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At a stop light near Palm Desert, top down in the MINI. A gold PT Cruiser convertible pulls up alongside us.

PT: Hey, nice convertible!
Me: Yeah, you too

I bought Civilization IV last night, something to keep me busy at my San Diego residence during the upcoming winter months. But, to my dismay, it seems like my laptop isn’t up to the job – rather than lush green tundra and rolling ice fields, my people were moving around a totally blank background. So now I’m stuck, I can’t return the game and I don’t have time to play it at home, so either I wasted $50 or I need a new computer for the loveshack.

The price of gas might seem to be going down but it is still a staggering $2.80+ for the el premo variety here in CA. And now Exxon Mobil announces a whopping $9.9 billion profit for the last quarter, up 75%. So the whole country is suffering, people can’t make ends meet because of high gas prices and Exxon is living high on the hog. Forget the price gouging dealer on the street corner, these are the *!%@ers who should be taken to task. Now I know this is just capitalism at its finest but there should be some moral responsibility out there, shouldn’t there?

Enough ranting and moaning, here are a couple of pictures from a trip I took with my Dad to Marwell Zoo last month; to see all of them go to this Flickr photo set.

 

So here’s a hot topic where I live right now – should stores employ people who can’t speak any English? There are an increasing number of sales assistants who only speak Spanish and its getting to be harder for non-Spanish speaking people to get jobs, even McDonalds wants bi-lingual people. It has generated a lot of letters in the press: Anglos takes the view that this is America and the national language is (American) English and if you come live here you should learn to speak it; the Mexican view is that their culture is being suppresed and they should be able to do what they please. Of course it makes sense to hire bilingual people when your customer base is at least 50/50 English/Spanish speaking but I can’t see that it makes any sense at all to put a non-English speaking person on the front line.

But lets face it, in 20 years time California will be 90% Hispanic so maybe I need to drop the French (thanks British school education!) and learn Spanish.

[Comment posting is now fixed]
Some train rides I’d like to take:

• The new Lhasa to Qinghai railway, the highest railway in the world at 16,600 feet up.
• The Ghan railway between Adelaide and Darwin in Australia.
• The Chihuahua al Pacífico Train, otherwise known as the Copper Canyon train in Mexico.
• The Empire train, from New York to Niagra Falls.

I am sure there are more but thats a good start. Keep an eye on my photo page over the next 20 years for the pictures.

This weekend, Teri and I put together the package for applying to remove the conditional status on my Green Card which ‘expires’ in January. Its always a stressful time trying to work out what proof they might want to see so that you don’t get asked for more information, and one mistake on the form can cause huge delays, too. The packet was in the mail this morning so hopefully we will get a receipt soon and then wait to see what happens next. The California Service Centre is currently 4 months behind so perhaps we will hear sometime in February.

Why am I conditional, you ask? Well, if you qualify through marriage the government wants you to have been married two years to prove that the marriage is real. If you have your interview before your second anniversary then you are approved ‘conditionally’. But, and here is the crazy part, your conditional period is two years from the day you were approved, not from when you got married. So if you are unlucky enough to have your interview a year and 11 months after your wedding, it will be a total of 3 years and 11 months before you are a real permanent resident. No, makes no sense to anyone else either.

So I come back from England, head full of great British music I want on my iPod but of course the tunes I want are only on the UK music store and not the US one. Grrr… I should have bought the CDs when I was there but stupidly thought things like the new Sugababes album would be available here.

The new James Bond was announced yesterday and, as expected, it is to be Daniel Craig who, to be honest, I’ve never heard of. He doesn’t have the look of a Bond, a bit too handsome rather than rugged for my taste but then the next movie is going to be set at the beginning so that’s probably appropriate. However, I am disappointed that my own choice appears to have been overlooked: I think Robbie Williams would have been an excellent 007.

As the saying goes, life must go on, and for some stupid dumbshits, that means spamming websites. Whilst I was gone this site and my MINI one accumulated 400 comments and over 50 pointless trackbacks. I really fail to see how any of it makes sense, that there is any value (monetary or kudos) to spending the time to do it. So time to put in place more barriers, maybe I will add one of those word icons that you have to copy when you add a comment, and I’m definitely going to close comments for posts that are old.

Well, after some playing around I’ve decided to give WP-Hashcash a try. I like the premise of how it works and I think it should be almost undefeatable. We’ll see…

Ok, looks like the plugin is interacting with this theme to prevent Firefox from displaying the comment page. Works fine in IE, and on my Flying blogpage in both browsers, so must be something funky with the comments page….