RIP Bloglines, wistrab Loris

So Bloglines is dead. Just as well, since it seems the owners are busy licking Twitterific balls. I’m glad I switched, even though it was a couple years late.

Feeling nostalgic, I logged in one last time and encountered a captcha – a brilliant one. Inspired by a series of captcha cartoons my brother showed me last week, I spent a whole five minutes creating my own:

…I guess I’ll be keeping my day job.

Visa Run 2010

I’ve been living overseas for half of my life and applying for visas regularly throughout that time. It never gets easier. Hell, now I have to report every ninety days to immigration (in person or by mail-in form) just for the honor of living here.

At least tomorrow’s visa run is just an hour away, in Khon Kaen. It used to be in the border town of Mukdahan (famous for peppery pork sausage and a shitty Indochinese market), and before that, the border town of Nong Khai (famous for a “friendship” bridge that Japanese engineers would scoff at, plus a shitty Indochinese market), but I suppose they got tired of dealing with so many foreigners coming from hours away.

I’ve met people that travel around to different countries just collecting stamps in their passports, and I really despise them. Collect some for me, fuckers. I’ll give you my passport and all the other shit you need to extend my visa for a year, and you go stand in line with fifty other pissed off, whiny expats that wai to office shrubbery and tow around ugly village wives picking grasshopper legs out of their teeth.

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I fucking hate visa runs.

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UPDATE: I’m done! Everything went really smoothly this year; the staff at Khon Kaen immigration is great and the labor office in Maha Sarakham has always been understanding, if a little comfortably-paced.

Baby Updates 9/26/2010

  • Max is 2 years and 5 months old and can identify around forty animals in English and Thai (we’re holding back on teaching him Japanese so far)
  • He can sing the ABC song and did so on stage with thirty kids at least twice his age this morning (at a strange baby TV expo at a local hotel [Takasila #2] I still don’t really understand)
  • He is going through a crybaby phase (please let it be a short one) and goes to mommy when he really wants something
  • He is currently getting over a serious cough that’s spread around schools all over Thailand

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  • Mina is nine months old and can stand unsupported for 7-8 second stretches
  • She wakes up smiling and can shake her head no
  • She can scream louder and higher than humanly possible (this usually happens when you’ve wronged her by taking foreign objects out of her mouth or wiping her face clean)
  • She fights dirty and has recently added a new move – Super Baby Razor Tooth Chomp
  • She is currently coming down with a serious cough that’s spread around schools all over Thailand