Long weekends rock. It's nice to have a bit of a break sometimes. Friday was more Windows stuff. I'll be happy when everything is a bit more stable. Was there sorta late just poking at stuff, did move some accounts around. Then I set up the new domain, and went crazy with security policies. Most of the domain controllers in the existing system are talking IPSec to each other whenever possible, which is nice. The goal is to get that up before moving accounts around a bunch and before the new password requirements go into place. Also password policies, machine policies, default permissions on stuff in the domain, automatic locking down of domain controllers as soon as they are promoted, etc. We'll see what other interesting automatic stuff I can do. I think I have the naming set for now, but still not totally satisfied. We'll see if I get bugged enough to pick something better. Went home and started poking with VoIP stuff. Got way too involved with poking there, and ended up not going to bed until like 6:30am or something. I knew it was too late when my brother was getting up to go to work. I learned about SIP, IAXtel, different codecs, asterisk (very cool all-software pbx), and lots of other internet providers. With the right asterisk routing config and a handful of well chosen VoIP-PSTN gateways you could get really cheap long distance rates. The rates on most of the gateways (even international) are dirt cheap... Like 4c a minute or less to places like UK and AU. Apparently a lot of people outside the US use them to call back to the US too since you can get that really cheap (like 1.1c/min or even free sometimes) and if you have a decent (even reasonable dialup) internet access, it doesn't matter where you are. Plus you can do crazy stuff with routing and wireless and stuff. Finally went to bed with a box able to route on at least 2 different VoIP networks, make calls to toll free numbers for free, and accept calls through various local gateways. Actually managed to run my phone's battery all the way down and use it plugged in for a while. Finally decided to get some sleep, and slept until mid-afternoon. Gotta love Saturdays. Then went geeky on telecom stuff among other things for the rest of the day among other things. Went grocery shopping, which was very needed. Found these IBC things that taste good but are IBC so too pricey. Cherry Limeade though, you should try it sometime. Also oiled my garage door so it's not all noisy and stuff anymore. I don't thing the previous owner did anything to it really. Sunday morning was church at Salem. It was pretty full. Not sure if that's the date or the fact that it was the first day with two services. After that chatted a while with my grandma about computer and phone stuff since she's moving. I still think it's sorta cool that like half the people I know either have or are seriously considering completely dropping their normal phone line to go cell only. The phone companies keep bumping up the price, so what do they expect. The average bill these days seems to be around $30 and that doesn't include long distance and ties you to a location. Between the cable company phone (a dedicated VoIP), places like vonage and packet8 over broadband, and cell phones, I wonder how long it'll be before the local phone companies end up mainly handling data lines or private phone trunks rather than individual lines. Anyways, ended up learning about this cool company who actually will give you a free phone number that routes to any SIP (a VoIP protocol) address on the net. You may wonder how that's possible, and the reasoning is that phone numbers don't actually cost the phone companies anything. Yea, thats right. The only thing that costs is interconnection. Although then that's shared, and calls are done in peering similar to how ISPs work on the net. While the US has enjoyed unlimited local calling for a long time, the catch is that the calling phone company actually pays a small amount to the receiving end - you may have heard of this as part of the reason long distance rates stayed so high for so long - they had to pay the interconnection charge on the receiving end. This balances out with traffic both ways in many cases and the companies call it a wash (balanced peering), but if it gets more than whatever's negotiated, the caller pays. It's apparently enough to cover the VoIP gateway costs too. So anyways, I now have a free voicemail box number to give to companies when they need a phone number to reach me at. Since it's probably to telemarket and I don't want to deal with telling them to leave me alone on my cell, that should be cool. I also have one that I'll probably use to play around. Maybe integrate it with some other useful stuff since US cell companies see fit to offer free minutes but no free sending text messages. So anyways, if you call 360-516-2134, it gets routed over the net to a machine in my equipment rack downstairs which currently just does some funny stuff. I'll probably add stuff to it eventually. The monkeys and weasels and listening to my music be repeated back to me are funny though, so I recommend calling it if it won't cost you anything. My brother's car was dripping antifreeze when he came home today too, so I spent a long time on the phone while under the hood with rags, flashlights, and screwdrivers. Enough that I ended up making my phone go dead again. A couple hours of talking plus a day of being on and poking on the keypad... Yea phones get great standby these days, but you only get the two weeks if you don't make calls, and only a few hours of talk time. Fuel cells will be nice... Also ended up reading about NANPA and the number relief proposals today. Apparently when we go to 12 digit dialing they'd expand the numbering restrictions and it'd be mandatory 12 digit across the country. Given how some people are still so attached to 7 versus 10 digit, that'll be interesting. It'd be nice to be rid of the artificial restrictions supporting 7 digit dialing keeps in place though. Also spent a ton of time cleaning up the desk and sorting mail. Followed by going through my palm and cleaning/updating stuff. If you think I might not have your correct info, feel free to let me know there. Mainly it was a sync to remove old addresses and get phone numbers transfered from the cell so the palm/computer is up to date. What in the world did we do before electronics? Anyways, since I'm on line 89 now, I think I'll wrap this up. Anyone actually read the whole thing? :)