I just stumbled across this telephone number — 1-700-555-4141 — tonight on the CRTC website. You phone it, and a recording tells you which telephone company is providing you with long distance service. Interestingly enough, the Aliant brandocrats haven’t extended their reach this far in the Aliantification of Island Tel: call the number above from PEI (assuming you haven’t jumped to another long distance provider) and you’ll still hear “Your provider of long distance service is Island Tel. Thank you for choosing us.”

Our cellular providers here don’t make it easy to find out what phones they sell. I don’t know why this is; somehow they seem to think that the handset is a necessary evil, perhaps? In any case, here’s a list, based on research today, of the handsets each of the three providers has in their current stable. I’ve included GSM phones for Rogers, and PCS/CDMA phones for Telus and Aliant.

• Aliant
  • Motorola V120c
  • Audiovox CDM 8200
  • Kyocera 5135
  • Samsung SCH-N370
  • Audiovox CDM 8500
  • Motorola V. Series? 60ci
  • Samsung SPH-A460
  • Kyocera Smartphone QCP? 6035
• Rogers AT&T
  • Sony Ericsson T306
  • Panasonic GD88
  • Motorola T720
  • Nokia 3595
  • Siemens C56
  • Motorola C333
  • Nokia 3590
  • Siemens M46
  • Motorola C332
  • Nokia 6310i
  • Motorola V66
  • Motorola V101
  • Nokia 8390
  • Motorola Timeport 7382i
  • Sony Ericsson T68i
  • Motorola V60
  • Motorola V70
  • Palm? Tungsten? W
  • Motorola 280
  • Motorola T193
  • Handspring Treo 270
• Telus Mobility
  • Samsung SCH-A220
  • Samsung SPH-A520
  • Sony Ericsson T206
  • Samsung SPH-A540
  • Audiovox CDM 8300
  • Audiovox CDM 8150
  • Motorola v120x
  • Motorola v60ci
  • LG TM-520

Obviously Rogers has the greatest variety of phones. Aliant seems to, inexplicably, have phones that seem like they come from the bottom of the “hot and sexy” barrel. Telus comes up the middle. Only Rogers offers a Bluetooth-enabled phone (the t68i). None of the providers offers any information about how to source phones elsewhere and have them enabled on their network.

Readers who were around in the 1970s will recall that David Moses and I were the protagonists in a company called Okeedokee. While Okeedokee is still alive and kicking, and runs the Vacancy Information Service for the Island, we have no employees, no other clients, and no office. We are, in the truest sense of the word, a “virtual” company.

And yet, somehow, we ended up on a list at Statistics Canada of “high tech firms we should send a lot of surveys.” And these are not simple surveys — they are detailed beasts about ROIs and employee ratios and technical infrastructure. They are, in sum, not something we have the time or staff to complete, nor are they particularly relevant to our operation.

So we generally ignore them.

But Statistics Canada does not give up without a fight. If you don’t reply, they phone you. And phone you back.

Historically the person who has phoned us to follow up has been parole officer like, and has gone on at some length about our statutory responsibilities, and the importance of contributing to the Greater Good with our information. We have always gotten the impression that they sit beside a red button that, if pushed, will immediately dispatch the RCMP Statistical Noncompliance Squad to our virtual offices.

Today was different though. A very nice woman from StatsCan phoned, and after some complicated dancing about whether she had called Okeedokee or Reinvented, I explained the situation at Okeedokee, and, oddly, she understood completely that it was absurd for us to continue to receive these surveys, and promised to take us off the list.

Before we rung off, she asked for my name. And when I gave it to her she said, “oh, I’ve read your website.”

I’m not sure whether to be overjoyed or deathly afraid.

Earlier this week I mused about who in Charlottetown could provide us with digital scans of film we’d shot in Spain. We settled, based on price and speed alone, on Wal-Mart.

While they did a bang-up job on developing our APS film (I recommend the matte finish with white borders: the result is very snappy prints), their scans suffered from a band of light running across most of the prints. You can see an example of the problem in the photo here (one of my ever-expanding collection of “please clean up after your dog” photos, this one shot in the park across the street from La Sagranda Familia in Barcelona).

Oddly, when we took the Picture CDs out to Wal-Mart to have them take a look at the problem, they had no facility to look at the digital pictures there, so they had to take our word for it.

As we had over 200 photos scanned onto CD, we could see an obvious pattern with this, and as the prints themselves were okay, we knew it wasn’t a problem with our camera or with the developing.

To Wal-Mart’s credit, they refunded the entire cost of nine Picture CDs we had made. They didn’t seem to be able to offer any possibility of actually fixing the problem with their scanner. So I would be wary of having Picture CDs made at the Charlottetown Wal-Mart until they can offer some assurances that their problem has been fixed.

We’ve got a HP LaserJet III laser printer that needs a new home. It’s in working order, with an almost-new cartridge installed. There’s problem with the “sucking in the paper” rollers that needs fixing. Available, for free, as is, where is, in the vestibule of 100 Prince St., Charlottetown to the first person to pick it up, starting right now. Laser printer gone. Time from post to exit: 4.2 hours. Recipient: Steven Garrity, junk collector par excellence.

My special correspondent on this case alerted me last night that The Amazing Race, Season 4 starts Thursday night on CBS. Perfect antidote for someone like me with the travel DTs.

I can’t for the life of me figure out the allure in being identified as the Dating 12 Years / Virgins team. Personally, early out I’m rooting for the Air Traffic Controllers team. Although I suppose the ability to without ones urges for twelve years might trump the ability to control the complicated dance of landing airplanes.

Derek and I were talking last night about how interesting it would be to see a “The Making of the Amazing Race” show, given the complicated logistics of the show. You can get a taste of this in this interview with host Phil Keoghan.

And I assume that Edward Hasbrouck will resume his weekly commentary about each episode, which is always a good read.

If there is ever a turn of phrase that should give taxpayers pause, it is this: “The state-of-the-art facility will incorporate interactive technologies…” In this instance, it’s part of a CBC story about the new $90 million “Canada History Centre” for Ottawa.

Compare this to Founders Hall’s description of itself:

Learning history is fun at Founders’ Hall, Canada’s newest heritage attraction. With state-of-the-art audio headsets, visitors are led through “The Time Travel Tunnel” and are transported back in time with the use of multi-million dollar technology, holo-visuals, multi-media interpretation, and realistic and interactive displays.

Notice the similarities? I think “state of the art” is a code word for “we’re pouring a lot of money at this problem, and hope it works out.” Lord knows we’ve got a state of the art white elephant of a tourist attraction at the base of Prince St. that our friends in Ottawa should use as a cautionary example (see Why Founders’ Hall Fails from 2001 for details).

I good friend and colleague said something to me a couple of months ago when I was discussing my general career path. “Peter,” he said, “you’re the kind of guy who needs constant stimulation.”

His words stuck with me, and I’ve had a chance to come to terms with their truth in the interim.

One of the reasons I love travelling so much is because it is the ultimate in the constant stimulation game: when you wake up every morning with a blank slate, ready to attack a city, find a new place to stay, figure out how to make train reservations in Spanish, and so on, it’s like a pure adrenalin rush all day long.

The last week has been, for me, like coming down off a high: it’s a rough landing making the transition from constant stimulation to the workaday pace of normal static life.

I used to describe my goal as being to create a “vacation-like life.” Most people, when I told them this, thought it meant that I wanted to laze around by the pool a lot. What it really meant is that I wanted, in my daily life, the same sort of Gatling gun of mental stimulation that being on vacation affords.

If I can somehow work to combine the camraderie of summer camp with the frenetic pace of the moving vacation with the focus that the market demands, I will have attained the charmed life I seek.

Today is one of those days where it’s a holiday in the U.S.A. (Memorial Day) but not a holiday in Canada. Given my birthplace (Rochester, NY) and that I have several U.S. clients, I feel compelled to at least place myself in a holiday state of mind. Who knows what this will mean for deliveries of The New Yorker?

Regular readers will recall that I spent the time between Christmas and April this year eating a diet of brown rice and bits of cardboard, due to a worsening relationship with my gallbladder.

Well, now my gallbladder is gone, and it’s just me and the limitless universe of food left to our own devices.

While I was in the heart of the cardboard food journey, I came to the understanding with myself that it would probably be a good idea to eat with an eye to health once all was settled. At the same time, I resolved I wouldn’t become a prisoner to this notion.

I did decide, however, that if I was going to eat foods not generally considered “healthy,” I was at least going to abandon the pointless harm of unhealthy food that offered no other worldly pleasures.

For example, over the past decade I’ve probably eaten hundreds of pounds of poorly prepared, bland-tasting, generally unappetizing french fries. There have been one or two cases where I’ve had truly great french fries that have enlivened me; the rest were simply deep-fried glop that I ate mostly because they were included with other bits of glop on the menu.

Same situation with chocolate: once you’ve tasted what chocolate can be, the Kit Kats, Mars bars and the rest taste like waxy gunk, and offer little or no satisfaction more than 30 seconds after eating (if even that).

My problem now is that I live in a region where eating out, at least in a snacky spur of the moment kind of way, usually means that glop and gunk are about all that’s on the menu.

I like to snack. If I had my way, I’d give up three square meals a day, and become a permanent Pintxosologist.

Is it wrong to seek out new places to live because of the snacks on offer?