2007 has so far been an eerily quiet year for insanecats. As a friend of mine pointed out to me yesterday, this clearly means that one (or more) of three things are true:

1. Nothing exciting is happening in my life.
2. Exciting things are happening but I can't talk about them.
3. I'm dead.

I'm not dead as far as I know, though I have yet to develop a test to adequately figure out whether or not I'm a zombie. Does anyone have links to a self-zombie test that I can perform at home?

It turns out the answer is #2: the usual onslaught of weird and cool stuff is happening, but I can't talk about any of it.

I can't tell you how handicapping I'm finding this. It's like when ... when a prof of mine discovers my blog and I'm unable to continue to complain about his course (and hope that he doesn't learn how to use the Archives). I've written 8 entries so far this year, and this is the first one I'm actually posting.

Insanecats is my way to dip my hand into my life, sift through the meaningless bits, and then clearly examine the remaining nuggets of events and thoughts.

"Maybe you should start an offline journal", someone suggested. The problem is that I don't have the discipline to follow through with something like that. It's the feedback that makes this possible. Maybe I need to develop multiple personality disorder and start having conversations with myself about these things.

I'm hoping everything'll soon settle down and I'll return to a point where I can once again braindump onto here again. Until then, you'll have to use your imagination about what's going on. Or IM me. Or both. Maybe I'll start making stuff up and post that instead. :)

Anyone who's read insanecats for more than a few days knows that I have the worst luck at airports. Specifically, I have a habit of getting stopped. All. The. Time. In both directions on this trip to Montreal, I ended up in some back office, explaining my life story to an immigration or security officer.

But the trip home to SF this morning was worse than I've ever had before: for a while there, it looked like I might not be allowed back in the States.

The problem is that I'm a dual-citizen, and apparently this sets off every warning flag in the book.

"What were you doing in Kazakhstan?", the immigration guy asked me, flipping through my passport. We were in his back office. One of my eyes was on him and the other was on my luggage which wasn't allowed to come into the office with us.

"Actually it's Kyrgyzstan", I replied. "And I was --"

"What?", he asked.

"Uh, I was in Kyrgyzstan. Not Kazakhstan."

"Whatever", he scoffed.

Right then and there I knew that this was not going to go well. An immigration guy who doesn't care about the difference between the "-stan" countries. Great.

I explained to him what I was doing there. He then proceeded to ask me a million questions about all the other stamps in my passport. How long was I in Guatemala? Was my purpose in Panama business or pleasure? What was I doing in Chiapas?

"Here's the problem", he said, tapping my passport on his desk. "You're an American resident now, right?"

I nodded.

"Then why are you traveling on a Canadian passport?"

"I --"

"Look", he snapped. "You're an American citizen and an American resident. I know you've been living in Canada most of your life, but you're not a Canadian anymore. You're an American now."

His words seriously sent chills down my spine. You're not a Canadian anymore. You're an American now... That's not true. He can't just say that. It's not true.

"Well...", I said cautiously. "I'm both. But I understand what you mean." I didn't.

"There's a new law in effect", he continued, "whereby all Americans are required to travel on their American passports. You shouldn't use this passport anymore."

My eyes hovered on my Canadian passport in his hands. "So, just to clarify, I should always enter the States as an American. Does that mean I can use my Canadian passport to enter Canada and my American one to --"

"No", he snapped again. "You cannot enter a country on one passport and leave on another. You must enter and leave as an American citizen."

What the hell? Seriously. What the hell? How can I suddenly be not allowed to use my Canadian passport? Where's Canada in all this? Shouldn't they be defending my right to be Canadian?

He continued. "If you enter a foreign country on a Canadian passport again, it's possible that you may not be permitted to re-enter the United States. Is that clear?"

I nodded, just wanting to leave, hoping he'd let me through.

He stared at me in the eyes for a long time. Maybe twenty seconds. Enough to make me severely uncomfortable. And then handed my passport back to me.

"You can go through this time", he said, with a look of I'm too kind and merciful on his face.

"Thank you", I said, trying to make it sound as genuine as possible, trying to flash him a winning kind Canadian smile.

And as I walked out of his office towards the security line where I began to undo my belt to put into the x-ray machine, Spirit of the West's song "Far Too Canadian" began to play in my head. I'm naturally a pretty aggressive and confident person, but I totally let some asshat immigration officer essentially renounce one of my citizenships without a fight. The fact that it happened without protest, I think, is proof enough that I'm still Canadian. Would you like some more of my rights, America? Here you go. No really, go ahead, take them. I insist.

Bah. He doesn't know anything. You can take the Catspaw out of Canada, but you can't take the Canada out of the Catspaw.

But his words still echoed hauntingly in my head. You're not a Canadian anymore. You're an American now...

As announced on the Google Code Blog ...

Post by [Catspaw], Google Software Engineer

Today we're unveiling the public release of "Testing on the Toilet": one of Google's little secrets that has helped us inspire our developers to write well-tested code. We regularly write flyers about everything from dependency injection to code coverage, and then plaster the bathrooms all over Google with each episode, almost 500 stalls worldwide.

We've decided to share this secret weapon with the rest of the world to spread our passion to other developers, and to provide a fun and easy way to educate yourself (and the rest of your company) about these important tricks and techniques.

We'll be posting episodes on the brand new Google Testing Blog on a regular basis and providing PDFs so you can print them out and put them up in your own bathrooms, hallways, kitchens, moon bases, secret underground fortresses, billionaire founders' Priuses, wherever. Send your photos and stories to TotT@google.com and let us know how Testing on the Toilet is received at your company.

And meanwhile, keep writing those tests.

Hawt, eh? We're now releasing the famous testing on the toilets to the general public on our Google Testing Blog. A lot of hard work by a lot of people went into making this happen; so thanks to all of them! And now there'll be regularly updated "testing on the toilet" flyers for you to print out and enjoy in your place of work or the comfort of your own home. ;)

So okay a lot of people have been saying recently "dude, you've lived in your apt for seven months. Where are the pics???" (Well, they probably didn't say "dude". I seem to be the only human being still alive who still refers to people as "dude". It's gonna make a comeback and when it does, I'm gonna be ahead of the curve. Just you wait!)

Okay since I spent about a million years this weekend dusting and vacuuming and sorting my clothing into "you will actually wear" and "you think you'll wear but you won't" piles, I decided my place is in okay enough shape for a few shots. Those who have visited can let me know whether I represent it fairly or not.











There you go. Very exciting, I know. Crazy amounts of natural light. Oh, and by the way, for those of you living on the east coast -- it's sunny and warm today. Just thought I'd share.

To combat the rumours from yesterday that now I'm able to bathe in piles of cash, here's a pic of the TV set I currently use.

It's 12". And classy.

You know it's classy, because of the duct tape.

Oh yeah. That's class.