Category: Uncategorized

Many, many years ago, I started my depressing voyage through the world of work at an Overwaitea food store in my home town. As a teenager, I expected to work so weird hours, and accept some level of abuse from the “adults” I worked with.

However, it seems that the organization now expects all their employees to accept this crap [here].

A major B.C. grocery chain wants some of its unionized staff to work shifts of just two hours, a move the union representing 8,500 workers called shocking.

The Overwaitea Food Group, which also runs Save-On-Foods and Urban Fare, made the demand for two-hour shifts as it began negotiating a new contract with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the union said.

I know that I have been bad at blogging news about GrabPERF, but today there is some. In the last two weeks, we have added two measurement locations: Washington DC AOL and Argentina LaNacion.

Thanks to Carson Evans of AOL, and Jose Falvo and Leonardo Lancellotta of LaNacion for helping out with the installation process.

So, on New Years Eve, due to the vagaries of modern air travel, the family will be spending seven hours at Sea-Tac waiting for the second leg of our trip home.

For me, this is usually not an issue, as I can huddle up in a corner with my wireless connection and while away the hours with work and general interest. However, we will be a one laptop family, and my children need to be entertained.

Likely at least an hour of the trip will be handled by immigration as they subject us to the joys of entry with our Advanced Parole documents. It’s now harder for us to get into the US via air as late process Green Card applicants than it is if we were simply visiting the country.

After that, who knows.

Does anyone out there in blog land have any great suggestions for entertaining a family for seven hours at an airport?

 

 

Don’t really need to explain this, do we?

Via Core77 and LuxuryLaunches

I am often chided for my 5-shot, Venti Latte.
Then I saw this.

Yup, it’s a “a 13 shot Venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel”.

Lord help this person when they wake up in the alley behind Starbucks on Christmas Day.

Original image from Core77.

Landed in the US on a one-day business trip today. The family is enjoying Christmas with the grandparents in Victoria, BC, and I need to work remotely to cover the time.

I flew into Seattle for a one-day trip, with my brand-new Advanced Parole documents. Figured it would be speedy.

90 minutes later, they let someone who has gone through a number of security checks and other body scans into the US.

Have to wonder what people from other countries have to go through.

Technorati Tags: Green Card, Advanced Parole, immigration, strip search, body cavity

This morning we dragged the family out of bed at a ridiculous hour for an adventure into downtown Boston.

It was a big day in the Green Card Process: We were off to get fingerprinted and have our pictures taken. This is a big step, as we can now be cross-referenced against all of the major security databases to verify whether we are criminals or not.

However, the biggest step came about 10 days ago when we got our Advanced Parole documents.

For those of you who have managed to avoid this happy process, an Advanced Parole document is a document that states that I have the rights and privileges of a Green Card holder, but I am on double-secret probation.

The other big deal with this is that I can take on contract work, and ZenWife can get a job if she so desires.

Our fortunes may be looking up?

Technorati Tags: Green Card, USCIS, Advanced Parole, Immigration

Ok, for my birthday (November 14), I am going to Columbus, OH.

Could be worse.

Couldn’t it?

Technorati Tags:
Columbus, Ohio, birthday, 39, travel

mon.itor.us, a service which also provides free Web performance measurement services, appears to be having a wee problem.

The most recent GrabPERF data on this site is available here. The issue may be corrected by the time you look at the data.

I don’t wish suffering like this on anyone. GrabPERF had it’s own 3-4 day outage a few months ago. It’s just sad to see when monitoring services go down.

I am a sucker for dogs.

It’s pretty much a global statement. Ok, excluding genetic freaks that appear on the arms of Paris Hilton and ladies who lunch.

However, the rule is: the goofier the dog, the better.

ZenWife and I use the laugh factor when selecting our dogs. If we see the dog, and it makes us laugh, we take it. That’s how we ended up with Wiggles, the Damnation Hound (Half Basset, Half Dalmatian).

Well, I have met my Dream Dog. Meet Larry.

You can see a LOT more of Larry here.