Our little parrot has been ill. All we knew was that since we collected her from the quarantine she’s appeared a little lacklustre and her left foot has seemed quite painful to her. Yesterday we took her to a vet who is widely touted as being one of the best avian vets around.
After discussion and a little handling, he deduced that she was probably not well.
I think Michele and I had been trying to deny to ourselves that she was less active than before but there’s now no doubt about it. Two days of antibiotics and suddenly we’re seeing our old bird again. The only downside is that we have to give her an injection tomorrow morning; we’re going to stick a needle in our tiny little bird! Eek!

Tomorrow is “thanksgiving”. Michele’s mum (mom) is currently engaged in making a massively complicated, fantastic-smelling, pile of stuffing (after spending all day making other complex foodstuffs that smell fantastic) and Ralph has engineered the table so that it is a third bigger than it should be with no loss of quality in stability or appearance. He is a magician.

I’m actually quite excited about it, even though I don’t know what it’s all about! Well, there will be 12 people all eating and making merry so it can’t be too bad.

Work news…for another time.

We have a bit of an ill birdy. The vet has put her on antibiotics and she’s not happy. Neither are we. She looks brighter already though.
Today has been so busy and quite stressful and tomorrow looks like being the same. To those that I owe an email, I apologise. Once we have reached the end of tomorrow’s list of shite I’ll get tapping.

Sometimes it’s best to employ a considerable level of discretion when blogging, but to be quite frank I can’t be arsed at the moment.

Our trip to New York was fun. Being the adventurous, carefree, tight-arsed pair we are, we eschewed the fast and efficient Amtrak service to New York in favour of the cheaper, slower, less glitzy, “New Jersey Transit” equivalent. In fairness, it’s a good service. But it’s a bit like a local bus route that goes from Lewisham way to central Birmingham, stopping at every stop on the way. We were even lucky enough to have our geek vibes tickled by getting on an experimental double decker train. Why don’t they have these everywhere ? My dad told me that they had a few in England at one time but they vanished. Pity, they worked well, packed loads of people in without discomfort, and I can categorically state that their khazis were somewhere between viable and pleasurable, even for bowel movements! Take note Network Rail.

After the 5 hour journey, our hotel felt like the Ritz. Ok, they didn’t have a dining room, or a bar, and the room was too hot, but it was very comfy and had all the mod cons. But then for $500 a night it fucking well should. Luckily the company I was interviewing with had agreed to foot the bill – a fact that, if we’d used our brains, may have altered the decision to plump for NJ Transit. We spent the night wandering around a nearby olde worlde touriste trappe and had our tea in a suitably cosy looking bistro. We also visited a bar with hundreds of bras suspended from the ceiling, accompanied by drunken scrawlings purporting to be from the former occupants.

Anyway the job interview was enjoyable if nothing else. I had to leave the hotel an hour beforehand and so ended up spending my pre-interview worry-time in a nearby cafe consuming strong coffee. This is, of course, an idea so bad that it warrants no further discussion. When the time came, I flew down to their glamorous looking Wall Street office and went in. Four hours later, after meeting some really nice people and generally being geeky I wandered out utterly exhausted. I’ve no idea how well it went, but it was a good experience and I enjoyed meeting the people there. I don’t hold out a lot of hope unfortunately because there are other candidates being interviewed, all of whom are supposedly excellent.

Thankfully I have other irons in the fire and some other interesting looking propositions so I’m not too worried. In fact a great, life affirming, thing has happened: I’ve met a recruiter who isn’t crap. In fact, she seems really excellent. She’s sorted me out with an interview next week – things are already moving slowly but the impending “Thanksgiving” appears to be grinding things to a near halt. This will be my first thanksgiving and I’m looking forward to it. It seems to be what Christmas is supposed to be about, but without the presents, the Wizzard, and the shops filled with tat. You basically meet up with your family and spend the day enjoying the food, the drink and each others company. Now that sounds good doesn’t it ? In the UK we get a raw deal because that concept is supposed to share the day with the consumerfest of Christmas and the two don’t mix well.

Michele’s mum (mom), Helen, has bravely offered to host the festivities here, which involves an 11-strong table. If it were me, I’d have had a heart attack by now, but she seems disturbingly relaxed.

Tonight has been superb so far. We went to a nearby Mexican restaurant called “Adobe” which is shockingly good. Not only do they serve food that tastes like the stuff we bought in Mexico, but they do a deal for two people that includes a bottle of wine and two main courses for $30. OK, admittedly the red wine isn’t very authentic – it’s easier to buy a gun in Mexico city than a bottle of red wine, but hey, this is tex-mex. And once the state stores are shut in PA guns are probably easier to come by. Now I’m sitting in the kitchen, listening to Sonny Terry and the sound of Ralph putting up a cupboard, while I sip red wine, tap away at this machine, and have my feet warmed by this heated kitchen floor. Nice things.

Michele’s brother and his wife had been covertly organising a party to celebrate our recent migration, and Saturday night was the night. There was so much food, so much to drink, and so many people that it couldn’t fail to be anything but excellent. I even made a friend or two! Really! Of course I paid the price by losing my camera, but that’s only fair I suppose. Additionally it means that I don’t have to show you the pictures of me dressed up as Uncle Sam and looking like an even bigger tit than usual. We even got presents. The bits of it that I remember were really good.

Meanwhile we’ve been failing to make any sort of perceptible progress in our nesting. This Thursday is my long-awaited job interview in New York and I’ve been applying for a bunch of other jobs but with little, or rather, no feedback as yet. Either things are moving really slowly or I’m unemployable.

The biggest bummer, next to my complete inability to be comprehensible to any natives without saying every sentence twice, is credit. My lack of a credit history here is equivalent to having the credit history of a bankrupt crack dealer. I followed the advice of everyone I asked and applied for a store card (charge card) so that I could start building a history. Of course I got turned down. They usually give them out to everyone including 20 year old criminals. I was so annoyed that I just dumped the suit we were about to buy on the counter and walked out, resulting in more work for the assistant whose fault it wasn’t that I got rejected. Sorry.

In honesty Michele went back today and bought it because it was really nice and a total bargain: 100% wool, light-weight, Ralph Lauren, black suit with a cotton shirt and tie for $200. It feels so nice on too. Jesus, what’s happening to me ? I hate suits. Age is so cruel.

Tip to those who are planning to move here: get a social security number on day one and then apply for a “secured credit card”. It’s a total con but apparently opens the wonderful door of debt that blocks the path to a mortgage and somewhere to live.

Applying for jobs and getting annoyed by things is taking so long that I’ve hardly been able to do any work for my UK employers which does, as you’d imagine, suck. But on the occasions I have been able to do some work, I’ve been enjoying the Comcast on-demand cable and watching many films. Here are some films that I’ve just watched and you have to see, otherwise your mum is gay:

• Idiocracy
• Rosemary’s Baby
• Short Cuts
• Under Fire
• Broadcast News
• Anything by The Cohen Brothers, especially Barton Fink and Miller’s Crossing
• Anything by Terry Gilliam, who is my all time favourite director

I’m sitting in the back seat of Walter, next to a cage containing our dear Parrot Humphrey.
We drove up to New York to pick her up from her custodians and now we’re heading back, under guidance from a borrowed Tom Tom.
Humph looks a little dishevelled, but essentially OK. And she’s already done some considerable damage to the Honey Treat we put in her cage so she’s clearly not too bad.

If you could judge a nation by the way people drive, our experiences today would have led us to believe that America is nearly entirely composed of Neanderthal fuckwits with erectile problems and zero common sense. No wonder Viagra sells so well over here.

We made the mistake of looking around a local show home that was for sale. It was a mistake because the house was absolutely perfect. As the result of being a new immigrant I have zero credit; at the moment I couldn’t get a loan for a packet of crisps, so a mortgage is out of the question. Pity because the house was not only lovely it was also a bargain.

So life goes on and I thought it prudent to make active efforts to go out and meet people, so as to avoid a friendless life of misery.

2600 was due last Friday but when the time came I couldn’t face it. Partly because it meant getting to 30th st station for 5pm and partly because the idea of socialising with a bunch of 14 year old boys with limited social skills didn’t really appeal. In the end I chickened out and decided to go to an alternative teccie event in Manayunk the following day: the Ph1ladelph1a Powerb00k Users Group.

It’s easy to look back in astonishment at decisions one has made in the past and think “what the fucking fuck were you fucking thinking you fucking stupid fucking twat” but you have to remember that this was just down the road, in a nice pub that brews their own beer, I love my macbook, and I thought that maybe Mac users weren’t as mental over here.
Let me tell you, the same gene that produces the classic blinkered British Mac fanatic is alive and well over here too. In fairness, there were a couple of good talks about the new OS – Leopard – and the guy who ran the seminar seemed utterly level headed and genuinely nice. But my god they were barking.

I arrived a tad early and was astonished to find that plenty of the mac people were there already and not one was a day under 65. I sat at a table that didn’t shoo me away and was then subjected to a, clearly well rehearsed, monologue about 3 spectacularly tedious and tiny bugs that one of the guys at the table was very proud to have discovered in Leopard. After a tortuously long period of time elapsed I caught the waitresses eye and ordered a drink. Thankfully Mike, my brother in law, arrived soon after and so I didn’t have to drink myself to death.

Much of the discussions revolved around people’s iPhones and for a normal person it was a real insight into the mind of mac fanatics. These people queued up with large wedges of cash which they eventually gave over to the guy in the shop in return for a small, crippled, piece of crap that doesn’t want you to use it. They then spend a long time working out how to “hack” it so that it will become marginally more useful (despite the lame specs) until Apple fix the bugs that caused the hack to be possible. Of course, Apple’s fix will always be pathetic and so the hacks can continue. All the time they are battling with this expensive and hateful little box they go around showing it off to people and telling everyone how cool Apple are. In fact, the harder that Steve Jobs shafts his fans up the Gary, the more they seem to love and evangelise him. Hmm. Anyway, Mike and I spent a pleasant time there sampling the local brews and toothsome food before heading back home.

Unperturbed by this experience, tonight I went along to the Philadelphia Linux Users Group (PLUG) which was a far more enjoyable experience, despite at times seeming like a load of out-takes from Dear John. There was even a mini keysigning session! We ended up in a local pizza place discussing the exigencies of setting up a Linux based business in Mali…ok…but look, it’s better than discussing the look of the new iMac. And I even got a lift to 30th street station, where I completely failed to find the bus stop home and ended up catching a cab.

There’s loads of stuff to blog about but I’ve not really been in the mood. Suffice to say that I’m delighted Michael Nutter is our new Mayor. There are three reasons for feeling happy about this:

1. He seems like a top bloke.
2. It pisses off all the local Republicans; especially as he won by >73%.
3. Heheheh. Heheheh. His name’s “Nutter”. Heheheheheh. Heheheheheh. Nutter! Heheheheh.

Oh son, your mayor is a nutter.

And I’ve now discovered why it’s so difficult to get good staff these days – HR departments (Personnel) are universally shit.

In my experience their entire raison d’êtra is to act as a barrier between candidates and jobs; consequently they are staffed by a combination of authoritarian harridans and vapid jobsworths. As the role of these departments is nebulous at best they are constantly striving to justify their existence by instituting new demands on applicants and existing staff so that they are not forgotten about.

Since I’m now “in the market” I’ve been dealing with a number of HR departments and a shocking new trend has emerged. Rather than send your carefully formatted CV (resume) you have to retype it into their awkwardly designed, utterly inadequate web forms and send your CV.

You then have to wait while some HR monkey scans your responses for the presence of keywords in your responses that match those in the job requirement. Of course, being totally unaware of what the words actually mean, they can’t recognise synonyms or related skills and so you don’t even get the hiring department looking at your resume.

Throughout the entire process the candidates are treated as though they are the fortunate recipients of a chance at the cup, rather than the people who could solve the problems of the department that needs them.

How much simpler would it be if the departments did their own hiring ?

But, far worse than HR departments are recruiting companies. Every member of staff in every recruitment company could be replaced by a very simple perl script. I find this particularly ironic because yesterday a recruiter was “testing my technical knowledge of perl” by asking me questions and hoping that my wording of the answers matched whatever was on his screen. Have you ever tried to explain a back-reference to someone who doesn’t know what a regular expression is ? He called them “reejixps” for Hicks’ sake. This job hunt is going to take a while…

It’s Halloween and in America this is a big deal. Brits will no doubt be giving derisory tuts as they read that but that’s because in the UK we are the victims of marketing pressure to adopt yet another artificial holiday just so that retailers can sell more junk to us. But over here it’s different. OK, every retail outlet is choc full of plastic, light-up, spooky crap, but it feels different. Mainly because here, everyone buys into it. Kids really love it, and it’s been said many times that it’s their favourite holiday of the year – and that includes Christmas! Here it means, dressing up, having fun and getting hold of buckets of sweets. For the adults it’s the same but with drink instead of the chocies.
So we’re now sitting outside on the front porch rocking benches, tapping away at our laptops like a 21st century Ma and Pa Kettle. Michele is hoping that the armies of dressed up children will suddenly descend and demand sweets…like it was in her day.

But evidently things have changed. Daily Mail culture (or rather Fox News culture) has made everyone believe the streets are crawling with child molesters and general nonces. Sad really.

Oh wait! Here comes one now. There’s loads of them! Oh yeah – over here the costumes don’t necessarily have to be scary – in fact some of them are just plain old fancy dress; consequently all the little girls go round as princesses and all the little lads go as ninjas, superheroes or corpses.

In the UK, all you get is a bunch of teenage delinquents demanding money with menaces.

Last night we went with Michele’s brother and his wife to a Haunted House called “Bate’s Motel.” We were bought tickets in advance with the added enticement that “they’ve got a corn maze too!” Obviously, I haven’t got a sodding clue what that means or what the whole thing was about so we went along.

Thousands of people drive to this big field in New Jersey the middle of Pennsylvania, park up and then join astonishingly long queues to enter either a scary house, a scary corn field or go on a scary “hay ride” – nope, me neither.

Let me tell you, the scary house and the scary corn field were genuinely frightening. Each was pitch black, full of “actors” dressed up as terrifying things, willing to jump on you in the dark, and all sorts of other nasty stuff in there: giant robotic rats, hanging meat (mainly fake), and people with chainsaws. My heart was racing for about an hour afterwards.

Afterwards, Michele and I were absolutely shaking with hunger and so we all went to a massive diner and ate much too much food, whilst laughing at the ludicrous wigs on the customers which may, or may not, have been Halloween costumes.

Today: lovely cycle ride along the creek again.
My favourite quote of the day is from Helen, Michele’s mum:

Martin, you look like a freak.

If you’ve been unlucky enough to have to get on a plane in the past couple of years, especially across the Atlantic, then you’ll no doubt have been irritated by the ridiculous pantomime of the airport security checks that you are required to endure just so the stupid people feel a bit safer. The limited liquid rule is particularly irritating, based, as it is, on a bizarre knee-jerk reaction to a very dubious threat.

There’s an old joke that involves asking someone why they’re performing a bizarre ritual, such as constantly throwing confetti out of a car window.

“It’s to keep the crocodiles away” the person explains.

“But you don’t get crocodiles around here,” you point out.

“See it works well doesn’t it!”

Now this is not just a crap joke, it also seems to be what the UK government are basing their airport security policy upon.

According to an article in El Reg Baron Bassam of Brighton, the government’s lordly gobshite on the matter, explained the need for the 100ml restriction of all liquids and gels thus:

The fact that there has not been a serious incident involving liquid explosives indicates, I would have thought, that the measures that we have put in place so far have been very effective.

So, not only has this measure prevented terrorists creating liquid explosives in airplane khazis, but it seems to have also put off the crocodiles as well!