We lost a unique opportunity to get a Green Card that would enable me to work in USA and would give us more freedom during travelling (it makes easier to re-enter USA after vacations abroad) and ability to change jobs if needed. I am really angry atm because JBQ won that Green Card application on “lottery” and we had a whole year to prepare. I had my papers done by July but JBQ was really busy at work and so we filed only 17 days before the Sept 30th which is the last day of the fiscal year for Green cards. There is a predetermined number of Green Card application numbers and you must be fast to allocate such a number before these go away. We could have done everything by June-July, which was our lottery’s turn to get processed. But we didn’t for one reason or another.

There is one more, older, green card application pending for us, but it’s not nearly as fast to go through (it will take at least 5 years) or good regarding its terms. This is a major blow to our family. I am really devastated right now. :’-(

Personally, I do not agree with vegetarianism and even less with vegans. I believe that humans need vitamins found on fish, eggs, dairy and meat products and there is no better way of absorbing these vitamins but by eating the right things instead of getting vitamin pills (personally I despise all pills). And besides, they taste good.

I understand that there are some cultures who evolved without meat altogether in their diet and that’s cool, because over the course of hundreds of years they managed to find alternative sources of what their bodies needed. Additionally, these people are not used to the taste of meat, so you can’t ask them to start eating it out of the blue.

But when you have someone who grew up in the west and was eating meat all his/her life, and suddenly decides to stop eating meat because he/she wanted to “stop the suffering of the animals”, this doesn’t sit well with me. I have to say this: there is a certain food chain on this planet, and that’s how nature works — deal with it. You are an animal yourself and by refusing to eat what you are supposed to eat on principle you are distancing yourself from your true nature rather than getting “closer to nature”. I agree that people in the west must eat LESS meat (especially in USA). But removing such products completely from a diet, I don’t see the point and you might endanger yourself if you don’t get supplementary vitamins. Humans are omnivores, end of story.

I’ve lived with a vegetarian fiance for 3 years and sometimes I had to cook for him different food than the one I was cooking for me, and some times in a special way (he wouldn’t eat anything fried). I tried being a vegetarian myself for 3 months in 1998. This thing just doesn’t work for me (and that’s true for most Greeks as well). I love meat (especially lamb), I like fish, I like eggs and I like cheese and milk. I see no reason why I should stop eating these, but I do agree that I need to reduce HOW much I eat of these. But I will never eliminate certain kinds of foods from my diet.

I am a singles person. Very rarely I listen to full albums and the reason for this is because I like catchy songs with a very distinct melody that I can sing along (well, usually at least). My favorite Fleetwood Mac song is “The Chain“, although I like 7-8 more of their songs too. So I thought I buy their ‘Greatest Hits’ album so I have them all in one place. Well, they have left out the “Chain”, “Landslide” and “Seven Wonders” among others. Obviously, a clever way to push people to buy all three full albums that these songs originate after they don’t find them in their “Greatest Hits” album. This “greatest hits” thing is not what it’s supposed to be.

Wireless ITWorld has an article saying that Ajax and Web2.0 sites render even worse on cellphones browsers than normal web sites do. I have been saying this all along, but there is always the occasional “know it all” jerk who will piss me off by replying that “why don’t you use CSS” or that “your code doesn’t validate”.

Between being an ultra geek with complex modern code that is not able to render on any mobile browser correctly and being the modest designer that uses old but tried methods in order to reach more readers, I prefer to be the latter. If there are two things that describe me (along with “bitchy”) that’s “practical” and “simple”. This is why cHTML (subset of HTML 3.2 and some minimum CSS just for optional beautification) will continue to be my avenue to mobile web design at least until 2010. Because it f*cking works.