Wait, where did I . . ? Oh, [insert expletives here]!!!!!

Washed your Passport? Yep, I've been there. I even did it a week before I was supposed to leave. Surprisingly, finding information on how to deal with this situation is remarkably difficult so just know that I can (probably) help you.

This information is from a trip I took in June 2009 to Germany and may have changed between you reading this and my experience but for what it's worth, here's what happened to me. Current and relevant information should be available at the Dept. of State website, especially http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/emergencies/emergencies_1197.html .

Also I used this blog post to model my own experience. Why go there? Well because it's prettier and has a better title.

Finally, I'll update my photos when I have a better camera available.

With that all out of the way...

Actually I lied earlier. I do that sometimes. I didn't just wash my passport. I also dried it. I figured finding out what to do would be easy surely so many people had come before that another had done the same and blogged about it or the government recognized it as a chronic problem or at least there was some forum with answers to questions like the ones I had:

• Is this a serious problem?
• Do I need a replacement?
• If I do, how much will this cost?
• Would the mail be too slow?
• OMG MY PLANE LEAVES TOMORROW WHAT DO I DO?

OK well I can't really answer that last one but you should keep reading! I still have some pertinent information for you and hopefully I'll get out in a concise enough format that you can still make your flight.

This really is a serious problem. Here's a little primer to explain why:

1. You get to the airport toting your bedraggled old passport in whatever imperfect condition it is in and approach the check-in desk.
2. The attendant goes through the motions until she asks for your passport. You hand it over casually, hoping she doesn't notice and/or care how good/bad it looks. She glances at it, stares and hands it back.
3. SURPRISE!!!!

I cannot answer what will happen for you at the end of this story because it's up the "airlines" and therefore each person you hand the passport to who works for your airline. I have heard that they are liable to deny you, too. It really just depends. The concern is that once you get to country X (US, Deutschland, Nippon, w/e) customs will deny you entrance and the airline will have to send you back on their dime (or even if you paid, their space!). In any case it's not a happy situation. For most people that means you can get sent back at one of three places; check-in, boarding, or customs. Really unhelpful. If your passport looks at all damaged (mine wasn't even peeling on the covers!) they can deny you so I would suggest getting thyself to the nearest Embassy/Consulate with your damaged passport and a small pile of local currency! For me it was (if I recall correctly) €65,00. They will charge you a bit extra on the passport application for "expedited" service to get an emergency issue / limited passport but once you get back to the States you can get this replaced with a real passport at no additional cost. Total time once I got inside the embassy to leaving? 1 hour. And that was when they messed up my birthplace on the first try (yes you should definitely check their work when they ask!).

Note about embassies: There is usually a long line outside. This is actually locals looking to travel to the US and there is usually a seperate line for the different services offered to US citizens (I believe it's US Citizen Services). If there are two lines that should mean you get priority :) Of course, always ask your friendly-but-stone-faced-kinda-scary-looking guard first before cutting!

To recap:

This is a serious issue. If you're bothering to Google things like "what constitutes a damaged passport" it highly likely it needs to be replaced.

The cost might have changed since posting but in June '09 it was ~$100.

The mail depends on how long you have. Get thee to an embassy!!! And trust me, emailing and calling will NOT get you the fast response you want. You should GO, with or without an appointment.

Good luck! You're probably hosed and have to risk it unless your embassy is in the same city/farm as the airport. If it is, check what time it opens and GET OVER THERE! You can probably skip any lines and making a passport might take less than an hour.

How to get Windows 7 running with 160MB RAM, an 850MHz processor, and 8GB of hard drive space OR Why I love FOG

Ignoring the abuse of titular "or"s the world over, the first question you might ask is, why? The answer is coincidence (or fate or serendipity or just some really tight OS design). I was working on a proposal for work (currently so secret not even my boss knows about it) that involves FOG. WTF? No, not the obscuring pea soup you're probably used to mouth-breathing zombie-style between sips of that all-too-hot-but-not-quite-enough-to-overcome-your-scorched-tastebuds-and-wake-you-up cup o' Joe. I mean FOG Project (I think it's Free and Open-source Ghost). For those not "cool" enough to have a job where one of your many meaningful contributions is "ghosting" computers, let me explain:

When an administrator wants to deploy lots of computers (this number can vary) but wants his own software on it (read: not just the Dell crapware pre-installed but the corporate crapware. Or sometimes something worthwhile like a not-IE browser.) and also wants to be able to quickly update lots of computers and such, he basically makes a single computer have all the stuff he wants and copies it to all of the others that want that combination of software. But Windows is designed NOT to be copied. They want to thwart all the "lost sales" of piracy so there's all sorts of ways to prevent that and this is especially thorny in Windows XP. Anyway, special software exists to help administrators create "images" of computers for redistribution to other PC's. The longtime market leader is Norton Ghost, hence "ghosting" or imaging. Hopefully your eyes didn't just glaze over.

You've probably figured it out by now, it's not that complicated. I downloaded the FOG VMWare image (shameless plug: it's great software if overpriced for students), configured it for my network, created an image using another VM (I wanted a clean install and small image for testing), and sent it on its merry way up a couple of non-existent ethernet connections inside my VMWare software. Importantly, it was Win7 and it had a few things installed like iTunes, Firefox, and Chrome among others. Now normally Windows 7 would not allow installation on anything less than 512 (I think, might be 1GB though!) but I just deployed it using my little Knoppix style PXE linux environment and BAM! I'm ready to take half an hour to make and eat a sandwich (so that I can finish downloading the image not because I have some kind of weird sensual sandwich eating fetish or anything). Come back, everything's booted up nicely and I don't even have mouse lag (mostly). Took some time but I managed to browse the web with Chrome and grabbed a screenshot of the machine specs as "proof."

So there you have it. Fresh install, pack it up with Sysprep, upload it to the FOG server, and download it to the final client which doesn't do any hardware checks apparently. Simple, right?

Le Raison D'Être

If only I spoke French. I can't. Sure I took it for 5 years and completed 4 years of coursework but understanding something, anything takes a lot more study than that. I was never fluent and I often translated things literally (ok that came out backwards. I also often struggle to communicate in English!). I never understood the full cultural context of everything, much less that I was acting as a part of it. I still feel the same way and not just about the French. I don't know what I'm doing here and I have no clue why you are visiting but if you're reading this know that I cannot know how my writing will affect you but this is the closest thing I have to improving the world. If it works out and I save your life or something that's great! If not, well . . .

C'est la vie.