Ask anyone to name the icon of the Disney company, and they will invariably say Mickey Mouse. Indeed, go to the company’s About Disney website, and Mickey is sitting up top.

But I have discovered, with Oliver’s help, that Disney’s true weapon is Winnie the Pooh, bear of stealth.

Try this simple test: keep an eye open for representations of Pooh as you walk through your day. If your day is anything like mine, you might lose count after 25 or 30 sightings.

Here’s an example of where you can find Pooh in my life:

• In Oliver’s bedroom there is one Pooh doll, one Pooh water bottle, a Pooh ball (with bell inside), a Pooh blanket, a pair of Pooh socks, and half a dozen Pooh books.
• Painted on the window of the Basilica Rec Centre children’s daycare on Richmond St., half a block from our house.
• On a flag flying over the daycare at the corner of Sydney and Hillsborough Streets, two blocks from our house.
• In Wal-Mart you cannot walk 25 feet without seeing Pooh — videos, books, umbrellas, rubber boots, diapers, sip-cups. Same with Zellers.
• In the video store — ad infinitum.
• At the public library — many, many Pooh books.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

The secret of Pooh’s success is that parents like us, who would never in a million years welcome Mickey or Dumbo or Barney into our home, see Pooh as a loveable, friendly character, somehow existing above the commercial fold.

Mickey is out there in front, taking the heat, getting all the public attention, and the anti-capitalist scorn; Pooh is bringing up the rear, raking in the cash, and loving every minute.

Gregory Peck has died. Roman Holiday, which starred Peck and Audrey Hepburn, is one of my favourite movies. I have the DVD sitting in my briefcase here in New Hampshire; I think I’ll go back to my hotel and watch it now.

Given our discussion here earlier this week, stumbling across this alternative high school in Arizona called ReinventEd seems predestined.

Hello Aliant. I am using the computer in your Business Centre in the Charlottetown Airport. It is an old IBM Aptiva. It is slow. The purpose, I presume, of your sponsorship of this high speed Internet connection — which I laud — is to show we business travelers what a wonderful service you offer. Showcasing this service with an obselete computer is like letting people take a drive on the autobahn on an old Wheelhorse lawn tractor.

Here’s my suggestion, offered before but so far ignored: go out and by the fanciest, fastest, most hot and sexy computer money can buy. You’d be hard pressed to spend more than $5000 to reach this goal. Install it here, and retire the old Aptiva. We business travelers will now marvel at your excellentness.

You will get bonus points if you install a more ergonomic desk and chair. Super bonus points if the computer you install runs Linux or is a Mac.

Thanks for listening. Peter Rukavina, longtime customer.

Catherine and I have been semi-regular customers of Coop Taxi here in Charlottetown for 8 years now. When we lived in Kingston, Catherine’s lifeline to the Big City was Coop; she still uses them to run out to Sobeys from time to time, now that downtown Charlottetown is devoid of grocery stores, and I take them out to Charlottetown Airport every couple of months.

In all this time — say, 250 trips — they have never failed us. They have never been too long coming, never missed a scheduled early morning pickup, never failed to answer their phone, never failed to offer helpful, courteous service.

If you need a cab in Charlottetown, you cannot go wrong with them. 628-8200. Employee owned cooperative.

Tangent: if you are ever in need of a conversation starter in a taxi cab in Charlottetown, just ask the driver about the situation in the taxi industry. No matter who they’re driving for, they will have a strong opinion. I’ve have innumerable conversations about Ed’s vs. Star vs. Yellow vs. Coop. Good Island fun.

My electronic address book, which I have been keeping, in one form or another, for almost a decade needed some serious cleaning out, and tonight was the night. When I started, there were 729 people on file.

Cleaning out an address book is always filled with pathos, for the people that get removed are people who have moved or people who have died. Unless they were enemies (which is unlikely, as who puts enemies in their address book?), this means that the deletion is sort of a “final farewell.”

It’s also an interesting bird’s eye view of my work life over the last decade.

The oldest addresses I deleted were for staff at PEINet, the Island’s erstwhile Internet Service Provider. So Berni Gardiner and John Cunningham, along with their @peinet.pe.ca email addresses, are gone.

I had lots of technical contact people from the first summer we ran the Vacancy Information Service — lots of entries like “the guy who runs the exchange in Wellington” and “friendly ISDN installer from St. Peters.” And the number for Sandra Perry, who used to be the woman who you had to call for anything related to data at Island Tel. They’re all gone now.

There were a collection of names associated with my work in the mid-1990s on the project that become Avonlea Village: addresses for historic villages all over North America, the name of the guy who used to store his boat in the Belmont School House (since purchased, moved from Belmont to Cavendish and renovated magnificently), and all sort of contacts at Parks Canada. There was also the number for the “Broom Squire” at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto, perhaps the most interesting job title of the deleted bunch.

I had the modem dial-up number for “BATE - Line 9” on file, which is something only diehard veterans of the data wars will know the meaning or importance of.

A couple of numbers for staff at Marine Atlantic and Strait Crossing from when we had the IslandCam based on the ferry, and at the staging yard.

Some names I didn’t recognize at all: a “Roger Kitson” at a company called Cintek, a “John Lauener” in Toronto, a “Neil Mackinnon” identified only as “Government of Scotland,” a couple only identified as “Marc and Melissa,” and an entry for “Opus” with just an email address. There was my contact at “Worldwide Food Distributor” — I think that was a possible source for xanthan gum (don’t ask). Gone.

Lots of people are still here, but in different jobs. I still had Kevin Lewis on file at Enterprise PEI; he’s since moved on to Island Tel, and then UPEI. Brenda Gallant used to work for Tourism PEI, then went to Island Tel, and is now at the Confederation Centre of the Arts. David Mackenzie was at CADC, then the Capital Commission, now the Confederation Centre. David Malahoff when he worked on a CBC Newsworld programme called The Richler Scale (did that ever air?).

Elmer Stavert and Elmer Stafford were in there twice — I was never sure how to spell his name. I solved the problem by removing both entries.

Some old projects: our contact at the now-defunct Island Way Vacations, the number of a guy in the U.S. who wanted us to help him distribute music to adult contemporary radio stations on the Internet, Joe Sherman’s phone number at Arts Atlantic when we were going to put the magazine on the web. The phone and email for the guy who founded Delrina (the makers of WinFax) from an aborted attempt to prospect his new company. The President of the New England Innkeeper’s Association from when my friend Steve and I responded to their website RFP almost a decade ago.

Inexplicably, I had the phone number of the woman responsble for landscaping at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, the email address for Brock Meeks, former Chief Washington Correspondent for WIRED magazine, Robertson Davies’ daughter’s mailing address, the number of the man who runs the transmitter for Global Television in Halifax, and the address for the President of the Island Grain and Protein Council on file. They’re gone now.

Sandy Griswold died last year, and I had a tear in my eye when I removed his entry. I couldn’t bring myself to take my father’s mother, or Catherine’s mother’s mother out of the book yet — always hope for miracles, I guess.

The end result? I’ve pared myself down to 398 entries. The first entry is now my old friend from Peterborough, Jill Abson, and the last entry is the man known universally as “Dave Z” (pronounced ‘zee’) at Yankee.

Next update scheduled for 2013. Oliver will be just about to get his drivers license.

Logan Airport Monitor is a free web-based application that provides real time tracking information about flights flying into and out of Boston’s Logan Airport. It’s really quite amazing.

I took this picture of the sign for Ferry’s, a clothing store in Barcelona, while walking home from dinner one night. I think that, in terms of typography, colour and shape, it might be the nicest retail sign I’ve ever seen.

Here’s a picture, taken inland from the Costa Brava in Spain, of our little Toyota Yaris, rented from EasyCar.

The Yaris is really a Toyota Echo hatchback. It’s wildly popular in Europe — we saw them all over Spain and London. And now the model is coming to Canada (but, oddly, not the USA): the Echo Hatchback will be available here, says Charlottetown Toyota, starting in August.

I’ve always found the standard Echo to be a frightfully ugly car, with its jaunty high rear end. The Yaris/Echo Hatchback has the same form factor, but without a trunk, that which offends me is cut off, and the result is a sport looking car with a lot of room inside.

Although the Yaris is smaller than our 2000 Jetta Sedan (it’s 72cm shorter, 7cm thinner and almost exactly the same height), the interior space is laid out in such a way as to feel much roomier. This was most obvious with Oliver in his car seat in the middle of the back seat: in the Jetta, his feet touch the back of the front seats; in the Yaris he had lots of leg room.

Fuel economy-wise the Yaris was fantastic: we filled it up in Barcelona, drove around a lot for 3 days, and didn’t use a half a tank of gas. The Yaris is rated at 41/57 mpg (city/highway); our Jetta is 19/28 mpg. In other words, the Yaris can go twice as far on a gallon of gas as the Jetta.

Needless to say, we’re going to take one for a test drive when they arrive in Charlottetown at the end of the summer.

Presumably in preparation for their escape to West Royalty, Tweel’s in Charlottetown has started to consolidate their magazine racks.

Historicallly, the position at the “end of the hall” at Tweel’s has held travel and cooking magazines. And the long stretch at the “bottom of the el” section has held niche magazines: photography, hunting, cars, dogs, and so on.

As you can see from the following photo, snapped yesterday, a consolidation is in progress, with the “hunting, killing and paint shooting” titles merging east into the bottom of the travel rack.

My favourite juxtaposition is Trailer Life with its new neighbour Solider of Fortune. Although MotorHome with neighbour Action Pursuit Games run a close second.