Some Odds and Ends

I’m a lousy trav­eler. For one thing, I’m still on Pacific time. No mat­ter how hard I try, I keep men­tally sub­tract­ing three hours from the clock. I got up at 9 and it felt like the crack of dawn (I had been up until about 3 AM that morn­ing). I ate break­fast at 11 and it felt just fine. I had lunch at 3 PM and din­ner felt very early at 8 PM. It’s like I’m in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent kind of time zone: DST (David Sub­jec­tive Time).

An obser­va­tion about Amer­i­can Air­ports: Since 9–11, there has been another change to them besides the obvi­ous secu­rity mea­sures. It’s the voice announce­ments on the Pub­lic Address Sys­tem, which have now been stan­dard­ized. The same woman who appears to be from some­where in Texas can be heard from San Fran­cisco to Seat­tle to Den­ver to Bal­ti­more to Boston. It may be the most annoy­ing voice I’ve ever heard in my life; mid­way between School­marm, Tel­e­van­ge­list and Motor Vehi­cle Admin­is­tra­tion Clerk. Her accent is hor­rific, and her tone is like fin­ger­nails scratch­ing black­boards inside my eardrums. Pas­sen­gers should be aware that BAG­Gige left unat­tended will be con­fis­cated and DIS­troyed at the dis­cre­tion of Secu­rity Per­son­nel. Thenk-yoo for your coop­er­a­tion. I’m con­vinced that this woman was not some incred­i­bly lucky Hous­ton Broad­cast­ing School drop-out, but had to be a friend of the Bushes, who got her this plum assign­ment and she prob­a­bly gets a roy­alty check every time we endure another Thenk-yoo.

Installed OS X 10.4 (AKA, Tiger) last night. That’s why I was up till 3 AM. Just kick­ing the tires. So far, I haven’t found Spot­light to change my life, but I did locate some files quickly. On the other hand, I was always such a care­ful filer for fear of los­ing some­thing that I prob­a­bly am not one of those peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from that new feature.

Tomor­row, at the crack of dawn (and I mean really at the crack of dawn — 6 AM EST, or 3 AM DST), we embark on our very last MIT Flea. Every­thing must go. That means the books, CDs, soft­ware, and any­thing else we’ve scav­enged have to go. If we are lucky, we’ll leave with more cash than it costs to get a spot as a ven­dor ($25).

And, we're back

I really should just install Ecto, my blog­ging client on my lap­top, because I dis­like using the online (web) inter­face to post to my blogs. The result is that when I’ve been on the road I haven’t done much in the way of updat­ing this. And boy, has there been a lot to update!

Yes, we were on the road, back in Van­cou­ver for a final visit before the move, and Seat­tle to visit with my brother’s fam­ily (even though my brother was in Brazil for most of the visit, but I did get to visit with my Sister-in-law and my niece) and for Pam to attend the STC (Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) 52^nd Annual Con­fer­ence. While I was there, I also spent a day in the mar­velous Seat­tle Pub­lic Library, and I also did some window-shopping at IKEA and Fryes for fur­ni­ture and elec­tron­ics that we’ll ‘need’ after the move.

But aside from all that, Murphy’s Law (which I remem­ber from old Larry Niven books, could be expressed as in engi­neer­ing terms as “The Per­ver­sity of the Uni­verse tends toward a Max­i­mum”) deter­mined: Dur­ing the 6 or so hours that we would be rel­a­tively dif­fi­cult to reach, i.e. while we were in flight — that would be the time when an offer to buy our house would come in. After fran­tic calls and mes­sages left on our cell phone accounts and var­i­ous voice mails, we man­aged to com­mu­ni­cate and accepted the offer. Also, although I don’t want to jinx any­thing or count any chick­ens before they are hatched, the prospect of me hav­ing employ­ment as we arrive in Van­cou­ver appears to be get­ting brighter. No details yet; there are still many hoops to jump through. Nev­er­the­less, I’m becom­ing more and more opti­mistic that the key items we’ll need to start a new life in Canada are lin­ing up.

Speak­ing of items needed to immi­grate, now is as good as any other time to list the things we’ve needed to get in order to immi­grate to Canada, just in case any­one else out there is think­ing of the same thing (and I know you are, lib’rals!)

1. First there are the forms to fill out. You’ll need to list every­where you’ve lived since you were 18, and every job you’ve ever had since you were 18. You’ll need let­ters of ref­er­ence from the jobs you’ve held in the last 5 years or so, ver­i­fy­ing your start dates, end dates, if applic­a­ble, your job title, and your salary.
2. You’ll need a cur­rent pass­port and…
3. An offi­cial copy of your birth certificate,
4. An offi­cial copy of your mar­riage cer­tifi­cate if you’re married,
5. Spe­cial ‘res­i­dent cut’ pass­port pho­tos, which have to have been taken in the last 6 months or so,
6. Offi­cial FBI and State Dept.- accepted Fin­ger­prints. There are places that take them.
7. Also, proof of 6 months worth of liv­ing expenses (hope­fully not a huge amount depend­ing on where you are moving)
8. If you’ve ever lived abroad (like as a stu­dent), proof from the police depart­ment of that area that you have no record. I actu­ally still need to pro­vide this one.
9. Did I men­tion you can’t have a police record? That includes your native coun­try as well, while you’re at it. You don’t have to pro­vide proof of it, but if you have any record, you’re pretty much out of the running.
10. For a driver’s license, it really helps to get the last 7 years of your dri­ving record. Oth­er­wise you have to get a learner’s per­mit and then take the Cana­dian Driver’s test

That’s about it. We hired a lawyer to help us out, so that adds some, but hope­fully it will help expe­dite our work. He’s already helped us head off some prob­lems when we didn’t fill in the cor­rect ‘fam­ily’ mem­bers on that part of the form — turns out you need to include all of your imme­di­ate fam­ily, liv­ing or dead, and their cur­rent addresses (if alive). So if you have a sib­ling or par­ent who has a record with the State Dept., then you’ll prob­a­bly run into trou­ble was well.

So this was a good trip. We got lots of stuff done with nail­ing down the apart­ment that we’ll be buy­ing when we get there (it’s really a condo, but there’s no word for that in Canada — actu­ally, they call it a ‘strata’, but that refers more to the res­i­dents who man­age the over­all prop­erty — kind of like a coop, I guess).

I’ll have more later. Plan on upload­ing some pho­tos to Flickr, so that will prob­a­bly end up mak­ing an appear­ance here, too.