Month: August 2008

I-94s – Wii haz um

After 12 hours on the road, 20 minutes in Canada (well, Quebec), and a night in a really crappy hotel room, we are back home, with freshly minted I-94s.

In the immigration office, they were hesitant to hand us the I-94s because we still have valid H1-Bs. I had to insist that they give us them to support our Advanced Parole renewal. This is way too complicated (and expensive) and I just want my Green Cards…now.

So, a tip for all you travellers out there: Regardless of your status, and the insistence that you don’t need I-94s, never let them take them away, and try to get the border agents to issue them for EVERY crossing. I know it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s more of a pain in the ass to have to go back and get them.

Rant the Second: Gutter Helmet, Again

So, in my second rant of the day, I am falling back to my favourite target of tension: Gutter Helmet. This long-running saga in one that I wish I had never been involved in, and in 20/20 hindsight, I wish that I had just chosen to go with standard gutters, rather than some gadgety gimmick that is installed by a company that seems to value customer service about 14th on their Top Ten list.
The latest installment has come about because one, if not more, of our downspouts is now blocked with … something. The thing is that these top-of-the-line gadgets should never become clogged. And if they do, we have a lifetime maintenance guarantee.
Well, they guarantee that maintenance will occur sometime in my lifetime.
It will be nearly 8 weeks since I called before the service person can come out and clean out a downspout. They said that it would happen this week (week of August 17th), but then changed their minds and moved the date out to the week of (maybe the day of?) September 3rd.
It’s not a hard fix. It shouldn’t take that long. And I know that the weather hasn’t been that great. But 8 weeks is a little long, especially for someone whose installation experience is already so far past acceptable.
So, below, I have created a little poll to get a feeling for how other folks with Gutter Helmet installs feel about their decision. Let us know!
[poll id=”3″]

Rant the First: US Immigration and the Confusion of the Process

On July 20, the family crossed over the border back into the US after attending Samantha’s grandmother’s funeral in Toronto. It had been a great weekend, a chance to get reacquainted with Samantha’s extended family and introduce the boys to some of these folks.
We crossed the border at the Peace Bridge, and got an Immigration officer who obviously did not know what she was doing.
To describe our current status: We are in the US on EADs with Advanced Parole documents which allow us to travel in and out of the country. The sheer complexity of our status (which is not an unusual one) perplexed this Immigration officer, and she processed us under our old status (H1-B/H4) and then did not issue us I-94s!
For the American readers among you, an I-94 is a little slip of paper stating when and where you last entered the US. Every person in an Immigration process (and many foreign nationals) are required to get either the white form (Immigrant) or the green form (visitor).
We are now in the process of renewing our AP documents and EADs, and one of the items they need is a copy of our most recent I-94s, which this Immigration official at Peace Bridge kindly removed from our passports without issuing new ones.
So, tomorrow, we have to drive up to the Derby Border Crossing in Vermont (the closest to our home) and get new ones issued so that we can renew our APs and EADs.
The main gripe I have with this is that the US Immigration service appears to be hideously inconsistent in when and where they enforce their own rules. As well, with the AP, it is now harder to get into the US than it was with the H1-B.
To sum up, this process frustrates me, and it is no wonder that between this sort of confusion and hearing that Green Card applicants can get thrown in jail and ignored until they die that makes me wonder if it is all worthwhile.
For those of you with Green Cards: Is it all worthwhile?

Another thumbs up for CBC Olympic Coverage

Philip Michaels writes a great review of why the CBC Olympic Coverage makes NBC seem like the pathetic old has-been it is. [here]
The US is ready for more NBC. Think you can actually deliver by 2010? When the Canadian broadcasters — even CTV! — will make you look really pathetic?
Didn’t think so.

Google Searches Always Bring Surprises

Since November 5 2004 (Geez! Have I been blogging that long?), I have written 1,744 posts (this is 1,745). So, as you can well imagine, I can’t remember whats in most of them. I know which ones are the most popular and what’s in those, but on the whole, I couldn’t tell you what’s in most of the posts I have put up in nearly four years.

So it always astounds me when someone goes to one the more obscure posts. Astounds me to the point that I have to go to the site and find out what I said.

The long tail meets the absent-minded.

Green Card: Man Allegedly Dies as a Result Of DHS Negligence

Ok, as someone who is waiting for his Green Card, the story of the treatment allegedly received by Hiu Lui Ng frightens me. [BoingBoing link here. NY Times here ]
My Green Card has been in process for more than three years. We are supposedly approaching the end of the long road. But how do I know I won’t be thrown in jail and deported because of some silly clerical error?
We are all enemy aliens until proven otherwise. No wonder US corporations are finding it harder and harder to sell the idea of emigration to the US to potential employees from outside their boundaries.

“Yes, it is possible that you will be thrown in jail and mistreated because of some silly clerical error. It’s more likely that we will just keep you in fear and treat you like second-class indentured servants for 3-4 years until we’re done with you. Now, about our medical plan…”

Strategic Reading: Managing FriendFeed My Way

For FriendFeed has become my replacement for Google Reader, which I only visit occasionally now to see if there are blogs I need to add to my feed.
But, if you are going to replace a reader with FriendFeed, how do you manage the flow of content. While tools will likely improve over time, I have adopted a simple strategy.
1) Scan for items with obvious links
As I power through the front page of my feed, I look for items that are obviously links to longer articles. I can then decide if I want click through to that article. But rather than opening it in a new tab right in front of me, I use the wheel-click option in Firefox and open these articles in a background tab. This allows me to scan through the fees and read the articles when I want.
2) Read Twitter/indenti.ca/Jaiku/etc. last
Personal conversations come second for me. If there is a thread I am interested in, I will wheel click the Twitter page for the person and pick it up that way…or use Twitter Search. Being the kind of person who processes personal communications last makes this easier.
3) Use the FriendFeed interface as much as I can
If there was a way to open posts in a frame such as the way that video and images are embedded in FriendFeed, I would never go to anyone’s actual site. While that may be a feature of the future, the storage implementation for the FriendFeed team is potentially enormous – unless they choose to retrieve the content on the fly.
And finally…
4) Gripe about TinyURL, etc. links and how I don’t know where they lead
A great feature of the future for FriendFeed would be to translate obfuscated URLs to their base URLs in a rollover
And there you have it. Not the world’s most intense primer on using FriendFeed, but it works for me!

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