Everybody who has used an Ubuntu live cd over the last nine months or so has used casper. It started out as a special udeb, called by the debian-installer code to bootstrap a live environment. While d-i is fairly flexible, this was stretching the limits and not really a great solution. Amongst the problems were user interactivity halfway through the boot and a very slow boot. In the middle of December, mdz asked me if I could take a look at implementing the SimplifiedLiveCD specification. As I had played a bit with casper already, I did. Casper is nothing like what it used to be, it now uses initramfs, so no user interactivity after the bootloader. It uses unionfs where available, which speeds it up a fair bit (compare to devmapper + cloop), and if the cd image has squashfs, it uses that too, which makes it even faster. Boot time improvements from around 368 to about 231 seconds is fairly good, but I hope to get it even lower. What I really, really like about casper however is how hackable it is. I added cd integrity check in less than a day (modulo some bugs in usplash I had to fix). Today, I integrated it with the new usplash in initramfs, so we actually have progress in the initramfs as well. (Instead of "mounting root file system" taking about 40 seconds.) Another neat feature is the persistence support. It will now look for filesystems with the label casper-cow (that will be changed to ubuntu-live-rw, I think) if persistent is seen on the kernel command line. This makes it easy to drag your setup around with just an USB key and any Ubuntu live cd. Next out is getting keyboard selection better and more speedups.

Just a quick note: Drupal 4.7.0 beta 3 is available now, fixing more than 100 bugs since the last beta. If you have any further issues or suggestions for 4.7 — now is the time to speak up, file bug reports, post patches etc. I haven't had too much time for Drupal development recently, but I guess I should really start updating the poormanscron module now (finally!) and help with getting the German translation up-to-date...

I made a w3m patch for mingw environment to use emacs-w3m on Meadow, an emacs variant for Windows. My patch is really ad-hoc because the purpose is for emacs-w3m only, so it only works with -dump option. It can't use fork() on Windows environment, and some functions like saving buffer, uncompressing network stream, handling local CGI depends on fork(), so such functions were disabled by my patch. Anyway, I submitted the patch to the mail list of w3m.

To complement my survival gear I bought a bike last Saturday. I have already noticed it gives me more freedom than just using public transport here and I just can not live without cycling. In the heart of Edinburgh, in the catacombs of the Waverly station one can find the Bike Station. This is a place kept by volunteers that takes in and recycles bikes, patches them up and resells them again. On certain days you can also take your bike there and use their tools and assistance to fix it. I find this and the way they are promoting cycling in the area a great initiative (and believe me, it is really necessary)! So I bought the cheapest second-hand bike they had: a 15-gear mountain bike without any features. This is of course because I will only be here for two months and it works just fine. There is a route from the city centre almost straight to the campus alongside the Union Canal (10km long route). It brings you through different kinds of nature but also different looking parts of Edinburgh. Half-way on the trip back I cycled over the Slateford Aqueduct which is really narrow. It’s almost impossible for two people with bikes to pass one and another when going in opposite directions. Besides that, the aqueduct is quite long, high and gives a nice view over Slateford. On Sunday I took the scenic route from the campus to Balerno and then to the city centre. There I tried to reach Arthur’s Seat in Hollyrood Park, but I took a wrong turn and had no energy to go all the way down and up again. So I turned around and cycled back using the Union Canal route. All and all it was a nice trip, about 40km long and I still can feel my bottom and muscles after 6 weeks of no cycling at all. Pictures of this trip are available on my Edinburgh album (photo 101 until 121). Technical On a more technical note, we have been moving from CVS to Subversion at work. This is nice because it allows us to do a good repository restructuring. Also did it give me the opportunity to try out SVK, which I’ve found to work well. It allows me to stay in the familiar CVS/Subversion world while not having to dive into whole new systems or command interfaces for which, at the moment, I do not have the time nor feel the need. I hope I can help Florian Ragwitz with svk-buildpackage, because I now still need a Subversion check-out next to my SVK local branch just to build packages. By means of this combination I’ve just been able to build and upload 5 new Ruby libraries (under Debian/Ruby Extras’ team maintenance): libbreakpoint-ruby, libcairo-ruby, libcmd-ruby (oops, it seems I’ve forgotten to file the ITP?), libdaemonize-ruby and libsvg-ruby.

Working on free software has made me fairly revision control system-agnostic; I can't afford to get too wedded to any one system because as soon as I do somebody will invent something new and I'll have to convert again, so I just work with whatever other people on the same project are using. Even CVS doesn't make a lot of difference to the way I work as long as I'm working online and have cvsps handy. And of course I usually don't bother with revision control if I'm just tweaking somebody else's Debian source package a bit (in which case I just use debdiff for paranoia). Using bzr at work, though, I think I just found my killer app in Michael Ellerman's shelve plugin. My working style generally involves alternating between doing lots and lots of stuff in the one working copy and (after testing) going through and committing it in logical chunks. This is fine if everything's in separate files (most revision control systems let you commit just some files), but if several of the chunks are in the one file then I'm reduced to saving diffs and manually editing out the bits I don't want to commit yet, which is obviously pretty tedious and error-prone. bzr shelve presents each diff hunk in your working copy to you in turn and asks you whether you want to keep it. If you say no, that hunk gets unapplied and goes into a "shelf", where bzr unshelve can later reapply it. In the meantime commits act as though the shelved hunks didn't exist. This doesn't help if you want to defer only one of two immediately adjacent changes that end up in the same hunk, of course, but it vastly reduces the scale of the problem. I suppose it would be easy enough to write a shelve-a-like for any other system; it's just that I haven't seen it for any other system yet. If working with systems that lack it really starts to annoy me, I may have to rip out the guts of shelve and figure out how to make it generic.

By request: Here's a list of people who've confirmed they're going to give a talk in the Debian Devroom at the next FOSDEM. This list isn't final yet (there are some more people who've asked for a time slot but did not confirm yet; and I didn't assign slots yet, either) but it might be interesting for those who are coming to have a preview of the subjects that will be available. Well then.

Lars Wirzenius: Nobody expects the Finnish Inquisition: Confessions of a package torturer

Piuparts tests that .deb packages can be installed, upgraded, and removed without problems. Lars uses it to torture all the packages he can get his hands on. This talk will explain how to use it on your packages before uploading them, and thus improving their quality and not having them suffer in Lars's hands.

Martin Zobel-Helas: Debian-Volatile - behind the scenes

This talk will give an overview of how packages are handled for Debian-volatile; what changes are allowed, how security is handled.

Martin F. Krafft: Improving workflow in Debian through process integration

This talk will be about the same subject as Martin's doctorate thesis. The abstract for that is:
This research paper/project details the technical challenges the Debian project faces as it continues its tremendous growth in size and popularity. It describes a research endeavour designed to increase the use of version control within the project for improved coordination of globally distributed teams of volunteers working on the software packages that make up the system. The research primarily focuses on the integration and consolidation of the involved processes. With tools already available for some parts of these processes as well as the coordination of teams, the goal is not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to reuse and improve these tools, to better integrate them, and to make them more accessible by providing abstraction wrappers with interfaces intuitive to Debian developers. It is further the intent for these tools to be optional and fully compatible to existing practices, thus not forcing developers to adapt. The research starts with process analysis and studies of the work habits on the side of the developers, and targets the final output of tools, which implement improved workflow in Debian package management through meaningful integration of existing (and proven) methods

Enrico Zini: Debtags, and what you can do with it today

This talk will introduce the Debtags project, what it has accomplished so far and the wonderful advanced tools that are now available, using debtags, to make sense of the huge package archive.

Bill Allombert: Inside the Debian menu system

The debian menu system transparently keeps the menus in sync with the list of installed applications; so transparently, in fact, that a lot of developers do not know how the system really works. This talk will detail the various components of the system, what the technical challenges are and how they are solved.

Frans J. Pop: Debian Installer internals

An introduction to the inner workings of Debian Installer. Starting with what happens when the installer boots, the talk will go on to discuss how the dynamic menu structure allows the installer to be adapted for different architectures and installation methods. Other subjects will include the special nature of udebs, the contents of a D-I initrd, how cdebconf knits everything together and allows the use of different frontends, preseeding and the use of hooks. If time allows, a short introduction into the build system and CD building may be provided. Some knowledge of Debian package management (like priorities and dependencies) is assumed in this talk.

Aurelien Jarno: The Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port of Debian using the FreeBSD kernel and a GNU libc library. It is currently the most advanced non-Linux port in terms of packages ported.
This talk gives an overview of GNU/kFreeBSD, and a quick comparison between the FreeBSD and the Linux kernel, to give users the necessary information to let them find how the FreeBSD kernel could fill their needs. It then describes the status of the port and the choices made concerning the architecture of the port (libc, threading library, etc.). It will continue by giving the various ways to try out this port and to give help, giving pointers to useful documentation and some useful hints.
Best portability practices are also covered, for both the Debian packaging and the upstream code. It will be based on real examples of non-portable code, and will show the best way to change it into portable code.

Summing the times that people gave me, I'll have anywhere between 5h25 and 6h00 of talks already, and two more people who've shown real interest in doing something in the Debian devroom (but who haven't sent me the information I ask for to be able to confirm their talk; please do so!). I'll probably get 9 hours in all (10 if I squeeze a little bit; but then I might have some issues with the key signing party, which I'm also co-organizing), so there is still some time left for interested parties. However, if you're interested in giving a talk, you shouldn't wait too long anymore!

Bored? Feeling that artistic vibe? Why not make some music with your (HP ScanJet) scanner? Or at least watch a video of other people doing so (as soon as the slashdotting has stopped and the video is back, that is)? Note to self: Add this to Crazy Hacks later, gotta run now. (via hack a day)

Today, we took a day off unpacking and ventured to San Jose on the light rail, of which Whisman station is an easy walk from our place. It was quite a fun outing. An adult "single trip" ticket cost $1.75, and was a good 2 hours travel. So technically, if you could get to where you were going and back again in 2 hours, more power to you. The light rail itself is like a hybrid tram/train sort of thing. It's two cars long, and sometimes goes onto the road, and other times is separate to the road (but always on rails). It stops only when required to pick up passengers, or when a passenger on board indicates they'd like to get off, so presumably this makes the timetable as variable as a bus. On the way to San Jose it didn't stop at a lot of stations. It also has cool bike racks on board. You stow your bike vertically, hanging it from the front wheel. I foresee a few further-afield cycling excursions in the future. The trip to downtown San Jose took about 50 minutes each way, and took us through a real who's who of Silicon Valley. We saw so many names... In San Jose, we popped into The Tech, just to see if it was open next Monday (Martin Luther King holiday), as we will have a guest with us, and discovered that today had free entry as SBC was paying for everyone to come in, so we thought we might as well go in, being free and all. There seemed to be a few more exhibits on line compared to last time I went with Michael, and Sarah enjoyed herself. We also had the obligatory Segway ride, and then headed home.

Some of the books I read in 2005:

Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and other pieces
Bob McCulloch, My Fare City: A Taxi Driver's Guide to Edinburgh
Origen, On First Principles (translated by G. W. Butterworth)
Sin-leqi-unninni, Gilgamesh: a new English version by Stephen Mitchell
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Richard Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe: from paganism to Christianity 371–1386 AD
M. A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Otto Friedrich, The Kingdom of Auschwitz
Nicholas Barton, The Lost Rivers of London: a study of their effects upon London and Londoners, and the effects of London and Londoners upon them
Anton Chekhov, The Steppe and Other Stories (translated by Ronald Hingley)
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Otto F. A. Meinardus, Coptic Saints and Pilgrimages
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
R.W.B. Lewis, Dante: a life
Miles Glendinning and Aonghus MacKechnie, Scottish Architecture
Arturo P rez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel
John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (second edition)
Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: the battles for Scripture and the faiths we never knew
Plato, Timaeus and Critias (translated by Desmond Lee)
Albert Camus, The Outsider
Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, Rosslyn: guardian of the secrets of the Holy Grail
Ginevra Lovatelli, Secret Rome
Dauvit Brown and Thomas Owen Clancy (editors), Spes Scotorum: Hope of Scots: Saint Columba, Iona and Scotland
Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII (translated by Walter Hamilton)
William Chester Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages (The Penguin History of Europe)
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women (translated by Virginia Brown)
Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
Georges Perec, A Void (translated by Gilbert Adair)
Saul Bellow, The Victim
Franz Kafka, The Trial
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream (translated by Joscelyn Godwin)
Italo Calvino, Our Ancestors (The Cloven Viscount; Baron in the Trees; The Non-Existent Knight) (translated by Archibald Colquhoun)
Eusebius, The History of the Church (translated by G. A. Williamson)
Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria: Bashar's trial by fire
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (City of Glass; Ghosts; The Locked Room)

Your Social Dysfunction: Paranoid You show pervasive and unwarranted suspiciousness, and mistrust of others. You are overly sensitive and prone to jealousy.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

I honestly don't see how some of the questions are relevant. Meh.

Your Social Dysfunction: Paranoid You show pervasive and unwarranted suspiciousness, and mistrust of others. You are overly sensitive and prone to jealousy.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

So I've been in the US for just over six weeks now, and I thought I'd reflect on the trials and tribulations of bootstrapping oneself in a foreign country. The Social Security Number is the primary key from hell I already had a fair idea of the importance of obtaining a Social Security Number (SSN). So much so, that after dumping our luggage at our temporary accommodation, the Social Security Administration office was the first place Michael and I went to, so we could lodge applications. We subsequently learned from another Australian who was about two weeks ahead of us, that you're apparently supposed to wait ten working days before lodging the application, to allow your immigration records to percolate through the bureaucracy that is the US Government. Our applications were duly accepted without any mention of waiting a bit, but we were sent away with a letter and a tracking number, saying that the SSA had to verify our existence with Immigration (this is despite the fact that we're standing in front of them with a passport with an I-94 stapled in it) and that it would take up to four weeks. So it's been six weeks, and still no sign of an SSN. Enquiries with the office are met with the same response - waiting on information back from Immigration. Apparently it can take up to three months. It's a real shame you can't start the application process when your visa is granted or something, as in order to apply, you need to quote your "alien registration number" (I still chuckle at how the US Government refers to me as an "alien" in all their paperwork), which is the number on your I-94, which you only get when you enter the country. So, whilst the SSN application remains pending, I cannot be paid, I cannot have my health insurance paperwork lodged by my employer, and whilst I'll be covered for health insurance retrospectively, I'm not technically covered right now, if I were to require medical treatment. Going back to how the SSN is the primary key of All Things... Next step is to open a bank account. We chose Citibank, because I've been told it's slightly easier to import money back into Australia with them. Fortunately we were able to open an account sans SSN, but it's called an "NRA account" (NRA standing for Non-resident Alien). We were told that we were only eligible for an ATM card until I had an SSN, yet they mailed me out a debit card about a week after we opened the account, and happily ordered one for Sarah, and a cheque book when we asked after opening the account. About the only thing it seems we can't do at the moment is transfer money back to Australia. No big deal, it's all coming the other way until I can get paid... Driver's licence requires an SSN ideally, so that's out of the question for the time being... Electricity, telephone and cable were all able to be provisioned with an SSN, although I think for credit-rating purposes, again, it is the primary key. We had to pay a deposit for the electricity, which is fair enough. The lady I spoke to on the phone when I got it connected said that they just treated us aliens like teenagers straight out of home with no credit history. I don't have a problem with that. It's just a shame that you can't import your credit history. Getting a cell phone account appears to be nigh on impossible with an SSN though. It was a battle just to get a prepaid SIM card for Sarah's phone, and this makes a great story of how much hoop-jumping is required. We walked up to a Cingular stand in a shopping mall to see what we could and couldn't do. I explained our situation (lack of SSN, lack of credit history, etc etc) to the sales droid, and he assured us it wasn't a problem to get a prepaid SIM card. He proceeded to take about 30 minutes to organise the SIM card. I watched as he entered a dummy SSN into the computer, and used his own driver's licence number. He was clearly battling the computer system to be able to do it. When we got home, and Sarah called up to try and put some credit on the phone with our Australian Visa card, she was told they only accepted credit cards with a US billing address. (So much for Visa being accepted worldwide). So we headed off again to Safeway to purchase a prepaid Mastercard. Funnily enough, when Sarah called up to activate that, she was initially asked for an SSN, so we almost had a dependency loop that we couldn't break, just to get a US cell phone. Fortunately they could cope with no SSN, so she successfully ended up with a prepaid Mastercard, with a US billing address, so she could put credit on her prepaid SIM. From what I can work out, a lot of the places that do request the SSN seem to using the last four digits as an authenticator, much like everyone just uses name and date of birth back in Australia, so I'm guessing for these organisations, I could probably just quote any old number that fit the pattern and they'd be happy. Just so long as they don't go trying to run a credit check against it... Foreign credit cards As I said earlier, a credit card with a non-US billing address is fine for most face-to-face purchases, but an amazing array of mostly telephone transactions will not accept them. Most notable was trying to add credit to a calling card for making international telephone calls. Couldn't be done. So it meant I had to forego any discounts or bonuses for topping up, and buy a whole new calling card. Car insurance and registration I'm not sure how this is going to go yet. Our Prius is supposed to be available around the 18th of January. I'm hoping I'll have my SSN by then, otherwise we'll have to import a heap of money to pay for it. I'm sure you can get insurance and own a car without an SSN, because you hear of people who do driving holidays across the US, buying a car on one coast, driving it cross-country, and then selling it. It might be more expensive, and I again, you can't import your driving/insurance history, so you have to start off at the bottom of the ladder again... In summary, I think you need to have relatively deep pockets to bootstrap yourself over here. You need to be able to function without getting paid for up to two or three months, and you need to understand that credit-wise and insurance-wise, you're going to be back at square-one again, irrespective of how good you might have been in your home country. The sooner you come to terms with these, and appreciate that you are moving to a foreign country, the sooner you can get on with enjoying the experience.

Last night, Sarah and I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I quite enjoyed it. It's been years since I've seen either the animated version (I think I've seen that at least twice, and I can't believe it was from 1979, that makes me feel so old) or the BBC TV mini-series (I think I saw that once), or read the books, so I couldn't remember the story very well at all, so it was great having a two hour long memory jog. It seemed very faithful to my memory of the original story. Acting-wise, I thought the actors that played Edmund and Lucy did a particularly good job. I was initially a bit down on the choice of making Queen Jadice/The White Witch so young, but that turned out pretty good nonetheless. The voice of Aslan was a good pick. My main beef was that the violence was too sanitised. I feel strange saying that, but up until the big battle scene, they went out of their way to make it all pretty tame and bloodless. There were also a couple of scenes that were very obviously shot in front of a blue or green screen. This movie had the potential to be Lord of the Rings material, but I think it fell down a bit, only on a few small things. The Lord of the Rings was as violent as it needed to be, without going into Day of the Dead territory, for example. Very good, but not great. I hope they do the rest of the books though. Oh, and I really think all these people who are trying to draw all these Biblical connections are really reaching.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% Superman 70% Robin 67% Iron Man 65% Hulk 65% Batman 55% The Flash 55% Green Lantern 50% Catwoman 40% Supergirl 40% Wonder Woman 30%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

I've still been extremely busy. Unlike my last fairly incoherent brain dump, this time I've been keeping notes on the things I wanted to write about, so hopefully I won't forget things. Here we go...

Squirrels

Squirrels are absolutely everywhere. They're very fast and very cute. They're kind of like possums, except diurnal. They run up trees with ease, and leap from tree to tree. It's quite cool to watch them. The damn things don't stand still long enough to be photographed (properly), and they don't let you get too close without scampering up a tree or running off. I'm told they're the number one carrier of rabies, so I shouldn't be trying to get too close anyway.

Sales tax

Definitely one of the more annoying aspects of consumer life is the fact that prices quoted are not inclusive of sales tax. This means you always need to part with more cash than you expect. Furthermore, there are some places (some fast-food outlets) that do quote the prices inclusive of tax, so it's really hard to know what you're in for.

Speed limits

I find speed limit signs to be either infrequent or harder to notice, or a combination of both. They're just a black text on white background sign. I'm used to them having the red circle. That said, no one seems to drive at the speed limit anyway.

Ethnicity

Canberra's a very white town compared to say Sydney, but I reckon at least the San Jose area of California blows the socks off what I've seen of Sydney for multiculturalism. You really notice it over here. I've been at the mall in Milpitas, and you can play "spot the white European" (a variation of "spot the Caucasian").

Different responses to thankyou

I think the fairly standard response to saying thanks that I'm used to is "You're welcome". Over here, you get "mm hmm" a lot, which is just strange.

Fractions vs decimal

They love their fractions. Petrol gets quoted at 221⁹/₁₀, which took me a while to realise was 221.9 cents per gallon

Alcoholic beverage labelling

Australia has the concept of a "standard drink". I remember as a kid the advertising campaign "rethink your third drink" (or for women, "rethink your second drink"). The idea being that men could drink two standard drinks in the first hour, and then one standard drink every hour after that, and be at 0.05% blood alcohol, which is the legal limit for Australia. And every bottled alcoholic drink is labelled with how many standard drinks it is. An average beer is about 1.2 standard drinks for example. No such labelling over here. You get the percentage of alcohol per volume, and that is it, which makes self-regulating very difficult. The limit is apparently 0.08%, but I don't think I want to be driving around on the wrong side of the road at that level (or any level really).

Christmas vs "Holidays"

Everyone and every piece of advertising goes on about the "Holidays". Retail people are always wishing us "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". I think this is because there's a large chunk of people who don't necessarily celebrate Christmas.

Tipping

I haven't really come across tipping in everyday life as much as I'd expected, but when I think about it a bit, I'm at work most of the time, so that's probably why. The general rule seems to be to tip "double the tax", so for a bill at a restaurant, or where you get personal service, such as a haircut, you tip. But you don't tip at McDonald's, nor Subway (where I would have expected you would).

That's about all my current observations on living over here. Tomorrow we get our townhouse in Central Park. Our air-freight was finally delivered today. (What was supposed to take about 8 days took 4 weeks). Not sure when we can expect our sea freight at this stage. We bought a couple of mountain bikes last weekend, and if the weather is okay tomorrow, we'll pick them up and ride them home. We've found a really nice off road (as in not shared with cars) bike path, which runs close to home all the way to work. I'm really keen to roller blade to work if it's feasible, and also to cycle in. I'm a bit disappointed to discover after we've been accepted for the place that we're right on top of a toxic waste dump (or something like that). If I grow a second head, you'll know why. The other piece of exciting news is that the bank sent me a debit card, when they'd previously told me they wouldn't until I had a Social Security number (still no sign if that yet). This thing (the debit card) is freaking weird. It's Mastercard branded, and in some places you use it like you'd use a debit card for EFTPOS back home. You swipe, enter your PIN and that's it. In other cases, you swipe and sign a bit of paper like a credit card transaction. In either case, money is sucked out of our checking account. The scary thing is that no one seems to check signatures in this country, and a lot of places will accept credit card payments electronically (like petrol stations where you just swipe the card at the bowser and enter the ZIP code of your billing address and that's it). Oh, and I can use this thing like a credit card for Internet purchases. What bothers me is that the level of authentication is so low, but it's sucking actual money out of our checking account, so with all the credit card fraud around, it's relatively trivial to draw actual money out of a bank account, as opposed to using someone's credit. That said, I just got the card today, and since then, it's made shopping so much easier. It's amazing how many places won't accept a foreign credit card, and I was a big user of EFTPOS back home, and this ability to use a debit card like a credit card means I can essentially continue in that habit. I wasn't looking forward to carrying lots of cash or having to use cheques.

I've been so busy, I haven't had time to blog. Rather than putting it off any longer, I'll just dump what I can remember. Last Wednesday, Sarah arrived after her holiday in Singapore, and from all accounts, had a great time. Photos as well. Sticking with the whirlwind theme, the next day, we had a "building warming" party at work for the new building we'd moved into the week before Michael and I started. The next night we had the work Christmas party, which blew the socks off any work Christmas party I'd ever been to before, and then on Saturday night we went to a party in San Francisco that we'd been invited to. On a life in general front, I'm still waiting for a Social Security number. The lack of one makes life a bit difficult for a lot of things. It also turns out that Sarah's work permit will take about 90 days to approve, so she's going to be a lady of leisure for the next few months. I've finally been issued with a work mobile phone (or "cell phone" as they call them), and so can stop roaming and paying through the nose for the privilege. We've found somewhere to live. We take possession of a 2 bedroom townhouse (split-level) in a complex in Mountain View that is 3 miles from work on the 18th. The rent is $1725 a month, which is a bit better than we were expecting. The complex we're renting in does have shared laundries, which we'd not too keen on before getting over here, but they're quite modern and secure, and there's a laundry block close to our townhouse, so hopefully it won't be too bad. The whole place had been renovated about 5 years ago, so it's all in good condition. We could have rented a 3 bedroom apartment (single level) in the same complex for about $125 a month more, but we're trying to actually make some money while we're over here... Driving on the other side of the road becomes fairly "normal" after about a week of doing it regularly. Sarah's adapted fine. Lane placement is the hardest thing, because your body's used to being in a certain spot on the road, and it's all different sitting on the other side of the car. We've managed to open a rudimentary bank account, even with my lack of Social Security number. Unfortunately I can't get paid until I have an SSN. Upside of that is that if it doesn't happen until next year, I presumably won't have to worry about income tax for this US financial year. Downside is kind of obvious... By far one of the stranger things of everyday life here is the lighting situation in the average residence. Lamps are all the rage, to the point that light switches don't exist in some rooms (notably bedrooms). Take where we're currently living for example. There's a light switch at the bottom of the stairs, there's one at the top. There's a bank of four in the living room, two of which control lights in the kitchen, and one the hallway. The last one controls a lamp in the corner of the living room, which is connected to a power socket (or power point as we'd call it). The bedroom with the attached bathroom (en suite) has two bedside lamps, and that is the sole source of light. The bathroom attached has light switches, and the walk-in robe has a light switch. It's so weird. So walking into a darkened bedroom involves walking all the way in, and fumbling around with a lamp. It's often easier to turn on the light in the wardrobe so you can see what you're doing first. I can't think of any reason for it, except tradition. It's not like they're avoiding wiring the walls or the ceiling, because it's done partially already. The bedroom has a ceiling fan, but where in Australia, there'd be a knob on the wall near the light switch to control it, it has a little chain you yank on. To add to the strangeness, there are two switches on the wall, one of which seems to allow you to turn off the ceiling fan if it's already been switched on by pulling the chain. The townhouse we're renting has a similar lamp dependency, so we're going to be making a trip to Ikea for some lamps it would seem. That's about everything I can recollect right now... Oh, I should point out that I'm really loving it over here.

I've already fielded enquiries from two people who have found my blog via Google, and given the 10,500 visas a year being issued, there's only going to be more, so in the interests of not spending too much time answering questions individually, I'm going to write a detailed account of things. Disclaimer: This article is not a replacement for doing your own homework. I expressly disclaim any responsibility for you getting your visa application denied, being cavity searched when you attempt to enter the US, or being sent to Guantanamo Bay. In particular, this information is subject to change, and as I'm not applying for a new visa every day, I'm not going to know about the changes. If you find something here that is blatantly wrong, or out of date, please let me know, but at the moment, I'm writing about my experiences. I'm undecided about maintaining a website devoted to capturing the state of the art in E-3 visa applications. If in doubt, spend the money (and I do mean spend, it's not a cheap phone call) and call the information line - 1902 941 641 - to speak to a human being, and ask all the questions. Resources

• The Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's page on E-3 visas
• The US Consulate's E-3 visa page
• The US Consulate's page on applying for a non-immigrant visa

What's the process? Your potential employer (sponsor) needs to file a Labor Condition Application (see the form here). At present, this form hasn't been brought up to date with respect to E-3 visas, it's the same form used for H1-B visas. Your employer needs to have written at the top of each page "E-3 - Australia - to be processed". This bit of handwriting is apparently key. You need to have the signed LCA in your hot little hand before you roll up at the US Consulate to apply for your visa. As for how long these take to be processed by the Department of Labor, the FAQ says a week for postal applications. From my experience, and the experience of a couple of other people I've spoken to, it takes anything up to about four weeks. Generally speaking, you do not have to concern yourself with the LCA process, unless for some reason, you're sweating on the LCA so you can apply for your visa. My personal opinion is that the whole process is so long, bureaucratic and unpredictable, that you really don't want to be making any firm plans based on any assumptions on when you think anything is going to happen. Start your planning from when you have been issued your visa, not when you expect you will be issued your visa. Once the LCA has been issued, your sponsor will send it to you along with a wad of paperwork, most of which you just take with you to the consulate. You can make an appointment online. Paperwork-wise, you need to take a completed DS-156 and a DS-157 if you are male between 16 and 45. These forms are available here. You can make an appointment online, the links to make an appointment at each of the US Consulates are also here. I found that the lead time to an appointment was around a month, so if you know the LCA application has been made, you can probably make the booking at the Consulate, so as to try and parallelise things a little bit. What do you need to take to the interview? You need to take your completed DS-156 and DS-157 forms. You need one for each person. So if you are the principal (i.e. the person being hired), you need a DS-156 for yourself, and your spouse, and whichever of you is male needs a DS-157. Bring the sponsor's offer letter too. You need a receipt for a non-refundable visa application fee. You need one receipt per person applying for a visa. You get these receipts by paying $130 per person at any Australia Post outlet. As the visa is non-immigrant, you need to be able show some sort of ongoing connection with Australia. If you own property here, and are planning to continue owning it while in the US, bring a rates notice. I don't know what else is useful to demonstrate an ongoing connection. Also bring a bank statement, as you need to demonstrate an ability to support yourself while in the US. Bring birth certificates and marriage certificates. Also bring a copy of your University transcript, and any assessments that your employer may have had done that state that you hold the equivalent of a US degree. I'm not sure how hard and fast the whole degree thing is. I have an incomplete degree and about 10 years of work experience. This was sufficient. I don't know how you'd go with absolutely no degree and lots of work experience. Finally, you need to bring two US-sized passport photos. These are 5cm x 5cm, which are not what your average passport photo is like if you go somewhere and ask for a passport photo. Processing takes about 3 days, although you get an indication on the day as to whether you are successful or not. If you don't want to come back to collect your passport with the visa in it, you need to leave sufficient stamped, self-addressed envelopes so that the Consulate can mail the passports back to you. It's a bit hazy as to what constitutes 3 days, but assume 3 full working days, plus whatever time it takes for the postage, so up to 5 working days. Good luck with your visa application. Let me know how it goes, and if this has been of assistance.

Where do I start? It's been an eventful couple of days... The flight to LA was uneventful. Qantas is certainly orders of magnitude more pleasant to fly with than United, even though we were seated in a bulkhead area. I had a 13-month old baby seated next to me (no, Mikal was on the other side), and he was about as well behaved as you could possibly ask a 13-month old baby to behave. Mikal also behaved himself. I had the intention of trying to get something approximating 8 hours sleep, as we arrived at LAX at 7am local time, but I only managed about 4 hours. I did spend about 8 hours with a mask on and my brain in idle, so I arrived at LAX being mostly coherent. Entering the US via LAX was a much less traumatic experience than I was expecting. The E-3 visa was accepted fine, and I now have an I-94 stapled into my passport. Quarantine involved getting looked up and down by a guy in a booth, who waved me through. We had 3 hours to spare (or about 2 by the time we cleared all the immigration/customs queues) and then hopped on a 50 minute American Airlines flight to San Francisco, hired a car and drove to Santa Clara. The accommodation we're staying in for a month is very spiffy indeed. It's a largish gated community of units. Mine's got a ground floor entry, but everything else (except the garage) is upstairs. When Sarah gets here, we'll put up some photos. The weather is lovely as well. Our first outing was to the Social Security office to attempt to get social security numbers. This wasn't as successful as I'd hoped, as we were too freshly in the country to show up on their systems, so we left with letters saying we'd get one within four weeks, when our details had been verified. Yesterday evening, we went for a general recce of the surrounding area, and checked out a supermarket. That was less disconcerting than I expected, although I don't think it was a terribly huge supermarket. Having a GPS certainly raises one's confidence when navigating significantly. Last night I discovered that all the keys in my apartment were not created equal, and that the two loose in the lock box on the front door were the only two that opened the unit, and the two sets on key rings on the coffee table only opened the amenities and my mailbox. So I got to spend a bit of time sitting on my front doorstep until the nice man from Synergy Relocations came out to let me in (except his key didn't work either, so he got to make conversation with a legal alien while we waited for someone else to come out with a key). Today, we drove around to see a shopping mall, and the first set of shops we found happened to be around the corner from an enormous (by my standards) apartment complex, which had some signage implying that it had vacancies, so we decided to get the low down on how renting worked before we did our rental tours. Casey drove us around in a golf buggy and gave a tour of what two different floor plans looked liked. It seems that in this part, it's standard for an apartment to include the refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, washing machine and clothes dryer, which is good to know. Let me just say that if this is what living in an apartment complex is like, it's more like living in a resort. The place had pools everywhere, tennis courts, two gyms, a community centre, it was just unreal. It was also cheaper than I was expecting. We then went to a massive shopping mall to do some window shopping. Discovered Wetzel's Pretzels. Hope they're not too fattening... Tomorrow, I'm going to avail myself to the complex's gym, and generally get ready for the week ahead. Future posts will be in a new category, which I won't be feeding to Planet Debian as not to bore people. I will inflict Planet Linux Australia readers with them until someone asks me to stop. If you'd like a custom feed that excludes my American adventures, please let me know. I wonder if adjusting Blosxom's idea of timezone buggers up existing posts and aggregators like Planet in general?