My buddy Sam sent me an email a couple of days ago indicating that he just might have joined The Family recently. And he joined it a much higher level than I, I might add, considering I'm still lumbering along in the PowerPC world; my G4 Powerbook, though a loyal and trusted friend, seems slow as molasses in January these days.

He also mentioned an old OS/2 habit, one which we separately shared back in the day. I started using OS/2 when I worked at UPS. One of our managers was running 2.1, with the old Presentation Manager that looked like a crappy(er) Windows 2.0, albeit with long filenames and the ability to run concurrent DOS sessions. I avoided it until OS/2 3.0 came out.

In '94, when Warp hit the shelves, I rushed out to Soft-Warehouse¹ in Alpharetta, looked in the Operating Systems² department until I found a box, then gave the man $300 dollars for the privilege of running it. Then, I walked over the desktop applications department, and put down another $495 for Lotus Smartsuite/2. Then I OEM'd 16MB of RAM for about $400 to make it all go.

Now, many may see OS/2 as a butt-ugly cousin of Windows, and they may be right. But back then, it was a work of art. Especially in the sense that it wasn't an exact science getting it to run. Nothing ever really worked like it was supposed to. Without the fallback of a DOS prompt, you had to have a second, fully-functional machine to do things like edit the CONFIG.SYS on the installation floppies to make sure your DASD drivers were loading. And most of the drivers were written so that, if they encountered an error while loading, they'd bork the whole boot process, just to be on the safe side.

The graphical interface also hung constantly. The Workplace Shell, despite (or maybe due to) all its object-orientiness, was horribly unstable. But I never saw a hang that wasn't cured with Control-Alt-Delete. That key combo went right down to the kernel, and always gave a satisfying, unconfirmed reboot, wedged GUI be damned. There was even a 3rd party program called Watchcat that sat on the serial port, or on a secondary Hercules/MCGA monitor, and let you monitor and kill programs remotely. The kernel's Kung Fu was strong like that, but the GUI was just ass.

Now, when Chicago started finally coming down the pipe, and even the Rolling Stones where pulled into the OS marketing world ("Start me up", anyone?), OS/2 fans like myself were sure that this pissant little DOS extender with a homely face wouldn't be the future. It couldn't be the future, it was just too depressing. It still wasn't a 32-bit OS, though the 386 had been out for over 8 years. It still used FAT, for crying out loud. In short, Chicago sucked.

OS/2 seemed like a scrappy little underdog, nipping heroically at the Microsoft behemoth's heels. I'm not sure why it gave that impression. At the time, IBM was much bigger than Microsoft, a huge, multinational corporation with interests in basically every aspect of electronics. They just couldn't write or market good software.

I'm not sure why I just wrote 500 words on OS/2. I actually wanted to write something about Linux.

Man, I'm unprepared. There's a checklist of things you should do before moving to England. I came over here without any money, preparation, or attack plan. There's something unbelievably stupid about this. It worked for me when I moved to Germany, but moving to England's a bit more complicated, apparently. Either that, or I'm remembering it wrong.

But I'm not the only one. The office I'm working in is full of non-British people. It's a rag-tag group of Germans, Italians, Brazilians, Spaniards, one (1) American, and who knows what else that all found themselves in the same boat when they first came over. This despite promises from The Company to help one resettle; promises which are certainly not kept and, when referred to in conversation, change their shape and character like a Democrat on a whistle-stop.

But at some point a kindly soul in the department, now departed, made a list of the reality of the situation. It's a short list of what one really needs to do when moving to England. Unfortunately, I only found out about it after I'd already been here a week. Here's your to-do list once you've arrived in England:

1. Get a room. If possible, get a rental agreement or any bill with your name and address on it. (proof of address)

   Deposit is usually 1 1/2 times the rent. Deposit and first rent is to be paid beforehand. If the room is unfurnished, see "Things to Buy" for shops and example prices.

2. Get a letter from your office manager (HR Lady) stating that you are working for the company and including your address. (proof of employment)

3. Get a bank account. Just walk in with your documents:

   1. Passport or national ID card
   2. Proof of employment (see 2.). it might be handy to have your contract with you.
   3. Proof of address

   Banks

   1. HSBC – try to get a standard account (they try to sell you an advanced package including insurances etc.)

   2. NatWest – Also recommended as this bank does not charge for withdrawing money from a different bank's cash machines

4. Give your bank details to The Company

5. Register with Inland Revenue – this is done by your HR manager. You should get your tax code about 2 weeks later (PAYE Coding Notice) At the end of the fiscal year (ending April 5th), you will get a "P60 End of Year Certificate" detailing your "Pay and Income Tax" levels.

6. Get a National Insurance Number by applying at a Job Centre Plus office. They ask for dtails before they schedule an interview appointment to verify your eligibility. Appointments are scheduled about two weeks ahead, and take place in the nearest county office, which usually isn't near at all. Without an NI number, you will be on emergency tax, which is higher than the standard tax rate.

   Documents:

   1. Passport

   2. National ID card

   3. Driving License or any other official document identifying you (Birth certificate, police registration, medical card, etc.)

   4. Proof of employment (see 2.)

   5. Recent payslip

   6. Bank statement

   7. Proof of address (utility bill, rental agreement, etc. – see 1.)

   8. It might be handy to have your PAYE Coding Notice with you

   As money is paid in a timely manner so it is available on the 27th, try to get your appointment after this date.

7. If you are British, a citizen of a member state of the EU, or other Commonwealth citizen, you can apply for inclusion on the Register of Electors. This will allow you to vote at local government elections. Your credibility will rise (good for tenancy applications or bank-related matters) and you are obliged to pay Council Taxes¹

8. If you buy any TV or radio equipment, you will be asked for your address, which will be automatically forwarded to the "TV Licensing Office"

9. Get a Tesco Clubcard

10. Get a life ;-)

    Any address change has to be communicated to all above-mentioned authorities. For the official notices to local council, the TV licensing, and most other on-line services, you can use I am Moving , where you can create/use an account for free.

All of this could have been avoided with a bit of planning. I am bitterly disappointed in myself.

For those interested, there's information to be had:

Farnborough derives its name from from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Ferneberga (Fern Hill) and is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086). But for the coming of the army at nearby Aldershot, the arrival of the railways, and the beginning of flying, Farnborough would probably have remained an isolated heathland village, that is until the latter half of the 20th century when the population moved out of London suburbia and became commuters.

"But for the … arrival of the railways, and the beginning of flight…". That's a pretty big conditional. There are probably a lot of places whose development was seriously affected by railways and the advent of powered flight. But I understand where the good Mr. Parkins is coming from.

I had forgotten the cable to connect my camera to my laptop. Of all the stupid things that I packed for the trip, 50 different USB cables, a USB hub, power adapters for devices I’d forgotten, not to mention devices whose power adapters I’d forgotten, I forgot the one thing that was absolutely necessary and planned-for. Not to mention irreplaceable, seeing as every camera maker in the world decided that their camera’s little hole should look different from all the other cameras’ little holes.

I walked into a little computer store on the strip in Fleet, Hampshire. Walking up to the pasty-faced, teenaged part-timer there, I introduced myself and shook his hand, which seemed to shock him.

He unconsciously wiped his hands on his pants and said, “eh...nice to meet you, sir. What can I do for you?”

I asked him, “do you have any USB card-readers?”

“Um, yeah," he answered. "I think I saw some around here somewhere.”

I looked around the shop, which was organized and clean. Man, he must really be the FNG around here. He finally found what I was looking for, stored on a shelf right next to where he had been sitting. He handed it to me and I started reading the back of the packaging.

“Just looking to see if it works with my Mac,” I told him.

“Oh, it's USB, so it should work,” he answered, and took the reader out of my hand. He moved his lips while he read the package. “Oh, yeah,” he said finally. “Right there it says it: ‘Requires Mac OS 9 or later’.” He looked at me skeptically. “So, you do have OS 9 or later, don’t you?”

“Um, yeah, I think so.” OS 9 went out of style back in the ‘90s.

He moved around to the register, and I handed him my Visa card. He looked uncertain as he turned it over in his hand. “This thing doesn’t have a chip on it?”

I took it back and examined it. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“Well, I don’t think we can take that, then.”

“Why don’t you just swipe it,” I said. “Give it a go.”

He shrugged and swiped it through the machine.

From behind me, a voice said, “it’s all chips nowadays, you know.”

I looked around, and saw that an older woman was standing behind me. She looked to be in her mid 40s, and wore a name plate with the store’s logo on it. “You can’t get nothing without a dozen little chips in it.”

I nodded agreement, and turned back to the young man behind the register.

“So, what kind of Mac you got, then?”

“A PowerBook G4.”

He nodded approvingly. “Nice piece of kit, that.” The little machine that had taken my card made a loud ping!, and spit out a receipt. He tore it off and gave it to me to sign, along with the card reader.

“Now, you have a nice day sir, and do please visit us again.”

I thanked him, said goodbye to the chip-lady, and put the small package into my bag next to my laptop. “Thanks, man, I’ll do that.” Nice kid.

Didja ever discover something that made your reality skip a beat? You know how, for just a second, something is so far out of place that you can't even figure out what's wrong with the picture? For example, the Augsburg Wireless-Internet provider Cyberways has had the same guy on their start page for years:

Every time you connect to the internet over public wireless in Augsburg, that dude was right there, staring at you with those soulless black eyes. Like a doll's eyes...

But today, I see the same mug in an advertisement for some random Minnesota state college:

And at an Irish hosting service:

And the weird thing was, I always figured he was the boss at Cyberways. I even thought I saw him once on the tram. I hate it when people use the same stock photos everywhere. Everybody's full of shit. Oh, I guess it's effective use of your cash dollars, seeing as it's cheaper than paying attractive people to work for you. But still, why not just be honest for a split second?

You get this kind of thing all over the Internet, of course. If you've ever shopped for web hosting, you'll notice, after a few visits to the providers' pages, that their employees all kind of look alike. And there's always some woman somewhere holding a laptop at her waist in near-sexual ecstasy over the reasonable shared hosting prices.

It's a leitmotif throughout the enter hosting industry: Shared Webspace=Chick with laptop.