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Random rant number 5: Why do bad things happen when you’re in a position to do nothing about them?

If you’ve been reading any of my postings so far, you’ll know that there’s most of the landmass of Northern America plus the Atlantic Ocean currently separating me from my family….

So why does my daughter’s computer wait until I’m 2 months away from my next visit to the UK to die?

… and why does it die in such a way that it’s the most painful problem to deal with (a fault on the hard disk that’s stopping it from booting)?

A couple of days ago it apparently started booting so far into Windows then it’d simply reboot. The crew back in the UK tried various recovery options that did absolutely nothing, then eventually we decided that the Windows installation must be screwed and so opted to re-install Windows.

So it goes through the boot from CD, runs the initial setup, copies the Windows setup files to the hard disk and then reboots, then gives a disk error on reboot, and it’s now stuck there. We can boot it from CD, we can load the recovery console, we can see files on the hard disk, but we can’t convince it to boot from the hard disk now.

If I were physically at the computer I could probably work this one out, but trying to diagnose it remotely and work with someone else’s hands and eyes is just not doing it.

So we’re stuck. There’s no one particularly computer literate in the family back in the UK (not computer literate enough to sort this out anyway) and I can’t get back there for 2 months. They could spend a load of money and have some computer ‘specialist’ look at it and try and sort it out. They could ask around to see if someone close there thinks they have the requisite skills to deal with this as a favour. They could whip the disk out and ship it to me and I could try and recover it here (or copy what’s accessable to a new one and ship that back). They could ship the whole computer over and I could deal with it and ship it back. Or they could wait 2 months.

And in the meantime, my daughter can’t get to the files she needs that are on the computer to do her college work.

It never rains,………..

AUGH

Random rant number 4: Do computer manufacturers assume everyone is computer literate?

I work in the computer storage industry, and have previously worked in the PC support industry, and I have a reasonable grasp of what is needed to make sure a computer is updated, secured, and safe. I just purchased some new computers for my family so they have something actually worth using when they get here in the US, and I was amazed that for a newly built/configured system that there was so much extra work to do.

The systems were shipped with XP Home and SP2, and an install CD for Norton Antivirus 2004, and just getting these fully installed and updated resulted in 8 distinct update/reboot actions with a lot of downloading (thank heaven for broadband). To get the systems fully secured and updated such that I’d let my family loose on the web with them took about 3 hours per system from start to finish!

I can understand why hackers and spammers do what they do, as there must be a huge number of badly secured systems out there – I can’t see the average home user doing things properly!

Random rant number 3: Why is the tax system so damned confusing?

Being a UK citizen who as of December has been living and working in the US, I have the dubious distinction of being a victim of the tax systems of both countries. This has opened my eyes somewhat to the way both systems work, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they are both overly complicated and less than ideal.

To start with, in the UK the tax year runs April to April, whereas in the US it follows the calendar year. This makes coordinating a clean split between the two systems is impossible. Then there’s the fact that both systems have interesting criteria to define residency and liability such that it is possible to be double-taxed on certain parts of your income, even though you can only physically be in one or other country at once.

Then heaven help you if you have stock options granted in one country that you want to exercise in the other, and as for doing things like selling a house in one country to invest that money in the other, the regulations and restrictions around that need to be looked at very closely if you don’t want to loose out!

I could rant for ages on all of this and more in some detail, but suffice as to say that if you’re in this position, you should either be very good at accounting and reading tax regulations, or be prepared to spend some money and engage the services of a tax advisor who is aware of the extra stuff involved as a result of working with the tax systems of more than one country!

Random rant number 2: So what is this Social Security Number thing all about?

Coming from the UK, the one thing that surprised and frustrated me more than anything on my arrival in the US was the need for and dependency on the Social Security Number, and this was closely followed by my shock at how difficult things are when you have no credit history.

If you want a ‘normal’ life, you really need both, or you need a lot of freely available cash. For example – try getting a car loan with no social security number and no credit history. Try getting a credit card. Try opening a back account (well actually that wasn’t as hard as I thought, but I did have some help). Try getting a driving license. Try getting a car….

Without a social security number you’re a nobody. The government will happily take your taxes (at an inflated rate), but you can’t invest in a pension plan. Without a social security number it’s difficult getting a loan or a credit card. Without a credit card or a loan you can’t build a credit history. Without a credit history, it’s difficult getting a loan or a credit card…..

I was lucky in that in the UK I’d used a particular international credit card for some time, and the company were happy to set me up with an American one based on my UK credit history, but not all credit card companies will do that.

I was also lucky enough to have come to the US under a company transfer, and so had a load of documentation proving I had valid employment, so opening a bank account wasn’t too difficult (as it meant they could get the money they could see I’d be getting!). I couldn’t however apply for my California driving license without a social security number, and the application for one of those takes 5-6 weeks to process thanks to post-9/11 security changes.

Herein lies an interesting issue, as California driving law states that if you are to be resident in the state, you need to apply for your California driving license within 10 days of taking residency, however you can’t apply until you have a SSN, and that takes 5-6 weeks to come through.

It takes at least 6 months to make enough ‘noise’ to actually get anything to show on a credit history. I ended up using the credit card I was able to get for almost everything (and paying it up at the end of each month), and taking a car loan at a stupid interest rate for a few months just to get some activity to show.

Oh yes – one I almost forgot. Try getting a cell phone on a regular plan just after you arrive in the country. Most companies will let you take a contract IF you can provide proof of income and pay a stupidly large security deposit.

The whole system seems stacked against people who have just arrived in the US to live and work. I think if I ever quit what I’m doing now, I’m going to set up as an immigration consultant.

All I can say is thank God (or whoever/whatever you worship) that I was dealing with all of the above while it was just me here. While the issues above inconvenienced me for a while, they would have made things pretty difficult (if not unbearable) if I’d moved across with my family. As things stand, I should be pretty well settled in when my wife and kids join me in a couple of months.

Random rant number 1: When is English not English?

I’m English. I was born in Berkshire, lived in the Midlands for a number of years later in life, and now find myself in California. Being exposed to TV and other sources of the spoken word from a number of international sources, I find that as an Englishman, I can understand people talking to me in a number of different accents and dialects, so I ask myself…. Why is it that Americans seem to have such a hard time understanding English people?

We speak the same base language. OK, so we spell a few words differently; Americans don’t like using the letter U in many places where English people do, we say ‘zed’ whereas Americans say ‘zee’, and we use some different words to mean the same thing, but we should be able to understand what one another says at the spoken level without much of a problem.

So, having lived here for 6 months, and visited frequently prior to that, I ask the following;

1) Why is it that a reasonable percentage of Americans (that I’ve met anyway) can’t tell an English and Australian accent apart (I’ve lost count of the times a stranger has asked me ‘Are you from Australia’)?

2) Why do Americans have such a hard time understanding people talking with an English accent (and I know this isn’t just me – a number of English work colleagues tell the same stories)? I’ve not had a single conversation with an American where I’ve not had to repeat one part of it because it’s not been understood correctly, and this is made 100% worse if the conversation is on the phone as opposed to in person.

What is the solution here? Do we all need to talk with an American accent? Do Indian and Chinese immigrants in America have the same problems? Is it just the English that this happens to (perhaps this is America’s way of continuing to rub the collective English nose in it from when America gained its independance)?

I should add that this is somewhat of an over-generalisation, and there are some Americans I’ve met over here who actually can cope with an English accent, but they are few and far between!