Skip to main content

12 days left - update on immigration process

After not writing much lately I think it's getting time to give a short update about how my immigration process is doing.

I received my one year work permit already in December and I'm still waiting to become a permanent resident. I applied a couple months ago and at least since January they are working on it in the canadian embassy in Berlin. According to their website it can take over a year for them to decide, so I better don't expect an answer the next weeks and months.

During the last few weeks I started applying at some companies, but answering emails isn't a strengths of most of them. I hope they serve their customers better. I usually call them about a week after, but often you end up in their phone systems without a chance getting the right person. It might be a bit easier when I actually live in Canada and can drive by to hand the resumes out to the right people. We'll see. At least we have a car already, Sarah bought a 2001 Chevrolet Cavalier last month. It's a former police car and seems to be in good shape.

End of February I finished my studies with handing out my master's thesis to my prof and all I have to do now is waiting for my diploma. For the last days I have been working on our wedding invitiations and wedding website and I also have been trying to solve all existing issues with the websites, computers and network at my brothers company. I'm looking forward not to do these basic jobs like installing computers and software anymore soon.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pentaho Data Integration - Multi-part Form submission with file upload using the User Defined Java Class Step

I recently needed to use Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) to send a file to a server for processing using HTTP Post. I spent several hours trying to use the existing steps HTTP Post, HTTP Client & Rest Client but I couldn't get it to work. After some more research I came across the issue PDI-10120 - Support for Multi-part Form Submittal In Web Service Steps  and I thought I was out of luck. I previously wrote a small Java client for a similar use case and remembered the PDI has a step called User Defined Java Class  (UDJC). After reading this great tutorial I created the following basic transaction. I have a dataset with the URL and the full file path and use the UDJC to make the HTTP call. HTTP Post using User Defined Java Class The Java class handles the actual HTTP Post. It uses 2 input variables, the URL (url) which is used for the call and the file name (longFileName). The HTTP call then contains the file (line 30) and the file name (line 31). I included some basi

Products you don't expect to be 'Made in China' - Del Monte fruit cups

Since I moved to Canada back in March I have started to realize how many products are actually made in China. Back in Germany you could also buy lots of stuff from China but you mostly had the choice between German or Europe products and Chinese products. When I went to Food Basics in Oakville a couple weeks ago to get some apples I stood in front of a huge tray of Chinese apples! Aren't there enough apples in Ontario, Canada or the US? Even Mexico would probably be closer than China. Another day my wife bought Del Monte fruit cups in the grocery store. I checked the label when I was going to eat it and i decided to leave it in the fridge. First of all it is 'Made in China' (again I guess no other country in this world has fruit) and second it contains artificial flavor. How bad must the fruit inside be that you need artificial flavor (and does anybody in China controls how it is made)? For my part I'll check the labels more closely whenever I buy any kind of product

Creating YTD transformation tables

The other day I had to setup a new data warehouse that will be used for reporting with MicroStrategy. Part of it was setting up the date dimension including the transformation tables. I had a quick look online and couldn't find any script doing the work for me so I created them myself (with the help of a colleague). All you need is an existing date dimension with date_id, year_id, quarter_id, month_id and week_id, you can find plenty of scripts for that online. YTD table select t1.day_id, t2.day_id INTO YTD_DAY from LU_DAY t1, LU_DAY t2 where t1.day_id >= t2.day_id and t1.year_id = t2.year_id QTD table  select t1.day_id, t2.day_id as qtd_day_id INTO QTD_DAY from LU_DAY t1, LU_DAY t2 where t1.day_id >= t2.day_id and t1.QUARTER_id = t2.QUARTER_id  MTD table select t1.day_id, t2.day_id as mtd_day_id INTO MTD_DAY from LU_DAY t1, LU_DAY t2 where t1.day_id >= t2.day_id and t1.month_id = t2.month_id  WTD table select t1.day_id, t2.day_id as wtd_day_id INTO WTD_D