Wow! Mark has a posting to my new MSDN article. Isn't it funny! Hopefully you enjoy it and you find it useful. And yes Mike, it is all about SPS and not about WSS (:-)).
How to customize your search using SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Explore three ways to incorporate Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Search (service) into custom Web pages, SharePoint Web Parts, Microsoft Windows applications, and other smart-client front-end applications such as those in the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions
For those who like to download the sample code of the article, I have dropped the samples on our SharePoint resource center. It is not the fastest machine, but you will find on it the goodies.