processing started..

We started processing your application on November 24, 2004.

Good onya Government of Canada! And Canadian Consulate General in Buffalo - and all those who developed the e-Client Application Status for cic.gc.ca!

A letter (posted on Australia Day) from the Canadian Consulate confirms that my application for permanent residence has been received and it's sitting in a queue awaiting assessment. Apparently they are currently assessing files received nine months ago. This means I have another four months before I even begin to be assessed - however, at least I know now that my application was received.

Anytime I want I can go back to the website and have a look at my status. It will say "Processing" for a very long time.. but I can wait.. because today I was given the OK on a job that I'm after :)

In celebration of this fact, I cooked fennel and vodka risotto and roast lamb and wrote a "Hello World" eclipse plugin. Brilliant!

In other rousing news today, I received my A+ Canadian Blood Services card. It hadn't occured to me before, but donating blood has the benefit of being a free test for horrible diseases - good for that stage in a relationship where you no longer wish to use prophylactics .. also, you get cookies :)

quantum entanglement

An explanation of Quantum Entanglement for the rest of us :)

http://www.joot.com/dave/writings/articles/entanglement/

A topic I find infinitely fascinating, due to it's romance, so much so that I bought the book by Amir Aczel, 'Entanglement - the Greatest Mystery in Physics". Not really a mystery, it's well explained, but beyond human rationalism - bring back the ether! *grin* Particles affecting each other without a known force!? Darn right it's spooky.

Where's the romance? Haven't you ever been thinking of someone you love when they call you out of the blue? .. Human Entanglement.

syber grows up .. gets professional

look at me! i'm sitting at a *desk* .. my back is straight, my feet touch the ground.. sure it's heavy as a bag of bricks, and i think my boy damaged his back moving it with me :( .. but now i'm ergonomically correct in every way!

it's not one of those useless house-of-cards computer desks, it's table with drawers, large working surface and sturdy. found it on ebay.ca searching for "desk" "results within canada", and paid $26 for it :) nearly twice that to move it from yonge + eg to my part of town, but still worth it.

it's great having a workspace.. instead of sitting on the sofa with my laptop (often in front of the tv if my boy is home too). mmm.. now i'm going to cook italian sausage risotto and after dinner settle into bauer and king's "hibernate in action". life is swell.

broken sense of happiness

i'm reeling from my day; receiving a stolen blackberry, reporting it to the police, attempting to contact ebay and paypal and try and get back the money i paid for it.

it was less than $200 .. but that's not the point. i feel sick inside at having being involved, regardless of the fact i was not responsible, for illegal activity.

my conscience is making me physically ill. the same way i react to hearing about abuse or drug use.. anything that i feel as wrong and harmful. it makes me sad, i had no idea it could make me sick.

over exposed in niagara 

testing audioblogger

welcome to the end of the beginning of the end

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -- Douglas Adams

Often in programming (or life) it is tempting to scrap a project and re-implement. Of course, one can write it better oneself (or at our most honest, "I don't understand what's been done, it will be faster for me to start over.")

Occasionally, this is the best course of action; what came before was truly unworkable, or so elegantly brilliant as to never be understood again! (or so I'd like to believe).

More frequently, I am turning to outside building blocks. A restful release of responsibility, yet placing faith in forces outside my control is something I've never been good at.

For example, using appfuse as a framework rather than a homegrown solution. True, it is a set a building blocks. I can choose the pieces and how they fit together, and I am still in charge of the end purpose.. but now I have to focus on the the end result - rather than the simple joys of stacking blocks.