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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….

I am sad to say that my mother has passed on to whatever lies beyond, finally finding peace from the suffering of the last few months. Although it hurts tremendously there is comfort in knowing that she is with her parents, and her beloved sisters Arlene and Karen who she missed so much.

The world has been a sadder place ever since Mum started to suffer the symptoms of the brain tumour at the beginning of the year; her kindess, generosity and great spirit will be missed by all who knew her and loved her. She was all that one could hope for in a mother, wife and sister and those of us she leaves behind will feel an emptiness forever.

Had a doosie of a storm overnight, I haven’t heard thunder so deafening and room shaking in a long time. Lots of lightening, too. Very cool. Made me think of my mother who hates thunder, she would always try to hide behind a pillow on the sofa so as not to hear the claps. The storm must have lasted a couple of hours, kept me awake (well, that and some other things). dbmini has some neat pictures of the stormy skies up his way.

PS. In case you haven’t guessed I did not win the $250M lottery jackpot.

With the MegaMillions lottery now at $250M I bet there are plenty of people out there planning on buying a ticket. According to my calculations you would end up with about $70M in your pocket after taxes. Now that’s pretty sweet, more than enough to buy my dream plane, the Cirrus SR-22 GTS. Though with that money, maybe I’d buy one of the new personal jets!

Anyway, I thought I’d post a link to this article with some tips and information about playing the lotto. Remember, you have next to no chance of winning, so just send me your $bill directly and skip the middle man!

So today, Apple unveiled their new cell phone/iPod dealie, the ROKR E1, which will allow you to store up to 1000 songs on your phone:

But I don’t get it, why do I want to listen to music on my cell phone? Most of the time, the call sounds terrible so why try and play music on such a device? Same thing with video phones – why would I want to watch Batman Returns on a 1″ screen?? Of course, its a cool looking phone and will no doubt sell like hot cakes.

In more interesting news, check out the iPod Nano, the new ultra-small colour iPod:

Now that is something I wouldn’t mind having on my hip.

Right now I’m missing out on an earthquake swarm out in the Imperial Valley. It started yesterday afternoon with a few quakes in the 3.0 – 4.6 range and there have been constant small tremors every 10-15 minutes since then. According to the recent earthquakes page they just had another 3.0 which according to Teri lasted quite a long time. I was in the Valley a couple of years ago for my first swarm and I can’t say I enjoyed it much – small shakes every 10 minutes combined with a few larger tremors over several hours was something new. Hopefully it is not the beginning of the Big One.