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361 days ago
I'm afraid you are stuck with me now. Today I attended my Naturalization Ceremony, and became a US citizen. Following on from my last blog post on the N400 interview, I thought I would give a quick review of today's proceedings. Today 102 people from 38 countries became US citizens at the Seattle USCIS office. I was the only Irish person. Several times I heard Philippines, China, Korea, Ethiopia, India, etc. A couple of Canadians and a couple of UK folks, one Swedish, and so on. Fairly diverse crowd :-) Three members of the US military were given special mention and a round of applause. The coolest moment was when 3 members of the same family all became citizens together - can't remember where they were from but definitely one of the Eastern European countries. The whole thing took about 2.5 hours. In rough order the day went something like this: Arrive about 30 mins early (just in case!), clear security Stand around with a bunch of other people confused about which line to ...
375 days ago
I had my US Naturalization interview today. Good news: I passed! I will have my Oath-taking ceremony on December 1st. In hindsight, the interview was pretty quick and uneventful and nothing to be scared of. That didn't stop me from being nervous all weekend and this morning, though :-) I thought I'd review my experience in case it's useful to others. After showing up at the USCIS office, and getting through security, I stood in line 3 which was for N400 and I485 appointments. The attendant swiftly called everyone up, checked us in, and directed us to the second floor. I saw some sign indicating that N400 visitors were to go to the blue room and I485 people were to go to the green room - I have no idea what this referred to as there was absolutely no sign of a blue or green room anywhere. Instead I arrived at the second floor and found two waiting areas with seats, one on each side of the stairs. I had no idea which side I was supposed to sit and looked around for any indication for ...
435 days ago
I'm confused. Last time I checked, "PC" was an abbreviation of "Personal Computer". It doesn't matter which OS is running on the computer - Mac, Windows, Linux, DOS... a PC is still a PC. So this whole advertising campaign Apple started highlighting why a Mac is better than a PC doesn't make any sense. How can you compare a Mac against a Personal Computer? Now Microsoft has its own "I'm a PC" ads... at least that statement is accurate :-) At both work and home I use a Mac with Leopard about 50% of the time, and a Windows Vista machine the other 50%.
438 days ago
Our first anniversary is coming up in a few days. The time flew by! We thought about what to do to celebrate, and the idea of heading to Maui came up. But the timing didn't work out - just a month before the Live Mesh @ PDC, I couldn't take the time off work. This weekend we finally settled on a new plan - we're heading to Maui for my 40th birthday instead (the week after PDC). I've only had 1 week off work so far this year so I'm really looking forward to it. As for our anniversary, Paew's heading to Yellowstone right before it with the girls and getting back Sunday night, and I'll take a day off work on our anniversary (Monday). We're not sure what to do yet. A day trip to the San Juans is one possibility, if the weather cooperates.
