it’s taken a while to commit this to paper,so to speak. not because i had an really vested emotional baggage, i just wanted to have some clarity about what i was going to say. the easiest place to start is the beginning – we lost our house. there, that’s said, four simple words, in retrospect not all that simple. we joined millions of other families that could no longer afford their homes and were foreclosed by the bank.
before we lost our house, i lost my job. well one of them at least. and it was the one that counted – the primary one, the full time one with the benefits. the one the mortgage payment came out of.
it’s funny how you alway seem to spend as much as you have. this is not a tirade on how I got screwed by the mortgage companies or how the global economic meltdown screwed up my life, honestly i’m not sure what this is about.
looking back now, I guess our house purchase could be summed up with the following words – it seemed like a good idea at the time – probably the most damning words in any language. we went to our original mortgage company we told them what we were paying in rent and utilities and the price bracket we were trying to stay in and they told us what we would could afford. we thought we were being clever, nothing exotic – we got a simple fixed interest 30 year mortgage and found a house in our price range and bought into the myth that our house would appreciate in value and by the time the kids were off to college we could sell and move on. never quite worked out that way.
i think the moral of this story and so many other like it is there seems even in this age of instant messages, email and calls being recorded for customer satisfaction, we’re missing some fundamental communication skills. it took us six months to get enrolled into the HAMP program and honestly if someone had told us in december when we realised that we were over our heads what our options really were we would have walked away then.
for those of you that don’t know, the government partnered with the banks and mortgage lenders to create HAMP – home affordable modification program. the concept being that a lot of people we in trouble but wanted to keep their houses. should be a win/win for everyone right? not so much.
first of all the modification is based primarily on your previous years tax returns and you current income statements. if you lose your job close to end of the year and apply early in the new year, it looks like everything is kind of ok and your adjustment tends to be tiny and not all that helpful.
secondly there are some terms in the paperwork that people tend to overlook eg, if your payment is late, everything that you owe comes due. at the end of the trial period at the bank’s discretion if they feel you’re no longer eligible, everything you owe comes due. if you’ve saved too much (per their instructions) and appear to be ineligible because of said savings, everything you owe comes due. if they’ve screwed up your paperwork and claim you’re not actually in the program even though you’ve been pay regularly for two years, everything you owe comes due. and when i say everything you owe, that means the difference between the adjusted amount and the original amount on your mortgage, plus whatever late fees and interest that accrued -which in most cases will amount to tens of thousands of dollars. which if you’re unable to afford results in a foreclosure notice and the people at the bank that you spoke to previously suddenly becoming unavailable. only one of those situations was ours, if you look around you can find examples daily of people who have had the same experiences and either chose to stand and fight or like us, decide it might not be worth it in the long run.
my fundamental problem with this whole experience is the inconsistent message, i think in the 10 months i spent dealing with the bank i spoke to 15-20 different people and they all told me something different. it was if the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing. honestly if the first person i’d spoken to had said, “you need to be making at least another $600 a month to keep your house” we’d have started the short sale in december. as it turned out, contrary to what i’d been told a short sale does not stop the clock when your house is in foreclosure.
the other moral of this story is that homeownership like college is not for everyone. we loved our little house and great big yard and we had plans for the future however we knew in december 2009 that it was untenable but we believed that with a little help we could keep at the dream. now it’s time for a new dream – we unlike so many others have found somewhere to live, we are not without opportunities and have the support and understanding of our friends and family, so onward to the new chapter.
i am surprised that i would ever have to use the immigration tag on a post again. i thought after two, three, four, i honestly lost track, years of dealing with the multiple name changes bureaucracy that is the INS i was done and i would have to mention them again. not so lucky.
the story is a follows, all those eons ago when victoria and i were filling out form after form after form, they all required you put in the names of your children. no problem, right? well it shouldn’t be, except lo and behold yesterday my younger daughter presented herself at the us embassy in trinidad to get her student visa so she could take advantage of a scholarship and the consular officer declared that there is an immigrant visa application associated with her name so he’s denying her application on those grounds.
i don’t even know where to begin with this. actually i do. one of the cornerstones of my job is to assume positive intent. i tried, for about 30 seconds i tried and then i realised that if this particular consular officer had taken the same 30 seconds that i gave him to do his job right i wouldn’t be typing this post.
in 30 seconds he might have seen that it was an 8 year old application for her parent that was processed and approved. in another 30 seconds that the child had a visitor visa issued within that 8 year period and had travelled to the us and returned, twice.
so here we are with two weeks before the child is due to report and we have little recourse. our congressional consular liaison sent a request for the embassy in trinidad to reconsider and approve the application and the school is also attempting to get them to reconsider. barring that we can throw more money at the embassy, reapply and hope for a different officer and a more sensible response.
the reason i haven’t actually used this space for its intended purpose is the same reason i’ve written this sentence about 12 times. it’s not that i’ve run out of opinions, i think i’ve lost the impetus to write. i sit at the keyboard and all the brilliant thoughts i had immediately evaporate, i thought the FFF would work but then i was working and after i lost my job i was too busy with the 12 million things i was working on to keep afloat and now that i have a full time job i’m down to 11 million things, because while it affords me relative luxuries like health insurance and a 401k plan, it pays for squat, so i’m still scrambling to keep afloat.
all of this to say that i’m going to try harder because i still have a lot to say.
“you are such a flake” she said with a devilish grin. “i’m only five minutes late, if i was flaking i wouldn’t even be here” i countered. we’d been playing this constant cat and mouse game for weeks, with constant last minute cancellations, project meetings and client calls, now, at last we were finally seated at a table about to break bread.
with weeks of careful planning on our part at stake we thought it would be best to hand over all of our communication devices to the maitre’d with strict instructions not to return them to us unless they spontaneously combusted, turned into snakes and started attacking the staff or some other equally implausible eventuality. we had been introduced by mutual friends almost a year ago to the day. according to them we were both smart, funny driven people who would either hit it off beautifully, fall in love and make beautiful children and make everyone else envious of our seemingly perfect lives or we would hate the other’s guts and our friends would have nothing to more to be envious because our ‘perfect’ lives would be devoid of love and they could hold it over our heads.
funnily our friends both used the same word to describe us – rake. as in (s)he is quite the rake, but i love her/him so. we had both broken our share of hearts along the way, but not in a vicious take no prisoners way that precludes the possibility of friendship, in fact the aforementioned friends were multiple exes who based on the same social and professional circles managed to find new interpersonal connections. and now hopefully it was going to be our turn.
it was the smell of cinnamon that woke me that morning. usually i’m out of bed first but on this particular morning i’d managed to sleep through not only her getting out of bed, but the usual noises of breakfast preparation. this was highly unusual, the other thing that was equally unusual was i dressed. i very rarely sleep in clothes, much less be so exhausted that i would wake up fully dressed under the covers.
the height of the bed and the cold tile floor added to my bewilderment. i hadn’t been drinking but i suddenly had the worst case of rum belly. i opened the first door i saw and prayed it was a bathroom. thankfully my prayers were answered.
as i planted my bum on the throne, i tried to figure where i was and how i ended up there. the bathroom looked fairly generic, right down to the dumb his and hers towels on the rack and the cutely shaped hand soaps that were a staple for guest rooms. they could never get that right, there would always be that odd edge from the mold that would take months of constant washing to go away but never happened because they always changed it after every guest.
i stood and washed my hands and face, rubbing my thumb absentmidnedly on the rough edge of the soap looking at my reflection. i looked like a bum, actually i looked like i felt – like i’d been ridden hard and put up wet. i was in a rumpled tshirt with a r. crumb illustration and faded blue jeans, i sniffed my shirt and caught the pungent odour of smoke and hard drinking and wondered for the millionth time, what i’d been up to the night before.
as i stood there lost in my own thoughts, the scent that woke me snapped me from my reverie, time to face the piper whoever it might be. i exited the bathroom through the bedroom and onto a small carpeted landing. did i navigate stairs in my state last night? curiouser and curiouser. i made my gingerly down the stairs following my nose to the kitchen.
have you ever imagined what you’d look like as a member of the opposite sex? i didn’t have to, there i was, standing in the kitchen. i looked up or my doppleganger looked up and smiled at me. my freakishly large hands reached out towards the towels, wiped them and gestured for me to take a seat. with my heart racing i sat at the table and wondered yet again, what the hell was going on.
Five Questions
These questions were sent to me by cajunscorpiogirl and originally came from White Apples by Jonathan Carroll. She liked them so much, they made it into her quote book.
Feel free to fill in your own answers.
What three meals from your past would you like to eat again?
1) Growing up I couldn’t eat on the plane and every trip back from Jamaica my grandmother would make rice and peas and curry goat. That amazing smell would waft through the plane, I can still smell it now.
2) Vic and I sitting on a bed in a hotel in Knoxville feeding each other.
3) My birthday dinner three years ago at the Mirror, surrounded by family and friends.
What two objects would you like to possess again?
1) One of two books: Last Chance to See – Douglas Adams or The Meaning of Liff – Douglas Adams
2) My original wedding band, not necessarily for sentiment, but it was a well crafted piece of jewellery that i actually liked..
What is the one act in your life you wish you could take back or erase?
I think I am who I am now because of all of my experiences, good and bad.
What one person would you like to see again?
Douglas Adams, seems to be a theme. I had an opportunity to talk to him and wasted it on idle chit chat.
What one experience do you wish you could repeat?
Living in London
my commentary on Wired’s GeekDad 100 Essential Skills for Geeks
- Properly secure a wireless router. yep.
- Crack the WEP key on a wireless router. if you have the skill and don’t use it, does it count?
- Leech Wifi from your neighbour. been there done that.
- Screw with Wifi leeches. haven’t had much of a chance to do that of late
- Setup and use a VPN. and i can teach people how it works too.
- Work from home or a coffee shop as effectively as you do at the office. anywhere i got a computer and network connection.
- Wire your own home with Ethernet cable. uh huh. including using wds to hardwire a machine without wifi, instead of running excessive amounts of cable.
- Turn a web camera into security camera. creepy but yes.
- Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point. no 3G phone, but just recently i did it with two laptops
- Understand what “There’s no Place Like 127.0.0.1” means. yes.
- Identify key-loggers. yep.
- Properly connect a TV, Tivo, XBox, Wii, and Apple TV so they all work together with the one remote. haven’t done it with those particular items but used my visor edge as the remote for my tv & vcr
- Program a universal remote. in my sleep.
- Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone. have the tool to get the ipod open in my drawer.
- Benchmark Your Computer. yes.
- Identify all computer components on sight. yes.
- Know which parts to order from NewEgg.com, and how to assemble them into a working PC. and yes, but why would i?
- Troubleshoot any computer/gadget problem, over the phone. to the point where i find myself doing it far too often.
- Use any piece of technology intuitively, without instruction or prior knowledge. scarily so.
- How to irrecoverably protect data. is that even possible? but i have backups of my backups offsite
- Recover data from a dead hard drive. too many times for it to even been considered fun.
- Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network. is this really a skill?
- Install a Linux distribution. (Hint: Ubuntu 9.04 is easier than installing Windows) in a virtual windows client no less.
- Remove a virus from a computer. not since the 90s
- Dual (or more) boot a computer. again, is this a skill?
- Boot a computer off a thumb drive. this shouldn’t count as a skill
- Boot a computer off a network drive. neither should this.
- Replace or repair a laptop keyboard. with ease.
- Run more than two monitors on a single computer. is there any other way?
- Successfully disassemble and reassemble a laptop. yes.
- Know at least 10 software easter eggs off the top of your head. yep.
- Bypass a computer password on all major operating systems. Windows, Mac, Linux no comment.
- Carrying a computer cleaning arsenal on your USB drive. yes.
- Bypass content filters on public computers. no comment.
- Protect your privacy when using a public computer. not a real skill.
- Surf the web anonymously from home. neither is this
- Buy a domain, configure bind, apache, MySQL, php, and WordPress without Googling a how-to. i should hope so
- Basic *nix command shell knowledge with the ability to edit and save a file with vi. self taught too, but i did learn basic as a child.
- Create a web site using vi. not that hardcore.
- Transcode a DVD to play on a portable device. isn’t that illegal?
- Hide a file in an image using steganography. i can but have never had cause to.
- Knowing the answer to life, the universe and everything. what is six by nine (base 13)?
- Share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple computers without a KVM switch. only if you count target mode.
- Google obscure facts in under 3 searches. Bonus point if you can use I Feel Lucky. here, LMGTFY.
- Build amazing structures with LEGO and invent a compelling back story for the creation. i can but i defer to my son, the master.
- Understand that it is LEGO, not Lego, Legos, or Lego’s. since 1977
- Build a two story house out of LEGO, in monochrome, with a balcony. again, possible but i defer to those greater than myself.
- Construct a costume for you or your kid out of scraps, duct tape, paper mâché, and imagination. there are advantages to being broke sometimes.
- Be able to pick a lock. i plead the 5th.
- Determine the combination of a Master combination padlock in under 10 minutes. nope.
- Assemble IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions. Bonus point if you don’t have to backtrack. i have, but it’s so much fun to use the instructions and a sheet pan to organise all your parts in their piles as you’ll require them.
- Use a digital SLR in full manual mode. i was using SLRs before they were digital.
- Do cool things to Altoids tins. yep.
- Be able to construct paper craft versions of space ships. not a skill i possess.
- Origami! Bonus point for duct tape origami. (Ductigami) nope.
- Fix anything with duct tape, chewing gum and wire. not everything can be fixed like that, but for the things that can i have tried.
- Knowing how to avoid being eaten by a grue. yes.
- Know what a grue is. hell yes.
- Understand where XYZZY came from, and have used it. yes.
- Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator. yes.
- Burn the rope. what?
- Know the Konami code, and where to use it. yep.
- Whistle, hum, or play on an iPhone, the Cantina song. han shot first.
- Learning to play the theme songs to the kids favorite TV shows. i can’t play any musical instrument.
- Solve a Rubik’s Cube. solved it in two weeks, aged 10
- Calculate THAC0. what?
- Know the difference between skills and traits. never got into D&D
- Explain special relativity in terms an eight-year-old can grasp. no & i don’t think everything needs to be dumbed down for kids.
- Recite pi to 10 places or more. 3.1415926536
- Be able to calculate tip and split the check, all in your head. and calculate approximate tax too.
- Explain that the colours in a rainbow are roygbiv. if i didn’t i shouldn’t have a job.
- Understand the electromagnetic spectrum – xray, uv, visible, infrared, microwave, radio. yep.
- Know the difference between radiation and radioactive contamination. may save my life one day.
- Understand basic electronics components like resistors, capacitors, inductors and transistors. yes.
- Solder a circuit while bottle feeding an infant. (lead free solder please.) never attempted it.
- The meaning of technical acronyms. does FUBAR count too?
- The coffee dash, blindfolded (or blurry eyed). Coffee <brew> [cream] [sugar]. In under a minute. don’t drink coffee anymore and when i did, it was a one step process.
- Build a fighting robot. no.
- Program a fighting robot. no.
- Build a failsafe into a fighting robot so it doesn’t kill you. no, but shouldn’t 79 include the three laws?
- Be able to trace the Fellowship’s journey on a map of Middle Earth. oh the shame.
- Know all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit. no.
- Understand the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel. and if you don’t shame on you.
- Know where your towel is and why it is important. i’m a cool frood.
- Re-enact the parrot sketch. and i’ve passed the skill along.
- Know the words to The Lumberjack Song. that one too.
- Reciting key scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. without which life would be a total bore.
- Be able to recite at least one Geek Movie word for word. i can and i’m proud.
- Know what the 8th Chevron does on a Stargate and how much power is required to get a lock. sadly yes.
- Be able to explain why it’s important that Han shot first. if i have to explain it to you…
- Know why it is just wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss. in that case the original poster was just wrong.
- Stop talking Star Wars long enough to get laid. hey they’re female star wars fans, i married one.
- The ability to name actors, characters and plotlines from the majority of sci-fi movies produced since 1968. only the ones that count.
- Cite Mythbusters when debunking a myth or urban legend. yes.
- Sleep with a Cricket bat next to your bed. i don’t, but i know why i should.
- Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising. yes.
- Identify evil alternate universe versions of friends, family, co-workers or self. yes.
- Be able to convince TSA that the electronic parts you are carrying are really not a threat to passengers. no comment.
- Talk about things that aren’t tech related. there are things other than tech? kidding. mostly.
- Get something on the front page of Digg. don’t really understand the fascination. there are much better aggregators.
good times, good people, good food, good music. everything you need for a good vacation
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- trini tweetup round 1
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- first doubles glow
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- they grow up so fast
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- me, sterling & lise
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- me, sterling & danielle
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- a man’s beer
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- sunday lunch
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- 3canal at fete de la musique
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- danielle, me & elisha
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- save boiserre house
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- port of spain at night 1
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- port of spain at night 3
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- port of spain at night 2
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- port of spain at night 4
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- trini tweet up 2
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- elisha & stacey-marie
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- trini tweetup las’ lap
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- me and my women
i’m in trinidad for a week, primarily for this reason:
My first born
father/daughter dance
i was raised catholic and methodist. my mother believed in covering her bases. knowingthe parochial system was probably the way for me to get the best education, she had me baptised catholic, although she herself was methodist. this double dipping required regular attendance to both denominations every weekend until i was about 15 or 16. so i consider myself a bit of an expert on the subject.
methodism in the caribbean was of the weslyean school; the sing a joyful noise unto the lord. there was a rich hymnal and every church we visited had a choir or an organ or both. one of my memories growing up was the fundraising efforts that seemed to go on forever to restore the organ of our home church that had been damaged in a fire. i was also attending mass in the catholic church post vatican ii and in the caribbean that also entailed a rich and diverse hymnal that moved you figuratively and literally and made a rhythm section almost mandatory at most churches. but it’s not just the music, i’ve gone to multiple catholic and methodist services in the trinidad and the rest of the caribbean using the same hymnal and i haven’t been moved in the same way. but this isn’t just about the music, it’s about the interaction.
there’s a comfort level you get when you find a place to worship and you can laugh and cry and be angry together or at each other and know that you are still loved unconditionally. there are in fact an extention of your family, your community. when you have that, it makes the worship special. the physical location doesn’t actually matter, it is in fact incidental. you feel a connection that makes you happier or even less sad or restores, even for a moment your faith in humanity. that’s a kind of intimacy that i think comes from true worship and i’ve found it.
