INS fun, petty bitching

I get digitally fingerprinted at the “Application Support Center” today as part of the change of status paperwork. Seventy five bucks. Someone has to be making money off this. Bit strange really. I mean, they have my photograph and fingerprint from the last 3 years of TN-1 visas, as well as when I came back from Costa Rica and then again from Peru. Something makes me think homeland security is not quite as integrated as the name suggests.

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Someone must stop the moleskine insanity. What is in the water? Fan sites, hacks? People, this is a notebook. Nothing more. No, Hemingway and Van Gogh did not use the same notebook as you. This company started in 1994, in Italy, not France. Your writings will not be better when you put them in this notepad. I should know, Anna bought me one for travel two years ago. It was on sale, because no one was buying them. Funny how things change.

To me, it all just shows how desperate modern society is to belong. Simple things become tiny gods (iPod, I’m looking at you) in the rush to belong. I suppose one could argue that the moleskine is the result of people rejecting the push to digital. But I think the real question is, how should modern society fill the tribal void we seem to be missing?

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Interesting article at the UT about Friends of San Diego Architecture finishing the awards for “Accessory Dwelling Units: Inspired Solutions for Our Community”. In other words, granny flats. Looks like they have some really good ideas and are hoping to convince SD city council that loosening the requirements on the flats can help out with the housing crisis. All the power to them, current regulations are insane.

Sideways voting

A lot of people died, but it is good to see around 60% of Iraq has an ink stained finger. Though it looks like turnout in the predominantly Sunni areas is low.

Finally killed all the bugs left in the system here at the office, I think. Doing a network rewire and a server reorg is always fun. You just never know what interesting problem is going to crop up. I was mostly trouble free though. I still want a sunny day in exchange. I did manage to get a bit of sun at the beach yesterday with the P’s & dog.

Anna and I were tossing around the idea of driving up to San Louis Obispo on Thursday for the farmer’s market and some camping. After finally seeing Sideways on Friday, that plan will probably cement a bit more. I though the movie was great. It was fun to see a movie feature a place you know well. “Hey! I’ve been tasting there!” I have no idea how Paul Giamatti didn’t get nominated for best actor. Depp was good in Neverland, but Giamatti did such a better job, with a much harder role.

I’m tempted to telefile again this year, as it is free. But with Anna and I joint filing, I don’t know how that would work. Anyway, if you follow this link from the IRS you can use the federal, online version of a lot of programs (Quicken, H&R Block, etc) for free. You have to pay 9 or 10 dollars to efile though. However, don’t you have to pay to efile with the full program versions as well?

You can file your CA taxes for free with the FTB’s CalFile.

Not a fan of the Inuit sunset

I went to update my transactions today in Quicken and received the following message:

“As of April 19th, 2005, in accordance with the Quicken sunset policy, Online services… Will no longer be available for Quicken 2002 users.“

Sunset policy, how quaint. This means I can’t get Quicken to download my bank transactions. The product could work for years as ’02 gives me all the functionality I need. But they are breaking it so I have to buy the next version. Aren’t they sweethearts.

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush’s push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families. But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president’s proposal. “Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?” Gallagher said yesterday. “I don’t know. You tell me.” OK, I will. You did, dumbass.

With the dollar in the crapper, you would think that the govt would be promoting tourism in the US. However a bit back we decided to fingerprint and photograph everyone coming into the country. More than a few got upset over that, and Brazil started doing the same to US travelers. Of course, the US complained. Apparently this was not enough of an attack on these evil people wanting to spent money in our country. Now we are going to start using RFID tags with US-VISIT. RFID tags are about the size of a grain of rice and they transmit an ID number a few feet away. Insane. I think we should just start ear tagging any visitors. Might as well go all the way.

Good ole North Korea is buying Nuclear, excuse me, Nucular bombs from the old soviet block or our best buddies, the Pakistanis. Good thing we focus on trouble makers like Iraq.

Finding Neverland

Anna and I saw Finding Neverland at Hazard 7 last night. It was my first time back to Hazard since Madstone died off. They seem to be keeping most of the good things about Madstone, but I wonder if they are going to survive as a regular theatre by charging 9 bucks. There are better seats out there for that price. I just hope they keep doing the latin film fest.

We both enjoyed Finding Neverland. It had a slight tearjerker formula, but I enjoyed the story. My favorite element of the movie was the mix of fantasy and reality. A similar feeling to Amelie or Big Fish in that one person was seeing something that others were not. Great visuals and the acting was well done, some of the better performances by kids I have seen.

Prefab Fab. Residential Architect covers modern prefab pushers and the potential they offer. Good information, but nothing groundbreaking.

Theo Jansen’s animals – immense multi-legged walking critters designed to roam the Dutch coastline, feeding on gusts of wind. I’ve wrote about him before, but wired gives him another look.

Good to see environmental rules and the proliferation of discarded devices push firms to design gadgets that are easier to recycle and safer to dispose of.

Your daily “we are screwing ourselves” report: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages.