Skip to main content
Today marks my 14th year in the USA. In 4 short years, I will have lived in the US more than Turkey (18 years), where I was born. Here is a brief summary: F1 Student Visa (Summer 1998 - Bachelors), OPT - Optional Practical Training (Summer 2002), F1 Student Visa (2003 - Masters), OPT (Summer 2003), H1-B non-Immigrant Visa (Late 2003), H1-B renewal (2004 August - Job Change), PERM application for Green Card (2005), I-140 (Oct 21, 2005), H1-B Renewal (2006), H1-B Renewal (new job), PERM application for Green Card (2008 - new job), I-140 (2009 new job), H1-B renewal (2011), I-485 (2011 Aug - Adjustment of Status), I-765 (2011, Application of Employment Authorization), I-131 (2011, Application of Travel Document), I-765 renewal (2012 June), I-131 renewal (2012 June), Service Request for I-485 (2012 June), Service Request for Service Request for I-485 (2012-August, not kidding), Service Request for I-765 and I-131 renewals (2012 August) ... still an alien...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Employment Based Green Card Marathon

There are 3 most popular ways to get a Green Card to live and work in US: Through Marriage with a US Citizen, Employment Sponsorship and the Diversity Lottery. I would like to articulate on the unfairness of the process for the Employment based applicants and its repercussions. After getting a scholarship to study at Brandeis University, I arrived in the United States on August 28, 1998 on an F-1 Student Visa. After graduating with my Master's degree, I had 1 year of OPT - Optional Practical Training which allowed me to work for companies that were in fields similar to my concentration. Next chapter in my immigration story is the H1-B Work Visa which is frowned upon. This visa provides an entry point for skilled immigrants and it is one of the very few points of entry to the US based on merit. Scorn on this quota of about 85k is well deserved on an emotional level, especially when considering high unemployment of today's workplace. Yet, working in IT and being involved with
3 comments
Read more

Online Education

I am enamored with the open coursework offerings of MIT and Stanford. I would contemplate hard on going to college and go under hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt if these high quality offerings were provided for free. Why not have all material for free and offer exams ala certifications? CNBC Article . Currently watching Special Relativity from Leonard Susskind
Post a Comment
Read more

16 GBs of RAM

In my efforts to create a lab at home, I thought 6gb would not cut it. I just installed 16 GB (4x4GB) and am ready to roll. (after the "VMWare Workstation or Player RAM Issue under Disk Disguise" incident below). I also converted my 4x1.5 TB RAID 5 to RAID 10 (4 disks for a total of 3TBs - striped and mirrored). You can definitely tell that there is a performance gain and 3TB seems to be pretty sufficient for me .. already have 1.4TB left.
Post a Comment
Read more