I've come to rely on my phone for much more than just calls. It is my morning alarm clock. I take pictures with it all the time. It is my wristwatch and calendar. It is my modem when I have no ethernet/wifi.

So that I am still carrying an original RAZR makes me feel just a bit crippled. I do get along OK with it, but the VGA camera is killing me, the lack of even EDGE for data use sucks, and bluetooth on this thing drives me fucking nuts (want to use bluetooth headset? might as well reboot first since 4/5 times it won't work otherwise. Want to send 20 pics via bluetooth? You have to select the recipient device before sending each one --UGH). So I'm thinking it's time for a new phone.

I had been kicking around the idea of a smartphone for a while but I've been really unexcited by everything out there. I've defiantly kept my PDA (Palm TX) and phone separate all this time but I think I'm prepared to relent, if I can only find the right device. The truth is my Palm is dying. Maybe it has cancer of the touchscreen, I don't know; but what's clear is that it is getting less reliable and less usable all the time. On the bottom half of the screen, my pen touches register about 1 mm above or below where they really are. This throws off my graffiti at times, and makes using the onscreen keyboard nigh-impossible. Then there are the crashes. I didn't used to experience them much, but now they happen all the time. Blazer is the biggest culprit but earlier I simply ticked an option in the system prefs and it abruptly reset on me.

My mind made up, now I just need to find this mythical device that will combine and improve upon the capabilities of my RAZR and TX.

Uh oh. It doesn't seem to exist. I wouldn't consider windows mobile anything unless I were to first get a lobotomy, so that's out. I want to like the Treos, but this is 2008 and I can't bring myself to buy a NEW phone running Palm OS 5. The iPhone is cool, but is more or less incompatible with my Linux desktop/PIM. Anything else I've found (which isn't much) just doesn't move me. At this point I think there is only one hope.

Android. I am watching and waiting, with great anticipation, for the first Android-powered phones. I don't know if they will fulfill my every desire, but they certainly have the most potential, and I really hope they live up to the hype because they are pretty much my last hope.

Posted by ra in gadgets and phones at 21:44 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Kind of like VOIP, but the voice is mostly replaced by silence.

I put together my awesome Asterisk server last year, bought five SIP phones on ebay, and was ready to rock. I guess I was thinking "if you build it, they will call" but it's been a bit lamer than that.

It's not all bad though. Despite that hardly anyone dials our VOIP number because they already have our cell numbers, it's nice to have for emergencies if teh cell network is doing the suckage, or battery is dead, etc. Most of our calls are internal (call downstairs from the bedroom, etc), which is certainly convenient, even if it seems a bit silly at times.

I have been racking up some minutes on my home-office VOIP line however, which rings only at my desk and the softphone on my laptop, so I don't feel that my PBX is not going to waste, even if it is underutilized.

I still need to finish hacking my PAP2 ATA (ugh., still haven't broken in) and I'm going to play with conference calling when I get a chance, and oops-- I still need to arrange to test 911 dialing; but in the mean time my little Asterisk server is doing everything I need and much, much more.

Posted by ra in computerish at 01:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

OK, I'm back and I'm going to try not to let my blog rot, like almost EVERYONE else's I know...

Recently I've had a awful pain in my side, and it turned out to be a pointy Cisco license restriction.

It started with sporadic trouble at the client as they began to use their VPN's more heavily. They had purchased a Cisco ASA 5505 to use as their VPN router, on my recommendation, and everything had been fine until we added another IPSEC tunnel and had more people accessing the remote sites. After some experimentation, we found the magic number to be 10 users, after which no one else could connect to anything across the VPN's.

Whoa... that sounds just like the "user" limit on this device! I hate user limits. Artificial restrictions on the capability of some hardware tends to piss me off. But I digress... This user limit restriction was a complete surprise because although we purchased a "10 user" ASA, I had talked to two different Cisco reps before the purchase to clarify the meaning of this and had been assured that this "user" limit did not pertain to users/IP's connecting over the IPSEC tunnels, and we didn't care about anything else as this device is strictly a VPN-gateway--they already have a m0n0wall in use as their primary internet gateway router.

So, Cisco screwed up. Fortunately I am a digital pack-rat and could produce a year-old email proving that the rep told me that the "user" limit meant 10 IPSEC tunnels with no limit on number of users. The truth is that there were two limits: 10 tunnels AND 10 users/IP's. Unfortunately, it took about two and a half weeks of dealing with assorted Cisco people to finally get a resolution, in the form of a free unlimited user license upgrade.

The outcome is satisfactory, but it really pisses me off that I had to waste so much time troubleshooting and getting it resolved after I tried hard to avoid this very problem by contacting them before buying. Furthermore, based on my conversations with half a dozen Cisco employees I can say that most of them didn't really understand the licensing terms of their own product, which is pretty sad. How am I supposed to understand if they don't? The less clear the license terms, the more likely that someone is going to get surprised by some restriction at the worst possible moment, and then swear off ever buying that brand again.

Posted by ra in computerish at 00:35 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)