Snow in ATL




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Friday night wii bowling

Oh yeah.




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Tattie the one-eyed cat

... Is cuddling with me.


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Down with Groundhog's Day

I have to give some props to this little groundhog who objected to being manhandled by Bloomberg. Go little groundhog go!

Groundhog Day

At the very least, someone trained in animal handling should have been involved.

Horray! A new president.

This is actually what working with monkeys feels like..

Apparently, I am not a "real" US citizen...

I was born. In Germany. To US military parents. The tricky part of the equation is that I was born in a German hospital. This means that having a US birth certificate eludes me. So, I have a certificate of naturalization.

Why is this relevant? Well, I am constantly asked by any organization even kinda having to do with the government to prove my citizenship. Today I finally asked one of those people why.

To make this story not too much longer, I ended up on the phone with a very nice lady at the social security administration. Apparently, my official status is "conditional US citizen." The lady on the phone pretty much said "what is thish words" (thanks for that helpful phrase Brenda Dickson!) to that classification. Interestingly, I can't find anything about this via a google search...

After looking into it more, she discovered that US law changed after 9/11 to make more paperwork required of people whose birth situations are like mine. The kicker is they made it retroactive, thus moving me to the conditional status, because I haven't done the new paperwork. So in the eyes of the system, I have not yet completed the paperwork to become a US citizen. This is despite the fact that I have a SSN, passport, etc. Thanks to all those lawmakers out there who thought that was a good idea.

So, what rights do I currently have? Can I be deported? If so, to where? I am not a citizen of any other place.

I can apparently get this fixed if I take the proper documentation and fill out some forms at a SSA office.

Ugh. What a pain.

How do I hate thee Comcast...

...let me count the ways

1. Your service is inconsistent at best.

2. When I finally can't take your inconsistency and call technical support, they say they can't help.

3. When I call tech support the next day, because I still can't believe you told me you couldn't help, you can only set up service appointments that make me miss work.

4. Three days later, while I am missing work, the service tech does not show up.

5. When I call to ask where the service tech is, you tell me the appointment was canceled by said service tech, and yet no one told me, so I am still missing work.

6. The service tech canceled the appointment because he said there was a service outage. Which is, of course, the reason I made the appointment. In a nice bit of irony though, my service was actually working when they told me there was an outage.

6. You tell me you will call the dispatch office and have them call me to try and get the service tech out this afternoon, but maybe not until tomorrow.

7. An hour after the dispatch office was supposed to call me I am still sitting here not at work using my internet that is not working with no sign of when I will get any help.

Now I am seriously considering switching to AT&T DSL. Kudos Comcast, you have achieved new levels of poor customer service.