The Obsessed Programmer

I know, it sounds like a bad computer game from the ’80s that advertised “VGA!” on the box.  But it’s not.  It’s the name of the haunted house Liliana and I just got home from.

I’d never been to a haunted house before.  I was kind of expecting to be way too freaked out, but Liliana dragged me along.  It was a ton of fun!  I would highly recommend Castle of Chaos in particular to anyone who’s interested in that kind of thing.  There were tons of good scares, and they had this weird 3d-glasses-enabled phosphorescent paint everywhere during part of it that made the whole thing even more otherworldly.

Note: This may not be for the squeamish–there were plenty of high-quality mutilated plastic corpses everywhere.  Also, the occasional strobe light might not be a good idea for an epileptic.

Senator Bennett,

A member of your staff called me last week asking what kind of assistance he could render us in our application for my wife Liliana to be allowed to work and become a permanent resident. I have some additional information on the case.

Our I-765 Application for Employment Authorization was rejected on August 20th for being expired (even though the form itself said it expired August 31st). The latest form on the USCIS website is indeed a newer revision, but also says it expires August 31st, 2008.

The woman I spoke to at the USCIS today assured me that although the former paper was rejected for being expired when it hadn’t expired yet, this one would not be rejected, even though it actually *has* expired.

Additionally, the USCIS says we need to have the original form they sent us for Liliana’s fingerprinting session in order to reschedule that appointment. However, the reason we did not make the appointment is because they mailed the notice to the wrong address. Last week, a woman told me she would fax me a copy of the old notice and re-mail it to us as well, but we have not received any fax and the USCIS cannot confirm where it has sent anything.

Please let me know if you have made any headway on our case, and if you can find out what is going on with the form I-765–somehow I find it hard to trust them when they say this expired form will still be accepted.

We really are trying our very best to have Liliana do everything legitimately, but it’s very tempting to just buy a stolen social security number off the street. It would be much faster, cheaper, and less stressful than actually working with the immigration office. And having just taken on some additional debt to help with the reconstruction of Liliana’s family home in Peru, we desperately need additional income from her employment.

Thank you again,

Ben Dilts
801-687-3450
PO Box 1854
Park City, UT 84060

There’s been a new, exciting development. The I-765 Permission to Work that we submitted, which expired August 31st, but which was rejected August 22nd for being out of date, is still the latest form available from the USCIS (check out http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-765.pdf if you don’t believe me).

I can’t go on writing this without debasing myself.

The other day, I sent letters electronically and through the mail to my three representatives in the United States Congress.  To me, it was sort of a Hail Mary move.  I mean, it couldn’t possibly be more desperate than trying to work with the USCIS directly, could it?

I just got off the phone with an aide in Senator Bob Bennett’s office.  He asked how his office could help.  I told him that since we sent the letter, we got hold of the receipt number we needed to resubmit Liliana’s permission-to-work papers without paying an additional fee.  But the SNAFU with the fingerprinting appointment has made it look like we might have to pay over $1,300 in fees again if we can’t reschedule it.

He collected some information about our papers and Liliana, and said he’d see what he could do to make sure we get another appointment without resubmitting all our papers with new fees.

Thank you, Senator Bennett.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

So I finally got a call in to the USCIS today about Liliana’s other two major forms–the I-130 and the I-485. The reason it happened today and not the same time as my call about the permission to work is because the USCIS won’t let you talk to them about any papers you haven’t gotten a receipt for until 30 days after you submitted them.

Well, they got the papers, all right. And they cashed the checks. And they set up an appointment for Liliana on September 16th to get fingerprinted in Salt Lake City. And they mailed the receipt to our physical address. Again.

What that means is that it was completely impossible for me to know about the appointment for fingerprinting until after the appointment had passed, since they wouldn’t even acknowledge to us by phone that they had received the petitions until after September 16th.

So the person on the phone with me said they’d write our PO Box in “big letters” now on our records. And she’d try to get us another appointment set up so we don’t have to pay another $1,300 in fees because they reject our petition because of a missed appointment.

I PAY *&$!ING TAXES FOR THIS?!

Check it out! Or, read the blog.

Like all good software projects, this one started with a big headache trying to get something done on a computer. The goal is to produce a product with Visio’s feature set in Google Docs’ format. Right now, it’s pretty much a proof of concept, but I’d estimate that it’ll be completely usable and reasonably feature-complete (for basic flow-charting) by Christmas.

We just purchased a PX-720 electric piano from Costco. As it turns out, this model isn’t offered in the U.S. normally (it took me forever to find that link), but Costco got some special concession. And it was about 60% of list price, so I couldn’t pass it up.

The sound it produces is simply amazing. It has the best recorded piano sounds I’ve heard in any keyboard, and it’ll mix up to 128 simultaneous notes. It has your standard 3 piano pedals, so I can finally get to practice some hymns right in the house

It came with a big book of standard classical songs of varying difficulty. All 60 of them are programmed into the piano, and you can set it to play back one or both hands at any speed, so you can practice along with it.

It’s got a metronome that works great and comes over the same speakers with the actual piano noise, so you can always hear it over your own playing.

It can record your playing and play it back, so you can hear where you messed up after the fact.

And as it turns out, there’s a little piano studio a few miles down the street that offers 30-minute once-weekly lessons for $80/month. I think I’ll go down and check it out. Liliana, too, perhaps.

Anyway, yay!

The English language does not have terminology vulgar enough to describe the atrocity known as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

A month ago, Liliana and I submitted about 100 pages of paperwork to USCIS to request permission for her to work and eventually receive permanent residency in the United States. Today, I received a rejection notice on the I-765 Application for Employment Authorization. The reason it was rejected? “The application/petition was filed on an outdated version of this form.” The date it was rejected? “August 20, 2008.” The expiration date on the form I submitted? “08/31/2008.”

Here’s the best part: “If you have successfully filed the Form I-485 - Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status - on or after July 30, 2007, you can re-file this form with NO fee. You must also submit a copy of the Notice of Action notice for the accepted Form I-485 as evidence of the filing of Form I-485 with new fee(s).” The means that even though the reason our WHOLE stack of paperwork was rejected several months ago was that we had sent the fee for the I-765 when we didn’t have to, we now have to send a fee for the I-765 or WAIT until our I-485 is accepted, which may take months.

I’m incapacitated by the anger I have for the USCIS. I can’t get any work done. I could hardly stomach lunch.

One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in my life is the aspen forests of Park City turning colors in the fall. I can’t see the beauty in them right now. In fact, if the USCIS were a tree in that forest, I’d burn the whole forest to the ground to get the little prick.

If the USCIS were a beautiful flower, I’d put it in a Blendtec on Frappe for 2 minutes and feed it to my pet turtle. Then I’d kill the turtle and make soup. Then I’d take my next stool and burn it, and bury the ashes in a cursed Indian graveyard at midnight under a full moon.

If the USCIS were a brand-new 8-core workstation with 32GB of RAM, I’d install Windows ME on it and give it a 13″ CRT monitor. And I’d install McAfee’s antivirus on it.

If the USCIS were an iPod, I’d fill it with boy bands from the ’90s, put it on Repeat All, and bury it alive with speakers blaring and a 150-KWh battery backup.

If the USCIS were a movie I was producing, I’d hire Uwe Boll as director, and cast The Rock as the leading lady.

If the USCIS were a Sesame Street character, I’d grind him up, make cookies, and feed him to the Cookie Monster. Then the Cookie Monster would have a love affair with Bert (come on, you all know Bert’s into that kind of thing).

If the USCIS were a government agency, I’d bring a civil suit against the USCIS for Liliana’s lost wages between August 20th and whenever they decide to finally approve her work permit. Given the rate things are going, we might be able to recover YEARS of lost wages this way.

If you have a touch-screen Windows Mobile phone, get it.

This is the best thing that happened to Windows Mobile since some enterprising ISVs decided it might be a good idea for the phone dialpad to take up more than 20% of the screen area, and started selling an application to make that change.

It’s still a beta, but it seems to work great.  My only problem is that my phone doesn’t have a whole lot of RAM, so it runs out of memory (but doesn’t crash) on pages with tons of images.

For those who aren’t aware, the Republicans in the House of Representatives recently made a big fuss about Speaker Pelosi dismissing the session (in accordance with House rules), refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would allow offshore drilling of oil.  Granted, she acts like a crazy person. (”I’m saving the planet!  I’m saving the planet!”?  What’s that all about?)  But offshore drilling really doesn’t make a whole of sense to me as a way to attack current oil prices.

Here’s an image I dug up recently:

(more…)