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?

Shell and The Economist are awarding $US 20,000 to the writer of the best essay on the topic “Do we need nature?”

It was a three-movie weekend. We started with a double feature of The Italian Job (on sneak preview) and Down with Love last night, and I snuck out tonight for Laurel Canyon. As I have nothing on my brothers when it comes to waxing eloquent about the movies, I’ll limit my comments to a short burst.

The Italian Job is Sneakers plus Ocean’s Eleven. It brings nothing new to the “crafty crime” genre. And if you thought Donald Sutherland would add some interesting gravitas to film, well, he doesn’t. It’s a generally well-executed picture, but you will not suffer at all for not seeing it.

You will love Down with Love only if you are a typography, fashion or interior design junkie (like me), or if you happen to like the broad, exagerated punchiness of a movie that is sort of Sports Night meets That Girl. Renee Zellweger is good, Ewan McGregor is better. Catherine laughed all the way through, but claimed not to have enjoyed the film. I didn’t laugh at all (at least on the outside), but came away mildly enlivened. Good film to see if your surroundings have got you down.

Laurel Canyon has good bits — Frances McDormand mostly, but also Alessandro Nivola. Kate Beckinsale plays a toned-down variation of her characteer in Serendipity that starts out with promise and fades into tedium. Christian Bale is simply tedious. All I can think is “thank God it didn’t star Christine Lahti.”

I would also comment on The Matrix, but we drove out on it after 20 minutes (it’s playing at the Brackley Drive-in) last weekend because (a) we were dead tired from jet lag and (b) perhaps because of (a) the movie seemed like an unintelligible morase of flying images. I’m happy to say that we did manage to sit through all of Kangaroo Jack first; the best I can say about that film is “not as bad as I anticipated.” If you are holding off going to see Kangaroo Jack because you think it might be a “talking Kangaroo picture,” I can offer you assurances that the kangaroo only talks occasionally, and then only in dream sequences.

Back in August of 1995 I ordered my first book from Amazon.com. After placing my order I sent the following email to their customer support people:

Hi there.

I seem to have sucessfully ordered a book from you folks
and I see by the order screen that it has been shipped.
One comment, though: it would be neat if you could display
the times/dates along the various stages that happen to
the order digitally, like:

08/08/95 12:56 Dave viewed your order and found the book
08/08/95 13:06 Sandy packed and shipped your book via USPS
08/09/95 12:00 Dave billed your Mastercard for the book

…etc.

Thanks for a wonderful service.

-Peter

Later the same day, I received the following reply:

Peter,

We've received several good suggestions from customers,
but I think this is a particularly good one.  We already
have one project under way which will give a bit more 
detail on the "Your Account" screen about the status of
an order, but something more like the log file you
suggest below would, it seems to me, be an excellent
addition.

Thanks for taking the time give us this suggestion.  
Feedback from customers makes it much easier for us as 
we go about the task of prioritizing which improvements 
we should make next.

Thanks,
Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com Books

In the grander scheme of things, this is like getting a personal note from Henry Ford after ordering a Model T. I found this correspondence in an archive of my email outbox from 1994 to 1996. I’m glad I kept it.