Some people have asked in the comments about how we take pictures. There is nothing special about the camera; it is an older Kodak.
Then we do this:
Or sometimes this:
The software is free. Anybody can make pictures look good with these excellent programs.
There is a fairly new VOIP solution out there called MagicJack. It’s comparable to Skype which is costing $3.00 a month these days. That’s $36 a year. Well MagicJack is $40 for the first year which includes a little jack that plugs into a USB port and into which you plug the POTS line from your phone. And after that it is $19.95 a year.
Skype, or else our Skype adaptor, has been having its hiccups lately so I decided to try this. I got my MagicJack today and installed it. It’s working great and is indistinguishable from a regular phone line. The call quality and ease of use is miles ahead of Skype even though there’s not much point in complaining about such cheap calling.
We still use Vonage (basic plan, about $15/month) for our main incoming line because Vonage lets us keep our old telephone number.
One problem I had was that I could not get a local number for MagicJack. Our area code is not even available. So I decided to try to find a number that was local for someone in our family that would normally have to pay long distance to call. Now my wife’s sister out West can call our new number which is local in their town without having any long distance charges. Nice for them.
Gotta find as many ways as possible to justify the cost of Comcast cable ($42.95/month). 6MB broadband doesn’t come cheap.
With much fear and trembling in light of all the naysaying out there, I recently installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my desktop. I have had the discs for awhile but for lack of time and also a good reason to leave XP behind I didn’t have much motivation to install Vista. Then the other day I set up a computer for my brother-in-law that had a 64-bit version of Vista on it. I was so impressed with its looks and features that I decided to finally go for it. So far I really like what I see. I think it pays to let new OSes work the bugs out for a year or so. The biggest improvement is the cool new interface but I am also learning about the nice new features under the hood. So far I don’t see any reason at all to go back to XP. There haven’t been any compatibility issues with my hardware or programs. I still don’t see any reason to go out and buy Vista to install on a computer that has XP. But if you have a chance to get it free then why not?