silverorange/Reinvented mediaplex on Fitzroy Street. One thing I have to do is move my business telephone line.

If I switch to Eastlink as part of making the move, my monthly phone bill, for identical Centrex service, will go from $44.70 to $32.50. And Eastlink won’t charge me anything for installation.

If I stick with Aliant, they will charge me $110 for the move, plus $35 to install a phone jack.

Over a year, then, sticking with Aliant would cost me an additional $291.

Is there any compelling reason for not doing this?

How are we ever going to train our ears to not get lushed out by the sound of a smoke- honed voice? Like red-painted lips that make the heart race, the voice ravaged by relentless smoking somehow maintains its allure even though we know that it ultimately harms the practioner.

Postscript: there are people keeping track of smokers. I don’t know whether this is creepy or brave.

Angus Orford sent me the photo on the left yesterday (it came to him via Cathy Large) of the house he owns on the corner of Prince and Richmond Streets in Charlottetown. It was taken in 1904. The house on the left is our house.

I took the photo on the right this afternoon, roughly 99 years later.

Ignoring the fact that the 1904 photo was taken from a higher angle, and leaving out the power lines, the home renovations, and the trees that have had a chance to grow in the intervening years, it’s remarkable to me that this corner is much as it was.

I’m usually not one of those “heritage people,” but I gotta say that the notion that as I type this I’m sitting in a room that has been here for 176 years does kind of blow my mind.

It used to be that the television character I identified most with was Edmund on All My Children.

I realized this morning that I have far more in common, these days, with Daddy on Caillou.

In other words, I’m no longer a manly, daring, swashbuckling journalist fighting for the rights of Pine Valley citizens, I am a docile father who wears sweaters and cuts out cardboard houses for pretend horses.

I’m not complaining. I just wish that, somewhere between Caillou’s dad and Edmund there were some realistic male characters on television for me to empathize with. Somehow John Belushi and Ray Romano don’t cut it.

Apparently Aliant has cancelled their One Number Direct service: I called this morning to ask if it was available in Charlottetown yet, and was told by the operator that the entire project had been cancelled. I suggested they update their website, which caused him to laugh.

This was one service from Aliant I was actually looking forward to. This, of course, is why it was cancelled.

“Can I speak to Peter Rukavina?”

“Speaking.”

“Hi, this is Eric calling from Apple Computer. I’m calling about your iMac”.

“Okay.”

“Just calling to see how everything’s going…”

“It’s going just fine; I had a little bump in the road there with a hard disk problem, but it’s purring along just fine now.”

“Okay, that’s great, thank you for your time.”

Here’s a page of tips from a Segway rental agency in Vancouver.

Catherine reports that there’s been a system turnover at the Atlantic Superstore sushi desk. The staff are the same, but the materials, boxes, and varieties are different. We ate our first batch of the new stuff yesterday, and it was markedly better, most noticeably the rice was very moist.

Having perhaps the only three year old boy on Prince Edward Island who is addicted to sushi, this is a Big Event in our household.

Back in 2001, I experienced multimedia overload. Tonight it’s happening again.

I’m sitting here in my home office in Charlottetown. I am listening to the live Berkman webcast from Cambridge, Mass. At the same time, I’m on IRC with several other people, from across the continent, who are listening to the same webcast. And I’m IMing to Steven Garrity, who’s just up the street from me.

If I tuned in a web radio station from Prague, the experience would be complete and I would explode.