Welcome To My New Blog

Welcome to my new blog! Some of Microsoft's wonderful Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) offered me a blog on this new site they set up on condition that I keep using it. That seemed like an easy one.

Until I leave Microsoft on September 1 I probably will not be writing much professional content in here. Until then, you will have to be content with things like a nice picture of some giant plumose anemone's I saw last weekend when a group of people from Bubbles Below went up to dive the McKenzie Wreck in British Columbia:

 

Besides, this gives me a chance to try out the gallery feature in Community Server.

BTW, we found out that when you enter Canada by boat, you must still stop by and say hi to the friendly uniformed customs and border patrol people; even if you intend only to dive and not even to step onto Canadian soil. The uniformed, armed, and somewhat annoyed, border patrol agents in the really zippy inflatable informed us of that, after they had boarded our dive vessels while the lot of us were down on the wreck. We were informed that "Canada is a sovereign country, eh" and "under no circumstances are you do deviate from a direct course to the customs station in Sidney."

All in all, the diving was as good as you can expect it to be on a summer day in the Pacific Northwest - in other words - spectacular. We also ended up in the middle of a spectacular show put on by a pod of resident Orca's on the way back to Anacortes. We had a big male swim right under our boat and a baby and mom put on a jumping contest about 50 meters off the port bow.

I will try to put in more of a diverse set of content here than what I used to, always retaining a focus, of course, on information security though. Right now, that content will have to wait a few weeks though. Hope you don't mind too much. If you want to look at some more dive pictures before then check out the galleries at the Bubbles Below web site as well as some other pictures I put on the-johanssons.com.

Published 13 August 2006 12:20 AM by jesper
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Comments

# Blake Handler said on 13 August, 2006 07:53 AM
Glad to "find" you again -- you're been added to my RSS Reader!
# Alun Jones said on 14 August, 2006 10:35 PM
It's curious how close those two words are... 'uniformed' and 'uninformed'.
# Amy Babinchak said on 15 August, 2006 06:29 AM
Checking into Canada is a breeze compared with checking back into the USA. After a 2 hour detour to get to the customs location, the guy was in a meeting, so we waiting for half an hour. Then I had to purchase a $25 annual customs sticker and fill out 3 seperate forms. Always fun when travelling by boat.
# jesper said on 17 August, 2006 11:09 AM

Amy, you are absolutely right for many cases, especially for foreigners. I think Canada seems to have gotten stricter with Americans at about the same pace that Americans have started showing utter disrespect for all foreigners coming to this country.

On our trip, it took almost an hour to get back into the US. We couldn't get off the boat (or even out of the cabin) and had to wait for the CBP officer to show up at the dock, even though they knew exactly when we were going to be there.

I have a friend who travels on a diplomatic visa who just tried to get into the U.S. from Canada. The CBP agent on the U.S. side was just about to go rifling through his luggage when he said, I think you should look at my visa first. When shown the A-1 visa, the CBP agent said "wow, I have never seen one of those before. What does that mean?"

# Alun Jones said on 17 August, 2006 02:58 PM
Sounds a little like my experience coming back from a road trip to Mexico, when I lived in Texas. We were stopped by the American border guards, who leaned in the window, noticed we were all white, and asked "are y'all Americans?" My mother-inlaw, driving the car, says "yes", at exactly the same time I say "no, I'm English". My mother-inlaw picked up, of course, that the guy had meant to say "are y'all not Mexicans?" The guard looked confused. His training didn't seem to have prepared him for this. I asked if he wanted to see my passport. He said he would, so I handed it to him. After a while of watching him riffle through the pages, with the passport upside down, I helpfully tell him that the photo is in the back, and the visa is on page 9. Without checking either of these items, he handed the passport back, and waved us through. I'm sure he muttered something like "and don't let it happen again" as he watched us leave.
# Hank Roberts said on 06 September, 2006 01:20 PM
Great to see a blog coming. I've done the improbable several times at the office with Word, with the MVPs' help -- more is better.

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