No doubt I haven't been particular active around here for quite a while. I've wanted to get a rewrite of the site done, but life has gotten in the way.

I continued to get more active, playing softball and dodgeball through the summer, and halfway through that summer about a year and a half ago, I had the fortune of being singled out and contacted by a woman in Chicago. We bonded over our schadenfreude-like glee at the dreadfulness of the ABCs of Death 2, and time proceeded to run away. After about 8 months during which she was able to visit every couple weeks, and through a tragic comedy of errors in her living situation, she was left without somewhere to stay while waiting to move for her PhD, so she stayed with me for those 4 months.

Those months were spent with a lot of good food and bad movies. I got to cook regularly for a willing audience and sudden cheesecake-fiend. We snuck entire pizzas into drive-in movies. I created a baseball fan as I was drawn into the Blue Jays 2016 campaign as saw games at Comerica. I was made a further indulgent of information as we toured museums in Cleveland. And we found the best (and worst) sushi in 100km of Windsor.

We also had the stresses of working around the American healthcare system, as without insurance and a need for prescriptions led to some trips back across the country just to be able to use insurance, as well as using alternatives of balancing the cost of travel vs paying out of pocket just across the border. We also shouldered the concern of impending move once again and all it entailed.

Since then I've become well versed in American immigration for Canadians. I've looked at the much-maligned H1-B visa program, which if anything its own problem is it isn't broad enough. Applications are narrow, start in March, and handed out in April in a lottery system because there are a limited number given out. Work for those jobs can't start until October. This wasn't a great option for someone looking in July.

Instead the TN visa was an alternative. Available to Canadians through NAFTA, if you have a job offer that is eligible based on a list of approved job titles and have the required education and/or experience, you can get TN status for up to 3 years from the port of entry same-day effective immediately. But whether I would apply was sketchy as for computers there is Computer Systems Analyst which excludes "computer programmers" but does not define the term, and Engineer in which "Software Engineer" is included, but not defined, and appears to often result in the border requiring an engineering degree, even though it's irrelevant.

However, finding my field may be broad enough for Computer Systems Analyst, I pursued that path. And despite a lawyer deciding to go on vacation a week after quoting me and agreeing to write my TN support letter, the USCIS not having its TN information available online, and an all-around opaque and confusing process, today I got my TN visa approved.

This is my home on the web. Now I may finally have where I should be in person.