There’s not much I can add to the explanation and discussion of the Trackback system. Other than this: I’ve always thought of Trackback as the calculus of the weblog work — a set of concepts so completely foreign to me as to exist beyond the realm of understanding. And thus best ignored.

Today, though, something snapped, and I suddenly understood Trackback perfectly, probably because I had an opportunity to use it.

If you have behaved like me, and run scared from Trackback in the past, I suggest you revisit it. I’m going to implement it fully, both coming and going, on the homebrew blogging platform I call home.

Like Justin, I’ve used Quicken for Home and Business to do the accounts for Reinvented for the past 5 or 6 years. It’s basically regular old Quicken with some businessy things like Accounts Receivable and Invoices added on for not-too-complex businesses like mine.

None of my accountants like Quicken, mostly, it seems, because it’s not a classical double entry bookkeeping system. Accountants like double entry bookkeeping systems because in Accountant World the Holy Grail is “adding up.” Everything must add up — accounts must balance — reconciliation is key. Apparently double entry bookkeeping is a system designed to prevent things from being able to not add up, which I suppose was a good idea when accounting computers were powered by steam. But I’ve never understood quite why the metaphor had to be carried into the digital accounting world where presumably, at least on some level, the “double” part of “double entry” is a conceit that could be done away with through clever programming.

To date I’ve staved off a switch from Quicken to something more traditional (like QuickBooks, or Simply Accounting) despite accountant protests.

Which is all to say that Justin’s musings about his own finances, especially his contracting with a consultant who will take Quicken files and advise clients on their setup, is fascinating, and perhaps the first financial writing I’ve ever encountered that bears any relation whatsoever to my own life.

Pick up any of the “personal finance” magazines these days, or read the weekend business section of the newspaper, and the unceasing mantra is completely retirement-centric — it’s all about RRSPs, RESPs, mutual funds, tax deductions, the stock market. None of this has anything to do with the price of celery, and although I can understand the need to set up nest eggs, the obsession with money in the future has always seemed absurd, especially when the obsession with money in the future becomes so pervasive as to interfere with the enjoyment of the present.

This means (a) that I will die penniless and (b) that Oliver will have to pay for his own college. I hope it also means that (c) we’ll have more fun, less stressfully, along the road to death. All of us.

My favourite part of Justin’s missive is his concluding paragraph:

Once I’ve got a month of better Quicken use under my belt, and I’ve combed over 2003’s transactions, I’ll consult with a CPA. My short term goal is to begin paying quarterly income taxes! And from there I want to reduce my five-figure credit card debt. So much of Quicken is designed to urge you to invest and track your investments. For now, my investment is me, and I need some investment tracking.

The 200 block of Sydney Street was uncommonly alive this evening, with a well-attended 70th birthday gala for Catherine Hennessey on one side of the street, and a wild indoor/outdoor gathering on the other.

Catherine (the consort, not the Hennessey) and Oliver have been recovering from a flu-like illness, so I was flung off by myself into the night. Arriving what I thought would be fashionably early at 6:45 p.m., I found the Hennessey gathering in full swing. I also found that I was the youngest person in the room, by about 40 years. Well, maybe 30. Okay, 20. Let’s just say, I didn’t feel that I was hanging out with my peer group, whoever they are.

Regardless of the demographics, it was a hip-happening party, and I emerged, none the worse for wear, 5 hours later. Which is an unusually early close-up for a Catherine Hennessey party, but then again, we’re all getting older.

Oddly, give the demographics, I saw many familiar faces: the Dowlings, Thompsons, and Boylans were there, interesting all (Ivan Dowling sang a lovely rendition of a song that everyone but I recognized, to much applause). Karen Mair was there, without husband Jack. Don Stewart and Kim Device, Beryl and Chris Cudmore, along with Chris’ mother Beth. George Kapelos from Toronto, who I haven’t seen since the big Canadian Living lobster shoot. I think Elizabeth Baird was there too, although I’m not sure. The Hamblys. David and Susan Mackenzie. Ritchie Simpson and Kendra. Gary Carroll and his friends Brian and Valerie from Amherst. Paul and Jane Michael. Many Orfords. All of Catherine’s sisters, of course, including honourary sister Claude. Karen Lipps and Ole Hammerlund. Wade MacLauchlan. John Tupper. Duncan McIntosh. Shauna McCabe. And untold others I didn’t meet, or whose names I can’t remember or spell.

A giant birthday cake was presented (somehow sister Betty and brother-in-law Claude got covered in chocolate icing as part of this proceeding). Innumerable interpretations of Happy Birthday were sung (along with a delightful presentation of hits of yesteryear on the electric piano by an excellent player, punctuated by a capable yet dreadful rendition of Feelings, complete with a switch over to “vibraphone mode” on the piano, which forced me to leave the room).

About halfway through the evening I was sitting in the living room, and caught a reflection in the front window of what appeared to be several naked people dressed only in feathers, glowsticks and Christmas tree garland, all standing holding drinks in Catherine’s kitchen. Have the demographics taken a wild turns towards excitement, I asked myself.

As it turns out, this was not, in fact, a reflection, but an actual event, happening outside and across the street: some sort of wild gathering of young people spilling out on the sidewalk. Catherine was alerted and, with the happy coincidence that Oliver’s present to her was none other than a glow stick, opened the door and rallied the partiers to her cause. Alas they stayed on their side of the street, and we on ours.

It was a good night.

Happy Birthday, Catherine.

Setting down to do a large piece of concentration-requiring work this afternoon, I cranked the iTunes volume up on KCRW and started to work. Almost as soon as I did so, a call came in on the house line from my inlaws, Grant and Marina. In my work-drenched, paranoid state, I glanced at the phone and immediately assumed they were calling to ask me to turn the volume down.

Here’s a secret client care / customer service weapon: every once in a while, especially when there are no immediate fires to put out or active projects on the go, phone your clients just to check in and see how things are going. In my memory, nobody’s ever done this to me; I don’t do it myself as much as I’d like, but when I do, the reaction is almost always once of surprise and delight, and I learn a lot in the process.

It seems to me that cities, towns and villages on Prince Edward Island are always twinning up with ye olde townes from the old country — Uigg, PEI twins with Uigg, Ireland, for example (note: I don’t know this to be the case, nor do I know if there’s a Uigg, Ireland, and, indeed, Uigg might be a Scottish placename, in which case I might find my barn burned down tonight).

I would like to propose that we abandon this, and move to a “cool city twinning” system. Let’s twin up Stratford with Venice, Cornwall with Barcelona, and Charlottetown with New York or LA.

This will mean fewer tea cosy exchanges, but might result in more interesting techno DJs from Seville making guest appearances on the Island.

When in doubt, ask!

I am a newly minted New Yorker subscriber. Since Tweels closed this summer, I’ve had a hard time re-establishing a New Yorker buying system, so I finally decided to move from “regular newsstand purchased” to subscriber.

My first issue arrived yesterday, and because it was the Sept. 22, 2003 issue (and yesterday was Sept. 17), I got curious about when the New Yorker is actually published relative to its cover date.

So I emailed the publisher. And 45 minutes later, he emailed back (this is one in a series of events that proves that the magazine has a great publisher).

Here’s what he told me:

The magazine arrives on newsstands one week prior to cover date (9/22 issue, arrives on stands 9/15), and subscribers get it the Mon, Tue, or Wed of that week. The cover date is really the date that the magazine comes off sale, not goes on sale.

So the issue I received yesterday was published two days ago, which is pretty amazing, and makes me almost feel like I’m actually living in New York (but not quite).

For reference, the magazine is generally available on the cover date here in Prince Edward Island on the newsstand. Which means that the magazine that I received yesterday, Tuesday, in the mail won’t be available otherwise until next Monday, which is the date it goes off sale in New York.

I note, with some irony, that pretty well the only spam I receive these days (what with SpamAssassin killing things on the server-side and Apple’s Mail deleting a good amount of the rest) is Viagra-related. Even virtually, the stuff can make things go where they’re not otherwise intended by nature.

There’s no doubting that “dick unhardness” (the official Pfizer term is “erectile dysfunction”) is a valid problem, and something that Viagra can help with. It’s unfortunate that the spamsters have taken this on as their latest cause.

Pfizer, makers of Viagra, have a helpful page on their website called “Tips for Talking to Your Doctor.” They include some helpful opening lines that you can use to break the ice. For example:

“Doctor, I’m having some trouble getting erections and I’m concerned.”

and:

“I need to talk with you about my sex life.”

Fair enough: as I can’t even imagine talking to my doctor about Viagra (or anything nether, for that matter), I can see how these might be helpful.

But what about:

“Have you seen the VIAGRA commercial with Winston Cup Driver Mark Martin?”

and:

“Have you seen the VIAGRA commercial with Major League Baseball Star Rafael Palmeiro?”

Must we really turn our lives into branded parodies of themselves to overcome our discomfort with talking about sex [or not]?

The Zap Your PRAM Conference now has a conference blog. I’ll move most conference-related discussion over there now.

Synesthesia and synchronicity have got to be two of the greatest words in the English language.

Synesthesia was the name of the radio program that used to come before mine on Trent Radio in the late 1980s. It was the creation of a woman named Leah Tremain who quickly became, and remains, one of my favourite people in the world. Our friendship was sparked by radiophonic proximity, and kept burning by a sort of double-reverse cuckold maneuver that we both unknowingly participated in, only learning the details of which when she was in Switzerland (or was it Sweden, I can never remember) and I was in Texas years later.

One dictionary definition of synesthesia is:

a sensation that normally occurs in one sense modality occurs when another modality is stimulated

In other words, “hearing colours” or “tasting sound.”

I told you it was a good word.

Synchronicity, on the other hand, means:

the relation that exists when things occur at the same time

That’s a far less dramatic definition, but the concept is interesting when you overlay reality on it. Like The Police did.

I had a small outbreak of synchronicity this weekend. I suddenly had a need to produce well-formatted reports, as PDF files, from a webserver. For two different clients. Elections PEI needed a nice-looking Supplementary List of Electors for the upcoming election, and Yankee Publishing needed nice-looking credit card transactions reports.

Fortunately, a smart bunch in Romania came to the rescue.

Interakt is a Bucharest-based software development house that produces a very sharp tool called PDFReports that happened to fill two voids for me this weekend almost perfectly (for those of you more techincally inclined, I’ll follow on with a more detailed review over on the Reinvented Labs website).

So I spent half the weekend lining up the last names of untold Gallants, Macdonalds and Doirons, and the balance lining up VISA, MasterCard and Discover payments. Synchronicity.

Next week: symmetry.