Satya's blog - 2006/05/

Did you know, if you pay off the balance on the American Express card (I don't know if this applies to all cards, or just the Amex Costco card) you still have an available credit equal to all the purchases since the last statement. Even if you paid it all off! I didn't know.

On _Star Trek : TNG_ the starship Enetrprise can separate into the saucer section and the engineering section, and later re-attach. I now suspect they did this just to allow jokes about returning it in one piece.

Neil now talks... or at least, makes sounds besides crying.

Stealing from Andrew Tanenbaum, this morning I thought to myself, "Do not under-estimate the bandwidth of a bicycle basket full of CDROMs and DVDs hurtling across the bridge on a bus." I was thinking this because the bag in the bicycle basket was indeed full of CDROMs, and it was indeed hurtling across the bridge on a bus. The associated bicycle was strapped, screaming (?), to the front of the bus. If I had biked across, as I sometimes do, I could have said things about the bandwidth of a bicycle loaded with CDROMs, etc.

So some guy, well, some kid came to the door selling subscriptions. I guess, because when I opened the door and peeked around it all he asked was "are your parents home?" and when I shook my head and whispered no, he said aight and left.

Weird!

We had an appointment for Neil's passport today. It was moved to today instead of Monday because the passport clerk was out sick or something. Fair enough.

Now, the photos have many rules. So we figured we'd get them at some photo shop, because on Monday the passport office camera wasn't working. Photo shop we went to didn't want to, because he's so small the photos are usually wrong and get rejected (eyes closed, etc.). Since the passport office camera was fixed, we thought we'd do it there at the appointed time.

We had an appointment for 1:30. We were seen at 2:00. Then the clerk says that since he's so small (Neil, not the clerk), it's hard for them to do it and it's better we go to some place in Towne Centre (Ritz) and they should be able to. We got an appointment for tomorrow. Clerk was pretty nice about it and asked if we at least had the right papers so tomorrow wouldn't be a problem.

At the photo shop, the guy said sure, but you have to hold him up and make sure his eyes are open. I said fine, but can we do him on the counter, might be easier. We were using a white blanket for the background anyway. He says no, better against the door. I figure he already has the distance calculated right to get the right size in the final print.

So we get him out of the car seat and hold him up (this wakes him) and he's looking around and staring at me. So I moved my head near the camera and we got several *beautiful* exposures, and 2 nice passport prints.

All this while I'm thinking, he's only 4 weeks old. *If* he's awake, he might be crying. We don't know *when* he'll be awake and happy enough to keep his eyes open. Even then, it's hard to hold him up and be outside the frame (solved that by holding him up in a blanket, with my hands on the other side). So we got lucky that he was wide awake and not cranky at just the right time. Yay.