May 18, 2026
Passport Renewed

I'm still feeling sick with a cough but at least I am back home now. There are so many errands to run after being away from home for a month, but things are slowly getting organized.

I had to quickly submit for a passport renewal online because the processing time is up to 6 weeks now. That will stop me from traveling until July! :) I'll need it by July 5th, when I'm meeting with some friends in Whistler, Canada. It will be a beautiful road trip and might take 4 days to get there, so I am tight on pushing the timeline. My old passport was literally falling apart and expires in less than a year anyway. An immigration officer with the Australia Defense Force mentioned that it failed one of the physical security checks (broken RFID chip?), so some countries might not accept it as an official travel document. Thankfully he still let me in the country instead of being difficult. Imagine how nice immigration must have been before passports were invented!

There was a surprising amount of new bugs found on Linux recently, so I am rushing to update the kernel and apps on my home systems before I forget. Found a cheap replacement battery on eBay for my father's old Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop, so now I can run Windows XP in style while on the road!

phi1618