Author Archives: Joel

Pardon me, may I see your biometrics?

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Sheesh! Took ’em long enough but we finally received our fingerprinting appointment at USCIS. Or as they put it “USCIS must capture your biometrics”. I hope they warm up the equipment first *wakka wakka*. The strange thing is that two other families with our agency sent their I-600a application in within two or three days of us (one sent in after ours) and they both received their fingerprinting appointments weeks ago. The US government running in an unorganized fashion? I’m shocked … SHOCKED!

Fingerprinting Appointment Letter

The appointment is Jan. 2nd. What better way to shake off the New Year hangover and start the year on a good foot by being fingerprinted by Homeland Security? But when it’s for a good cause, USCIS can capture my biometrics any time 🙂

Home study is on the calendar

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Well that was fast. Not but three days after sending in the last of the agency paperwork do we have our home study scheduled. Booyah!

It feels very good to get this scheduled. I said to our social worker at the agency ‘It feels like we’re making “real” progress now.’

We’ve got roughly three weeks until the home study. Our plan is:

  1. Get as much (hopefully all) of the dossier paperwork completed so our social worker can take it with her afterwards.
  2. Clean the house. Three weeks should just be enough 😉 I’m joking, right? Right?!

Yahoo Groups are icky

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Here’s a little self-serving rant. Can I just say that I despise “Yahoo! Groups”? Kate and I belong to a client-run yahoo group for members of our adoption agency. It’s a wonderful group with a wealth of great information and constantly buzzing with activity. The content and people of the group are simply awesome. Very active, very supportive, and let’s not forget super-friendly.

What I don’t like is the format and user interface of Yahoo Groups in general. It’s like a giant mailing list mated with an ugly, hard to use Web site.

User management

Your default posting name is your “Yahoo! ID”. News-flash: this means everyone will know you as the first part of your Yahoo email address … which probably isn’t your main email address anyway. You probably only have a yahoo email address in the first place so you can use things like yahoo groups. This means most people are known by catchy monikers such as “34bearzfan56pdx@”.

Ah, but you can change the email address you use to receive email digests so it’s not your yahoo email address. Why does this matter? Well because yahoo groups displays the first part of your email address up to the at (@) sign for all of your posts. This is because it’s sort of a mailing list. But I feel most people use the Web interface exclusively.

Finding all posts by a specific user is not intuitive either. You have one way to find posts by a user. Click on the miniscule “Advanced” link by the search box. There you can search by user. But shouldn’t this be available when I click on a username from a post? You know, from the user’s profile page? Yahoo, what the heck are you doing?

Messages

It’s funny, the message handling is the most frustrating part of the entire experience, but I have the least to say about it because it’s so obvious in it’s suckyness. Yahoo groups are trying to be a forum … but it’s also a mailing list. The issue is that it’s failing at both.

Conclusion

Personally, I feel most yahoo groups would be better served with a good and proper forum. And I’ll say it again: the content of the adoption yahoo group is just awesome. I only wish I could access the wonderful things they’re talking about with less frustration.

Ok, I’m done. Sometimes you just gotta’ vent! 🙂

Garage Sale Jitters

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Oh my! The size and scale of this garage sale is, shall we say “daunting?” Yesterday was delivery day to Sharon’s house. Sharon is Kate’s amazing coworker that offered up her family’s home to host the garage sale. She is in a much more garage-sale-friendly neighborhood than ours, which should make a big difference. So far, we’ve delivered over 9 full pick-up trucks of stuff. I’ll say that again: over 9 pick-up trucks full!

Tonight is pricing night. It may not be possible to get everything priced tonight because there is just so much stuff. Kate and I really can’t believe the turn out. Everyone chipped in with stuff for the sale, friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, everyone. Setup tomorrow will be a challenge. We’re crossing our fingers that everything will fit in the space we have to display it. We’ll be spilling out onto the sidewalk, that’s for sure. It was even discussed to split the inventory into two spots: one in the front of the house and one back by the garage. We’ll see.

To those who want to stop by, here’s the craigslist ad with all of the details, including a nice Google Map.

More on the garage sale as it develops