This is a poll designed for those of us who are here legally, but who cannot influence the outcome of this election which will affect us so profoundly. Tell us here at Newest Industry what scares you the most.

[poll id="4"]

Many, many years ago, I started my depressing voyage through the world of work at an Overwaitea food store in my home town. As a teenager, I expected to work so weird hours, and accept some level of abuse from the “adults” I worked with.

However, it seems that the organization now expects all their employees to accept this crap [here].

A major B.C. grocery chain wants some of its unionized staff to work shifts of just two hours, a move the union representing 8,500 workers called shocking.

The Overwaitea Food Group, which also runs Save-On-Foods and Urban Fare, made the demand for two-hour shifts as it began negotiating a new contract with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the union said.

Got my T-Mobile Rizr Z3 unlocked yesterday and it is now running the stock Z3 Software…looks like for Malaysia!

I hated all the extras that came with the T-Mobile Software. Now, I am happy.

I have a problem: I like to collect GSM phones. Right now, I have seven.

From left to right.

• MOTORAZR V3
• MOTORIZR Z3
• MOTOSLVR L7i (current phone in use)
• Motorola V188 (running V220 software)
• Sony Ericsson K700i
• Nokia of some description
• Samsung T619

Ugh.

If you use GrabPERF on a regular basis, the somewhat flaky navigation method has become second nature to you. In fact, to circumvent some of the idiosyncrasies, you have probably bookmarked your favourite pages.

Yesterday, I broke your links.

When I redesigned GrabPERF in February 2006, I had just discover the require function in PHP, and decided to build the entire the structure using a single container page as the framework, and individual functions called using URL parameters.

As time went on, my own “brilliance” started to get in the way of maintaining and updating the code. It took me 10-15 minutes to figure out how I constructed pages, and then find the right code to fix or update.

Yesterday, I got completely fed up with this structure.

Now, all functions have their own unique pages, making maintenance a snap. And as an added benefit, I can now effectively track the usage of individual pages, so I know where to through development efforts.

Some of the changes.

http://grabperf.org/homepage.php?page=compare&test=2&tests%5B%5D=276&tests%5B%5D=277&tests%5B%5D=279&tests%5B%5D=280

becomes

http://grabperf.org/compare.php?test=2&tests%5B%5D=276&tests%5B%5D=277&tests%5B%5D=279&tests%5B%5D=280

http://grabperf.org/homepage.php?page=scatter&test=277&hours=2

becomes

http://grabperf.org/scatter.php?test=277&hours=2

I apologize for the confusion that this may cause, but in the long run, this will help me make the code better, and more robust.

Well, now that I’m certified, the slope gets slippery very quickly.

We have until early August to get all of our docs to the lawyers before the August 17 deadline.

Many calls, pictures, doctors appointments, and huge expense.

Going to be a fun month.

It seems that more than the usual immigration backlog reduction process has been at work in the USCIS. There are two likely scenarios that appear to be running around immigration circles these days, regarding the Green Card slot tease that has turned into such a furore.

The first is that the Department of State, which issues the Visas, was pressuring the USCIS to fill the Fiscal 2007 Green Card quota, something that has happened rarely in the last few years. What most people in the US don’t know is that most years, thousands of eligible Green Card slots simply disappear because the applications can’t be processed fast enough by the USCIS.

Recent events have highlighted this, and the Department of State may have applied pressure to USCIS to completely exhaust the 2007 pool, to avoid the embarrassment of having to explain to Congress why they can’t process applications faster.

The second reason is greed: as of August 1 2007, the government fees for Green card applications increases massively. For a family of four, the cost will increase by $2,500. So, by not allowing the flood of applications from all of those expectant people, they have guaranteed themselves a higher revenue stream for next year.

All things considered, the whole event smells.

Now, for the long-term affect on skilled immigrants, Microsoft has set the trend by announcing that it will be moving development over the border to Canada [here]. As a country with a skills-based immigration policy, highly-trained technical professionals feel welcomed and wanted in Canada, something that is not the case with the archaic and glacial immigration policy of the United States.

In the next 5-10 years, US companies will face a serious inability to recruit employees from anywhere other than the United States. Skilled professionals will simply not come to a country that actively discourages them from staying permanently and making a contribution.

The US policy policy will be a boon to Canada, Ireland, and other countries who actively seek and encourage skilled professional immigrants.

Tags: USCIS, Department of State, immigration, Green Card, skilled professionals, Canada, Ireland, brain drain

Netcraft noted that Yahoo encountered a bit of a headache today. So I fired up my handy-dandy little performance system and had a look.

Although for an organization and infrastructure the size of Yahoo’s this may have been a big event, in my experience, this was a "stuff happens on the Internet" sort of thing.

Move along people; there’s nothing to see. It is not the apocalyptic event that Netcraft is making it out to be. Google burps and barfs all the time, and everyone grumbles. But there is no need to run in circles and scream and shout.

Yeesh!

Tags: GrabPERF, Netcraft, Yahoo, outage, performance issues, panic, crisis

Ok, we are back from Wasaga Beach. We crossed the border in a ridiculously easy manner — when you have a work visa, you always expect the body-cavity search treatment — and made a run for Syracuse. We picked a hotel out of the air and lucked out with the Comfort Inn near the Syracuse Airport. They said they were dog-friendly and they weren’t kidding. more hotels need to learn how to treat people who travel with pets from this place.

If you are on the New York State Thruway, and need to crash with your puppy, make it to Syracuse and this place will treat you like a normal person, not someone who wants to destroy their hotel.

Tags: Comfort Inn, Syracuse, travel, pets, dogs

Thanks to the generosity of Henrik Sjostrand of Netvouz, there is now a measurement location up and running in Gothenburg Sweden.

You will find it listed in the data as Gothenburg Sweden #1.

I have had a few other parties expressing an interest in hosting a measurement agent, but there is always room for more measurement locations! Send me an email if you can host a site!

Tags: Netvouz, GrabPERF, measurement locations