In reply to Font icon troubles:
Found it. In the Fontlab info section section "Encoding and Unicode", subsection "Unicode Ranges", UNcheck the box labeled "Mathematical Operators".
Really peculiar.
Found it by viewing with thumbnails ( I usually don't) a random folder of ttf fonts and found a couple with the same symptom and looked into them; generated them with and without that flag set and the thumbnails changed.
- Herb