Okay, I’m willing to accept the whole “Magic Ninety Three dot One” thing. I don’t like it, but it’s hard to be critical of a techo-posturing when it’s happening inside the soul-free puffery that is “Great Lite Rock Hits.”

But it appears, at least from the evidence presented on a brief listen to the Halifax CBC afternoon show, that there might be a movement afoot to rebrand CBC Radio One as “CBC Radio Dot One.”

I’m hoping against hope that this was a momentary slip or two by a green host, and not an across-the-board change.

Last night on Compass, Hon. Mitch Murphy, the Provincial Treasurer, engaged in open speculation about his plans for dealing with the provincial deficit. One of the trial balloons he sent up was a new health care premium. Used in some other provinces already, this is a monthly or yearly fee, sometimes income-geared, that is charged as a separate fee to every citizen in return for health care privileges.

I don’t think this is a good idea.

I’m all for paying for health care, and perhaps more than most families, I’m in a position, after the birth of a child, and three major operations for our family in two years, to appreciate the value of having high quality, well-funded health care at our disposal.

I don’t have any problem paying more for health care. As long as the system is well-regulated, available to all, and is client-centred, I’ll contribute happily.

But introducing a health care premium is going to complicate my life, and the lives of my fellow citizens. Needlessly. It’s going to require an entirely new bureaucracy to maintain. We’re all going to have to remember to pay our premiums, and staff will have to be in place to send out invoices, process payments, chase down non-payers. There are going to have to be systems in place at the doctor’s office to handle people who haven’t paid their premiums: do they get denied access? And so on.

All of this seems like a waste when we already have an effective, well-maintained system of filing, collection, and enforcement through the income tax system. A simple administrative change to the provincial income tax rate could achieve the same increase in revenue, without the need to introduce an entirely new level of bureaucracy.

So, Minister Murphy, please consider this as feedback to your trial balloon: charge me more for health care, but do it simply by increasing my taxes. Please.

Edward Hasbrouck provides a helpful update on Amazing Race 5. I can’t wait.

When Steven gets slashdotted, servers catch on fire and pagers go off all over town. When I get slashdotted, nobody notices (including me). This is the price I pay for discussing obselete technology.

Just finished an interesting conference call: Johnny was dialed in to the Reinvented Asterisk server via the VoicePulse DID number in Peterborough, New Hampshire from his home in Vancouver. My colleagues at Yankee did the same thing. I dialed in to the Reinvented toll-free number to get to the Asterisk server. And our colleague Steve dialed directly into Yankee’s office.

Six people. Two countries. Four locations. Worked like a dream, with excellent voice quality.

I just finished taping a segment for CBC Prince Edward Island’s Main Street from here in San Francisco on the “Super Tuesday” primary that’s taking place here, and in 9 other states, today. It should air between four and six in Prince Edward Island.

Next stop, November.

An abbreviated report tonight, as exhaustion fades me quickly soon.

Up at the crack of dawn. Sophie and Oliver find they are moving to North Carolina. Pick up Sophie at UC Davis and head, in the rain, into Berkeley to the chocolate factory. Much chocolate consumed, and I decide that 70% cacao is now my personal minimum. Indian fast food for lunch. Into the hills for verdant memories of [friend, not son] Oliver’s childhood. Across the Bay Bridge for supplementary chocolate and wardriving with my iBook and Sophie’s Pocket PC (very cool). Rendezvous with silverorange boys and two browser savants from the Mozilla Foundation for dinner at the Betelnut on Union St. (recommended by Ian).

Taxi to the hotel. Settle in, only to be summoned to the promise of fun by Dan. Drive Nick to the airport. Only small fun. Drive around in suburbia: many big box stores and fast food restaurants, but little fun. Daniel and I get hit with the bowling bolt at the same time, and we undertake a short but very complicated diversion into alley location, which ultimately fails, but is somewhat fun. Back to hotel. Deep sigh and resignation to sleep rather than Big Fun. Have to live purely on the residual joie de vivre of the futility of it all.

At the Pan Pacific now, tucking in for the night. Tomorrow my last dash of warm coastal freedom before the insane redeye return to snow, snow, snow.

As previously reported, this is a out-of-order episode in my western adventure, stretching back two days to Saturday night.

Saturday night we hooked up with the silverorange boys after all and, based on a recommendation from Peter Burka (present only in spirit), we walked into up, up, up to a Japanese mall food court for sushi in boats. But there was a long and confusing line, so we headed back out into the neighbourhood, and finally settled on a Japanese restaurant across the street.

The general consensus was that the food was excellent. I had a combination dinner of salad, soup, sushi, and tofu steak, and a glass of Kirin beer. During the dinner, a plan to engage in some variation of drunken karaoke emerged, so when we finished at the restaurant, we scoured the neighbourhood for an eligible location. Alas we came up dry, and so walked, somewhat sullenly, back down, down, down towards our hotel.

Once at the hotel, a small burst of new energy pushed us back out the door. There was an aborted flirt with a raucous Irish pub, followed by some aimless wandering. Somewhere along the way, the Burka boys secreted themselves off, no doubt to attend some late-nite Mozart concert. Finally, realizing that the End Was Near, we made a last-ditch attempt to rescue the night by jumping on the Powell-Hyde cable car.

At this point, somehow, I was nominally in charge of the event, and there were many sceptical looks my way as the cable car drew further and further from our starting point, and the Fun Night Activities appeared to be whittling away to nothing. We finally reached the other side of the mountain and, as luck would have it, a jazz lounge winding down for the night presented itself. We had a drink, entertained by smooth piano stylings, and then, satisfied that we had done our best to achieve maximum levels of fun, ventured back out to find our way home.

Serendipity struck as, amidst a “we’re going to need two taxis” conversation, Dan flagged down a mini-van taxi that neatly held us all. It appeared, from my backseat position, to be driven by Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. But we got there in one piece, and a much better piece it was than the crazy NASCAR-inspired taxi ride from the night before.

This morning we wrangled ourselves up for 9:00 a.m., and by all appearances our young colleagues were either all out and about, or still asleep (the only one with concrete plans was Stephen, and I’m sure he’ll report his exciting activities here). We had a moribund breakfast at a deceptively well-decorated café around the corner, walked around Chinatown for a while (our weather has been fantastic, and there’s no salve to the frigid snow-pummelled Charlottetown soul better than a warm morning walk in the sun).

And then suddenly it was time for Johnny and Jodi to head back to Vancouver, and for me to do a complex Bart-to-train dance up to Davis to rendezvous with Oliver and Sophie. By the clock on the wall, the train upon which I write this note should arrive in Davis in 20 minutes. More on our exciting Davis activities, and our chocolate-drenched Monday morning, when next the Internet strikes.