Page Template Last Updated: 2006/10/29 21:27
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
| Months | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
[13:29] ...and visas for all!
We had our visa interview today and, despite much freaking out by me, it was all pretty easy, went well and we've been granted a lovely new E-3 visa!
The action all took place at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States_in_London">American Embassy in London. Our appointment was for 0930 so we turned up bang on 0930 (the letter said not to rock up early because there's nowhere to stand around). We had to stand in a line in order to find out which line to queue in in order to gain entry so that was nice. Luckily we'd come prepared and had plenty of reading material and no liquids (or pocket-knives - although I admit that I protested bitterly about that on the way out the front door this morning). We eventually got into the building around 1015 after a reasonably perfunctory security check and presented our appointment letter for the third time to get into what looked very much like an airport waiting room. There are TV's hanging off the roof with counter numbers and the ticket number they're currently serving, a wee cafeteria (well, a refrigerated cabinet) and a LOT of seats. I also noticed that the fire extinguishers seemed to be from the US. I'd never seen anything like them before and I've no idea how you actually use them. A little searching this evening has identified them as RED LINE Cartridge-Operated Fire Extinguishers, they look very exciting!
We got called up for our initial check pretty quickly - around 1100. The automatic doodad called out our number (227) and we headed over to counter 11. A nice guy on the other side went through our documentation and made sure everything was in order and then asked us to present ourselves to the LS2 Check fingerprint scanner. This little gadget takes some pretty high-res (1584 x 1480 pixel) scans of your fingers: one of all four finges on each hand together and then both thumbs together. I asked the guy behind the window about the data retention policy but he just said that they'd keep them for "as long as necessary". So far I've not been able to find anything on the web except this from the US-VISIT Privacy Policy:
"Personal information collected by US-VISIT will be retained and destroyed in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements."
I suspect that my prints and all of the information on the visa papers will be staying on file for quite some time. I guess I better make sure that I remain innocent so that I've nothing to fear....(hopefully the definition of innocent will remain the same).
After that excitement we sat around until about 1300. Luckily I had an almost unread MAKE Magazine which kept me happily occupied. When we got called around to the second set of windows and a nice guy asked us a few questions to make sure we hadn't told any lies, scanned our fingers again (I assume to make sure we'd not done a quick switcheroo in the waiting room) and sent us on our way!
[Posted at: 22/08/2006 21:29]
[09:24] Bug? WScript and CScript execute Shell.Run differently.
I've been trying to debug something this afternoon and I've just realised that the reason it's not working is because the two Windows Scripting Host engines, WScript and CScript (possibly the W and C stand for Windows and Command-Line respectively) treat the Shell.Run method differently!
To see the bug in action, create a .vbs file with the following content (which comes from the page linked above):
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Return = WshShell.Run("notepad " & WScript.ScriptFullName, 1, true)
You can specify the engine to use on the command line. Run "CScript.exe test.vbs" or "WScript.exe test.vbs" to see each in action.
When run, this should execute the notepad program and then wait for the process to terminate before exiting. Under the CScript engine this is exactly what happens. When the WScript engine is used the script terminates as soon as the notepad proces has been spawned.
I've not found a KB article acknowledging this just yet but I can confirm that this happens on Windows XP (Version 5.1.2600) using WSH 5.6 8515 and Windows 2003 Server Standard (Version 5.2.3790) using WSH 5.6 6626.
[Posted at: 18/08/2006 17:24]
Updated 23/08/2006 20:48: I raised a bug, or as Microsoft calles them "Feedback Item", specifically Feedback ID 182672, mostly because I wanted to try out the Microsoft bug tracking facility: connect.microsoft.com. It was actually pretty easy to find and use, I'll be interested to see if anyone actually picks the bug up or not though...
[09:00] This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Holy crap! Life got REAL busy all of a sudden. I've not stopped writing entries but they're all archived on my USB key pending some photos being sorted out. Hopefully I'll get life sorted out somewhere in the next couple of weeks and I'll remedy the drastic post shortage. Just wanted to let y'all know I wasn't dead!
[Posted at: 18/08/2006 17:00]