infrastructure – Page 5 – Graves On SOHO Technology

Staying Frosty Through A Texas Summer

Some time ago I characterized a high quality coffee machine as essential equipment for home office dweller. That remains true, but given the last four weeks straight of 90+ degree days, culminating in a daytime high of 107 F (!) last weekend, I’m revising my stance to nominate the air conditioner as technological king of this hill.

When my wife and I bought this property some dozen years ago we were specifically looking for a home with a garage apartment that I could adapt into a home office. The one bedroom, ground floor, garage apartment here seemed the perfect candidate.

In general, my home office has served me well. In fact, I’m truly blessed to have such a space. Even so, over time I’ve made some changes to enhance my productivity, including replacing the air conditioner…twice!

The path by which I can to have the current air conditioner was not simple. Along the way I have learned a few lessons. Since the major purpose of this site is to share such experience I thought it about time that I addressed the matter of keeping my cool.

Live From Las Vegas! We’re Now Hosted At Lightning Base In Las Vegas!

This is the fourth installment in the long-running tale (parts one, two & three) of my search for the most appropriate host for this site.

The very fact that you’re reading this means that the site is now live on a server operated by Lightning Base. In the past I’ve used a shared host and couple of different VPS providers. In point of fact the site was at UnmeteredVPS.net for over two years.

I have nothing but nice things to say about UnmeteredVPS.net. That service is excellent, but it wasn’t exactly a perfect fit. It was an unmanaged VPS, which meant that I was responsible for everything.

Every few weeks I would need to update some aspect of the OS or supporting software. Some updates were trivial. Some, like major Apache or MySQL updates, were a bit scary. Despite five years running this site I’m no Linux guru.

Holiday Gift Idea II: Power To Your People!

Hey, here’s a semi-geeky gift that they’re sure to get a charge out of…a high-current USB charger built into a common household receptacle. You may recall that I installed a couple of the FastMac USockets some time ago. There’s one…

Sonus Networks On Session Border Controllers

OK, I’ll admit that this is a little beyond the scope of concern for a SOHO dweller. However, if you are inclined to learn more about the gear that makes VoIP service providers tick you might want to take advantage…

Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson Airport Delivers Power to The People

Back in January I made a trip to Fresno where I found that the newly renovated airport took a decidedly 1980’s approach to publicly available AC power. That is, they basically didn’t provide any beyond the occasional outlet to allow someone to polish the floors.

A recent trip to Knoxville TN presents a splendid contrast. Arriving at Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson airport I found a new-ish facility that had taken a more enlightened approach to providing travelers with power for their gadgetry…they had built it into otherwise normal seating.

Insight Into Free Conference Call Services

February 1, 2012
Michael Graves
infrastructure

In the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” the legendary science fiction writer Robert Heinlein once wrote, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” This came immediately to mind when I stumbled upon Fee Fighters where I found a post that was a nice explanation of how free conference calling services work.

The author quite rightly points out that Google Voice and Vonage will not place calls to the rural rate centers with the exorbitantly high termination costs that make the free conference service possible.

My preferred ITSP, OnSIP by Junction Networks, charges a uniform per-minute rate for calls to most rates centers in North America and Western Europe. However, when it comes to those rate centers in rural areas that host free conference services their plan changes. If we call such services they charge us “the true market rate” which can be up to 20x the normal rate. They made this abundantly clear back in 2009 when the policy was enacted.

We find no fault with OnSIP and their policy in this regard. In fact, we decided that we saw value in adding an optional private conference bridge to our OnSIP account, even though it costs us $20/month.