My Creative Zen xtra arrived yesterday and as with all electronic things nowadays I had to wait 4 hours for the battery to fully charge. By then it was bedtime so I only got the chance to have a quick listen to some of the classical tunes before going to bed. However I’ve had a chance to use it a bit today and here are my thoughts.
I installed the MS antispyware on the parents in law (PIL) computer and although it didn’t find anything it does have some funny things going on.
If I log on as me I get no alerts from the application. However if I log off and then log on as the PIL I get 3 alerts pop up as below. However these only occur if I’ve logged on before they have. I can’t work out what application keeps changing these settings as there is nothing obvious in the startup list. Any ideas?
Interestingly, the url redirects to altavista.com
Internet Explorer URLs alert
Internet Explorer URL for Search Bar has been allowed to be changed from http://go.compaq.com/1Q00CDT/0409/bl8.asp to http://www.google.com/ie. This URL is in the user’s allowed Internet Explorer URL list
Internet Explorer Security Settings alert
Occured on: 4/27/2005 at 10:12:49 AM
An Internet Explorer security setting & Warn about invalid site certificates and has been granted permission to be changed. This setting is in the user’s allowed security settings.
Internet Explorer Explorer Bars alert
Occured on: 4/27/2005 at 10:12:48 AM
Internet Explorer Bar Microsoft Shell Browser UI Library c:\windows\system32\browseui.dll has been granted permission to be installed. This program is in the user’s allowed Explorer Bar list.
About Internet Explorer Explorer Bars: An Explorer bar (band) is a panel like the Favorites, History or Search panels that you see in Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer.
A useful links of google map hacks
When people ask me what the difference is between american living and english living I can tell them a little story….
In england, when you go to a drivethru and ask for some ketchup, you end up with 
However if you go to an american drivethru you end up with 
If you have a google account for groups or gmail then if you sign into the account and then go to the SearchHistory page then it will record the searches you have done for your later perusal. It also changes the google.com page to include the searchhistory results as a link. Very handy if you are using multiple computers and know that you found the answers on one of them during a google search.
From Add or Remove – White Space This is generally due to the DisplayIcon having a negative number. From here you can either remove the negative number or remove the last application listed: Start/Run/Regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{}
Kristen woke up early the next morning and went downstairs to see the cats and found that Winston had found his way into the closed off area of the basement and Basil couldn’t be found anywhere. We subsequently found that he was hiding under the stairs, wedged in as far as he could go and it was a hard job pulling him out. Unfortunately he was not very happy with the move and was still pretty scared. Every sound had him running to the far corner of the room where he could hide. (However you’ll be pleased to know that he is now fine). By this time Frankie and Winston were back to normal and were playing like they’d lived here all their lives. Sometimes i’m sure Frankie has a memoryspan comparable to a goldfish.
Thursday morning we went to the Social Security and I filled in the form to get a number. It is very difficult to do anything in the states without ones of these and why they don’t give you one as you get your permanent resident visa I don’t know. I now have to wait a week for the number to arrive in the post (they don’t give numbers out immediately) which means I can’t apply for a driving licence, credit card or mobile phone under my own name yet. We then went to see the bank to enquire about our credit rating/mortgages and we both applied for a credit card to improve our scores. Kristen had a credit rating from when she lived in the states previously so that helped a great deal, but we are now waiting for my SSN before the card application can come through.
We’ve also got new mobile phones which are quite a bit different to those in the uk. In the States, Nokia phones are very much in the minority and the majority of phones are flip covers. There are about 3 or 4 major networks and we chose Verizon primarily because with two phones on the same network you can talk between them (and any other phone) at any time for free. (and for $5 a month you get unlimited text and picture messages too). Thankfully most of our friends and family are on verizon apart from Kristens Dad so we shouldn’t get any nasty suprises.
We got the phones from Radioshack which seemed to have the best deals that I could find locally and the guy that served us is the owner of the geocache behind the shop so we had a good chat about that too.
I also got a new wireless hub for the computers upstairs. I had brought mine with me but as its an adsl modem I had suspicions it wouldn’t work easily in the current network (cable modem) setup. Also I didn’t bring the uk power supply so I would need to get a US one, and that costs $20 yet I could buy a new wireless router for $29 from bestbuy (after rebates!) That was installed yesterday and works great and I get coverage in the basement too (which is where I am typing this from).
Later on today we get to go to the spring game at Ohio State’s football ground. (A Spring Game is where the offensive play against the defensive and is like a training match that anyone can come along to.) Really looking forward to that and I hope it doesn’t rain. Hopefully we have some decent seats so I can get some good pictures.
Now that we’ve actually moved to the States, new posts on the move and our new life will be under the “Settling in” category as opposed to “Moving to the States” category. This will probably only affect those of you who are looking at the category archives. Regular rss readers and website readers will not be affected.
Well I woke up at 3am this morning and I didn’t really try to get back to sleep as the alarm clock was set for 4.15 this morning to get ready for the drive to the airport. It was a quick check of email to make sure we hadn’t had any important emails come in and then it was time to shut the computer network down, pack it in the hand luggage and let the cats out for their last roam around the house. They all seemed to be very suspicious that I was letting them out of their room AND they were hungry as we were not allowed to feed them last night so needless to say they were making their feelings heard.
(seeing as though this post is pretty long, the rest of it is in the more section)
Well about the only thing left in the house is the furniture AND the broadband connection 🙂
The pickfords movers came at 9.10 this morning (slightly early) and got stuck in pretty quickly. We had 43 boxes (i think we had allowed for 44) and they had finished by 12.10pm. The box-to-tea ratio was not bad at 22:1. They could have had more but the packed ALL the mugs so I’ve not even got a mug to drink coffee from between now and Wednesday morning. That will have to be rectified if I am going to be awake to get to the airport.
I gave away all my motorbike stuff on the freecycle mailing list. One guy was extremely thankful and took everything I had (apart from the helmet and gloves which had gone mouldy). Then this afternoon a mechanic came round to collect the motorbike. After a couple of minutes fiddling with the choke and a boost from a special battery pack he had the bike running. He wasn’t able to drive it away because as soon as the booster pack was disconnected the bike died, but I was very impressed that it started up. He had to bash the brakes with a brick (which promptly split in two) to release them as they had siezed up a bit and after pumping up the tires (with an electric pump) he wheeled the bike down the lane. I was very sad to see it go as I had many a happy mile on it and seeing him getting it started to easily I wish I had flogged it for more money.
The freecycle network was quite neat as last night I deleted all the content on Boring Bulb Blog and recreated articles on all the things I had to give away. Then sent an email out to the list and people could comment if they wanted the things. That way everyone knew what was left. As I received comments I moved the category from Free to Gone and the url that I gave out only contained the Free items. It worked out really well – thanks MT
We had a celebratory meal out at The Plough at lunchtime which was nice. Kristen had a duck wrap and I had a steak and onion baguette. Mine wasn’t as nice as I remembered from the Friday lunchtimes at Siemens – partly because it didn’t have gravy on it and partly because a lot of the steak had fat/gristle in it. The bits that didn’t were nice though. Kristen wanted to go to this pub as we had often driven past it but never stopped so now was a good time.