Putzina's Blog

2011-05-15T10:52:00.002+02:00

Phone solutions, Microsoft's acquisition of Skype and other musings

I haven't updated my blog in a very long time, due to having a lot of work, stress, etc. Today I would like to share some information about my latest home phone set up and share my comments regarding the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft and its potential implications.

A few years ago, I got rid of my U.S. Skypein number that Skype was charging me $60 a year for when I found out about IPkall.com, which offers free U.S. phone numbers that can be forwarded to SIP services. Free is cheaper than $60, of course.

With my voip adapter registered with a sip service such as nonoh.net or voipblast.net (see previous posts for screenshots) and ordinary landline phones plugged into the adapter, which is plugged into the adsl modem and requires no computer to run, my phones here in Prague ring when people call the IPkall number, which is a Seattle number that is local to most people in the U.S. This is the same functionality that Skype provides, but is free and not $60 per year.

I used to own an expensive futuristic looking set of cordless phones that had built-in Skype and could receive Skype and landline calls and did not require a computer. They had cool ring tones and were attractive. However, I stopped using Skype to make outbound calls to ordinary phone lines when I found a cheaper solution. Voipblast and Nonoh charge $0.10 per minute to call Czech mobiles and charge nothing to call landline and mobile numbers in the U.S. and Canada and to call Czech landlines, while Skype either required purchasing of a monthly subscription for an unlimited calling plan or charged 2 cents per minute to call U.S. numbers and landlines in most other countries and charged almost 20 cents per minute to call Czech mobiles. Another disadvantage of using Skype was that I could not receive calls to the expensive Skypein number on any phones other than the Skype cordless phones.

My current set up is as follows.

All of my old fashioned landline phones are plugged into the sip adapter (similar to the little boxes provided by companies like Vonage), which is configured for nonoh.net, and I hear an American dial tone when I pick up any of the phones. My Seattle IPkall number is pointed at my sip account, which makes my phones ring when people call the Seattle number. Rather than use the Czech landline number provided together with my ADSL home internet service, I am using a Czech landline number that costs only $2 per month that I purchased from flynumber.com, and it is also pointed at the sip account. There is also a digital answering machine, which I bought for one dollar last year at a thrift store in Ohio during a visit to the U.S., which is plugged into the sip adapter along with the phones and takes messages for both the IPkall U.S. number and the flynumber.com Czech number.

The only thing I really ever use Skype (on my Linux machine) for any more is IMing and occasional video calls, both of which are free. In my opinion, Skype is shooting itself in the foot by charging so much more for inbound and outbound calling services than its competitors and for not being compatible with SIP. Apparently there is now a way to configure Skype SIP settings, but Skype charges for this service, which is ridiculous. I'm curious to learn what Microsoft's acquisition of Skype will mean. I find it odd that Skype did not respond to competition by lowering its prices, but actually increased them.

Lost parrot in Zbraslav!

2010-08-25T11:59:00.003+02:00

Here in Zahradní Čtvrť, the neighborhood in Zbraslav where we live, we and our neighbors have been "treated" for quite some time now to an annoying parrot owned by the people across the street, who whistles, talks and sings at the worst times of the day. Certainly, parrots are cute, but when I am in the middle of translating a 20-page lease agreement from Czech to English, the last thing I need is a whistling parrot to throw my concentration! Closing the windows usually solves the problem, but in the middle of July or August when it gets up to almost 40 degrees Celsius, who wants to close all the windows and make the apartment as hot as a sauna just to be able to concentrate on work without being disturbed by the frickin' parrot?

About a week ago, I noticed that we no longer heard the parrot any more, and I began to wonder why. I admit, I missed its whining just a little. Yesterday, I may have found the answer to my question at the bus stop, where I happened to snap this paper notice someone had taped up there. It was taken with my mobile phone, so I apologize for the blurry image.

The notice reads:

PARROT

found in a garden. Owner please call 732 308 265 18 August 2010

For the sake of preserving peace and quiet, the new owner can keep the parrot or donate it to an animal rights organization, as far as I'm concerned! Life is so amusing sometimes.

Translation of "bad English" song into standard English

2010-08-24T09:01:00.001+02:00

I am too busy to write an entire blog entry today, so here is a humorous video instead. Learners of English will especially enjoy listening to the words and reading the subtitles.

Some musings of mine for the day

2010-08-23T22:09:00.005+02:00

To reactivate this lame blog, or not to reactivate this lame blog? That's the real question.

I read a very interesting serious article this weekend in the Czech gay magazine Lui, which presents evidence that Jesus was gay and that all or many of the churches existing today in the world would be disowned by him if he the man, not to be confused with the modern solar deity of the same name, were alive today. In fact, based on the description of him in the article in Lui, Jesus was in fact much more like a modern neo-Pagan civil rights activist than he was like one of the many church leaders of today, some of whose doctrine sometimes even seems to revolve almost entirely around violent condemnation of gays, Muslims, and children murdered in Nigeria and other African countries by local clergy upon being labeled "witches" by American evangelical missionaries, not to mention the numerous extremely hateful "Christian" organizations in the United States calling for the death penalty for gay people, demanding that their Wahabi-like extreme fudamentalist brand of Protestant Christ worship become the official religion of the United States and the only one that people should even be allowed to have and who behave as though they are ready to wage a violent holy war against anyone who disagrees with their arrogant views in order to speed up the Second Coming.

As the article in Lui (If you want to read it but don't speak Czech, you may order a translation of it into English from me or another reputable translator) points out, Jesus lived his life according to his belief that judging others, attempting to force your views on others and being intolerant of dissent are wrong under all circumstances. The article also suggests that he and John the Baptist had an intimate relationship that was more than just friendship, based on writings in The New Testament.

Legal disclaimer for the authorities in any country where freedom of speech is not fully respected and "blasphemy" or "slander" are illegal: This blog post merely describes to people who cannot read Czech and/or do not read the Czech gay magazine Lui an interesting article published in that magazine. It makes for an interesting read, irrespective of anyone's personal views on the subject. By mentioning the fact that a magazine published such an article, I, as the author of this blog, am neither claiming that Jesus was definitely gay nor presenting any evidence to the contrary.

I reiterate, it was truly an interesting read. Ironically, the more I learn about Jesus, the more I am convinced that the churches that claim to be the houses of His worship are in fact not his temples at all.

2009-06-02T21:33:00.003+02:00

In my previous posting, I wrote about how to get a free US incoming telephone number from ipkall.com to use to receive calls with a free voip service such as voipraider. For those of you who have unlocked an old DTA310 adapter formerly used with Packet8 home phone service and want to configure it for use with voipraider, I am posting snapshots of sample sip configuration settings for the DTA.

I've made these images large so that you can read the configuration settings, but YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO VIEW THEM FULL-SIZED.

New improved phone solution: US number for $0, outgoing calls for about $10 per year to over a dozen countries

2009-05-29T10:57:00.005+02:00

I have come up with a home voip solution that is even cheaper than the previous solution I blogged about before that involves using Voipbuster and Skype.

This new solution does not involve Skype.

What you'll need:

A broadband internet connection with one extra available ethernet port

An unlocked analog telephone adapter that can be configured for any SIP provider.
(Personally I use an old former Packet8 adapter that I have unlocked. Do an Amazon.com or ebay search for "unlocked vonage adapter" and you should be able to find an inexpensive similar device.)

A Voipraider account (www.voipraider.com) or a similar account with one of the other Betamax services, such as Voipbuster.

An ordinary phone (yes, any phone that you'd use for normal landline service!)

An answering machine (Personally, I have one of those old ones that were popular in the 1980s that uses a cassete tape and even includes a speaker phone. I bought it used at a Salvation Army thrift store in Dayton, Ohio, in about 1995 for $2. It still works like new! No need to subscribe to home phone voice mail!)

A free Washington State US phone number provided by ipkall.com that you can use with sip. Register for free on their website and they give you a number.

(If you need to have a number in your own geographic area code) a free Grandcentral number from Google. The Grandcentral number will be in your US area code, and you can set Grandcentral to forward all incoming calls you receive on that number to your free Washington State number you got from Ipkall, which will MAKE YOUR PHONE RING WHEN PEOPLE CALL YOU! A novel idea.

How to make it work!

1. Plug your ATA into your cable modem or broadband router.

2. Plug your phone into the phone line jack on the ATA. If you need to plug multiple phones in, such as a cordless phone and an answering machine, plug a splitter into the ATA first and then plug both phones into the splitter. DO NOT PLUG THE ATA INTO A WALL JACK WITH A LIVE PHONE COMPANY (non-VOIP, think Verizon, AT&T etc.) PHONE LINE, OR IT COULD DAMAGE THE ATA.

3. Configure your ATA to use voipraider, voipbuster or a similar service by following the SIP device configuration instructions on http://www.voipbuster.com/en/sipp.html or by Googling for configuration settings if your particular device is not shown. Note that the sip server address for voipraider is sip.voipraider.com and not sip.voipbuster.com, but otherwise the settings are the same for either service.

> If the above step was successful, you should hear an American dial tone when you pick up the phone.

4. Make a test call. Services like voipraider give you a certain number of free minutes for test calls before they make you buy credit. Call your Mom and ask her if she can hear you. It will seem no different from any other ordinary landline phone call.

5. Connect your ipkall number to your voipraider account so that people can call you.

Log into your ipkall.com account and enter and submit the following settings:

(Example: You are Barack Obama. Your email address is barack@presidentialemail.com, your voipraider user name is "obama" and your voipraider password is "president")

Sip phone number: obama
Sip proxy: sip.voipraider.com
e-mail address: barack@presidentialemail.com
password: president
Seconds to ring before hang up: 120

6. Call your ipkall Washington State number from a different phone. Your other phone will ring. Don't answer, let your answering machine pick it up and leave yourself a message!

7. Now that you know that you can both make and receive calls, you need to buy $10 of prepaid credit from voipraider. When you do that, voipraider will award you 90 free days of unlimited calling (actually their free calls are limited to 300 minutes per week, but who calls that much) to all of the countries on their free list, which includes all landlines and cell phones in the United States. Voipraider won't start eating away your credit until after your 90 days of free calling have passed UNLESS:

a) you call American "toll-free numbers" (Yes, it's weird, but voipraider charges you 2 cents per minute to call "toll-free numbers" but charges zero for you to call "non toll-free numbers". So use your cell phone to call toll-free numbers, or call them with Skype since Skype doesn't charge anything to call toll-free numbers.

b) your phone calls to the free countries exceed 300 minutes per week. Unless you are operating a call center from home or intend to make endless calls, don't worry about this!

c) you call a non-free country (like North Korea) or you call a mobile number in one of the countries where only calls to land-line numbers are free (like the Czech Republic). Those charged calls are stilly extremely cheap but not free.

8. Enable outbound caller ID:

Set up a second voipraider account but don't buy any credit for it. Temporarily connect your ipkall number to that second account by following the above instructions.

Download the voipraider Windows program from their website and run it. In the program options, enter your ipkall number (or Grandcentral number if desired, see above) as the number you want to be shown as the number you're calling from and click verify. When your phone rings, pick it up and when the voice with the British accent asks for the 4-digit verification code, enter it as shown on your computer screen. Then it will tell you your number has been verified.

Exit and close the voipraider Windows program on your computer. Log out of the 2nd voipraider account that you created and log your ATA back into your original voipraider account that you bought the credit for.

(Outbound caller ID may need a bit of tweaking with your ATA settings if the voipraider number verification steps alone didn't make it work. Google for help!)

NOTE: You CANNOT call 911 in the US from a phone with this set up. Have an alternate method of reaching them, such as a cell phone.

Comparison:

The above solution

- incoming US number: $0 per year

- outgoing calls to numbers in the US and other free countries: about $10-20 per year depending on how quickly you use up the prepaid credit each time your 90 free days expire

- voice mail: $0 per year (You're using your answering machine!)

Skype as your phone service:

- incoming US number: $60 per year
- outgoing calls: $3 per month unlimited to US numbers, about $10 per month unlimited world (to land-line numbers only in countries besides the US)
- voice mail: Last time I checked, Skype charges about $30 or more per year, or they give you free voice mail if you have one of their unlimited calling subscriptions.

Skype has much better caller ID functionality, but that's about the only advantage I can think of.

Neither of these solutions lets you make emergency calls! If you need cheap "real phone service" in the US and don't want to pay a lot, go with something like joiphone so that you get things like 911, and then make the above solution your second line.

This blogger does not necessarily support the political parties that purchase Google ads displayed on this blog

2009-05-12T21:09:00.002+02:00

As many of you know, the Czech Republic is scheduled to hold early elections in October. For the record, I support the Green Party, even though I am an American citizen living and working here and cannot vote in Czech elections. I am not very enthusiastic about the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), even though I mind it less now than I did when it was controlled by its founder, current Czech President Vaclav Klaus. I don't really like the Czech Social Democrats very much either, but if forced to choose between them and the Civic Democrats I'd probably choose the Social Democrats.

Some of you may have noticed the banner ads for the ODS appearing on this blog. Apparently the ODS is advertising on blogs in the Czech Republic, including mine. I urge you to click on the ads if they interest you, because the advertisers support this blog. Therefore I am not going to ask Google to remove their ad. Nonetheless, I thought it would be right to publish this disclaimer so that people don't get the wrong impression and start thinking I support the ODS. I don't care if other Czech political parties decide to advertise on this blog either, and I even find it somewhat amusing. Let's just hope that the extreme-right Worker's Party, WHICH I AM STRONGLY AGAINST, doesn't start buying Google ads on this site. If they do, I will definitely have to ask Google to remove them.

Offset some carbon just by clicking, and ditch your incandescents too!

2009-05-11T12:39:00.005+02:00

Would you like to offset some CO2 just by clicking on nonsense? Apparently by clicking on links on sites such as
ecologyfund.com and StopGlobalWarming.Care2.com you are offsetting CO2 emissions, because the money paid by the advertisers on the site is donated to projects that do things like plant trees, develop renewable energy projects and so on. So go ahead, click away.

I found those two links on

http://www.wikihow.com/Offset-Carbon-for-Free

WTF, I know.

Other things work too. We don't have a single incandescent light bulb in our apartment anymore. I have replaced them all with compact flourescents. I replaced the two 60 watt light bulbs that were in the living room with 11 watt light bulbs that are just as silent and emit the exact same amount of yellow light as the 60 watt bulbs. This saves us 98 watts per hour when both lights are on in the living room.

I also removed the two 100 watt light bulbs from the hall, the 100 watt and 60 watt bulbs in the bathrooms, the 60 watt bulb in the bedroom and the 60 watt bulb in the patio light and replaced each with 11 watt CFLs. I could have replaced the 100 watt bulbs with 20 watt CFLs designed to emit the same light as 100 watt bulbs, but I opted for the 11 watt CFL bulbs that emit the same as 60 watt bulbs, because I determined that the "100 watt effect" seemed too bright and we really only need the "60 watt effect". The 40 watt bulb in the reading lamp in the bedroom is also gone. I replaced it with a 7 watt energy saving replacement for a 40 watt.

Oh the savings and the reduced carbon!

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Now some of you might have heard Rush Limbaugh and other clueless anti-environmental Republicans bashing CFLs and claiming their mercury is dangerous. Most of the rumors being spread by anti-Green right-wingers about CFLs being dangerous are pure nonsense. One CFL bulb, the standard kind that fits in a normal light socket, has only as much mercury as could fit on the tiny tip of a ball point pen. Most people who got tooth fillings years ago have MUCH more than that in their mouths seeping into their bodies all the time. Moreover, certain power generation methods such as coal burning release much larger amounts of mercury into the environment as a result of people using old 100 watt bulbs all the time than the extremely tiny and harmless amount of mercury that gets released if a CFL accidentally breaks. Still, it's a good idea to recycle old CFLs. At least where we live in Prague, there are drop boxes for recycling batteries and old eco-bulbs at many supermarkets.

Go ahead and torture them, ordered Condoleezza Rice (America's image abroad)

2009-05-06T09:09:00.004+02:00

I happened to snap this photo at our bus stop here in Prague. Someone anonymous obviously angry at the U.S. for being a country that tortures people taped up this local newspaper clipping with the headline

"Torture them, said Rice"

The caption below the photo of Rice reads:
Condoleezza Rice allowed CIA agents to torture prisoners "humanely"

I won't strain my eyes to translate the whole article from the digital photo, but here is the first paragraph:

Washington - America is dealing with another scandal related to brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA.

Already in 2002, then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who later became Secretary of State, recommended to the CIA that officials questioning terrorism suspects should use torture methods. She along with former Attorney General John Ashcroft then signed official permission for torture.

Below the newspaper clipping, whoever taped it up at the bus stop hand wrote, "Humane torture the new democratic method. Excellent. Kill a democrat and you will strengthen peace."

This is still the reputation of the United States around the world, a country that illegally tortures rounded up suspects being held indefinitely without charges or trial. Barack Obama has his work cut out for him if he is ever to succeed in changing America's image, especially considering that when these kinds of articles are published, many do not really understand that the Obama administration is not the same human rights violator as the Bush administration was.

Breaking news: TV reporter fired for mocking swine flu by oinking in youtube video

2009-05-05T13:28:00.005+02:00

Several Czech news websites including aktualne.cz and Lidove noviny have reported today that a news reporter at Czech private television station TV Nova has been fired for mocking swine flu by oinking on a Youtube video. The reporter later posted the youtube video on his blog.

Here is the offending video itself.

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Poem of the day: The emergency service (sponsored by joiphone)

2009-05-04T23:22:00.003+02:00

by Putzina
(originally published on myspace in 2008)

A mild mannered fellow mistaken for a lady stays calm under pressure
As a cement worker uses profane colorful speech
After which the fellow answers questions to help colleagues contact
The trained healers they are so desperately trying to reach

Users of medicine reach out to their suppliers
Via audio frequencies beamed through the air
And upon being told they must abstain until Monday
They protest that the delay is not fair

A man from the Far East responds to his voice mail
And tries to converse in English with a young man from Manila
For a child is to be born once the surgeon is ready
To introduce the woman's infant to the Earth
And she need not bleed more than to the extent required
For all to go smoothly with her infant's irregular birth

Ladies speaking foreign tongues inquire about their visits
With magic men and women who they think can provide a cure
To all that ails them and makes them feel weak
But the messenger wants to be sure
That he has the correct number and he has the right name
So the sought can respond to the seeker
And the chemist can dispense the magic blue pills
So the weak ones won't feel any weaker

When the steward returns, he takes control of his flock
Hoping the queues will cease to linger
For to transition from one crier for help to the next
The messenger really need only lift a finger

Just a reminder in case the planned official Prague May 8 celebrations may confuse you, the Americans liberated Plzen from the Nazis, but NOT Prague.

2009-05-04T10:18:00.011+02:00

Apparently a live person has now "reviewed" this blog and determined that the robots were wrong to believe it was spam. Therefore, they have removed the stupid warning message that was being displayed for a couple of days and their message about my blog being "marked spam" has been removed from my account settings page.

In other news, it's raining here in Prague and only about 9 degrees Celsius, 48 Fahrenheit. It's only supposed to get up to about 10 degrees Celsius today. So chances are, I probably won't go anywhere and will simply stay at home and prepare my April invoices and work on new translations if anyone orders them today. This week is a bit slow here, because of May Day, which was on May 1, and various celebrations of the American liberation of parts of the country from the Nazis after World War II and the May 8 holiday marking the liberation of the rest of the country from the Nazis by the Soviets.

There was once a plaque in Czech, English, German and Russian on Old Town Square in Prague that had a hammer and sickle on it and officially thanked the Soviet army for liberating Prague from the Nazis during World War II. Its description was a true account of history. On the other hand, I have been told by many people here that during the Communist regime the Communists were careful not to teach anyone anything officially about the liberation of Czech towns like Plzen and Karlovy Vary by the Americans during the war. Instead they simply told everyone that the Soviets had liberated the whole country.

A somewhat similar distortion of historical events has been taking place in some parts of the country such as Prague since the Communists were toppled in 1989. The monument thanking the Soviets is long gone from Prague's Old Town Square and was replaced several years ago by a new plaque that basically says the Czechs liberated Prague from the Nazis on their own and does not mention the Russians at all. Moreover, again this year, according to newspaper reports, antique American jeeps will be driven around Prague during the official May 8 celebrations. I believe that would be appropriate in Plzen, but SINCE THE AMERICANS DID NOT LIBERATE PRAGUE DURING WORLD WAR II AND THE SOVIETS DID it is just as much a denial of historical events for the Americans to be given so much attention and for the Soviets' role to be downplayed or not even mentioned now as it was when the Communists in Czechoslovakia used to lie similarly and tell people the Americans didn't really liberate Plzen.

Personally, I am sick of propaganda being constantly fed to the masses, no matter whose it is, and I would just like to be told the truth. Officially. I recognize that Czechs don't like Russians because of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and that reason is understandable, but the Soviet soldiers, who were U.S. allies during World War II, who liberated Prague from the Nazis and may have prevented the German soldiers from completely burning down the famous Astronomical Clock rather than just damaging it, for example, not only had nothing to do with the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia two decades later, but deserve to be thanked for liberating Prague from the Nazis. Period. End of story.

And there is nothing Communist about what I just said, just as there is nothing Capitalist about mentioning that the Americans liberated Western Bohemian towns. These are simply historical facts, whose presentation should be influenced by truth rather than anyone's propaganda.

Two sayings immediately come to mind here:

"You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
-- Bob Marley

"The truth prevails."
-- Czech national motto.

Let's see if any of the Czech media report anything about the controversey surrounding the now annual tradition of the Americans pretending that they liberated Prague too. Will the media even touch the topic, or will they simply act like parrots and blurt out the propaganda about how we're not supposed to thank the Soviets anymore? Time will tell.

"Google robots" have accused this blog of being spam. How evil!

2009-05-03T14:41:00.000+02:00

This is a personal blog and is not intended to be spam. It's insane that Google robots have now detected it as "possible spam". The very notion that this blog is spam is outrageous. Is it because it contains adsense ads? If so, that's ridiculous. Google allows bloggers to place context ads on their blogs. The blog is not about the ads and exists only for the purpose of allowing me to rant about crap and write about things that interest me. Robots obviously cannot be trusted.

Update: It only showed up as being spam for about 5 minutes. They must be experiencing some kind of silly glitch again. Well at least they gave me something to write about today.Update again: Ok, apparently the error message about the blog "possibly violating the Blogger terms of service" is still appearing. Darn robots!

How to have and use a U.S. phone number anywhere in the world

2009-05-02T20:51:00.001+02:00

When my partner and I first lived in NJ several years ago, we initially ordered Verizon phone service, because we were unaware of alternative options and/or there weren't very many better phone service options. Now of course the world has changed and there are tons of different options. I initially discovered a VOIP service called Packet8 that cost about $20 per month for unlimited domestic long distance. That seemed cheap at the time. Compared to our current set up though, Packet8 and similar options just seem a little too expensive, even though it was also a quality service.

When we moved addresses, we were offered a good deal from the cable company to get what they called the "triple play" consisting of internet, phone service and tv. It was a good deal, so we signed up for a year and saved a lot of money. Then the year was up and they upped our monthly rate for each service. So in order to keep paying the same per month for internet, phone and TV I called the cable company and canceled the phone portion of our service.

The rep was quite argumentative and tried to convince me not to cancel the cable phone service. He did so very aggressively. However, I wasn't going to let him have his way. I had already purchased a Netgear cordless Skype phone on ebay for way less than its retail value. It looks and operates like an ordinary cordless phone and has its own version of Skype installed on it. Armed with it and a Skypein number in my area code, I no longer really needed phone service. The phone number from Skype cost only $60 per year and meant that when people called that number our phone rang just like any other phone and we answered it and talked just like on any other phone. Then we ordered the unlimited calling plan for the U.S. and Canada, basically unlimited local and long distance for less than $3 per month. To call, we simply had to pick up the phone, dial the number and press the green button. The phone needs no PC to be on in order to work, because it runs Skype on the phone. And when people called us, the cordless phone would ring and we'd answer it and talk. Few people ever knew we weren't using a "regular phone" as the sound quality was indistinguishable from regular phone service. In fact, it was even better.

There was initially one small issue with using Skype as our only phone service, and that was that our NJ number didn't show up on people's caller ID when we called them. Instead it would show a meaningless fake number or "unknown" with no number. Rather than wait forever for Skype to start offering it, I came up with a solution of my own, although it took some time. I came across a website that posted instructions for unlocking old voip adapters formerly used with old services like packet8 so that they can be used as analog phone adapters for any voip service. I will post the instructions another time. Then I configured our old packet8 dta device to work with Voipbuster, a German voip service that is way cheaper than Skype. Voipbuster gives you 120 days of free calling to landlines in over a dozen different countries just for buying 10 Euros worth of prepaid calling credit. Logging into the ip address of the unlocked old packet8 adapter and following the sip device configuration instructions on the voipbuster site was all I needed to do to get an American sounding dial tone from an ordinary phone plugged into the device. With the 120 free days that they give, outbound calling is almost free. They don't start eating your 10 Euros worth of prepaid credit until after the 120 free days have passed. The call quality is indistinguishable from calls made from any other phone service and is even better than traditional non-VOIP phone service.

Voipbuster enabled outbound caller ID to work with Skypein numbers even before Skype eventually enabled the service on their own. Here's how.

a) You have a cordless phone with built-in Skype, such as our Netgear phone.

b) You have an incoming phone number you bought from Skype for $60 per year ($5 per month), called a Skypein number. So your cordless phone will ring when people call your number. Simple enough.

c) The ethernet cable running from the transmitting base of the Netgear cordless phone plugs into your internet router.

d) The regular phone cable running from the landline jack on the Netgear phone plugs into your unlocked voip adapter configured for voipbuster.

e) Set the "preferred line" on the Netgear cordless phone to "landline". Your fake landline is your dial tone generated by the unlocked voip adapter configured for voipbuster.

Now the caller ID part...

Download the Windows Skype-like voipbuster program from their website. Run it and find "caller id settings" Input your Skypein number as the number you want to use for caller ID and then click on "verify number". When your Netgear cordless phone rings, type in the 4-digit code that you see on your computer when you hear the lady with the British accent say "Please enter the verification code you received." Once it has been verified, your Skypein number will show up on people's caller ID when you call them. Calling them by the way is not a fancy complicated process. Simply pick up the phone, dial the number and press the green button, assuming you've selected "landline" as your preferred line (see above). Or if you prefer to hear the dial tone first, pick up the phone, press the green button and after you hear the American dial tone just dial 1+area code+number and wait to be connected.

...
That instruction is actually now a bit obsolete, because Skype now offers outbound caller ID for its Skypein numbers, which means using the SIP device and Voipbuster no longer needs to be part of the solution. But doing it my way and making the outbound calls with Voipbuster instead of Skype and using Skype only for receiving Skypein calls on the Netgear cordless phone is still cheaper than using Skype for both incoming and outgoing calls. We live in Europe again, but we still have our NJ number so that people in the U.S. can call us here without having to call a foreign number. And we still have at least 90 free days of calling left on our Voipbuster, so we use it to make our outbound calls. However, lately when we outbound call via Voipbuster our number doesn't always get sent correctly to people's caller ID, even though when we outbound call via Skype it does. Voipbuster is cheaper though, and since most people know it's us calling and we still have free days left, we use it to call. Until our free days are used up with voipbuster, I see no reason to switch to Skype's unlimited U.S. or unlimited world calling plan just so people see our NJ number when we call them, especially since Voipbuster includes free calling to landlines here in the Czech Republic.

supermarket stampedes

2009-05-02T11:36:00.000+02:00

Everyone loves a great bargain, right? A couple of weeks ago Globus, one of our big stores here in Prague, was having crazy mark downs. The 1.5 liter bottles of the mineral water that we drink had suddenly been marked down from 11 crowns each to 6.50 each. So to "cash in" so to speak, I made at least 3 trips to Globus and picked up dozens of them, all of which I hauled home on the metro and the bus. Then they marked down liter cartons of orange juice from 20 crowns to 10 crowns each. So similarly, I bought about 30 of them. More money saved. Cooking oil was then marked down from 30 to 18 crowns. Take a wild guess what I did if you can.

The most fun was watching people buying up the stuff like there was no tomorrow. It somewhat reminded me of all the y2k hysteria that preceded the end of 1999. This morning I had a similar experience. We normally buy a cola at our Lidl supermarket called Freeway Cola which is made in Poland. It costs about half what Pepsi or Coke costs, but I honestly can't tell the difference between it and Pepsi. This week Lidl decided to mark down Pepsi to the same price as Freeway. Hence this morning when I went to Lidl originally intending just to get a bag of flour, people were in there fighting over the Pepsi. I picked up a pack of 8 2 liter bottles and quickly proceeded to the checkout.

Was all of this silly on my part? I suppose it was, but I figured since we would eventually buy these groceries anyway, it made sense to stock up while they were cheap so that when the prices go back up after the sale ends we won't have to pay double for them again.

2009-05-01T12:16:00.001+02:00

This is yet another attempt by me at a blog. So far it is new and void of very much content. More content will appear soon. So don't touch that dial or hit that back button.

In the meantime, here is a photo of some of our house plants. The larger palm is new. I've had the smaller palm since at least the year 2000, and it has survived ever since, even when I was living across the ocean. Family members took care of it for me during that time, and now that I'm back in Europe I'm taking care of it again. We'll see how long it lasts.

I meant to put the photo below the text, but I'm still learning how to use blogger. I would also like to wish all of my fellow Wiccans a merry Beltane. Therefore, I'm embedding this youtube video with music by Lisa Thiel. I absolutely love Lisa Thiel. Let's see if I can manage to put the video below the text instead of above it. If what I attempted worked, it should also automatically be playing. Edit: I have turned the autoplaying off.--------------------------------------------------
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