Today, I found a soft SIP phone that runs on Windows Mobile. Using the Wi-Fi built into my phone, I was able to use my mobile phone as an extension to my PBX at home (Asterisk).

I know this is shocking news, but there’s still a problem that I haven’t yet figured out. The sound comes out the external speaker instead of the earpiece. I can’t figure out how to change it. I see where to change it, but the option just isn’t there.

Because of today’s hilarious announement that the CEO’s twenty-eight year old son-in-law is being hired as Director of Marketing at Trax, I’ve posted a funny.

[Despair.com]

I’m married to the most tolerant person on the face of the Earth. How do I know? Here are some of the burdens she’s had to bear:

She didn’t mind (too much) when I commandeered the Pantry in our first house in order to house all of our “home theater” equipment. At that point, our home theater consisted of an eight year old 35″ TV, a bunch of unsightly speakers, and a subwoofer as large as a coffee table; all placed in the most visible place in the house. The living room.

After we bought our house in Arizona, before we even moved from Michigan, I had the second garage (a single stall) converted to a home theater. I started filling the linen closet with equipment and wiring almost as soon as we got off the plane. We couldn’t afford to simplify the theater’s operation by using a sweet Creston control system, so while out of town I’d often receive phone calls like this:

Jamey: Hi, I have some friends over tonight and we’re sitting in the theater trying to watch a movie. How do I play a DVD?
Me: On the table in there, find the projector’s remote control among the other twelve.Jamey: What does it look like?Me: It’s gray.Jamey: There are four gray ones.

Me: The small gray one.

Jamey: There are two small gray ones.

Me: The small gray one that says ‘Electrohome’ on it.

Jamey: Okay, here it is.

Me: To turn on the projector, press the ‘Exit’ button, followed by ‘11′ in order to change it to the right channel.

Jamey: Channel?

Me: I mean Input. Now, turn on the pre-amp/processor, amplifiers, HTPC (home theater PC), find the remote for the screen and then press the ‘down’ button in order to lower it. Find the remote that says ‘Lexicon’ on it and press ‘AUX1′ then pickup the wireless keyboard and using the mouse control in the upper right, find the icon for the DVD player software and start that.

*five minutes pass*

Jamey: The movie started okay, but it stopped abruptly and the screen now reads “General Protection Fault”

 

 

She’s remained married to me even though I’ve changed the phone system five times. We’ve used the following systems:

1. Diamond Telecommander (1995). This was a Voicemail/Modem/Caller ID card for the computer. It ran on Windows 95 which made it incredibly unstable. It would often not answer the phone to take a message or announce the caller ID through the speakers. Sometimes it would go crazy and announce the Caller ID at full volume startling anyone who was within a block of us. We ditched it after less than a year.
2. Microsoft Phone (1996). This was pretty cool, but in typical Microsoft fashion they stopped supporting it. So in order to move to Windows 2000, I had to get rid of it.
3. Cygnion CyberGenie (1999). This one had the most promise compared to all my previous phone systems. This was the first “real” phone system. The others were mostly just fancy phones. Unfortunately the first cut of the software didn’t have Caller ID-based or time-based rules. Another “feature” of this system was that it had an auto attendant with voice recognition; and I use the term recognition in the loosest possible way. The system would answer and speak the sentence, “Thank you for calling, please say the name of the person with whom you wish to speak.” More often than not, it wouldn’t understand what the caller was saying, especially if they were using a mobile phone. Since most of the phone calls are for Jamey, she had to handle the majority of complaints regarding the CyberGenie. It was eventually put of of service when I tried to flash its BIOS to upgrade it to a never-released version of its firmware and software. It mis-flashed and became an inanimate object.
4. Panasonic PBX (2005). The base unit for this system was already installed in our house when we moved in last May. I have since spent a bunch of money on phones and the Panasonic Voice Processing System (voicemail) that integrates with it. After messing with it for about nine months, I discovered that this PBX didn’t have any cool features at all. Even though you needed a college degree in “phone speak” in order to configure it, It was decidedly basic in its feature set.
5. Asterisk (2006). An open-source Linux-based PBX. I checked to see if this was “for real” by “stealing” the kids computer and reformatting their drive in order to install Linux. After determining that it really was a working software-based PBX, I re-tasked one of the servers here at home (an old Dual 933 PIII machine) for Asterisk and ordered an interface card for the phone lines (a Digium TDM400p). For the first sixty days I had to run the Asterisk box side-by-side with my Panasonic system because I couldn’t figure out how to tie in the doorbell (it’s really a door phone) to the Asterisk system. I was able to get rid of the Panasonic system after I figured out how to get that working, but Jamey still had to endure the phone refusing do dial-out 8 out of 10 tries. Finally! I found the fix for that and put it in place just two weeks ago. This system looks like a winner. It’s not the easiest to configure, but it’s full-featured and better than any commercial PBX that I’ve worked on.

I knew it was a winner when Jamey liked it. She doesn’t fault me for this one now, but the transition from regular old TV to a Series 1 single-tuner TiVo was a strange one. Explaining the concept and function of a DVR to people in the year 2000 was difficult.

In my quest for “something better”, she has put up with countless Internet providers for shell dial-up, PPP dial-up, fixed wireless, DSL, and Cable. At one point in 1999, we were using a 1 Mbps wireless LAN (peer-to-peer really, this was before 802.11b/Wi-Fi) through a Windows-based proxy server using a dial-up account with a 56 Kbps modem. Needless to say, it wasn’t entirely reliable.

I know that Jamey probably has countless other examples of things that I may think of as “normal.”

Good thing I’m married to her because I don’t think anyone else would put up with all that. Maybe one day all this technology will just “work” and our lives will be missing that bit of chaos.

UPDATE: Jamey has reminded me that Call Waiting still doesn’t work yet with our Asterisk box. I really haven’t looked into it.

*This kind of ruins the post, but anyone under 30 is going to need to look this up.

Lo an behold, Oral Roberts was right all along! He really did see a 900 ft. Jesus.

O ye, of little faith (Matthew 8:26).

I worked in the building products industry for so long that when I look at a house, the first things my eyes gravitate towards are the products I used to sell. It drives whomever I’m with at the time crazy. To give you an example, here is a nice photo of a Ferrari parked in someone’s driveway:

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Below is what any Red Blooded American Man (RBAM) sees:

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And herein lies the problem. Below is what I see:

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I should really seek help. I love Ferraris.