Perhaps (should you live here in eastern Canada) you have seen the Atlantic Lotteries television commercials advertising the “649 Atlantic” draws? The ads use the fact that $1,000,000 buys a lot more in Atlantic Canada than it does elsewhere in Canada. They’re pretty well done (here’s one you can watch online — it’s a 416KB Windows Media Player format file; there’s an associated print campaign too).

The truth of these ads wasn’t completely born out for me until brother Johnny sent me this MLS listing from Vancouver.

My favourite part is “Access to the property has not been given.” Followed closely by “Needs work.”

Several years ago I was working for The Anne of Green Gables Store here in Charlottetown doing product development. One of the products we wanted to develop was the driftwood folk art of former Premier Alex Campbell. So I was dispatched to his summer home in Stanley Bridge to see what I could see. I spent a very pleasant afternoon with Alex and his wife, drinking lemonade, talking about driftwood, and touring his workshop.

Meanwhile, across the Island, my consort Catherine was becoming ever more deeply involved in the Island spinning and weaving scene. One of the women she met through this work was Harriet Meacher. Catherine mentioned that Harriet and her husband Michael had a summer house in Stanley Bridge.

It was only several years later that, no doubt with the assistance of “connector node” Catherine Hennessey, I came to learn that Harriet is Alex’s sister.

Small world, take one.

Fast forward to this Saturday: we were having some people over to the house to look at our slides of Spain. Catherine invited Harriet, and she planned to drop by, but something came up and she couldn’t. One of the people who did come was Roy Johnstone. Roy got talking to my father, and learned that the Queens County Fiddlers were having a concert Saturday night at the Carrefour. So while I cleaned up the dishes and looked after Oliver, Mom and Dad and Catherine went to the concert. Who should they meet there, but the selfsame Harriet.

Small world, take two.

On Sunday, Harriet, suffering from gallbladder problems goes to the Internet to look for more information on her condition. Where does her searching the vastness of the web land her? Right here.

Small world, take three.

Here’s an interesting article from Maritime Electric’s website about how 5% of electricity used in homes is now consumed by appliances in “standby” mode.

At the risk of losing all objectivity and credibility regarding Maritime Electric, I report for the record that I’ve just completed what amounted to perhaps the best customer service call of my life. I had a question about my bill; the gentleman I spoke to had all the answers to all my questions, provided additional information unprompted that was very useful, and left me wanting for nothing. Thank you.

Special bonus feature: if you go and visit Maritime Electric’s website now, you’ll see the annoying animation of a thunder bolt is gone. Jim Lea promised to remove this in March. And he followed through on his promise. Thanks again.

Today marked Jim Brown’s last day as “Friday host” for the CBC Radio One programme The Current. Somehow I have ended up listening to the show every Friday for the past several months, and, on balance, I’ve enjoyed Jim’s tenure there. I like Anna Maria Tremonti (although if she could relax by, say 6%, she would be more pleasant), but the Friday break mixed things up a bit. And, Lord knows, if Jim’s only role was to keep Evan Solomon from the Friday spot he would be doing the world a great service.

That all said, sometimes I really, really miss Peter Gzowski. Today was a case in point: in a segement called “MPs and Pot,” Jim interviewed three Canadian Members of Parliament about how they talk to their teenaged children (or, in one cause, nieces and nephews) about drugs now that pot is going to be decriminalized.

While Jim did manage to puncture the MPs’ spin armour a couple of times, most of the segment consisted of posturing along the lines of “we’re actually going to send a stronger message through fines.”

You just know that if Gzowski had been at the helm, his rumpled style would have engaged the guests to the point where some honest conversation would have happened. I can almost play out the dialogue in my head.

So, Jim, we’re gonna miss you. And Peter, where ever you are, we already do.

Rob, I hope you’ve heard of Joni Mitchell, an artist who is not only fantastic in her own right, but who writes songs that cover extremely well (see Diana Krall singing Case of You, or Sarah Maclauchlan singing Blue, or BB Gabor singing Big Yellow Taxi).

I’ve been rediscovering the music of Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell and many others thanks to Acquisition, a new client in the same vein as Napster, Kazaa, and the like.

The thing that sets Acquisition apart from its peers is its integration into iTunes, Apple’s excellent music player. It’s also got a very well laid out filtering system that lets you see search results by album, by artist, and so on. It makes music sharing seem less like doing laundry and more like exploration.

And it’s about as close as we Canadians can come to experiencing full-in AppleMusic.com for now.

Here’s a screen shot of Acquisition in action:

Will Pate announces the fourth meeting of Charlottetown bloggers, Wednesday, June 4th. Formosa Tea House. 1:00 p.m. If I can convince Rob Paterson to come with me to skew up the age quotient, I may just come along.

It’s 1:10 a.m. I want to know what my residential long distance rate is. My provider of long distances services is Aliant (formerly known as Island Tel). So, logically, I go to www.aliant.com to look for the answer.

I click on Products & Services on their main home page. So far so good.

I see the words “Local & long-distance telephone” on the next page. But, oops, that’s not a hyperlink. I scan down and find ” Visit Aliant.net” and click on that.

It’s not all that easy to find, but hidden up in the top-left corner of the next page is a button labelled “Telecom Services.” I click on that.

Now I’m at “Aliant.net Telecom Services” and I have to select my province. I click on “Prince Edward Island.”

This next page is weird — all the text and images at the top of the page is covered by big blue boxes filled with what look like menu items. Thinking this might be a problem with my beta Safari browser, I load up the page in Mozilla, but the page looks exactly the same. I try Internet Explorer, but the page won’t load at all. I finally decide to try clicking on “Learn more about Aliant’s products, services and promotions” (oddly, that’s very similar to the link I clicked on 5 pages ago called Products & Services; no matter).

Old brands die hard: although it has the Aliant look and feel, the next page is actually on the old Island Tel webserver, and has an islandtel.pe.ca web address. I click on “Home Solutions” (no more products or services — I’m on to “Solutions” now!)

Over on the left-hand side of the next page (in the look and feel of the old Island Tel website, no less), I click on “Long Distance.”

On the next page, titled “Residential Long Distance Savings Plans”, I figure out that I should probably select “Truly…Yours By The Day” (which, if you ask me, sounds like some sort of escort service, but no matter).

Hey, hey — I found what I was looking for! Here’s what it says on this, the ninth page I’ve visited:

Aliant now offers Long Distance plain and simple. One simple bill - all for a flat rate: 17¢ a minute, anywhere in Canada (including N.W.T.), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Just for the record, my journey took me through nine pages on six webservers:

• aliant.com
• aliant.ca
• aliant.net
• broadband-largebande.aliant.net
• www.atlanticzone.ca
• www.islandtel.pe.ca

I experienced five different “look and feels” on this journey, and used eight different navigational metaphors.

Truly. Here. For You. Somewhere.

Let me just say, for the record, that Tom Waits is amazing.

During my last year of high school we took a tour of the Department of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum (the department is now known as Palaeobiology — they merged with Invertebrate Palaeontology in 1996). We students were offered the oppotunity to come back and work as volunteers, and I eagerly pursued this opportunity. I’d like to say that I had a passion for Vertebrate Palaeontology (or even for dinosaurs), but my interest was simply a product of my general curiosity: I wanted to see what scientists did, and how they did it, and I didn’t really care what field they were working in. And besides, it was cool.

I had a great time working at the ROM, and I soon graduated from volunteer turtle bone sorter to mildly paid computer programmer. I used to take the GO Train in from home every day, spend half a day at the ROM, half a day at Athenians, with lunch at Bogey’s Sandwich Shop and Greg’s Ice Cream between the two.

The ROM is going through a renaissance (their words) these days. Part of this involves a rather dramatic expansion and renovation of its home at the corner of University and Bloor in Toronto. You can watch this transformation on their newly-installed webcam.