Mind Nuggets

We had an eclipse today

2006-03-29T10:04:00.000-08:00

This is the image I captured of today's partial solar eclipse. I took the picture with no specialized equipment using only a 3x optical zoom, which is why it's of such poor quality.

All I can say is thank goodness for the hazy clouds that moved across the sky; otherwise I'd have never gotten the shot since the light from the sun would have been so intense that you couldn't have seen the moon moving across it.

And I did look at it. Briefly. To set up the shot. In case you're having trouble making it out, the sun is the circle in the middle of the picture, with the moon just taking a bite out of it on the lower left hand side.

Leccy's back on

2006-03-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

From Friday evening, we were having serious electrical problems in our house. Our house has five main circuits, with all but two sockets upstairs and the sockets in the main downstairs area of our house on a single circuit, with the two remaining upstairs sockets on another, the kitchen and dining room on another one, the extension on another circuit, and the downstairs electric shower on the fifth circuit.

Whew, that was boring wasn't it? Anyway, the main circuit to the house kept tripping with a loud pop from Friday night onwards. Whenever it tripped, we'd go to the fuse box and flip it and try to find the source of the problem. We found a space heater that reeked of ozone, so we threw it away assuming that it was the source of the problem. It wasn't. We replaced two sockets in the area of the living room where the pops from the circuit tripping were the loudest, assuming that would solve the problem. It didn't. Time to call in an electrician.

I nearly shit myself when I found out what the problem was this morning. We have been having heavy rains here for a few weeks; the Foss broke its banks last week and hasn't receded yet, and the Ouse broke its banks last night. The village where we live has a high water table anyway so drainage has always been an issue, and our patio has flooded three times in the last two weeks. We didn't think anything of it since it does that all the time, it never bridges the damp course, and it always recedes on its own relatively quickly.

Anyway, the electrician came this morning and quickly determined that the two suspect sockets were wired incorrectly to begin with; we suspect that the previous owner of this house did it, since the neighbor says that he was a DIY enthusiast. We didn't install or wire them; we merely replaced the sockets, which weren't faulty to begin with. The wiring in the wall and floor was the problem. The electrician said it was a complete bodge job and we could have burned our house down. The recent rains meant that when the electrician peeled up a floorboard, there were two inches of standing water underneath the floor. This is common in this part of town and is not a problem; everyone in this estate has had that problem at one time or another and it always goes away on its own without flooding the houses or causing damp problems.

In our case, however, we had live wires sitting in water because of the poor wiring job. The wires kept shorting, tripping the circuit and scorching the joists underneath the floor. Any one of the times that the circuit tripped, we could have burned our house down. Very scary shit. Anyway, it's all fixed now. I'm dreading the bill.

I'm finally learning C++

2006-03-20T11:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm finally doing it; I'm finally learning C++. I figured it was about damned time, and Transact-SQL simply isn't a challenge anymore. I wrote 20,000 lines of scripting code last week and I'm not even impressed with myself for doing it, probably because I used templates and it feels like cheating even though I wrote the templates. They're rather ingenious if I do say so myself; other people want to use them. They say they're 'real timesavers.' I'm preening here.

So, we're looking at a screen shot of Borland C++ Builder X, which I got free with my C++ book. I'm no longer new to programming, but I got a n00b C++ book anyway because Transact-SQL isn't object-oriented and VBA is basically a toy; I figured starting from scratch wouldn't be such a bad idea. If this were a few years ago, I'd already have thrown the book against the wall several times in frustration because they never explain exactly what every single little word is for. I no longer care; I just take it as a given until it is demonstrated otherwise. Real C++ programmers will look at what I've written and guffaw, and I probably would too if I kicked as much ass at C++ as I do at T-SQL; but hey, we've all got to start somewhere. At least I didn't take a screenshot of the 'Hello World' program.

I suppose the real issue is why I'm bothering with C++ if I'm an 8-year veteran of QA wanting to become a DBA. Well...the QA market in the US is different from that in the UK, where you are essentially never required to learn a programming language. In the US, they pretty much expect people at my level to know C, C++, or Java. I probably won't be able to get DBA gigs straight off the bat since I'm still studying for my OCA (first level of Oracle certification), so I need to beef up my QA resume since I may be stuck doing it for another year or two or three. Plus, it's a good skill to have on the resume, and you never know; I may enjoy it so much that I decide to become a programmer instead. Stranger things have certainly happened.

The state of UK politics

2006-03-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

Y'all should know something. Tony Blair is not popular around here. That sign...it's not a typo. Private Eye is just full of ads for "Bliar" t-shirts with the Labour Party rose logo. The signs pop up like mushrooms at every protest, and believe me there are plenty of those. People here just don't like Tony Blair and most of them seem to want him to go.

"But but..." you sputter. "There was just an election there last year, right? You guys re-elected him, didn't you?" Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I am not part of "you guys." I'm not British and I can't vote in this country. I became eligible to apply for citizenship in June 2004, but have refused to do so because I would be required to pledge loyalty to the Queen, and I won't do that on general principle. My husband, on the other hand, CAN vote in UK elections. He voted Labour in May 2005. There are many reasons why he voted Labour, and none of them involve liking Tony Blair. He doesn't like Tony Blair. Not one bit.

In May 2005, the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrat Party were led by Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy, respectively. Michael Howard, at the time the third Tory leader since 2001, led his party to its third consecutive general election defeat. (The others were in 1997 and 2001.) He pledged to resign afterwards, after the party elected a new leader...which they finally did a couple of months ago. Charles Kennedy had led the Liberal Democrats for a long time, but was falling apart spectacularly in public. Rumors of his alcoholism had been rife for years, but we had not had any public confirmation. Still, everyone knew he was an alcoholic. We just didn't know, if you see what I mean. So...faced with the Transylvanian Michael Howard or the ruddy Charles Kennedy, the British did the sensible thing and stuck with what they knew: Tony Blair.

The British political system is in the midst of some fairly interesting shifts. Since Tony Blair took control of the Labour Party it has shifted sharply to the right, with a deep divide between socialist, pro-union 'Old Labour' and the Blairite, capitalist 'New Labour.' The Tories have been in meltdown since the early 1990s and are now moving to the left after a sharp swing hard to the right didn't win them any elections. We would normally call this 'flailing about.' The Liberal Democrats under Charles Kennedy swerved hard to the left, with Kennedy promoting such ideas as an income-based council tax (which would have raised our taxes considerably), heavy taxes for high earners, and scores of socialist programs designed to take back control of public services which were privatized under the Tories and whose privatization continued under Blair.

Now everything has changed. The Tories elected David Cameron as their new leader a couple of months ago and on the back of that, the Tories have seen gains in their polling numbers while Labour has seen sharp falls. Almost immediately after David Cameron took the helm for the Tories, the Liberal Democrats fell apart as only they could have. Charles Kennedy finally confessed to the nation what we already knew: he had a drinking problem and his drinking problem was negatively affecting his ability to lead his party. The Lib Dems had been in near-full revolt for weeks prior to that, and Kennedy had no choice but to step aside when he lost the support of his parliamentary party. Last week, the Lib Dems announced the election of Sir Menzies (pron. 'Ming-us') Campbell, a 64 year-old moderate and former Olympian. During the Lib Dem leadership campaign, not one but two prominent Lib Dems were involved in very public homosexual sex scandals. The Lib Dems really have their work cut out for them.

In the days and weeks since the new leaders were elected, we've seen a shift to the left for the Tories and a shift to the right for the Lib Dems. The political spectrum used to read, from right to left, Labour --> Liberal Democrat --> Conservative. It now reads Liberal Democrat --> Labour --> Conservative. Will Cameron push the Tories to the left of New Labour? Will Menzies be able to inspire the British public with his tepid promises of centrism that doomed the party to permanent minority status?

With choices like these, is there any wonder that the British public chose to put Labour in charge for a third Government? I didn't think so. Just don't assume that it means that Blair is popular here. He isn't.

It snowed

2006-03-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

All the old-timers kept saying it was going to be the harshest winter in years. They were saying this all summer and all fall. It didn't happen. We got some snow right after Christmas and some pretty cold freezing fog, but nothing really huge. I've seen worse since I've been here. We got a nice little surprise the other day, though; the day started off dry and fine...very sunny...then about 3pm it started to snow and dumped it down for 2 straight hours before tapering off and finally dying away around 6pm. I'd say we got a good inch and a half to two inches of snow, and it was still there when I woke up this morning. I shot this out the window of the back bedroom of our house. That big flat area in the foreground is the flat roof of the extension of our house.

I enjoyed the snow yesterday; it was still snowing when I left the office to catch my bus yesterday afternoon and some colleagues of mine and I stood at the bus stop trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues. People looked at us as if we were crazy, but who cares? At least the snow on the ground covered up the vomit and used drug needles; where I work turns pretty rough after dark. We have a nice view of a park across the Ouse, and of the York Minster; it was snowing so hard that the Minster was completely obliterated from view. It was gorgeous, though. Just gorgeous. I just wish I had taken my digital camera to work yesterday so I could have captured it, but on BBC Breakfast yesterday they didn't give good odds for us getting any snow. This may be the last snow we see for a very long time.

Worky jobby things

2006-03-04T07:05:00.000-08:00

I've been at this contract since late November. It's working out pretty well; this week I programmed an Access VBA application as the front end to a bunch of crap on the SQL Server. I had to reprogram a bunch of Access crosstab queries as stored procedures in SQL Server since SQL doesn't have native support for pivot tables. I had to reprogram a bunch of VBA functions into SQL UDFs which wasn't all that hard; it's just time-consuming to test them all.

The DBAs at the company are so greedy with their resources. No recursive functions. No cursors. No calling basically any system stored procedure. They don't want to see any table scans. Etc. They're so fussy about indexing; I can index these tables to make the app run faster, but then my inserts take forever. They only have to be run once a week and I made them pretty efficient using ISNULL(), but still. We're also not allowed to run any DTS packages, so we have to schedule them and get the mainframe extract files to the correct directory before 9:30 am every Monday morning. If we have a bank holiday, we have to call I.T. and actually raise a call to get the DTS package run manually. They're insane there, but hey; they're paying me, so I don't really care.

I don't know when the contract is going to end; they're going to review it at the end of the month. I've reprogrammed all of their Access DBs to run on SQL with an Access front end so I'm not sure what there is for me to do, but they keep saying they've never had a situation where they had to get rid of an MI person.

The contract started off as maternity cover and the person I'm covering for isn't coming back until the end of May so I should be safe until then. She also doesn't have my skills; all she can do is Excel spreadsheets. I can do those plus everything else they need, so I hope they'll keep me around at least a couple more months before we run off back to the USA. If they don't it's not the end of the world; I've saved plenty in the bank in anticipation of the contract ending early, but I'd rather it didn't. I'm actually enjoying it; I like going to work. I like the people I work with and I'm learning so much; I'm being challenged in ways that QA never challenged me and I'm having fun. I told my boss that. Hopefully it'll mean something. :-)

Visa update

2006-03-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

Y'all haven't heard anything because we haven't heard anything. We sent off our 'biographical information' form at the end of October. It's now early March and we should hear from the US Embassy in London basically any second now. I've been getting butterflies every day coming home and checking the post, expecting something from them.

Previously, my husband would have had to arrange for a medical examination prior to his visa interview but the rules changed and they didn't notify us (of course). The deal is that his medical exam comes after his visa interview, which will be anytime between April and when we begin collecting Social Security. His police certificate from the Home Office (demonstrating that he's not a terrorist, felon, communist, or pedophile) hasn't come yet, but those take 40 business days to process, probably because they're using MS SQL Server down in London. (Newtch.)

The IRS is taking too long to update my 2003 return (didn't file a foreign income earned exemption that year because I forgot to) so my parents will be my husband's sponsors. Basically what this means is that if he goes on welfare, they'll get a bill from the government with interest. It's no biggie and they're not really bothered. It'll just be faster to have them do it. Once he gets his visa we'll put the crapshack on the market. If it doesn't sell in four months, we'll just sell it to a broker and take a 20% hit on the value of the whole thing, but even with that kind of hit we should have about $85-$95,000 of profit in cold, hard cash. Buying a house in the UK in the late 1990s-early noughties was an excellent investment. Of course, if someone actually pays asking price we'll be a lot better off. We bought the house for £110,000 in late 2001 and it should sell for between £190,000 and £205,000.

It's only 1000 square feet, but the cost of living here is ridiculous! Of course, since we're moving away that works to our advantage. Eeeeeeeeeee!

Haven't been around in a while

2006-01-27T15:06:00.000-08:00

Lots of stuff has happened since I last posted. I can't lie; I've been busy doing absolutely nothing except working, watching TV, reading books, etc. I really should get back to posting regularly!

First off, the University of Texas at Austin won the Rose Bowl...and with it, the BCS Championship...defeating USC in a down-to-the-wire nailbiter. But you already know that.

Vince Young has gone pro, basically screwing UT's offense for the 2006-07 season, but hey...Vince has to do what Vince has to do, and I wish him well. The kid worked hard and has earned a shot at the pros, and if he thinks he's ready, who am I to say he isn't? Bon voyage, Vince, and I hope you don't end up on one of the shittiest teams in the NFL. That honor should be reserved for Heisman winners like Reggie Bush and crybabies like Matt Leinart.

Very little else is going on. I'm still at my latest contract, programming databases and stuff. It's not particularly interesting, but it's challenging and that's enough for me. I'm learning a lot, adding new skills to the arsenal. It's all good. Plus, I get paid; so I'm happy. The move to Texas is still on, and I can't wait. My husband is still somewhat reluctant, but we hope that when he gets there, he'll love it.

Fox News takes sides in war on Christmas

2005-12-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

Well, looky what we have here. This is a photograph of Fox's morning broadcast (afternoon for us in the UK) on Christmas Eve. You guys are so BUSTED.

First, a word. You may be wondering why someone in the UK can see Fox News, an American network. Glad you asked. We have a Sky subscription. Sky is a satellite service here in the UK. Cable never really caught on. Sky is kind of like DirectTV in the US. We don't get any American networks other than this one. This is because Sky is owned by Rupert Murdoch...the same guy who owns Fox News. We get the channel's national feed instead of a broadcast from a select area, since none of the American advertisers have paid to have their ads distributed in the UK. So, this is what we see when American viewers see commercials:

They show weather for the entire world, including Africa, except for the Indian subcontinent and Canada. I don't know why they eliminated these two areas; you'd have to ask Rupert.

They also play ridiculous elevator muzak or weird porn music during their little "Fox Cast." I don't know what's worse...this or commercials. A few years ago, Fox News didn't show the Fox Cast during the ads; they showed e-mails they got from around the world praising Fox and how 'fair and balanced' it was. This is better, believe me!

All through the month of December, Fox viewers have had to put up with Bill O'Reilly and his ilk blasting 'liberals' for declaring 'war on Christmas.' Bill O'Reilly even went so far as to say that non-Christians are not (really not ALLOWED to be) offended by 'Merry Christmas' but that Christians are offended by 'Happy Holidays' or 'Seasons Greetings.' Then...irony of ironies...Fox goes straight into a station ID that says (guess) 'Happy Holidays.' Watching Fox in the week up to Christmas, I counted several holiday IDs:

Happy Holidays (most often seen over 1 week)
Seasons Greetings (rarely seen)
Happy Chanukah (seen once every other hour)
Ultra-religious Merry Christmas with Bible-y overtones (seen once every other hour)
Wordless ID with CGI snowflakes and a red Christmas ornament with the Fox logo on it (rarely seen)

So...Fox News has been propagandizing a fake culture war for weeks, lionizing fundamentalist Christians who insist on cramming their religion down peoples' throats and demonizing anyone who dares to issue a more secular or inclusive greeting such as 'Happy Holidays' or 'Seasons Greetings.' Then they turn around and show those same words on their news broadcasts. There are no American fundamentalist Christians around here, so I can't ask them what they think about this. However, it strikes me as mildly hypocritical, but what else can you expect from a right-wing propaganda machine like Fox News?

I saved the best one for last. On Christmas Eve, they showed Christmas greetings from American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's how they introduced each soldier's video Christmas card:

Stuff happens and stuff

2005-12-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while. I don't have internet access at the office at my new job, and when I come home all I want to do is veg in front of the TV or read, plus my computer was down all week thanks to some moron who gave me a boot sector virus. (Thanks, whoever you are.)

Well, my new job hasn't turned out to be what I expected. I thought we were going to be upsizing Access databases to SQL Server, but we're not. We have to fill in forms to get someone else to do it, and they don't upsize them, they just copy the data across. All the queries have to be rewritten and they're full of Iif() and DLookUp() functions which don't exist in SQL since they're stupid VBA stuff and which have to be painstakingly re-written to work in SQL.

Starting a new contract

2005-11-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

Well, I begin a new contract on Monday. I'll be paid a decent amount of money, though I don't know how long it'll last. The recruiter said 3-6 months, with the possibility of an extension. Knowing the company offering the contract, I'm guessing the work will drag on as long as I want it to; that company hardly ever gets rid of contract employees. They usually hire them on as permanent employees. They also pay over the odds per hour, which must be why they're in such dire straits financially. They've laid off so many permanent employees it's not even funny, but they end up hiring about half of them back under contract anyway. The company in question...which will not be named for obvious reasons...has historical I.T. problems well-known to those within the organization, and they cannot be solved in 3-6 months. Period. So I'm thinking I'll have work as long as I can stand it, or as long as I stay in the UK. Whichever comes first.

I'll be doing database-y stuff...basically, I'll be upsizing Access databases to MS SQL Server. I'm told it shouldn't be too involved or difficult. I hope not, because I am neither a programmer nor am I a DBA, though a contract like this will look good on my resume if I want to become a DBA later, which I think I may want to do. It's one of the highest-paid positions in I.T. and DBAs are needed all over the place, not just in the traditional tech sectors. Basically, anyone who has a database needs a DBA. So, more work for me. Bonus. Plus, they don't have to pull the same ridiculous hours as programmers or testers. I remember the odd 80-hour work weeks very well, and we were compensated with time in lieu but it never matched the overtime we put in. Ever. If it did, we'd have had weeks of nothing but days off!

Sometimes I think I should have chosen a different sector where I could make more money, but there are actually few sectors where you can make as much money as you can in I.T., especially if you don't really feel like going back to school to get an advanced degree. You don't really even need a bachelor's degree to succeed in I.T., though a lot of companies won't hire you nowadays if you don't have one. That market has gotten a bit more competitive, but even if I didn't have one I wouldn't worry since I'm now an 'old hand' with 8 years of experience. Plus, I don't like the extended hours and travel that come with fast-paced business careers, and business just bores the shit out of me. I can't stand it. I.T. is easy for me...ridiculously easy, in fact...and I just zone out all day at work while getting paid well and doing a job that other people think is difficult. Either I fake it well, or everyone else is stupid.

UT ends regular season undefeated 11-0

2005-11-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

Today's game against A&M was a real nailbiter, though. UT's offense was sloppy at best and the number of turnovers was plain embarrassing. The defense didn't do much better, allowing A&M to score 29 points. We beat them 40-29 in the end, but we were led by A&M and the stats were terrible. That's not the kind of playing that's going to win a national championship, that's for damn sure.

UT goes up 10-0

2005-11-13T02:37:00.000-08:00

UT slaughtered Kansas last night, 66-14. Hell, we were up 48-ZIP in the first half.

Not that I saw any of it...NASN played the stupid boring shitty USC vs Cal game, which was agonizingly one-sided. So was the Texas game, but it's different. They're MY team.

So, we've got the Big 12 South title locked up, and we have a week off before we play the last regular game of the season vs A&M the day after Thanksgiving. HOOK 'EM!

Visa update

2005-11-13T02:08:00.000-08:00

We sent our 'biographical information' form off 2 weeks ago. It takes 3-4 months to process. In the meantime, I'm waiting for my old tax returns and stuff. Very boring. *sigh*

Phase II begins

2005-10-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Well dear readers, phase II of my husband's visa application is upon us.

For those that don't know, a green card application involves two phases. The first, an I-130 petition, is required before you can apply...in effect, you have to apply to apply for a visa. The I-130 was successful and now we're on to the next phase which involves background checks, medical exams, financial records, and finally an interview at the US Embassy in London.

Timeline so far:

03 August 2005: I-130 petition mailed to US Embassy in London

04 August 2005: I-130 petition received by US Embassy in London

15 August 2005: I-130 filed by USCIS at US Embassy in London

01 October 2005: I-130 petition approved by USCIS

24 October 2005: K-class visa application packet received by us

Longhorns demolish Red Raiders

2005-10-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

My Longhorns subjected the Texas Tech Red Raiders to a supremely humiliating 52-17 ass-whipping in Austin today.

It was so so sweet, it just had to be fattening.

The Red Raiders looked strong at the beginning of the game, leading Texas at one point 7-3 and tying the game 10-10 in the second quarter, but Texas quickly pulled ahead and the score was 31-10 by halftime.

The humiliation continued, with Texas scoring three more touchdowns in the second half of the game with Texas Tech only managing one.

Texas Tech also played incredibly sloppy football with ten penalties (with a resulting loss of 78 yards) to Texas's three. Texas Tech simply did not look like a top 10 team out there today. Their defense was pathetic, their offense ineffective. Even with some pretty shitty calls from the referees, we absolutely humiliated them and they fucking deserved it.

Tom DeLay is a naughty boy

2005-10-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

Tom DeLay is a very naughty boy, as evidenced by these mug shots. I don't know if they're real or not; I got them from Bartcop.com and they're not the ones being circulated by the media, but I still think they're quite funny.

I just wish I was in Austin so I could point and laugh every time Tom DeLay has to come and make a court appearance. He is now demanding that the judge hearing his case recuse himself because he donated money to moveon.org last year. By that logic, judges that give money to crime-fighting initiatives shouldn't be allowed to hear burglary, rape, and assault cases, to name a few. DeLay is ridiculous and he is desperate.

There is no guarantee he'll be convicted; Ronnie Earle famously indicted Kay Bailey Hutchison and nothing happened to her; she is now Texas's senior Senator. However, I don't feel that Ronnie Earle is motivated by politics. He just doesn't like corrupt cronyism, as evidenced by his many prosecutions of Republicans and Democrats alike. I hear DeLay is not only asking for the judge to recuse himself, but his lawyers are musing over whether to file a COV. You go right on ahead and try, Tommy boy.

Horns go 6-0 against Colorado!

2005-10-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

Oh baby, another orange tower tonight.

The University of Texas Longhorns are now 6-0. They are UNDEFEATED in 2005.

I remember before this game a lot of the sports commentators were like "UT is going to have a fight on its hands with Colorado, they can't let up any."

YEAH RIGHT.

We kicked their mountain-lovin' BUTTS 42-17. We are 6-0, UNDEFEATED. LOVIN' IT. Absolutely LOVIN' IT.

My biggest regret is that I am not in Texas to witness this season. I can't even watch all the games. I've only gotten to see the Ohio State and the Oklahoma games. I MAY get to see the A&M game. Maybe. If Texas gets fucked over in the BCS, I may not get to see our bowl game this year. We're DEFINITELY getting a bowl game, and NASN better fuckin' show it.

One MILLION dollars!

2005-10-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Bush has to be getting anxious at this point. His popularity ratings are in the toilet. DeLay has been indicted. Frist is sure to follow. Liddy Dole is running Republican fundraising for the mid-terms into the ground. His response to Katrina has shown him to be aloof and imperialistic at best...cruel, racist, and uncaring at worst. We're getting our asses handed to us in Iraq by an insurgency that they must have known would be a problem. Looks like they read their history books; this is exactly the same kind of guerilla warfare that wore us down year by year in Vietnam.

At least his daughters haven't been arrested lately, but this is most likely because they're over 21 and can no longer be arrested for underage possession. They can still be arrested for public intox, though, like Bush's nephew Jeb Jr. Ha HA! Quality runs in this family, and it runs fast.

I can't wait for the '06 midterms. I really can't. I have a feeling that the Democrats are going to gain a lot of ground, possibly winning back the Senate and sharply reducing the Republican majority in the House. Hell, if more top-ranking Republicans are indicted, we might just take both houses. The Republicans took over Congress in 1994, promising to sweep aside deeply-entrenched Democratic corruption and cronyism that took four decades to build. In the space of 10 years, they have managed to match the Democrats in the corruption stakes and outperform them in the cronyism stakes. Bra-VO, guys. Really. That must have taken a lot of effort.

And to sweeten the pie, the religious right wing of the party is running out of candidates to field in 2008 because they keep getting into trouble. So far, McCain and Giuliani look like strong contenders, but McCain is critical of Bush and Giuliani is a liberal Republican who will not please the religious right. Condoleezza Rice looks like a possibility, but I'll believe neocons will vote for a black woman when I see it. The next few years should be interesting.

Horns shut down OU 45-12

2005-10-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

I got to watch most of the UT/OU game on NASN on Sunday afternoon. They taped a broadcast from ABC in the US and showed it "as live" the next day in the UK.

First, let me voice my strenuous objections to what ABC did. Whatever broadcast affiliate provided the tape to NASN is the guilty party. They cut away from UT/OU in the third quarter after OU faked on a punt and tried to convert a fourth down and went to the Minnesota/Michigan game. Let me say now that I do not care that the Minnesota Golden Gophers had not won that fucking jug since 1986. I do not care that that stupid jug is the oldest trophy in college football. I do not care. I wanted to see my Longhorns kick the shit out of OU for the first time since 1999, but apparently ABC didn't think it was worth showing the rest of UT's ass-kicking. It wasn't entirely NASN's fault, but they should have sourced a better broadcast. Perhaps one from...oh, I don't know...TEXAS? This Big Ten/northern U.S. bias is getting a wee bit tiring.

What I got to see of the game was fantastic, though. An 80-yard touchdown. OU failing time after time to score on their pathetic drives. The Longhorns running rings around their pathetic defense. Peterson limping off the field with a sprained ankle. It was a thing of beauty.

Kitchen floor is a mess

2005-10-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

We had a builder in this morning to screed parts of the kitchen floor to level it out because we're having new linoleum laid on Monday.

The floor looked a lot like this when we removed the carpet that the previous owners had installed. As soon as we took it up we could see why they laid it, but we couldn't keep that carpet; it was filthy. The blue and white tiles you see on the edges are what we put on the floor to cover up the mess. Further back in the kitchen you can just make out where the old linoleum disappears under a layer of concrete. This is how the kitchen's extension was done, and the floor was never properly finished. The bumps and kinks have only been smoothed over this morning, and the extension was built (we're told) in the early 1990s. This house's kitchen was butchered by a cowboy builder, that is for sure. The kitchen has cost the most; in addition to the floor, we've had to replaster the ceiling and the walls. Altogether, just the floor, ceiling, and walls have cost over 1,000 pounds to put right. That's not counting other plastering work elsewhere in the house, refinishing a large wooden floor, laying new carpeting in almost every room, and replacing an entire bathroom suite, not to mention painting every room at least once.

If someone had left my kitchen in this state, I'd have sued them. When we bought the house we were naive about construction and DIY; if we knew then what we know now, we would have knocked a considerable sum off the price of the house or we would have simply not purchased it. This house has needed thousands of pounds of repairs and upgrades, mostly due to the previous owners' ignorance and neglect. At least we're leaving it in a better state than we found it.

The areas where the lino has broken off and there's nothing but bare concrete underneath have to be screeded over so they're smooth when the new lino goes down. This stuff takes hours to dry and since English builders never work on weekends, we have to wait until Monday for the actual flooring. It is costing almost 500 pounds for the labor, the linoleum, and the fitting. We bought cheap lino. At least it'll be better than what's there now.

Next house we buy is going to be BRAND-SPANKING NEW and will not need any work doing to it. I'm so sick of this shit I could SCREAM.

America's top jobs

2005-10-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Not only is my job (software engineer) on the list of top jobs published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it was the highest-paid one that CNN.com listed.

These are apparently jobs where the applicants and employees have the edge, not employers. This is great news, since both my husband and I are I.T. professionals, and he has 15 years of solid experience in the field. Hopefully this will mean that we'll have little-to-no trouble finding work when we arrive in Austin, and we'll make fantastic money to boot. The median salary listed for software engineers was $75,000 a year. That's $150,000 a year between the two of us if we make the median salary. We could make more. Even if we made less, we'd still be pretty damned comfortable.

I don't ask for much out of life. I like spending time with friends and family; I want a nice medium-sized house in a leafy suburb with a nice garden, 2 cars in the driveway, a couple of kids playing in the yard, and a decent career with good job security. So...looks like my career choice has yet again been validated. Hooray!

Full story

APPROVED!!!!!!!!

2005-10-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

My husband's I-130 petition has been approved by USCIS.

We now have to wait to be contacted by the US Consul in London. I don't know what happens now. But we've cleared the first hurdle!

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate

2005-09-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

America gets a bad rap for silly place names. We have towns named "Intercourse," "Truth or Consequences," "Assawoman," and "Big Bone Lick," to mention a few.

England is full of its own silly place names. One of the shortest streets in the country, Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, is right here in York.

The street crosses The Pavement and The Stonebow. It begins where Colliergate ends and ends where Fossgate begins. The street is a mere 35 meters long, and most of it is a pedestrial crosswalk anyway. It's so short that it takes more space on the map to write it than the street actually occupies.

Why is it there? It's so silly that it is listed on Wikipedia's list of "interesting or unusual place names," but how did it get its name? "Whip" is a clue. It's where the city of York's pillory was once located, where criminals were publicly flogged. In the 16th century, the street was known as "Whitnourwhatnourgate," which means "what a street." Bizarre. It's actually a tourist attraction, which just highlights how little there is to do here.

Bugs and flowers over at Disruptive Hair

2005-09-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

The growing season here is winding down in a big way; it's starting to get pretty cold at night and the days are now shorter than the nights, so the plants aren't getting as much sun as they'd like.

There won't be any new bloomers in my garden this year; what's there now is all that is going to be there until spring...and by that time, we hope to be in the United States. So, this month and next month will be about saying goodbye to the garden I've slaved over for four years. That's part of what photographing it this summer has been all about. I wanted to capture it for posterity, and to show prospective buyers since by the time we put our house on the market, there will be very little to see in the garden but bare soil and twiggy shrubs.

This particular photograph is of a ladybug on an amaranthus that has already set half its seed. The plant is dying, unfortunately; like many of the annuals in the garden. So for those of you who are expecting lots of new photographs on Disruptive Hair, I'm afraid there won't be many more this year...especially not from my tiny garden! I'll do my best, but I'm afraid that we may be stuck with hellebores, pansies, and primroses until we move to the United States!