Dear “Honourable” Jim Prentice,
Allow me to express my sincerest feelings when I say you are responsible for fucking over the Canadian people. This bill you are introducing this morning — likely as I write this very post — is not for the benefit of the Canadian people.
Not one bit.
For all intents and purposes, I’m off the Rolex team. I’m still on their resource sheet, but the reality is that I haven’t done sqwat with the Rolex account for over a couple of weeks now. It’s all been transferred to Torin, who’s the new Tech Lead. I went into self-imposed exile at the fringes of the team’s seating space, soon to be a long-distant memory.
But before I left, I had a debt to settle. Many months ago now, I had to institute what we called the “Jugo Juice Rule”. It was an effort to get everyone to calm down a bit (we were all under a lot of pressure, and mistakes were becoming more frequent) and concentrate on what they were doing. Short version: If you made a mistake, you owed the entire team Juge Juice (a fruit smoothie).
I’m beginning to know what a shuttle launch must feel like. Anxiety about what could go wrong, the knowledge that once the launch happens that there is little to do but hang on, that when you’re in orbit you’re pretty much at the mercy of your own fate.
The key difference is that my feet will (for the most part) be on solid ground. (Well, except when I’m flying.) But otherwise I’m feeling pretty wound up about what’s going to happen shortly.
Sigh. Just in time for us to leave the house, too. Oh well, at least it’ll improve the overall value of the place, right?
Here are the before/after pictures. Because it’s important to know what we’ve done here. We started off with a 70s reno gone wrong. We’ve ended up with a nice, modern space ready for almost anything.
This moving thing is no fun. Not at all. Yes, Costa Rica is a nice country, with nice people, and we’re arranging a very nice place to live, but the act of getting there is far more work than I could have imagined. We have to sort through red tape on how to move the cat (a still on-going issue), we have to get a proper will (finally) sorted out, and then there’s the issue of taxes.
There are times when I wish this world wasn’t so obsessed with money, so moving around wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass. Sadly, greed being what it is, life is complicated.
One part of moving to any other country is the act of applying for a work visa. It’s pretty much a requirement where treaties (e.g. the European Union) aren’t there to ease the situation. A necessary evil, if you will. Because in most cases, the process is not really well documented and you’re going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what you need.
And believe me, we are far from actually getting this one sorted out. Jason’s been a massive force in getting us some iota closer to having it done, but the reality is that we’re going to be flying by the seats of our pants until documentation is actually done.
So this morning, I’m scanning through my Twitter feeds on Twhirl, and I came across a rather interesting note by Dave Fleet, which said:
Things like that tend to pique my curiousity. I’m a curious person. So I decided to see what Christopher Penn had wrote about it. I quote:
OMFG. Just installed Woopra and it really is web analytics porn.
That just sooooo necessitated a look-see.
It’s been a long, hard slog since all this began a year ago. Demolition, plumbing, heating, framing, electrical, gas, contractor nightmares, self-realisation, and now the end of the tunnel is fully lit. This weekend, barring disaster, the basement will be done.
Just in time for us to leave the house and let someone else enjoy it. I’ve still not really come to grips with that part.
I love American politics. It’s my form of WWE — all the cheers and jeers with all the spectacle to go along with it. One day, I think the American presidency will go the way of the President of the Galaxy from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and be little more than a distraction from the real power.
Heck, it could be like that already, for all we know.
Today, it was announced that Hillary Clinton would be willing to consider a Vice-Presidency with Barak Obama as top billing. But here’s a thought: Are Americans ready for this?
We’re bringing Asia with us. Not the continent; she’s our cat. We don’t want to part with her. She’s a wonderful pet and truly part of the family. She was our first baby before Mi Niña Pequeña came along. Giving her up is just not an option.
Getting her through the border is the trouble. Mostly because there is no de facto source of information on how this is done properly. What I have found is confusing and very contradictory. For someone who is going to be spending 12 hours with an annoyed kitteh (LOLCat spelling) — she might be stuck in that cage the entire time — I need to know that getting into the country isn’t going to kill her.
Or me.