Poojan (Wagh) Blog

I woke up on Saturday morning in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. I took some pictures.

My first foray into astrophotography—if you can call it that. I took two pictures at two different exposure lengths and then merged them.

So, in August we made a total of 1755 seconds of outgoing calls from our landline.

I currently use voip.ms to make these outgoing calls. Their rate (using premium routing) is 1 cent per minute. (Curiously slightly higher for toll-free calls.) Anyway, I paid a whopping 30.7 cents for all these outgoing calls in August.

Right now, I still have AT&T handling incoming calls. If I were to cancel AT&T, I would save roughly $20 per month.

Instead, I would have to pay for incoming calls as well. As well as 911 (E911) service. Both voip.ms and CallCentric (a service which seems to be mentioned a lot online) provide E911.

With CallCentric, their North America Basic plan includes E911 and 120 minutes of outgoing calls; this costs $1.95 per month. (After 120 minutes, which I probably won’t use, it’s roughly 2 cents a call.) In addition, I can pay $1.95 monthly plus 1.5 cents per minute to receive calls. (I could also  pay $5.95 for unlimited outgoing calls, but given how few calls we take, that does not make much sense.)

With CallCentric, the costs would come out to $1.95/month + $1.95/month + 1.5 cents/minute-incoming. So, $3.80/month + incoming 1.5c/minute.

With voip.ms, as I said before, they charge per-minute on outgoing calls. (This is why I picked them in the first place: no monthly fees, and very cheap usage rates.) For incoming calls, the rate is $0.85/month plus 0.9c/minute. For E911, I pay another $1.50/month. So, I’d pay $2.35/month + 1c/minute-outgoing + 0.9c/minute-incoming. (voip.ms also has a $4.25/month unlimited incoming call plan. However, it isn’t clear to me whether this includes E911.)

So, all of this depends on how many incoming calls I receive on average. (Unfortunately, AT&T does not list this on the bill, since it’s basically free—er, included with my monthly service.) I can’t imagine it amounts to more than a few hours per month. And to be honest, the differential between CallCentric and voip.ms is so low, I don’t know that it matters (roughly a buck or two in the end).

Great sound:

[mp3 asins=”B00122D8OU”]

Very catchy tune. One of my favorites, from the album “Team Boo”:

[mp3 asins=”B000X5ERQK”]

This is a very uplifting, poppy song. I can’t remember exactly whom this band reminds me of…

…No, I don’t think its themselves.

[mp3 ASINS=”B0026ECCEK”]

When I came home from work this evening, low and behold: two warranty replacements sat in my foyer. One was that 1 TB Hitachi drive. The other was the Eagle Tech speakers.

I was more excited about the speakers. Except they didn’t work. Same exact problem as last time: the LCD that’s supposed to show volume/treble/bass didn’t work. I know what most of you are thinking: are you sure you set them up right?

I can tell you that I tried every possible setting on the thing (there aren’t that many). If anyone has any recommendation on a good set of 2.1 speakers suitable for a small home office, let me know.

I just got the following speakers yesterday:

I had to send them back today, because the LCD that’s supposed to show volume/treble/bass didn’t work. No lighty.

I had the option of getting an exchange or refund. However, it seems like Amazon’s exchange means you just buy a duplicate item and send back the defective one. It seemed like I’d be responsible for the shipping charges. The alternative, simply returning for a refund, meant that they’d pay shipping charges.

Returning was very easy: since I still had all the packaging and shipping box from the item, I printed out the UPS slip. put the RMA in the box, taped it up, and took it to a UPS store. At the same time, I ordered a new one, because I really want those speakers (provided they work).

The first set took a month to get here. This second set says it’ll ship on the 23rd. I’m really hoping that they’re not waiting for me to return the defective pair so they can just ship it back to me.

Wonder of wonders. I also found out today that a replacement for a defective 1 TB hitachi drive has been shipped today.

I need to remember around Christmas time that when I buy all this tech crap, I only end up sending a good chunk of it back mid-winter. From now on, I stick to online gambling.

Great, high-energy song to work (and work out) to:

[mp3 asins=”B002FU2452″]

Didn’t really care for the rest of the album, though.

A coworker of mine stumbled upon the web site Swoopo:

My understanding of the web site proceeded in stages:

1. It’s ebay
2. They’re losing money
3. You can game the system
4. It’s a gambling site Read the rest of this entry »