Negative reviews

At the beginning of our journey, we received a rash of negative reviews of our work. Though it sometimes stung, we made changes over time to address these concerns and haven’t often received this kind of critical feedback since, which is a problem.

We aren’t so big that we get much in the way of online discussion or mentions in the press, so I went looking. With the interest in screen-free ways to access audio, like Yoto player, Tonie, and our sponsor Storybutton, I decided to dive into forums that discuss the experience of listening to audio on these platforms.

It’s important to note that these listeners have far different expectations than those sharing an iPhone or iPad with their kids. They also are not necessarily aware of what a podcast is or the community built around podcasts such as ours.

There were two criticisms I have found stated time and time again.

The first was advertising. It’s an understandable complaint. We have gone a few weeks without an ad, and then boom, there is an advertisement for bed sheets or meal delivery before every story. I don’t like ads much either, but without ads, there wouldn’t be stories like Bernice the Bear, which their kids seem to love. People don’t often realize that others have a mortgage to pay.

The other complaint concerned our birthday shoutouts. “Why the hell are there 100 birthday shoutouts before a story?” was one complaint. Kids love hearing their names on a podcast, and we are often surprised by how popular this part of the show has become. But it hasn’t scaled well. Even after charging $35US per shoutout, we still get inundated with requests.

We haven’t considered creating with these closed platforms in mind, but as I find more of these criticisms and the platforms increase in popularity, we’ll likely make more changes to how we produce our audio.


Just start somewhere

Whenever I mention to those with more talent and experience in writing that everything I release is essentially a very rough draft, I can see a slight grimace forming at the corner of their mouth. To release a story that is not perfectly formed is not best practice.

Our listeners don’t seem to mind too much, as children tend to possess an interesting combination of open appreciation, criticality, and forgiveness of the less-than-perfect.

This allows us to produce more stories on a tight time schedule. You can’t expect perfection if you only have 3 hours or so to write something new.

Eventually, some investment in time and money must be made in editing so that the stories can be released in different mediums for reading. Without the benefit of Sheryl’s voice and my music, the accuracy of the word becomes more important. With hundreds of stories, it is difficult to know where to start, but that’s where the uniqueness of our model comes into play.

I have access to the listening data, regular communication from listeners, and comments and reviews of all our stories, which tells me which resonates most with kids. So, while I may like the story about a Mermaid visiting Souris, it turns out that the most listened-to story was about a mouse in a barn. In fact, over the course of a year, Nibbles the Mouse has been listened to hundreds of thousands of times. I have no idea why.

In the Montague Community School writing class, we were asked to submit a story to share during the final banquet. The teacher graciously offered to edit each of our stories and then print off copies that others could take home. So I took the opportunity to send her a copy of Nibbles the Mouse, and now I have a far more complete version. I think she was slightly taken aback by my copyright message on the first page. It was a bit heavy-handed (it had a reprinted with permission message), and I hummed and hawed, but in the end, I acquiesced to the instruction I received from lawyers.

With a more polished version, I can find an editor and an illustrator and start creating prototypes to see what format best fits these stories.


Story waypoints

I’m about to finally finish a series called The Magical Book of Dreams, which I started for Sleep Tight Stories a year and a half ago. It’s a story about a girl whose father disappears, and she goes off to find and then rescue him. I found it very hard to write, and my writing style changed about five times throughout the time I have been writing it. Though a mess, it’s proven to have a following, and we often get requests for when the next chapter is coming.

I read an excerpt that at the bi-weekly meeting of the Montague Writing Group. I don’t think they came away impressed, and they had some helpful feedback.

Next, I hope to publish it in print and ebook, but because it’s so messy, I think it’s going to cost a fortune to have it edited. Once done, the publishing part should be more straightforward than the other stories I have written, which occupy the space between board and chapter books. They will also require more illustrations.

The other continuing series is The Transfer Student, about a girl who moves to Canada from Mars. I started this series after I was inspired by Patti Larsen’s Cat City, which we published and are re-mastering as time permits. The Transfer Student is far less developed and will take considerable time to complete before it’s finished. The story never explicitly states the location, but I will somehow find a way to weave Charlottetown into the story.

By the time both of these series reach their respective end points, it will be the end of June, and it will be time for a couple of weeks of working outside.


Some local works

I’ve been collating the remote digital bits to my life of late. Online health checks, Montreal clinics for a doctor, mentors for design and business, online co-working, and Zoom-based social gatherings. These fill holes that I find can’t be filled in our remote summer paradise.

I signed up with the Start-up Zone again last summer in the hopes that I might use the space to fill that need to be around people during the workday. In the dead of winter, I find my Montague office very isolating, and the old men at Home Hardware can only be so accommodating. I never got to the Start-up Zone but made some great connections.

It’s not official, but that resource will cease operations at the end of May. It was always an odd place, but I found my year as a resident company incredibly useful. It was very active and busy, with plenty of opportunities to connect with people and learn new perspectives. It has never recovered from the COVID shutdowns and has received little direction from the board until now. Other organizations have been trying to fill the gap, like PEIBWA, a strangely female-only resource, and Innovation PEI, which has recently published some material to help would-be entrepreneurs. Neither have an environment conducive to the magic of a happenstance connection with a peer.

However, I have found a couple of other local organizations with programs I am starting to enjoy. Creative PEI is running a course I joined, which will follow Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way. I particularly enjoy trying to write my Morning Pages every day. They also have an Artist’s Support group, which I attended. It’s comforting to be around people who live through the same challenges as you, who are not obsessed with leveraging real estate assets as their primary output, and who make things because they feel they need to be made.

I have been a member of the PEI Writers Guild for a couple of years(?), but I have never participated in any of their events. However, they have a monthly writers’ meet-up that I will attend. If I can summon the courage, I plan on reading at their monthly readings at The Gallery.

While so much of what I do seems to be increasingly done off-Island (relying on off-Island health services is an odd one), it’s wonderful that there are still some opportunities to connect here locally.


It’s home

Answering the question as to why we live in Prince Edward Island requires just two words: it’s home. All the many advantages of living here can surely be found elsewhere. And the many disadvantages, like the lack of social services and health care, high taxation, etc., are negated by simply repeating those two words.

That doesn’t necessarily apply when it comes to running a business. Does it?

I finally received a bill for legal services that we received from McInnis Cooper. I’m glad I have a sense of humour, as it was laughably high considering what service was rendered. A copy of their findings was also going to cost extra, which I declined.

I like working with people across a table and with a whiteboard or paper handy. It’s enjoyable to connect with experts like those at McInnis Cooper. As such, I have been trying to be as local a company as we can be, even when their fees are 2-3x as much as those of a remote competitor.

Recently, as we have placed more attention on the financial side of our business, I’ve realized that all our business is conducted in US dollars. We do nothing in Canada. We have US currency accounts and are also in the process of opening a bank account in the US.

We’ve decided that no matter the size of our tiny shop, we will not hire employees. There are many reasons for this, the most important being that I don’t want to be someone’s boss. The work that we hire for will be done remotely by freelancers or contractors outside of Canada.

So why not move the whole company to another, perhaps more favourable jurisdiction? What advantages are there to be had by being located here (locating elsewhere is surprisingly easy)? Why be local at all?

During my search for an answer to this question, there were many reasons listed: Tax benefits, legal system, access to trade agreements, banking and currency exchange, access to talent, reputation and branding, funding and government support, and healthcare.

The only one of these that interested me was tax benefits, and that will require a conversation with an accountant. I don’t foresee any government support.

We will categorize this as a thought experiment for this year, but if we are lucky enough to continue or even grow, we will look more seriously at it in the new year.


Apple Tax

The tech news is often full of articles reporting on Apple’s dominance with its app store and the percentage it charges. There is less talk about how businesses are compelled to spend a significant portion of their budget on digital advertising with Google and Facebook to ensure visibility online.

I’m sure the economics work out well for large companies, but for a really small shop like ours, I’m happy to pay Apple this fee.

We host our premium feed with Supercast, and payments are made through Stripe. The service is completely open, and the fees are relatively low. I can access customers’ emails, listening habits, and other information I shouldn’t be privy to. This would seem ideal from a business/marketing standpoint—low fees and lots of data.

Except it’s not. How many times have I acted as tech support for a $7/month charge? Too many. Hours and hours have been spent. Or all the time, I have had to refund a charge, which costs me the fee that both Supercast and Stripe levy. Not to mention those who are too lazy to email and simply dispute the charge with the credit card company. This not only costs me the fees from Supercast and Stripe, but the bank charges me $15.

For many, this is no big deal, but each hour spent sending emails, offering tech support, or managing payments is time I’m not spending doing other, more important things, like creating something people might want to pay for in the first place.

So, we are going to move from open to closed and move all our offerings to a service that manages those aspects of our business. We’ll also find another way to establish a relationship with our listeners.


Buckets

I’m working on trying to change my mindset. A mental hack perhaps. I am trying to put certain aspects of my life into mental buckets. When there is time to devote to that “bucket,” I’ll take the cover off and devote whatever cognitive capacity I have at that moment to that bucket. Perhaps this is called mindfulness, or living in the moment? I have yet to really look into the proper labels. In a way, it’s related to not taking your work home with you.

What I have found is that I have a tendency towards workaholism in the sense that I cannot disengage from work-related problems, likely due to some underlying issues like anxiety or perfectionism. I tend towards rumination – I dwell too much on problems, primarily in our business.

I think the underlying anxiety I feel is related to age and the question that Sheryl once asked, “If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?” A question I don’t have an answer to. There is also a tinge of anger towards the source of many of our problems, something I will write about later.

I recently shared with Camren one of the methods I was taught many years ago, related to musical performance. Often, problems creep into your playing as a musician, or perhaps there is a particular music passage that you always play poorly. Sometimes it’s stage fright. These issues become even more acute the more you focus on them, and it can get to the point that you can hardly function at all.

I was taught early to be a systems thinker. What are you doing holistically? What process to being better are you taking? Almost universally, when I focused on the process, the problems went away.

That’s the approach I am going to try to take again. The first step is to stop this incessant focus on the problem and just try to be good (which is good enough) at what I want to do.


Podcast rankings

Do these real meaning? I have no idea. This is our current rankings for the US in our categories. Our other podcasts don’t rank as high.

Usually I look at these to see who is spending on promotion and to get a sense of what other people are working on. These ranking also illustrate that there are very few independent producers left.


Decision made

I don’t remember having my future laid out so early, but this seems to be the norm for Camren and his classmates in IB.

We started talking about university in a more serious fashion at the start of the school year. Camren had his schools of interest narrowed down to about five, plus one in the UK, and I suggested a couple in the States.

My opinion was that in Canada, at least, with some exceptions, the undergraduate education you get is going to be of an acceptable standard, no matter the school. As long as the courses he wanted were offered, he should be fine. But, my life experience has been that the farther you venture from home, the greater the discomfort, the greater the potential for wonderful memories, learning and experiences.

He agreed, but in the end, it came down to two choices: Victoria University, which we visited earlier this year, and Mount Allison University. He chose Mount Allison and will continue to swim competitively with the varsity swim team. He is very excited and happy.


Obsolescence

Does your hammer lag when you wield it? Your paintbrush stutter across the canvas? Or does your pen simply stop accepting ink?

My Mac is simply a tool I use, and sometimes I believe the online nonsense about planned obsolescence. Then, when I go to Apple.ca, I look at the prices and think that perhaps I should use a different tool, like a typewriter and reel-to-reel tape.

I won’t change. It’s too ingrained; I’ll just suffer through a laggy cursor and a myriad of other issues that creep into my workflow (like increasingly crappy user interfaces) until I break down and enter my credit card number.


Unnerving

I took a few minutes to try Pi.ai by Inflection AI this afternoon. Just a short conversation, the kind you might have with a stranger, though perhaps a bit more honest. I have no deep analysis other than to say I found it unnerving. I had the audio piped through studio monitors and I could hear the breathiness in the playback’s voice, telling me to get more sleep, and if I had trouble sleeping here were a few techniques she recommended. I felt like I shouldn’t be talking to this female Entity alone in my office, so I tried it again with Catriona present, where she gave Catriona detailed advice on why she shouldn’t be drinking so much tea and eating so many carbs.

If the voice didn’t resonate with me, would I be more receptive?

Like ChatGPT, this isn’t intelligence, but 90% of all conversations you have with people you don’t know aren’t that intelligent anyway. I’m curious how this progresses.

The AI companions you can have conversations with


Weird Apple

It’s nice to be recognized by Apple, but I can’t understand why they couldn’t have thought a little bit more as to where Sleep Tight Science was placed on their list.


Decisions

At the start of the school year, Camren sat down and mapped out all the universities he was interested in attending to begin the application process. The top of his list has always been Mount Allison because it has excellent coaching on the swim team, and it was a school he was most familiar with.

His list included Carlton University, University of New Brunswick, Mt. Allison, University of Victoria, and Aberdeen in Scotland, and I threw in Brown University and Stanford University for fun.

He applied to all of the schools except for Brown and Stanford. He discounted Aberdeen as too expensive early on.

What is interesting to me, as an observer and advisor, is how his decision is being shaped. All of these schools, except one, have regularly contacted him during this process. UNB and Mt. A reached out with personal emails from students offering help. The coach at Mt. A has checked in as well. There is genuine and sincere interest from these schools in seeing him attend.

He has had zero communication from the University of Victoria, which, after we visited, he was convinced he would attend. But since then, he has lost interest, with emails unanswered and zero effort from the swim team coaches.

A little communication goes a long way to shaping his (or anyone’s) decision.

There is no right or wrong here. His final three choices, U.Vic, UNB, and Mt.A, have sound academic programs.

U.Vic will offer greater personal growth, UNB’s swimming program is superbly funded, and Mt.A has a good mix of sound academics and the chance to compete (it has also offered scholarships).

We are both quite underwhelmed with U.Vic’s recruiting effort, especially after all the work he has put into attending there. Many university programs are highly competitive, but that competition works both ways, and unfortunately only some universities recognize that.


Fredericton

I’m spending a couple of nights in Fredericton. Camren is attending a UNB swim team recruiting event, and it made more sense to stay instead of making two trips. It is also a chance to experience a different environment for a few days, something which feels necessary.

I’m staying at the Carriage House Inn, and the first descriptor that comes to mind would be ‘quirky.’ The innkeeper who lives onsite is extremely friendly, and if my limited interaction with her so far is any indication, the main reason the business continues to exist.

This isn’t a holiday, so today will be spent trying to keep on top of my writing. A local coffee roaster is nearby, so I will visit there to work for the morning, grab a bag or two of beans, and spend the afternoon in the dining room here at the Inn.

Fredericton looks similar to every other Maritime city, with the same architecture and the same dearth of activity downtown. Close your eyes, and UNB could be UPEI or Mt.A.

Hoping for good weather for the drive home. I’m not the winter driver I once was.


Is there an app for that?

There was a brief period before we realized that pursuing a passion 7 days a week required real income, where our work seemed stress-free and full of hope. We were growing, and the reviews from the stories I was writing were positive. I was dumbfounded that I could be so fortunate to pursue full-time something I had no training in or perceived aptitude at this stage of my life.

Then, we tried to make a predictable income.

We have partnered with the audio equivalent of a writer agent to handle ad sales, growth, and, in one case, language rights so that I could focus on creating cool stories and, if lucky, fund other projects that can allow us to escape the vicious world of kids advertising.

Each and every agreement has been a disappointment. Some, if I am in a mood, might be characterized as malicious.

My problem is not just wasted opportunities or not living up to our potential. It’s my inability to block the myriad of problems we face from my mind. I mull the problems over and over again. I lose sleep. And lose mindshare to problems out of my control.

Today, instead of writing stories, I am dealing with the fact that some asshole is using our name on Apple podcasts to try and game Apple’s search engine to get subscribers. He’s violating our trademark, and now I have to spend my time pursuing him.

Looking through Spotify, it’s amazing how rife the market is with people skirting copyright rules, with little to no scruples, in order to gain a couple more listens.

So, this would seem to be some kind of mindfulness hack or technique I don’t have. Blocking out the noise from the misanthropes of the world so that I can put my full attention on creating cool stuff. Is there an app.?


Performance

On Monday nights, I join a creative writing class at the high school in Montague. It’s well-attended, and it focuses on getting you to write freely. The other students have wonderful stories to tell.

I use the opportunity to get some work done.

There is something invigorating about being pressured to write to a prompt, complete the work in 40 minutes, and then share with a group of others. The work I completed then was superior to the 4 hours I spent finishing the story the next day.

Community schools are awesome. While I am in this class, Sheryl is learning to knit, Catriona is practicing TaiChi, and Camren is lifeguarding for the Special Olympics at the pool.


Cats

We have two cats now, which is a sign that we are committed to staying here in Canada against all odds. I didn’t think too hard before reaching the decision to bring new members into our family. If I had of I likely wouldn’t have, because though not as much responsibility as a dog, the daily litter box cleaning gets tiresome. The waiting outside my bedroom door at 4am, wanting to be fed, annoying. They don’t understand the coffee first rule. They do force a certain sense of calm and patience which is something I need.


Joy

Joy is sitting down in the morning writing 600 words without stopping, with the words coming out as fast as I can two finger type. No email. No browser. No procrastination.

Then, stopping to brew a cup of coffee from Myanmar, and experiencing it all over again.


Turning point

I just want to make things. And have time to dream up new things to make. This is all I really want to do.

We are at a turning point. Most similar products like ours are created by companies with an org chart, or at least by a group of individuals. They might have a CEO, developers, writers, voice over artists, sound engineers, producers etc. We have myself, and Sheryl on the weekends. Our pace is too frenetic and the work we create, from my eyes and ears, is suffering.

The decision we have right now is, do we scale up and hire, or do we find a way to scale back so that we can focus on being better. Or is there a middle ground?

I don’t want to be a manager or a boss, and I don’t want to answer to someone else. I just want to make things.


Enjoy

There is never a dull moment at the Montague PO.

After watching an interview with Chuck Palahniuk, I was struck enough by his narrative style that I had to go out and buy one of his novels.

Unfortunately, while Canada Post said we picked it up from the post office, it was not picked up by us. We often get other people’s delivery slips in our box and hand them back to one of the clerks. I assume the person who got our slip did not and is now enjoying our copy of Choke.

I like going to the Montague PO, but I’ve started sending packages to Stratford for future deliveries. It takes an extra two days to come out here to the wilds of Kings County.


Camren in Montreal

Camren is returning to the Island today after attending a swim meet in Montreal. Camren is everything I wasn’t at his age. He is smart, hard working, driven, and has grit.


Automation

When we moved into this old house, I invested in a bunch of low-cost sensors, plugs, and cameras. In part, this was due to being hysterically told, “Crime is rampant in Montague,” and to monitor temperatures and humidity so that when certain thresholds were reached, an action could be performed. It’s also nice to not have to reach around to turn off hard-to-reach power switches for lamps.

I’ve got a mix of HomeKit and Alexa/Blink devices in the home and studio.

Yesterday, for some unknown reason, HomeKit stopped working, and all the lights everywhere were on. I tried some quick fixes, but I refuse to put effort into what is supposed to be a timesaver. That era was supposed to be over a decade or more ago. This morning, it came back, and I discovered the studio was 10˙C.

Also, this morning, the TV turned on itself and started playing Pipi Longstocking Bedtime Stories.

Attempting to turn off the Christmas lights, Alexa said they didn’t exist. I looked on the app, and the name had been changed to 0.

If I attempt to answer the door with our doorbell, the person will likely be back in Charlottetown by the time it connects.

I have each Alexa device we own set to a different voice. The bedroom is Aussie, the living room is British, and the office is indistinct. I am constantly being sold something.

Siri never works, but the American voice I have it set to sounds fun announcing Island place names.

HomeKit routines have a mind of their own. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

I tried to order a heater through Amazon that would quickly warm up my office in the morning, but it kept arriving in pieces. Homedepot has 4, but their automation doesn’t work either because each time I go there, no one knows where they are.

Instead of writing, I just finished troubleshooting an issue with Supercast, which is supposed to automate paid subscriptions. I spend far too much time acting as their tech support.

I recently subscribed to Spark Email’s Pro plan (or whatever it’s called) to automate email through Ai. They forgot about how important the user interface is, and now I spend more time looking for actions so I can do things with my mail – 2 steps forward, 6 steps back.

Alexa just told me someone is in the driveway; it’s likely a fly or the neighbour’s cat.


Compete

Sleep Tight Media’s three current public podcasts joined another network – sort of a network within a network. The relationships were obfuscated enough that we hired someone at great expense to review the contract, but funnily enough, we got a more detailed analysis from ChatGPT. There is no press release, and I am unsure if we are allowed to mention them by name until we move our digital bits to their platform.

These arrangements become necessary in these early stages if we want to continue paying our mortgage and continue with an activity that has great personal value to us and our listeners. We need help growing our product, and bringing in revenue is the only way I know of other than eliciting help from others.

It’s also become necessary because, in the past six months, there has been an explosion of interest in our category. When we started, there were plenty of others, many of which processed more talent and resources than we did. But I generally never uttered the word competitor. Now, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t see something new, not just stories for kids podcasts but bedtime stories as well. Coincidentally, our formula seems to work as I see it being used by many others.

Most of these podcasts come from companies with actual organizational structures. Some are big, like Amazon; some are much smaller. We are all competing for an audience and need revenue to continue.

Of course, it’s great to have confirmation that what you are doing works well enough that others want to do it, too. And it’s especially great to have kids’ audio get the attention and growth it deserves.

The downside is I am competitive and like to try to win. But how do you compete when you are creating something that you feel appeals to children? This isn’t candy bars, but it’s not art either.

This is the question I have been wrestling with: how do we compete against overwhelming odds while staying true to doing what we love to do?


Agreements

My concept with entering agreements has been:

I don’t have the time nor the immediate expertise to do this myself, so I want to hire you to do it for me. In return for bringing advertising to our podcasts, you take a generous 50%.

But this power dynamic doesn’t exist.

Instead, it’s more like:

Since I lack the resources and the necessary skills, I’m forced to rely on your services despite the terms being unfavourable. For which, I reluctantly agree to surrender a substantial 50% of the revenue.

I don’t know if it’s possible for but the largest creatives or artists to upend this dynamic.


A comedy show

Camren and I flew to Victoria last Thursday so that he could tour UVic, swim with their swim team, and get a general feel for the city. We both came away with a great first impression and were struck by just how friendly and helpful people were.

We left a day earlier than necessary because we were flying Air Canada, an airline with the efficiency, reliability, and customer service similar to Soviet Airlines of old.

Flying out of Charlottetown to anywhere of distance often requires catching the early morning flight that leaves at ~ 5:20, which we did. Other than my carry-on setting off all kinds of alerts, to the embarrassment of the newbie security agent, our flights went without a hitch. Except that, in flight, we were told we couldn’t eat the snacks I prepared because someone had a food allergy. Air Canada’s aircraft lacked amenities, and the seats had little room. Most people have caught on to the fact that if you check your baggage for a fee, you stand a good chance of not seeing it when you land.

Surprisingly, Air Canada sent an email a day after we arrived offering a credit due to a poor flight experience.

Our flight back could have been smoother.

First, our flight was delayed leaving Victoria due to a staffing issue in Toronto. At this point, we could still catch our connecting flight.

Once boarded, we had a further delay because the “only person who could approve the flight by checking the checklist” was not at the airport. Luckily, he “was still on Vancouver Island.” We finally left 45 minutes later. Making our connecting flight was increasingly doubtful.

In flight, I got a notification that our flight to Charlottetown was “delayed due to airport constraints.” It was only a 15-minute delay, but we could make our flight after all.

I received another notice, “This flight is delayed due to airport constraints,” and again later, yet another delay. The 3-hour total delay meant that we would most certainly make our flight, though I expected that they would, in the end, cancel, which necessitated a last-minute search for a hotel.

When we arrived in Toronto, we had to wait on the tarmac because our gate wasn’t available. An earlier Air Canada flight had broken down at the gate.

Then, when we finally arrived at the gate, they wouldn’t open the door because we were told the door was damaged and someone with more authority had to come and approve its opening.

Hours later, we boarded our flight to Charlottetown with the usual asinine board by zone. You can pay $75 to board earlier in the hopes that your carry-on will be placed nearby, though if you carry a backpack, that may have to go under your seat.

This kind of nonsense used to drive me crazy. I don’t know if it’s my advancing age or just low expectations, but through all of this, all I did was laugh like we were taking part in some kind of reality comedy show.

We finally arrived in Montague at about 4am, the late hour which negatively impacts everyone’s week.

There are many positives to living here on Prince Edward Island. But the hassle-free ability to leave for places afar is certainly not one of them.


New Cover Art

I finally found some time to update our current shows cover art. It’s been a lot of fun spending time looking at pixels again. My philosophy has been to create something simple, that is both recognizable and readable. Despite the bulbous typeface, I think it works.


From the future

Since moving to the hinterlands, we get a lot of strange messages from Canada Post. Usually, they state that our package couldn’t be delivered, which is code for, it’s in your mailbox. This one is new. It states that a card was left – except that the time the card was left hasn’t occurred yet. I guess Canada Post has managed to travel into the future. I’ll sit on my step waiting for them this afternoon.


Podcast Nomination

We have been nominated.

We are thrilled that Sleep Tight Stories and Sleep Tight Science are included in the 6th Annual Canadian Podcast Awards list of impressive nominees. We never promote and as such seldom get included in any “best of” lists, awards, or get accolades from peers, so this is a nice surprise.

“Nominees like Sleep Tight Stories exemplify the wealth of talent we have here in Canada and reflect the unique attitudes, opinions, ideas, values, and creativity of Canadians,” said John Leschinski, Chair of the Canadian Podcast Awards. “We had over 500 podcasts submitted this year from across the country – It’s truly an incredible honour to be recognized and chosen by your fellow peers within the Canadian podcasting community.”

The Canadian Podcast Awards were established in 2018 by Podcamp Toronto to showcase the very best in Canadian on-demand digital audio production. The awards feature categories across topic areas such as documentary, politics, arts, and culture. Past winners include Front Burner, Parkdale Haunt, Minds of Madness, and Our Native Land. A full list of previous winners can be found at canpodawards.ca/award.


Homedepot Charlottetown is a PITA

Whenever possible, I shop at one of the hardware stores in Montague. They tend to have long-term employees who know what they are talking about and give customer service far exceeding what you could experience in a big box store. But they don’t sell everything.

I’ve been working out of our garage since the end of June. It gives us more space than what we had in Charlottetown, and I have the added advantage of being able to have comfy naps. The garage is supposed to be insulated, but like our old house, it was likely insulated on the cheap because it’s damn cold. So, I opted to buy a combination of radiant and forced air space heaters to keep our gear from freezing. However, each time the Vornado we ordered arrived from Amazon, it arrived broken and in pieces.

I haven’t been to Charlottetown during business hours for 2 weeks, so yesterday, I raced to pick up Camren, and having 20 minutes, I thought I would first drop in and pick up the heater at Homedepot, who also sell Vornado products.

Their website and app say they have 4 in stock and tell you exactly where they are. Except that section doesn’t have heaters; it’s the next aisle over, and they aren’t there.

Anytime I have to ask for help from the mass of employees roaming the store or chatting in groups, my time would be better spent walking up and down the aisles. But I was in a rush. One lady reluctantly agreed to look for the product but couldn’t find it on her terminal and didn’t know where the heaters were. So she asked someone else who double-fisted 2 terminals and also had no idea. Then she said that she would ask someone else but that he was busy at the moment. Eventually, he came over to tell me that they were likely in the clearance section and that if not there, it was likely a mistake in their inventory system. They weren’t there.

So I lost 30 minutes of my time trying to spend money.

I’m not a big fan of Canadian Tire, either. Their staff suffers from the same problems that Homedepot does, but at least their inventory system works so that you generally don’t have to interact with them.