Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

Just because I'm not allowed to seek employment yet doesn't mean I'm not keeping myself busy. It's important to keep my hand in, so to speak, so I set myself little design challenges and projects to keep the brain ticking over. One that I've just completed, and am pretty pleased with, is a redesign of Portland's MAX Light Rail system map. The MAX is a fantastic example of a renewed interest in mass transit in America (fighting back against the omnipresent car!). Twenty years ago, it didn't even exist, now it is an integral part of the city with plans for further expansion.

As great as the system is, its system map is severely lacking. I present here the official Tri-Met PDF of the system for your reference. The whole thing is suffering from visual overload... too much information all presented at similar levels of importance. The use of blue type everywhere is overwhelming to the eye and the clumsy use of "TC" and "P" in circles to denote Transit Centers and Park and Ride leads to ugly incidents at Gateway/NE 99th and Parkrose/Sumner, where the designer is at a loss as to where to place the parking symbol. Overall, the map lacks the style and grace of the best transit maps - London, Paris, Sydney and Stuttgart being prime examples of the way to do it right. For a fantastic reference on metro and transit maps around the world, click here.

Of course, I like a challenge... so I decided that I would add in the soon-to-be commenced Green Line as well. This line completely changes the face of downtown as it will run north-south through the nearly completed Transit Mall, rather than east-west as the current lines do. The yellow line will also be rerouted along the mall. Based on information on Tri-Met's site, I have produced this map, which I feel is a vast improvement on the incumbent.

It's a lot more visual than the old map - Transit Centers (white) are now easily distinguished from normal stations (coloured ticks), standard icons are used for Park and Ride and (my addition) bicycle lockers. Black type for station names stops blue from dominating the entire map, and town names are now a shade of grey to stop them from being so visually heavy. Changes of direction in a line are now gracefully curved, rather than abrupt changes of angle. Unforgivably, all type at a 90° angle on the old map read from the left, something I was always taught NEVER to do, so I have amended all the angled type to be read from the right and improved the differentiation between station names and bus route numbers.

The thing that I think reduces clutter the most is the new way I have approached depicting Fare Zones. Rather than use the large and distracting Zone Arrows that had to be placed awkwardly between station names AND the huge travel time lines, I have opted for a far more visual approach and used progressively lighter tints of the line colour. This wouldn't work on a map of the complexity of London or Paris, but on this relatively simple map it works surprisingly well, especially with the legend explaining it so clearly.

I've also included some Portland attractions on the map (the Zoo, Children's Museum and baseball park), although I have cheated and left out the venues at the Rose Quarter. The station name does the work for me there, so it's not too bad. I also like my little pedestrian interchange line between the two Rose Quarter stations, as there's a two block hike between them on foot.

Things I'm not sure about: the curve in the red line to the airport, while geographically more accurate, could be a bit fussy and unnecessary. Also, the travel time lines, while a vast improvement over the old heavy blue ones, don't really work for the downtown part of the yellow/green line, or the Clackamas branch of the green line.

Finally, this whole layout will fall apart somewhat when the extension of the yellow line happens in 2014. From PSU, the line will cross the river and head south to Milwaukie. On my map, this will put Milwaulkie a lot further south than Clackamas, when in reality they are pretty much level. I can't see any better way to represent downtown than what I've done, so it may just have to be that way.

I'd love to hear what you think of my efforts!

Posted in: chaosboy, design, portland on October 22, 2007 at at 10:15:00 AM 4 comments    

As you might expect, Halloween is big business here in the States. It kicks off what is known as "the Holiday Season", simply because there's a big holiday festival going on for every month until the end of the year - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas... an endless orgy of consumerism to be had! As Halloween is pretty much non-existent back home in Australia, I thought I'd give you a bit of a look at what goes on around here during Autumn... I mean Fall, he he he!

Here's the display of enormous carving pumpkins at our local supermarket. There are pallet after pallet of these jack-o-lantern's-in-waiting, all for the bargain basement price of 17 cents a pound! Christine and I bought two, one of which cost $4, so it weighs 23 pounds or over 10 kilos! We're heading over to Kim's place tonight for a night of pumpkin carving, which should be both messy and highly amusing!

This is just one of four aisles in the supermarket dedicated to Halloween-themed goodies. From all your trick-or-treat candy supplies, to costumes for kids and adults alike, to cheesy and unnecessary toys, to ridiculously overblown outdoor display pieces - it's all here for you to purchase. Just as Christmas light displays are now de rigueur both here and in Sydney, so too are Halloween displays here, complete with giant inflatable ghosts, pumpkins, spiders and spooky castles. One-upmanship over your neighbours' displays is, of course, mandatory.

On an aside, perusing these aisles led me to discover that what we call Mars Bars are known as Milky Way bars in America, and what we know as Milky Ways are called something else again... weird!!

Here's some pumpkin beer! Honest! It's on special already, before Halloween, so it may not be such a big hit. And in case you're thinking that this is the strangest Halloween beverage, you'd be wrong:

Burgerville is offering Pumpkin milkshakes! By all reports, it's actually quite delicious, sweetened with cinnamon and nutmeg, but the concept by itself is a little mind-boggling!

So, pumpkin carving tonight... I'll let you know how my masterpiece goes!

Posted in: chaosboy, united states, weirdness on October 18, 2007 at at 12:34:00 PM 1 comments    

So my appointment today at the Portland Office of the USCIS turned out to be fairly pointless. While the nice lady behind the counter could sympathise with my situation (I seem to get a lot of that!), there was nothing she could do. The power to issue interim employment documents has recently been stripped from the local offices, meaning that now only the four big processing centres have that ability. The local centres can fax a request further up the line, but only if an I-765 application is currently in progress... which mine isn't.

So there's nothing for it but to refile a new I-765 at the new ridiculous price of $340 (compared to the old $180) and then sit back and wait. The only new bit of advice that I got was to include a covering letter with my application that asks for "expedited processing" based on the financial hardship that not being able to work causes. It doesn't guarantee anything, but if the supervisor on duty that day is in a really, really nice mood, it could bring the processing time down from three months to perhaps one and a half. Maybe.

Anyway, I completed my new application this evening and it's ready to be mailed off to the man and the monkey in Nebraska tomorrow... I wonder which one is the supervisor?

If it's even a half-decent day tomorrow, I just want to go on a big long bike ride somewhere and get all this frustration out of my system.

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, portland, united states on October 15, 2007 at at 6:16:00 PM 0 comments    

My decision letter from USCIS arrived in the mail yesterday. I had been expecting the worst since reading on an on-line forum that the phrase, "we mailed you a decision" is a euphemism for "application denied". If an application is approved, they generally just tell you that your application has been accepted - there's no need to let you down gently.

True to these expectations, my application was denied. But the reason for the denial turned out to be something that completely beggars belief. Let me present you with an excerpt from the denial letter:

8 CFR 274a.12(a)(6) provides for the issuance of employment authorization to: An alien admitted to the United States as a nonimmigrant fiance or fiancée of a United States citizen... for the period of admission to the United States.

Employment authorization under category (a)(6) may only be granted for the period of admission to the United States. The evidence submitted indicates you entered the United States on May 15, 2007. You were admitted for a period of 90 days.

Because your period of admission to the United States has therefore expired, you no longer qualify to receive employment authorization pursuant to 8 CFR 274a.12(a)(6). Therefore, upon consideration, it is ordered that this application be denied. There is no appeal to this decision.

So, have you got this?

Because my application was not processed within this 90 day period, my application was denied. However, there were 120 days between USCIS's receipt of my I-765 and the issuance of my decision. This, of course, means that there was never any chance of my application being successful. I believe that any application should be decided on its merits, not on how long it takes USCIS to get around to opening each case. If there's only a 90 day window for fiance visa EAD applications, then USCIS should take all reasonable steps to ensure that such applications are processed within those 90 days.

I feel that I've been completely shafted by bureacracy here: that I have done everything right - I have entered the country legally, I have filled in all the correct forms and submitted them in a timely fashion - and have gotten nothing in return. And they wonder why there's such a problem with illegal workers in this country...

This morning, I had calmed down enough to call the USCIS Information Center for advice. I outlined my case to the operator, and he seemed to think that the decision was irregular: the fact that I had married within the 90 day period should stand in my favour. However, as they are only an Information Center, there is no one there authorized to act on cases: he could only offer me alternative courses of action.

The first was to open a new I-765 based on my I-485 case, but this would require another $180 fee and - almost certainly - another 4 month wait. The second option, one that he thought would be better, was to make an appointment at the Portland USCIS office to discuss my situation personally with an officer.

The only way to make an appointment is via USCIS' online "InfoPass" system, which I have never had any luck with to up until this point, so I wasn't particularly hopeful when I logged in to it... I expected the usual "there are no appointments available at this time, please try again later" message. Fortunately - and completely unexpectedly - there was an appointment available on Monday, October 15, so I quickly snagged it. Hopefully, some common sense can be applied to my case, because the "service" I have got from USCIS regarding my work authorization has been nothing short of disastrous so far.

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on October 2, 2007 at at 12:55:00 PM 1 comments    

Last night, I was shocked and surprised as the following email appeared in my inbox:

Subject: Case Status Information

The last processing action taken on your case

Application Type: I765 , APPLICATION FOR EMPLOYMENT AUTHORIZATION

Current Status: We mailed you a decision.

On September 26, 2007, we mailed you a decision on your I765, APPLICATION FOR EMPLOYMENT AUTHORIZATION. Please follow the instructions on the notice. If you move before you receive the notice, please contact customer service.

If you have questions or concerns about your application or the case status results listed above, or if you have not received a decision from USCIS within the current processing time listed*, please contact USCIS Customer Service at (800) 375-5283.

*Current processing times can be found on the USCIS website at www.uscis.gov under Case Status and Processing Dates.
*** Please do not respond to this e-mail message.

Sincerely,

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

It's all very - and completely unnecessarily - cryptic and vague... why can't they just tell me what the decision is in the email, instead of making me wait impatiently for the postman each day? Sigh. At least the end of this process is very close now!

And no celebrations yet, please. The decision could still be "go back to your own country and stop stealing our jobs, you convict Aussie". Unlikely, but it could happen.

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on September 27, 2007 at at 9:35:00 AM 0 comments    

Hey there.

I know its been some time since I've done this crazy blog. It's not like we have been super busy, but maybe just getting more and more super comfortable. And with winter coming in, we'd better get used to it.

But I was thinking tonight of all the things that Cam has done since he's arrived to this wacky country. Like tonight in particular. We went to our favorite rock climbing gym, The Portland Gym, and Cam was fabulous. He had just exchanged his new shoes the other day and he was flying up walls. Whereas a month ago, I was practically hauling him up on my end of the rope. He has adapted and is getting better all the time. Since I have a year head start on him, I must be the patient one, but I'll make him catch up with me sooner or later. There is so much trust in rock climbing. And the more confident he gets, the more he trusts me that I won't let him plummet to the floor just for a laugh. It's good. We really need to take pictures, but it's always weird taking pictures in a gym where other people are sweaty... and wary of lenses.

Also, Cam has taken over my projects. I'm not fussed whatsoever, as it keeps him quite the entertained while I slave away the day at work. Colin's new website looks amazing - www.colinlake.com - and also he is not quite satisfied with the Wellington Road Moores site which he is taking into his own hands soon. I keep feeding him missions so he can keep his mind busy. Whether it's laundry or design, it seems rare when he is bored.

Not to mention that we have been suckered into technology more and more. Cam has made our house a network mecca. Everything connects to something else wirelessly. And now with our new iPhones we can connect to the outside world even easier (Cam had the cheapest T-mobile phone and I had the oldest, both of which met their demise) and makes our lives more integrated with the pizza joints nearby in our neighborhood. You know, wherever we are, that will be useful for the winter ;)

Posted in: apple, chaosgurl, general musings, sport on September 24, 2007 at at 10:34:00 PM 0 comments    

Yes, I know it's just a fancy-pants word for "taking your fingerprints", I just wanted a funny title for this entry...

I finally have an appointment to get my biometrics "captured" by the USCIS in relation to my I-485 (residency) application. It's on October 17th, so almost a month away still. At least things are happening with this application, unlike my I-765 (employment authorization document). The way things are going, I'll get my Green Card before my EAD, even though I put that application in two months earlier!

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on September 23, 2007 at at 2:46:00 PM 0 comments    

At last, a glimmer of progress on my I-485. The check (or cheque for those from the Commonwealth) that I sent in with my application on the 27th of July has finally been cashed by the US Department of Homeland Security! That's 53 (yes, count them - fifty-three!) days to basically open my envelope and cash a check. I'm looking forward to my residency being approved – in 2012!

Still, it's nice to know that the application actually got there and is being processed, however slowly. I was starting to think it had got lost in the mail!

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on September 17, 2007 at at 11:43:00 AM 0 comments    

So, football season is upon us here in America, and it's very interesting to observe things at close quarters. As an Australian, it's always been very easy to dismiss American football as slow, tedious and boring compared to our fast flowing, hard hitting football codes (rugby union included when the referee puts his whistle away!), but then again, I've only ever really watched half of about three different Super Bowls, which isn't exactly indicative of the game as a whole.

So last Monday, I sat down with Kevin to watch the season opening-game for his beloved Cincinnati Bengals as they took on the evil Baltimore Ravens. The game was very even and closely fought, with Cincinnati repelling a lot of last ditch attack from the Ravens to prevail 27-20, so I think I probably saw a good game, and at moments it was genuinely thrilling and exciting. But overall, it still leaves me a little cold. The stop/start nature of the game erodes any sense of continuity: once a play is completed, everyone stops, dusts themselves off and trots off to the middle of the field to set up the scrimmage line all over again. There's no advantage to be gained from a play apart from the yardage up the field. The defence always has time to reset itself for the next stanza of play, which always starts from the centre of the field. Compare this to the fluid defence required in the rugby codes or AFL, where you have to rush to be in the right place at the right time throughout the game.

And adding to the stop/start feeling is the ever-present TV advertising. At one point in the game, a Bengals player fielded a kick off in his own in-goal and touched the ball to the ground, signalling a restart from the 20 yard line. The network immediately cut to a three-minute ad break: when they came back, the players were still milling around the goal line, obviously waiting for a signal to resume play. Talk about a game made for TV!

Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the skill and power of the players involved, and if anyone thinks they're wusses for wearing all that padding, you should definitely think again. Kevin Everett, a player with the Buffalo Bills team received severe spinal injuries from a tackle gone wrong in a game last weekend, and may never walk again. Like in many rugby tackles, he simply got his head on the wrong side of the tackle, but the forces involved with two 300 pound men hitting each other are much more than the (comparatively) smaller guys in our codes.

On a lighter note, one last thing that amused me was when a contentious refereeing decision is made, a coach can challenge it. When this happens, the head referee disappears into a little viewing booth on the sidelines to review the video. The booth even has little curtains to hide the referee and screen from view! So cute!

So, my verdict: The jury's still out on this one, I think. We'll see how I go as the season unfolds!

Posted in: chaosboy, sport, united states on September 14, 2007 at at 10:10:00 AM 0 comments    

Last Saturday evening was Widmer Brother's big Oktoberfest party and Christine and I - along with around 3,000 other Portlanders - went along for fun, food and music. We turned up a little late to see our good friend Colin Lake (Widmer's own!) strut his stuff, but the other bands were a lot of fun. We had lots of free food and beer coupons thanks to Kim and Kevin (who both work at Widmer's), so it was a very inexpensive night out for us impoverished types. In the photo above, Christine is holding our commemorative glasses (only 500mL, half the size of a German Maßkrug) as Curtis Salgado gets the crowd dancing. And yes, the band is performing on the brewery delivery dock!

Posted in: chaosboy, party time, portland on at at 9:51:00 AM 0 comments