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July 31, 2005

The English Drink

If memory serves, it used to be tea. That’s the old stereotype isn’t it? Masterpiece Theater episodes 9-27, conversations over tea. Not anymore. I’d heard that coffee had begun to dominate the English palette in recent years but I hadn’t realized to full extent of the change until today. Nothing demonstrates the comparatively recent English addiction to coffee than the incredible prevalence of Starbuck’s shops in London. During the ten minute walk from the office near Aldwych St. to the company flat in Holborn, I pass no fewer than three Starbuck’s shops. If I walk another couple of minutes down High Holborn, add another. Turn south down Chancery Lane and within a minute your up to five.

Now there are many who decry the spread of Starbuck’s as a pox upon the land, driving out small local shops like Walmart on caffeine. For me, it’s all good. Starbuck’s just happens to specialize in the sort of blend I like most; dark roasted. I’ve ordering coffee from Starbuck’s since before they had a store east of the Mississippi. What’s more, I don’t recall all that many half decent coffee shops being about until Starbuck’s raised the bar on quality coffee.

In any case, it’s not like Starbuck’s is the only game in town here. There are at least as many non-Starbuck’s coffee vendors. In fact, the whole city seems to be pustuler with coffee shops which is just fine with me.

Filed under Life in London.

Posted by eric at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

A Walk Around Westminster

The plan is to stay up until about 9:00 PM BST tonight. I’m told it’s the shortest path to whacking your biological clock into synchrony with the local time; don’t sleep on the plane then just stay up until late in the evening. I’ve also heard that it’s a good idea to get a lot of light to help convince your doubtful system that it really is still daytime. Accordingly, to stay awake and get what light there was, I went out very shortly after I arrived to explore the area.

A roughly fifteen minute walk took me down past the Bush House HQ of the BBC, across and across the Waterloo bridge from which I could plainly see nearly all of the landmarks that say “London” to Americans: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abby and, back the other way, St. Paul’s. I paused in the middle of the span to snap a few photographs (see above) and proceeded to the south bank.

Walking up stream along the The Queen’s Walk I passed the Tate Modern museum and the Jubilee Gardens. After squeezing my way through the scrum milling around the entrance to the London Eye, things became very strange indeed. Between the Eye and Westminster Bridge there appeared a collection of very odd street performers; some commanding an audience, some not, all of them a bit scary.

Crossed back over the Thames via Westminster Bridge; thick with tourists, heard almost no English on my way over, and then turned back downstream along the Victoria Embankment Gardens. These are very nice quiet little alcoves right off of the busy street. A bench was easily found where I could pause and look over my reference map. More signs of recent unpleasantness: I’m not sure if the passing phalanx of assault rifle bearing policemen made me feel safer or more at risk.

The gardens are home to many statues some of whose names they honor I recognize. There’s one to a Napoleonic era minister, whose name I recognized but can not now recall. On my way back up north I passed this statue of Michael Faraday who looks a bit peeved at having become a loo for the local winged rats. One more I run across on my way back to the flat at a church that’s literally an island in The Strand, is in honor of H. C. T Dowding, the RAF commander during the Battle for Britain. He doesn’t actually look all that much like Lawrence Olivier.

One amusing side note to my walk, I had expected to somehow be obviously American and that people would know I’m from the states without having to trouble to ask. Instead, this morning I was asked for directions by somebody taking his nose out of his A-to-Z. "Do you know which way is the Chancery Lane station?" he asked. As it was, just having passed it myself I was able to direct him properly. What’re the odds?

Filed under Life in London.

Posted by eric at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

Getting from the Plane to the City

Having finally arrived at our gate, we were in for quite a hike to passport control and customs. I don’t think I’ve had quite so long a walk since YOW was under construction and you not only had to take quite a hike but also had to board a bus to get from the gate to passport control. As my guide book warned, Gatwick is the destination for many an international flight and lines can be long; they were. Though EU residents had little wait and passengers connecting to other international flights, who strangely must go through UK passport control, breezed through, the international arrivals line started long and got longer, nearly running out the door to the capacious queuing room, while we waited. At least a couple of 747s must have disgorged their passengers at about the same time we arrived.

Eventually my turn came up. A slight delay was occasioned by the fact that while my passport an permit are all in order, the permit doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow. After a quick check with her supervisor, the agent "landed" me and stamped the permit. At one point she asked if I’d been to the U. K. before. Upon being told that I’d not set foot on the island to date, her response was "taking a bit of plunge aren’t you?" Indeed.

After rejoining my colleague on the other side of the desks, we moved on. Customs was all but a no-op as I’d carried nothing anywhere close to declaration worthy. I think they do little here but random checks. No we were out in the north terminal. The Gatwick Express train for Victoria Station, however, leaves from the south terminal. Fortunately, there’s an automatic tramway between the two that’s easy to find and not a very long walk. During the short ride, we asked a local about tickets for the train. Yes, they do take cards (and give them back) and you can just hop on and pay during the ride which runs about 30 minutes. Excellent.

Our timing was good, there was an express waiting at the platform that was leaving in five minutes. We climbed on board, wrestled our larger luggage onto the racks and sat down at a table for the ride. While waiting we saw the first evidence that things are not presently as normal in Britain. A pair of body armored police walked by very heavily armed with automatic rifles and what looked to be a larger than ordinary complement of side arms.

The ride north through the misty country and south London was relaxing. We paid for our tickets about ten minutes into the trip, £13.00. After arriving at Victoria, there was a bit of a walk to the cab rank and then we were off to Holborn. Conveniently, my colleague is staying at a hotel about a block from the cab so we could share. The cab ride has settled me in my plan not to drive in London. It was positively head spinning. We zoomed through the city missing busses, cars and pedestrians by inches. And it’s clearly not the case that we had a particularly maniacal driver, all of them clearly expected to be missed by inches, planned on it if fact.

The cab ride ran £12.50 and, as we had a fairly friendly and loquacious cabby, a £2.00 tip didn’t seem out of line. It was gratifying that I could disconcert a cabby with some twenty-one years experience; he’d never heard of the street on which the flat sits. He seemed delighted to find something new about the city he hadn’t known about before.

Paid off the cabby, heaved my bags into the flat, settled down to have a drink of water, and listened to the silence close in around me. It’s Sunday downtown and the flat is in a very quiet yard. The quiet made things seem a bit lonelier and I was getting sleepy so, after sending a quick text to the wife to let her know I’d arrived safely, I went out to explore the area.

Filed under Life in London and Travel.

Posted by eric at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)

Six and a Half Hours to London

This will be one of the last entries under “Relocating to London” because as of now, I’m no longer relocating but relocated. Here I am parked at the company flat in downtown London — Holborn actually, just above Westminster — and yes, I’m looking pretty baked. I’ve now been up for some 28 hours and I plan to go for another three or so more before calling Saturday/Sunday a day.

Our flight finally left the gate at around 7:30 PM EDT (12:30 AM BST). We had a smooth take-off to the north which is where we wanted to go so we didn’t have to make one of those climbing corkscrew turns I find so disconcerting. Staying with EDT, we were down to a thin band of twilight by 8:30 PM and full dark shortly after than but the first signs of dawn started showing up at around 12:30 AM making for a very short night. I’d downloaded a bunch of movies from MovieLink, which seems to work fine on my laptop though I haven’t had the courage to try it out on my PC again yet, but for the most part I just read.

Some new things I’d not seen before when flying: Flat panel displays on each seat back. No longer do a few CRTs drop down from the overhead compartments when the one in-flight movie is available. Now ever seat, except those lucky folks at the bulkheads, has it’s own small flat panel and a selection of several movies on various channels. As it happened, today’s movie choices were pretty foul. The “Are We There Yet?” display. Shown on the large screen on the bulkhead and available on one of the channels is a rotating display that shows the plane’s progress along the flight path, altitude and ground speed, outside weather conditions, as well as the current time at the departure point, present location and destination. Then there are the arm rest remotes used to control your seat back display and audio selections. Loathsome creatures who’s greatest accomplishment is to make the arm rest useless for its designed purpose.

The flight was mostly uneventful but for occasional turbulence. The pilots’ typical reaction to rough air is to try to get permission to climb out of it. By the time we were over Ireland, we were at 41,000 feet. This fact may have contributed to the somewhat abrupt descent into Gatwick. To kill speed and altitude the pilot deployed the breaks, made a heck of a racket. We touched down about ten minutes early and would probably have been at the gate bang on time had there not been a plane still occupying it. We ended up sitting on the taxi way for about fifteen minutes loosing most of the time we’d gained back during the flight.

I was on the starboard side for this flight and even though we spent most of our flight hugging whatever coast was available, I wasn’t able to see much of interest out my side. I did see the lights of Halifax go by early in the flight. Saw nothing of Ireland or Lands End. As we manuvered for landing I still didn’t see very much as, here’s a surprise, a heavy cloud cover obscured the greater London area. Nothing much could be seen until we were below 2,500 feet.

And what was my first view of England? It wasn’t the river Thames set off by an expansive city. What unfolded below the cloud deck was a landscape of small farms bounded by hedges with an occasional cottage or manner house thrown in for variety. Gatwick is quite a ways south of London and, although there are signs of sprawl along the rail route to London, outside that corridor, things look much as they’ve done for quite some time I imagine.

Filed under Relocating to London and Travel.

Posted by eric at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2005

Returning to the Skies

Here I am at the airport having arrived dutifully two hours prior to scheduled departure. The wife dropped me off and I said farewell to the offspring though he’d fallen asleep on the way and didn’t notice. Off they drove and in I went.

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I’ve loathed both flying and airlines since long before it was fashionable to do so, I haven’t been on a plane since before our world changed so abruptly nearly four years ago. The last time I was in the air was for a brief trip up to Ottawa in July of 2000. There are some things that have changed; some for the better and some… not so much for the worse as a bit less convenient.

First, there’s this matter of checking in. Five years ago you were still pretty much limited to desk or gate check in. Now, you can check in on-line, at an electronic kiosk, at the curb when you give your check luggage to the skycap, at the desk or at the gate. As I’ve an enormous pile of luggage, probably something close to the limit, I decided to stick to the old fashioned procedure and check in at the desk. Nothing much has changed there except perhaps that the lines are shorter.

Then there’s the issue of security. Yes, it’s tighter but most of the changes are behind the scenes I gather. About the only real differences I noticed is that I had to take off my shoes and that I did not have to turn my laptop on. (Tip if you’re traveling with a laptop, it will have to go through the X-ray — don’t worry, it won’t get hurt — so while you’re waiting in line, unzip your carrying case and be ready to plop it in one of the plastic trays and put it on the conveyer belt. Tip if you’re traveling with shoes, have your laces loose as you’ll probably have to take them off unless you’re wearing slippers.)

The other aspect of security that has changed is that you must have a boarding pass to go through security. This was a periodic measure five years ago but is permanent now. This means no greetings or goodbyes at the gate. In my case this is probably good as a drawn out goodbye with the offspring would probably do neither of us any good at all.

So now I’m at the gate and there’s at least an hour to go before we board. Our plane has been here at the gate but apparently it arrived late and they’re still cleaning and re-provisioning it so the’ve announced that boarding will begin at least twenty minutes late. That’s OK. I’m in no hurry. Fortunately there’s a coworker here who happens to be on the same flight so we can pass the time while we wait.

Filed under Relocating to London and Travel.

Posted by eric at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2005

Finally, a Bit More Progress on the Model

What with preparing to move, moving, and preparing to relocate overseas, there hasn’t been a lot of time to devote to quiet pursuits like model building these past few months. This are, for the moment at least, reasonably well settled. The offspring has been picking up the partially competed Mercury-Atlas model and admiring it, probably wondering when Dad’s likely to get around to finishing it. So, while I was playing with him last night, we gathered up the booster so far and the remaining parts sheets, collected some scissors, glue, and a toothpick and sat down at the kitchen table to make some more minor progress.

The results shown here include the construction and attachment of the LOX pipe and verniers. My LOX pipe looks like somebody took a ball-peen hammer to it with a will. The fairly heavy weight paper I printed the pattern out on doesn’t lend itself well to being rolled up into a tube that narrow. The Atlas portion of the assembly is taking shape. All that’s left to the booster are the engine bells. Then the Mercury capsule and we’re done.

Filed under Harmless Fun, Scale Modeling, and Paper Models.

Posted by eric at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Driving and Insurance in the U.K.

One issue I’ve thought about for a while but tried to avoid actually doing anything about that of driving and automotive insurance while across the pond. Here’s what little I’ve found out.

The U.K. government site indicates pretty clearly that my national (U.S. — that is NC) license is good for 12 months in the U.K. After that, a U.K. license will be required. But! Make sure that you take and pass the test prior to the expiration of that twelve month period. If you do not, you enter the system just like any 17 year old just about to get his license for the first time. Further, I’m told, that the U.K. driver’s license test is rather difficult compared to the usual U.S. equivalent and a number of common driving actions must be done just so in order to pass. A lifetime of contrary driving habits might not serve one terribly well here.

On the insurance front, I’ve as yet found out very little about what I’ll need to do by way of obtaining insurance over there. What I have found out is that unless one is planning to be over there a very long time indeed, one really should maintain some measure of insurance in the U.S. If you do not, when you return the insurers will simply assume the worst about why you haven’t had any insurance for the past n years. You ran over somebody or some such. They apparently will not be interested in any proofs you might offer to the contrary and will charge you usurious rates for the first year or two after you reestablish coverage if they offer to cover you at all. So it was reported here [I've lost that link I'm afraid. Post it later if I find it again.] and, given my experience with the insurance industry, I’ve no trouble believing it.

What we’ll probably end up doing is selling one car. Parking another, and dropping insurance down on the truck to minimal liability, theft and vandalism. Hopefully, that should reduce our U.S. auto insurance costs substantially.

Filed under Relocating to London

Posted by eric at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2005

Passports Stamped and Ready to Go

Impressive work from the U.K. visas team. The whole family’s documents arrived by courier at the house this morning just as I was setting out to work. Each of our passports now bears a hansom U.K. residency endorsement that covers an entire page and which includes a second photograph. Given that the package was sent up to the consulate in NY last Monday afternoon, the turn-around time adds up to less than a week. Say, we’ve got a pretty free market focused administration right now. I wonder if they’d take bids from the U.K. team to process U.S. passport applications, a process which presently takes every day of the promised six weeks.

I’ve passed copies of the endorsements along to HR, the firm assisting us with immigration issues wants to keep copies as well as a history of all entries in and departures from the U.K. so that they have an accurate record of our immigration status if it comes to extending our visas; something not presently planned.

Filed under Relocating to London

Posted by eric at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

Who's Cicero and Why Is He Clogging Up My Computer?

Remove CiceroUIWndFrame to avoid crashes

Windows, while being shutdown after yet another hung Outlook session, reported that it was having trouble getting rid of the CiceroUIWndFrame. So who’s Cicero, aside from a famed first century B.C. orator and political casualty? Apparently, in the Windows universe, Cicero is part of the speach and handwriting recognition system in MS Office. Also apparently, I’m far from the only one to run into trouble with it (as can be seen).

I’ve been suffering many hung Outlook sessions while using wireless lately. I’ll get rid of the handwriting and speach stuff as I’m not very likely to use it. I doubt this’ll fix all my troubles, they’ve appeared too many and too varied to be easily blamed on one little piece of ancillary software.

For what it’s worth, I find Outlook much more reliable when I work “offline” over wireless connection periodically send/receiving to stay in sync.

Filed under Software and Outlook.

Posted by eric at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2005

US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan D

Still questing for some option aside from Cingular for prepaid GSM cellular telephone service for those occasions when I’m in the states, I looked into Verizon today. I’ve never been too awfully keen on Verizon because one of the local companies that got assimilated into that particular borg was the highly dysfunctional GTE. All my indirect experience with Verizon since then seems to indicate that whatever ailed GTE was contagious and has thoroughly infected its new host Verizon. (Some corporate cultures are just like that, just impossibly pernicious. For example, no matter how many good companies it buys and no matter how many times it changes its name, US Airways remains good old Agony (Alleghany) Airways.)

Poking through Verizon’s site I find that they do offer a pay-as-you-go plan. It compares fairly poorly to that offered by Cingular. First there’s a daily access charge of 99¢ “even on days you do not make or receive calls.” What if my ‘phone isn’t even on? Cingular’s $1 access fee associated with its 10¢/min prepaid plan may work similarly but it’s worded differently. Then there’s the expiration schedule for prepaid minutes. Since I’m likely to be out of the country for months at a time, I want to be able to get to the longest period prior to expiration with the least amount of dollars. For Cingular, this is $100 which yields 180 days to expiration. With Verizon, you’ve got to shell out $150 to get to the top of the schedule and even then the minutes will live for just 120 days. Next please.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2005

UK Prepaid Cell Service, Plan B

I purchased a Virgin Mobile SIM from Telesital along with the tri-band ’phone because it’s the only brand they presently offer. However, I’m still on the look out for any better deals that I might be able to get once I’m on location. Just off the bat, O₂ does not look like such. Many of the features of their pay-as-you-go plans look nice, like the extras you get for fairly minimal (£10) monthly top ups; 100 extra minutes or messages. However, one big down side comes when you step out of the O₂ system. Calling mobile in, as we say, “another” network? Bad customer! Bad! Don’t do that again! That’ll be 40p/min.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

Light at the End of the Bureaucratic Tunnel!

I’ve spent much of this morning and afternoon filling out forms — 3 copies of the visa application to be specific — chasing down the spouse to collect a signature I should have gotten this morning before I left for the office and going to our HR people for clarification on how to answer abstruse questions (e.g., “How much money is available for your visit?”). However, after some perseverance, HR now has in their hands three complete signed forms with, we hope, all the right answers filled in. How odd to be filling out a government form that doesn’t ask for one’s social security number first thing.

The next step, I’m told, is that all of these applications, our new and expired passports, 2 additional passport photos each, official marriage registry copy, official birth certificate copy for the offspring, three months’ bank statements, and three months’ pay stubs all get bundled up and shipped off to the U.K. Consulate in New York for processing. The end result, in some two weeks time, should be a work permit endorsement in my passport and dependent endorsements in the spouse’s and offspring’s passports.

Update: Seems we took a wrong turn in filling out the olde fashioned paper forms sent to us by the firm assisting us with U.K. immigration issues. The preferred, indeed required method now is to complete the forms on line using the e-fastrack system and then ship up the supporting documentation via courier. Fortunately for me, as I’ve already provided HR with all of the required information in the paper forms, they’ve taken on the task of transcribing it to the electronic forms.

Update: Looks good. I’ve received three confirmation e-mails from the e-fastrack system reporting that the applications have been received.

Update (7/11): Received an e-mail update from the visa processing team that the package of supporting documents has been received and that the application should be processed within about five business days (their web site says that it takes ten but I’m not disposed to quibble about it).

Update (7/15): Received an e-mail update from the visa processing team informing me that the visas have been approved and the documents given over to the courier for shipment back down here. That’s four business days for turn-around. Compare this to Uncle Sam’s “that’ll be six weeks unless you slide me another half a C note”.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2005

Plans Delayed

Well, I had been planning a house hunting trip to London next week but recent events have put rather a bump in that road. Heard the news while I was driving into the office this morning. At first I wondered whether I was hearing anniversary coverage of some years old attack like the Canary Wharf bombing. But it wasn’t long before it was all too clear that this was a current, possibly ongoing attack.

While I’m not particularly worried from a safety standpoint – I imagine that there will be such a strong security presence that the tubes will seldom be safer – but after consulting with our people here, it was decided that the last thing London will need next week is yet another clueless Yank wobbling about the underground looking for the line to Richmond. The system will probably be under enough stress without me to help. Inconvenient in some ways but I don’t think that my convenience matters a whole lot in the context.

The knotty bit of the problem is that in order to move the work permit process forward, I need to ship my passport, along with the spouse’s and the offspring’s, up to the U.K. consulate in New York for a couple of weeks. Any small delay in my house hunting trip translates directly to a delay in the ultimate date that the permit is issued and I can actually start work. So, we’ve decided start the permit process now and push the scouting trip off until the permit is approved. This’ll mean about a three week delay.

If this all pans out, I’ll have the permit when I go over to look for a place to live so why not just stay at that point. It means getting all the crap I plan to take together in less time but since my concept has been to travel light for these two years, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2005

US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan C

A third option in the US pay-as-you-go ’phone market is Virgin Mobile USA. The coverage maps below, just pulled from their site, show good coverage in most of our stateside stomping grounds. The downside of going with Virgin Mobile USA is that there does not seem to be any way that I can establish service without also purchasing a new handset that will immediately become a paper weight. What is it with U.S. service providers and selling just SIMs? Why do I have to by a #*%@$!! ’phone every time I want to change providers? Three years ago, we had not a single cellular ’phone in the house. Now we have three. Soon we may have five, three of them useless. I wonder if anybody collects old handsets? Hate to send perfectly good, if deliberately cripled, hardware to the dump.

Central NC	D.C. Area	Western NC	South West VA

Update: Virgin Mobile USA apparently uses CDMA over the Sprint PCS network in the mid-Atlantic region so option C looks like a bust. At this point it seems I’m stuck with Cingular, how sad.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)

US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan B

I’m not one of Cingular’s greatest fans, but they do have a pay-as-you-go plan and it does cover central North Carolina. It looks like the minutes might expire a tad too quickly; $100.00 top-up minutes expire in 180 days. It’s probable that we’ll be back in town more frequently than that and will most likely be heavy ’phone users when here so this may be an option. If Cingular can get behind the idea of converting the plan for my current number to a prepaid plan, then it might just be worth it if for no other reason than I won’t have to buy a redundant ’phone. My prediction is that there will be some stoopid reason why this just can’t be done.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Pay-as-you-go... Somewhere Else

Looks like I was a bit confused when I looked over the service coverage maps for the T-Mobile pay-as-you-go service. When I put my new T-Mobile SIM into the v180, all I get is “Emergency Only”. My fault. I muddled up the T-Mobile plan system map (see below left) with the T-Mobile prepaid system map (below right). Note the total lack of prepaid coverage in North Carolina. Well, the minutes on the account should be good for a year or so and there is coverage in the D.C. area where I’ll no doubt find myself before too long, but it is all rather frustrating. Guess I’ll have to fall back on Virgin Mobile USA or, shudder, Cingular. Really hope I don’t have to buy a useless handset just to get a prepaid SIM.

Filed under Relocating to London, Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2005

US Prepaid Cell Service, SIM Only

The T-Mobile SIM I ordered from Planet Omni (which is really Quantum Star) arrived today, right on time, shipped by yet another entity called buyundercost.com. What’s not obvious in the low resolution picture here — I’m too lazy at the moment to shuffle downstairs and dig out the Olympus so I’ve used the Logitech webcam instead — is that what we’ve got here is what might be called a refurbished SIM. It’s held in the card by two strips of scotch tape and the associated telephone number is scrawled in pen on the back of the card. Still, if it works it works.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

Notes on MSN Desktop Search

Part of today’s work was to asses the MSN Desktop Search tool as a potential alternative to Google Desktop. We’re hoping to use some desktop search engine or another as a solution for users who need to hunt through vast e-mail archives and while Google Desktop works fine by itself, it apparently does not get on well with the Aventail client which we kinda need to have installed on all our laptops.

Installation

Microsoft’s entry into the desktop search engine arena is bundled with the MSN toolbar. This can be obtained at http://toolbar.msn.com/. Download and installation proceeded cleanly, so far as I can tell. (For what it’s worth, I’m using Windows XP SP2, IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519, and Outlook 10.6515.6714.) The installer demands that both IE and Outlook be closed before it will finish the job.

Initial Impressions

Noted that, when hosted by a laptop, the index daemon is happy to index newly added files while on battery power but will not run a full index pass unless some settings are updated. Watching the index in operation, the daemon seems to be pretty good at stepping aside of other processes’ way.

I had a collection of .pst files under My Documents but they were not indexed in the initial pass. They were not opened within Outlook.

What’s Included

The MSN Desktop Search package adds search tool bars to: IE, Windows Explorer, Outlook and the taskbar. All of the old MSN toolbar features are included such as pop-up blocking for IE. One additional new feature is tabbed browsing for IE, about time too.

Searching

Very simple, just enter search keywords in any of the MSN Desktop Search toolbars and hit “Enter”. A results box will pop up listing hits. This list can be filtered by type of resource: e-mail, document, IM chat etc. The search engine retains a list of recent search strings from which you can select and repeat common searches. When the search field on the taskbar is used, a pop-up list of documents that satisfy the search criteria typed thus far is dynamically updated with nearly every keystroke. Pretty slick.

If you leave the factory settings in place, the MSN Desktop Search engine will build an index that includes your Outlook, or Outlook Express, e-mail and everything under “My Documents”. Additional directories may be added, or selectively excluded, using a fairly easy to set up “Custom folders and e-mail locations” wizard in the “Desktop Search Options…” panel.

Indexing E-mail

As with Google Desktop, e-mail archives that are not currently opened in the mail client will not be indexed. Indeed, for any e-mail to be indexed, the mail client must be opened while the index is built. If an e-mail archive is opened after MSN Desktop Search is installed, it appears that Outlook must be shutdown and restarted or you have to diddle Desktop Search’s settings to force the archive to be indexed. Sadly, if once you get Desktop Search to build indices for archived e-mail files and you then close those files from within Outlook, the search engine will clear the associated index entries in pretty short order. The archive files must remain opened within the mail client to remain in the index.

Overall, the desktop search engine and tools included in the latest MSN tool bar seem to be worthy competitors to Google Desktop. More to our own point, I encountered no compatibility problems with any of the other software on my laptop.

Filed under Software, MSN, Desktop Search.

Posted by eric at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)

Does Anybody in the States Sell Just a SIM?

In my initial search for pay-as-you-go cellular ’phone plans in the US, the only provider I could find for whom I could purchase just a SIM — we neither want nor need another US ’phone &emdash; was T-Mobile. I ran across two vendors: Telestial, who claims to be out of US SIMs at the moment, and any of n subsidiaries of a Quantum Star. The later is a we’ll sell anything that makes money outfit with more doing business as names than might be best calculated to make me comfortable. Still, a search through BBB and other on-line references raises no flags so I’m placing an order for a T-Mobile Max prepaid SIM. This should give us adequate coverage through the mid-Atlantic region and the minutes should last the intervals we’ll be across the pond.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)