Keith & Kay Seabourn

The experience of my relationship with Bill Bright has taught me much about the promise and power of reconciliation. I will never again deny the prospect of coming together with those with whom I disagree. It is indeed the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to break down the walls between us. Sojourners Magazine, 11/2004

The U.S. News and World Report cover story for this week is The Deep Divide: Why voters for both sides are so angry. This touches something that concerns me.

Having lived for 15 years in an African country that went through periods of democratic elections and military coups, I was always amazed at how few countries can go through a polarizing election then everyone works together following the election. The African country I resided in could not do that. After an election, people were left polarized. To the point of killing one another. Or plotting military coups because their party did not win.

I felt that it had something to do with the strong Christian heritage that still had residual influence in the U.S.

Today, I read an amazing article that spread hope. The November issue of Sojourners Magazine, which I rarely read, had an article by Jim Wallis on The Power of Reconciliation.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourner’s Magazine, and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, found themselves on opposite sides of the political process many years ago. This is the story of their reconciliation. Amazing.

I don’t really intend to turn this into a tech-geek discussion, but I have found another tool that is pretty cool. It’s designed for those of us using LCD screens (that’s what is in your notebook computer). ClearType Tuner is the name. It’s part of Microsoft’s semi-official Power Toys.

I read about it in Woody’s Office Watch.

Do you hate the lousy search capability in Outlook as much as I do? Do you feel it’s a waste of time to wait while Windows scans your entire 40Mb hard disk looking for a file you used 2 days ago but cannot now find?

I sure do.

Enter… Copernic Desktop Search

A few weeks ago, I installed Copernic Desktop Search, a free search utility. It searches my Outlook emails including attachments, files like Word or Excel or Adobe PDF, and more. I’ve only used it for email and file searches. It indexes whenever there is 30 seconds of inactivity to keep my indexes updated.

And now… Google Desktop Search

Today, I installed Google Desktop Search, another free search utility. I’m indexing my files now, so don’t have much usability experience. If it works as well as Google’s web search, I may switch. Google Desktop Search does not index PDF files (bummer!), but it does thread email messages like gmail. It is also supposed to remember webpages you’ve read recently and include them in the search. That will be great!

There are a few obvious differences in the two solutions. Copernic is a stand-alone program in the traditional Windows style. Google runs in a web browser with the url http://127.0.0.1:4664/ (running on the localhost with port number 4664).

Sometimes I run a local webserver (Apache) on port 80, so I don’t know if this will interfere. More on that after I use it.

I have had some additional crashes in my Windows XP system since installing Copernic. It seems that sometimes Outlook and Copernic are fighting over my mail files. The system locks up and killing the processes is the only way out.

My friend Rob has blogged about Google’s desktop search on his blog.

We’ll see how Google works.

Well, I need to quite typing so Google can resume indexing my email and desktop files.

Enough is enough!

After hurricane Jeanne visited Florida, I told my wife that if we had another hurricane I was moving to North Dakota. She told me I wouldn’t like the winters and that my job required living in Florida. Someone sent me this revised map. YES! I have found a way to do both! How do we get this new geography approved?

We made it through the hurricane during the night. Fortunately, the winds were barely hurricane force. Yea, “barely” means they are still 75 miles per hour! But the roaring is decreasing. The storm is heading towards Tampa. Look out, Tampa!