Crayons Taste Like Purple!

I haven’t read the latest on VoIP on the iPhone, but last I checked, it still wasn’t ‘allowed’. Perhaps this was just GoogleVoice & the news surrounding it. From the reviews, I’m not the first to notice this, but can confirm that as of 28 Dec 2009 (11 am CST), this worked, and I wasn’t in Airplane mode, either.

Today I found myself able to use WiFi to make a call over an hour long, completely free, with my iPhone. I’d downloaded the Vonage Mobile app while in Greece in an attempt to make a call without using international minutes, but alas, could not set it up without sending/receiving a call in the first place.

Over the holidays I’ve been in a low AT&T network area, but with wifi. That low network signal drops to no network signal when in the basement where I was working. I checked the Vonage app (now properly set up and with the initial $1.00 credit they gave me) for rates on US calls and found: $0.00 to land lines, $0.00 to mobiles. Interesting.

I made a 25 minute 800- call with no change in my balance (it gave me a low balance warning at the end of my call, but I see it is still at $1.00). I then talked for an hour to a US-mobile number, which reduced my balance to… $1.00.

Not sure if this is in error or if it’s a gift from Vonage to make up for the silliness of needing a separate account for the iPhone and/or an additional charge for softphones, but it worked for me. I’ll be interested to hear if it works for anyone else.

Most of the time this won’t matter for me anyway. I rarely use the voice aspect of my iPhone, wish that I could get it with a data plan only, and have so many rollover minutes that they are now expiring from 12 months ago. Still- for anyone whose minutes are running short and who would like to give free wifi a try while it lasts, check out Vonage Mobile.

cheap ball chair, originally uploaded by katatak.

I’ve been looking for a replacement chair for working at my computer. J’s got a great one (AK Octane), but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore (nor, according to many message boards, is their ‘new model’ that seems never to have come out).
I’d been intrigued by all the exercise ball chairs that many people swear by, but was concerned that 1. it would be too short (my desk is a little high and I don’t currently use a keyboard tray) and 2. I’d get tired of it like I did the kneel-chair I still have in storage.
I already had an exercise ball, so started looking around and came up with this setup. It’s the base of my papasan chair that, though I love it, I don’t use very often and is starting to fall apart. Although it’s somewhat worn, the bottom is a perfect fit for the ball and it comes to nearly the right height. I’ll need to pump the ball up just a little more to make it a tad higher, and/or I’m considering some casters to make it more useful for the office.
So far it’s treating me well and is helping out the pain I’ve had in my hip for the last few days. But if I change my mind, at least I’m not out the $70 (the price that the ball-chairs on Amazon were listed).

Chemtrail is making its first on-stage appearance at the Stone Pony tonight. There’s an interesting mix of bands: first a cover band (they were great) and now a reggae band called Dub Proof (v.mellow; Pretty sweet). There will be one more band, then Chemtrail, then the headliner, The Joe Harvard Band, and finally a closing group. I’ll post another pic & maybe an audio file if I can manage to grab one.

I like a little humor with my weather. Be safe all you, my friends, traveling in Chicagoland today!

weather report for today from Chicago Sun-Times

I recently got to catch up with my cousin, who had tales from a recent gig she worked on. Saturday I caught the proof on Bravo…
Congrats, Marie!

I come from a family of packrats. Both sides, unfortunately– my mom and my dad were both packrats. I have aunts, uncles, cousins… we’re all packrats. At least I recognize this and can fight against it, but I still, often, lose the fight.
Tonight I found myself looking for something I’m sure I would have packed away somewhere. Something that, when I’m fighting the packrat, I would look at and say, “I’ll never need this,” but then, the packrat says, “Hey, you never know!”¹ So then when times like tonight come along, I have to wonder: who won? The packrat? Or the other guy?
What I needed tonight was an insignificant piece of metal. One that I would have kept around for a while, and I’m sure if I look a while longer, I’ll find it.  But I probably did get rid of it at some point, thinking, “I’ll never need this… if I do want to remove a PCI card, I’ll be replacing it with another one,” or, “I’ve got loads of old computers sitting around here doing nothing; If I need one, I’ll just take it from the stock.”  As I spent 30 minutes or so digging for that little piece of metal to block the hole in the back of my G4, I of course didn’t find one. I did, however, find some other things…

• 1 Memory Card Reader that I’ve been missing for 5 years. I thought it got lost in the move. I thought maybe I’d left it at my last job. Nope– right there in a box, waiting for me to find it tonight.
• 1 voice recorder (iRock VM150- apparently the company is offline, but I found a review here) that I’ve been missing for approx 5 years. I remember taking it to San Francisco where I recorded the sound of the cable cars and their bells as well as to a Flaming Lips concert- New Years 2003 in Chicago. Unfortunately that audio wasn’t still on there, but seems I did use the MP3 player function for 1 song: This one, which was a major player on our San Francisco 2003 soundtrack.
• 1 Graduation card. Signed, sealed, addressed to a friend who was a year behind me in school. High School. So apparently I’ve had that sitting around for… yes, 10.5 years now. How did that ever get into a box here in my house halfway across the country?? It’s even in a new box, so I apparently transferred it there at some point.
• 1 credit card from a bank I’ve never heard of. The bank likely does not exist anymore and the expiration date on the card was… 1999. It had a credit limit of $500, which wouldn’t get me very far these days. So apparently I have heard of the bank enough to apply and receive a credit card from them. When I was a freshman in college.

There’s loads of other great stuff in there, I’m sure, but for now I must rest. It is a school-night, after all.

¹ “You never know!” is a phrase which I will always attribute to my dad. Fortunately it goes through my head every time I try to ‘find a place’ for something I don’t really need, so I think of him often

Each time I begin to get into a habit of posting, I end up falling off track after a month or so. It wasn’t so long ago that our girls’ night into the city to see Wicked! was so far off into the future that it wasn’t really even on my radar. Now it’s already 2 months past.

So to recap: Like many movies, I wanted to read the book before seeing the musical. The book was good– I enjoy knowing the full background to stories. But in this case, I think I enjoyed the musical even more. It’s been quite a while since I’d seen a musical- I forgot how much I love them! The sets were wonderful- I did snap a couple of pictures before the show started. It was funny as several of us who had read the book remembered things differently- the changes between the book and the musical. We knew the differences were there, but couldn’t always agree as to what the differences were, exactly. Becky remembered someone being red, I thought another character was blue, and none of us could recall exactly how the shoes were depicted in the book. Not surprisingly, being limited in length and a musical to boot, the ending of the theatrical version was more preferable than that in the book, but then I’ve always been a fan of fantasy.

Also since then… a new car and the first of the long end-of-year holidays! Less than a month now until we’re off to Aberdeen for Christmas!

:: A SodaSnap Postcard For You!, originally uploaded by katatak.

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Holy crap. Look what showed up in the mail from Gramma today. I’m speechless… It’s so… so… that it just might be awesome!

That’s right. It’s a dog purse.