Dave Winer says it better than I ever could:

The Shuttle astronauts were so lucky! They had amazing lives. They went to space. They were scientists so they knew it was risky. And they were lucky because they died quickly without much time for pain and long goodbyes. Yes it’s sad they died. Yes. But it’s also great that they lived.

In the past month I have been to Wal-Mart here in Charlottetown three times. This is almost more times than I have been to Wal-Mart, ever. And after a decade of deep “Wal-Mart is evil” feeling, I’ve come around. I understand Wal-Mart and, while I can’t say I like it, I’ve become a contented Wal-Mart customer, and I’ll be back.

Here is what Wal-Mart understands that others do not: shopping in this century is like going to the gas station. We go, we fill up, we leave. We don’t need an “event.” We don’t need coupons or sales or loyalty programs. We don’t want to dress up. We don’t want to make a night of it. Shopping is refueling. That’s it.

Much of the rest of the retail world still treats shopping as some sort of entertainment activity, as if we consumers take great pride in hitching up the wagon, getting dressed up, and making a day of it in the city. That’s simply not the way things work anymore, and Wal-Mart understands that.

In this way, Wal-Mart is in the same class as airlines like JetBlue, JetsGo and Southwest, airlines that understand that we now treat flying more like taking the bus than taking an ocean liner. Old-line airlines like Air Canada and American seem to still feel that air travel needs to “have a production made out of it.” And what’s really sad is that even as they think this, they’ve pared back their service to the point where the new independents actually offer more service.

Compare Wal-Mart to an old-line retailer like Zellers. Wal-Mart offers excellent selection, good service, clean, well-lit stores, and quick checkout. Zellers, despite years of trying, is still held back by less selection, non-existent service, stores with products tumbling into the aisles, and a checkout that seems to take at least 15 minutes no matter the time of day. Imagine if you had to wait 15 minutes to pay for gas.

Many complain that Wal-Mart has ripped the hell out of downtowns across North America. And they are right. But perhaps if the small, local retailers that tumbled in Wal-Mart’s wake had seen this new retail reality, and reacted to it, they wouldn’t had disappeared as they did. It’s not pleasant, but it’s true.

In the early 1960s, my parents moved to Rochester, New York, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. I was born there in 1966. I stumbled across Rochester: A City of Quality in the Prelinger Archives this evening — watch it, and get an introduction to the fertile ground that spawned me. To quote from the notes in the archive:

Beyond this, all Rochester seems to offer is “stable people” and “plenty of convenient parking”.

While I have no memory of my early days in Rochester (we lived there for only 3 months after I was born before moving to Ottawa, another city with plenty of convenient parking). But I do remember return visits over the years.

I remember a large discount store that had bowling alleys in the back, eating ice cream at Carvel, brother Mike peeing in front of thousands at an outdoor amphitheatre, going to eat at The Copper Kettle, going to visit the airport, and staying at a Holiday Inn that had a “games room” that I remember as being quite thrilling.

The weirdest visit was when, by sheer coincidence, my grade 13 end of year field trip took us to Rochester, to tour the various pillars of industry there (Kodak, Xerox, RIT). As is usual on such trips, various beer smuggling shenanigans took place, tempers flared, discipline threatened, etc. The highlight of the trip was taking the entire class to eat at the Copper Kettle; I don’t think they know what hit them.

Someday I’ll have to take Oliver back to see the old home place, such as it is.

I’m a registered voter in Rochester to this day — I voted for Ralph Nader for President! — and so will be connected to the city for as long as my franchise extends.

I wrote earlier about a challenge with Eastlink, my cable provider, and getting extra cable outlets installed.

I sent an email off to Eastlink on Tuesday. On Wednesday I got a telephone call from Eastlink, and a very nice woman offered to have an installer come out and install an additional outlet, at no charge. This morning the installer showed up and did exactly that. As I type this, I’m watching Compass in a little window on the screen as a result.

My only criticism: the appointment was an “all day” appointment, meaning that we had to be prepared for the installer from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I thought these days were over: even doctors, who have arguably more complicated lives than cable installers, can schedule in a narrower window than that. One would think that after the endless parody of this system on repeats of Seinfeld would have sunk in by now.

That all said, Eastlink came through, and that’s laudable.

Let me simply note for the record that the designers of Windows NT have now wasted another 5 hours of my life. Today I spent the afternoon — from noon to 5 p.m. — reinstalling Windows NT and the MapGuide server that drives the mapping functions on www.gov.pe.ca. By my count, I had to wait for Windows NT to restart sixteen times in total.

Windows NT needs to be reinstalled every time you blink. Change the computer name, restart. Change the IP address, restart. Install some software, restart. Uninstall some software, restart.

It’s as if the designers assumed users would buy their computer, install the operating system once, and then use the computer in that state forever. At least I hope that’s what they assumed, because if it was somehow considered okay to have users wait 5 minutes every so often for Windows NT to get its bearings, well, that’s a sad reflection on their design goals.

In any case, install went off generally without a hitch (which is unusual) and we should be back in the MapGuide business shortly.

David Malahoff turned me on to ZED, the new “after The National airs a second time” show on CBC Television.” I’d seen the show listed in the TV guide, but I’d assumed it was simply another Richler Family Vehicle, so I’d actually never tuned in.

Indeed I haven’t tuned in yet. But I did discover this amazing gem on their website (which, oddly for CBC when it’s trying for the hip demo, does not suck). And so now I will tune in.

The best reason for watching the movie associated with this story is to hear the word “choreographer” said with a Newfoundland accent; that alone makes me want to move to St. John’s right away.

I’m all for not going to war and all, but I’m with the Premier when he says it’s “primarily a business issue which is consistent with the objectives of the Slemon Park Corporation,” when commenting about the issue of American military use of Slemon Park.

The Slemon Park website is pretty clear about its pitch:

Slemon Park is a private corporation that is dedicated to providing exceptional facilities for some of the world’s finest companies in aviation, aerospace, commercial and light industries.

And then later on the same page:

Slemon Park has an airport with hangarage that can accommodate all but a few of the world’s largest aircraft. The airport has excellent entrepreneurial potential.

And finally:

Slemon Park is the perfect location to promote your training initiative.

The aerospace sector represents 20% of provincial exports; it’s a major part of the Island economy. It employs people.

One of the ways we kill people is with things that fly, and so in that 20% is presumably at least some material that will, at least indirectly, be responsible for blowing people up, making orphans, oppressing dissent, and so on.

For example: Honeywell “develops and produces cockpit display and mission management systems for the worldwide defense market.” Wiebel Aerospace “work[s] in the field of spare part distribution, and provide[s] support services to commuter, regional, military, and corporate operators.”

In other words, we’ve been supporting the war efforts of the U.S. for years — and the taxes and other benefits that have accrued to the province have paved our roads, healed our sick, educated our children.

It’s all very well and good to get all riled up about the headline issues; it’s another thing to try and build an integrated economy that sustains the people of the province. Social justice is important. We shouldn’t be living off the avails of killing machines. But social change isn’t affected by trying to micromanage institutions through the media: if you don’t like what Slemon Park is doing, run for office and get elected and have it do something else. Or join the Board of Slemon Park and guide it in a new direction. Or start an alternative business in Summerside that offers well-paying secure jobs to highly trained technicians so that they have employment alternatives. To continue with the “nightly press conference on Compass” approach serves only to make us feel all the more powerless, and takes the focus off approaches that might actually achieve the Good Aims we all seek.

Highlight of yesterday’s keyword searches leading people to this website was the phrase “anti war rallies in michigan when the next one is”. Not only is that a lyrical search phrase, as near as I can tell this website is the last place on earth such information would be available.

In other search news, a Google search for keywords tim hortons nutrition now shows this story from July of 2001 as the second hit after Tim Horton’s itself. Go figure.

And while on the topic of links in: fully 25% of the referrals to this website are now from NetNewsWire, a Mac news reading program that slurps in the XML version of this site.

And finally, for those of you missing the daily update on the Leo Broderick front, CBC comes to the rescue: here’s their Leo Broderick Watch page (okay, it’s not really that, technically, but the effect is the same).