guapacha.com

Google recently added a ‘street view’ to their map product for a very few regions. One person found a close up of their cat in the window:

• Google Maps Street View

It’s a little scary but it’s fun to ‘drive’ around the streets of Oakland and check out the buildings. Zoom out from the cat to get to the street level and then use the arrows to explore.

Where db goes, we all follow and since Twitter can’t seem to get their IM interface working reliably again I am going to do like him and abandon it. It was fun but its too frustrating these days. In the meantime we’ll wait and see what he comes up with us to play with next.

So its 30 years of Star Wars today and I bet you’re wondering how to celebrate. Well, why not dress yourself up in a Princess Leia Metal Bikini? Or if you’re a guy not into that kind of thing, perhaps several pages of customers in costume suits you better? Me? Only role I can play is the wookie.

Been messing with guapacha.com a bit, upgraded all my blogs to WP 2.2; I swear these guys do more updates than Sony does with the PS3 firmware (great update coming out tomorrow though!). Anyway, all new WP installs and a brand new look for my MINI blog and my flying blog. Check out the friendly guapacha.com family of websites:

• This here page, whatever’s on my mind
• The MINI Cooper blog, all things related to my MINI
• My Flying blog, all things related to my hobby flying
• StopSunroadCentrum.Org, news and views related to the scandal of the San Diego Sunroad Centrum development

• My Twitter page, my tweet archive
• My Flickr page, photo archive

Yeah, I know its obvious and hardly worth blogging but really, can’t we give them their own private island and then make sure none of them can ever leave? Perhaps there is an island already inhabited with brainless morons ready to join?

Finally managed to get my application sent and received by the INS/USCIS and have a receipt notice. The notice lists my priority date as April 9th, but the online case tracking system lists it as April 16th. A quick look at the current priority dates being processed shows San Diego is working on September 12 2006 so it looks like there is a 7-8 month turnaround time right now. Plenty of time to learn my US history…

So you get to a new company, after three months you are put on the project from hell – testing server code for people who don’t want you to do it in the first place, oh and they are in Japan, and you hate testing, and everyone where you work wishes the project didn’t exist – then get put in a group whose sole focus is a technology totally opposite from the one you were hired to do. Despite this, you get through it (admittedly with much whining) and manage a decent performance review.

And then you get a 2% pay raise.

Now, its not totally my boss’ fault, he asked for more but HR said I was already earning ‘too much’. My boss basically says to suck it up and perhaps things will be better for me next year though I could have exactly the same situation.

At some point I think Teri and I will be leaving California (NZ isn’t totally off the table) and I really don’t want any more jobs before then but maybe I can squeeze one more in….

Last weekend was the Coachella Festival in nearby Indio and I had no idea that Amy Winehouse was playing. Can’t believe I had a chance to go see her and didn’t even know she was just a short drive away. I need to pay more attention to the culture section of the newspapers I suppose, though usually there ain’t nothing going on out here in the desert that good. Click on the pic for full size.