Productivity

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).

Or, maybe not so much.

I got an email from MoveOn.org today that was pretty funny– it was about a not-so-great comment made by McCain’s team today. Right up there with Al Gore inventing the Internet. Actually, I’m not sure what Al Gore really said, but it will forever be remembered this way.
So I wonder if McCain will be remembered for this?

The actual quote (I think?) is in this short article at Politico. OK, OK, I see what was intended here was not ‘he created the Blackberry.’

What’s interesting is the actual intent: that somehow the Telecommunications in the US over the past 15 years is something to marvel at. Umm.. maybe they need to take a look at South Korea, Japan, or even Europe and their mobile communications before they start raving about ours.

Premier innovation indeed.

Good fortune?, originally uploaded by katatak.

“Bonding Together” Let’s create the world’s most admired business in our markets.

Sounds nice

This has been a fine and relaxing long weekend.

Saturday I went out Geocaching for the first time in a few years. Agnes came with me and, using the new GPS (thanks Tim!), we were able to find 6 caches in 3 hours. To regular cachers, I’m sure this does not sound like much, but my previous attempts (with a much older and less accurate GPS) topped out at the reciprocal of that.

On Sunday, aside from getting a few things done around the house, the evening brought a Chemtrail show in Manhattan. I’m not sure if its the added adrenaline from being in the city and away from their home locations in Asbury Park, but the band was in top form and played wonderfully. They admitted to a couple of mistakes, but overall were quite pleased with their own performance. In addition, the sound technician they worked with was wonderful. I suppose it’s a luxury that’s only allowed to the first band on the bill (and even then, only when they show up more than an hour early), but sound checks were done on each member individually and then with the band as a whole. This allowed for much better levels across the board. To anyone in the business, I’m sure this sounds quite amateurish (of course they should do sound check on the whole band!), but it wasn’t something I had seen done for the guys before. I look forward to hearing the CD from the soundboard.
Other highlights from the night include my cousin, Marie, coming out for the show, a guy who was at the show who was “losing his shit” over them (read: so excited; called someone and was holding up his phone so they could hear; talked to the guys for about 45 minutes afterwards about his music distribution.. and their ‘image’… ok, so the 45 minutes of talking was more exciting than what actually came out of it, but at least people seem to be responding well to their style of music if not their wardrobes), and finally, to top off the evening, I drove in the city for the first time. Thank God J didn’t have me drive in, but at 12:45am, it wasn’t so bad. There were a surprising number of people still out and about, likely due to the holiday weekend, but I survived and think that I could muster the courage again (so long as I have a good navigator and don’t have to be looking too much at signs and can concentrate on the traffic).

Today we went out to the Tour of Somerville to watch and support our friend Sebastian in his race. I took loads of photos and look forward to downloading them and seeing what I’ve ended up with. There was a nice guy I ended up sitting next to who gave me some tips from his experiences capturing shots at these races. I think I was able to get Sebastian in a few shots, but I pretty much just turned on the multi-shot burst and just let it go while the racers went by. I’ll post something up here if anything great turned out.

In the other free times over the weekend, I’ve finished (well, 20 pages left) Order of the Phoenix and am ready to move on to The Half Blood Prince. Anyone who knows me well knows that each time a new Harry Potter book (and sometimes movie) comes out, I reread all the books up to that one in preparation and anticipation. So I now have (at the time of this writing) 53 days to read 627 pages (UK edition) in preparation for Deathly Hallows. So as long as I keep up these productive and somewhat relaxing weekends, I think I can handle the roughly 12 pages/day.

What an amazingly awesome day!

• Superiors showing confidence in you at work
• Multiple people offering to help you network to get where you would be well suited and happy :)
• Bowling awesomely! (205, 186, 247 for a 638– yeah, baby!)
• People from other leagues congratulating you on your great game
• Threadless T’s have arrived in the mail
• Getting ready for a trip when you haven’t been on one in quite a while.

:) While I currently may not be working my dream job, not many companies have multiple peoples who are interested in your happiness with your job… and that’s one reason why I REALLY like my company.

I wrote this about 7 months ago on my website, but didn’t want to lose it with my (infrequent) updates.

While in my education classes at EIU, I was never really convinced one way or the other about standardized testing. Sure, I did great at it, but look who also is in Mensa.
Most of my friends either hated them because they took them seriously and usually did poorly (these are intelligent people who just don’t test well) or they hated them because they knew they would do bad so would not take them seriously (or maybe they did bad because they thought they would…). At any rate, it’s a lot of stress for most kids (or not enough, so the data is bad) and can be very discouraging while teachers spend a lot of time trying to encourage.
So not having been convinced one way or the other, I don’t think that my work experiences in the academic assessment industry have encouraged my beliefs in the current system.
I’ll let you all know when I come up with a better way. (that is, I don’t know one, so hate to complain– just thoughts on the matter).