Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

Ego++ with MSN Search today... Turns out I'm #2 at the moment for just plain Corey. Oddly I've moved down quite a bit from #12 to #38 on Google for Corey.

At any rate, the beta search is looking quite sexy. Will it ever make me stop using Google though? Not a clue just yet. Definitely not if MSN doesn't add some of the hidden uses of Google, like UPS, FedEx quick tracking links, Calculator, etc.

And they say time flies when you're having fun .

http://dubya.auroravisions.com/

Gramps told me the other day that my second (or is it third) cousin Andrew, a marine, was being sent to Iraq. Not that big of a surprise since the marines are usually cannon fodder for any given military movement. But it’s kind of weird that it’s my cousin being sent and not some other unfortunate soul who I’ve never heard of. My gramps that was in WWII has never supported the war in Iraq and has always been pretty liberal. My first cousin, Casey, has been in the Navy for a while now. He was originally stationed in Okinawa, Japan but is now on some god forsaken island off of the San Diego coast. He’ll probably get out of the navy without ever seeing battle, definitely a good thing in my humble opinion since he’s been brainwashed enough as it is.

Anyway, Gramps was saying that it was ironic that our family has two grandsons in the military right now. The one that supports the war has his grandson on the front lines with the marines in Iraq fighting the war that has been long over for some times. Gramps who hates Bush and doesn’t support the war has his grandson home (seemingly) safe at home on a homeland naval base.

Odd?

Well, I don’t know, I guess I agree. But for me, it’s stranger when I think about my cousin (who I’ve only spent time with once) being in Iraq. Now when I see the MSNBC .NET Alerts pop up in Messenger about US soldiers being killed I notice them more. I notice them when they say 5 marines killed in bombing. I’ve looked at the growing list of names, I haven’t seen my cousins yet, but 4 more years, a lot can happen.

Despite the fact I really don’t have any close ties to Andrew I can’t help but feel terribly sorry for him and every other soldier over there fighting for nothing. They serve no purpose at all except to possibly secure a few more barrels of oil which are oh so precious as the planet starts to finally run out. There’s no freedom in Iraq and there certainly won’t be any in the next 4 years. We certainly aren’t any more secure than we used to be by being in Iraq either, the only real thing to come out of Iraq will be further hatred for America and what that other half stands for. Americans are dead wrong if they think we’re somehow safer from “terrorism” than we used to be. Heck, I’m sure we’ve probably got a few more radical liberal terrorists even more pissed off since the election on Tuesday. I can only imagine the headlines when a few of them got together and decided to drive a pickup truck filled with liquid explosives to the Reagan Center while Bush and Cheney were giving their 4 more years speeches. That’s terrorism, it’s all around you, it’s not the fear of some Iraqis catching a flight from Fallujah and taking a bomb to the next football game. The only way to start the explosion of terrorism is to stop pissing other people off around the planet and promoting peace. Till then this country is screwed and any halfway insane American can just decide to make a few good pipe bombs and start blowing stuff up. Anyway, I’m getting away from what this post was about...

I really hope I get a chance to speak with Andrew once he comes back, not about what it was like over there, but if he truly believes it really mattered. Till then, good luck.

Well not exactly free, but $4.99 a month for an unlimited number of calls is quite incredible. How am I managing this exactly? Well it’s not some magical telepathy; it’s thanks to the most popular VoIP service out there, Vonage. Yes, that wonderfully unknown and never seen company, the one without a single advert anywhere.

So my stint with Vonage started back in August when I moved to San Jose for yet more college and decided that I just couldn’t stand old telecoms. I decided that I was going to do without them. I signed up two days early for SpeakEasy’s OneLink service, a whopping 6000/768K service that takes $115 worth of agony out of me every month and doesn't require an existing phone line. Oh and wow, they're the best ISP ever!!! The day after that I signed up with Vonage on their Premium Unlimited service which cost $29.99 at the time. The modem was free (well free if you count the fact that they should give you back the $29.99 activation fee should you cancel). So in that first month it was $73.23, not bad considering that SBC wanted $36 out of me to activate plus $76 a month for the same unlimited calling to the US and Canada. I really couldn’t justify that cost and having to deal with the phone company.

The modem came a few days later while I was still on my DSL Extreme (also a pretty good ISP, but nothing compared to SpeakEasy) account in Joshua Tree. Initial impressions were quite good, quality was good, and I had no complains. Luckily I timed the SpeakEasy service just right so that it was activated the morning after I got up here. I had the Motorola modem Vonage provided plugged in and had my 408 number up and working again (without a handset though ). The service with the extra bandwidth seemed even better with literally no realization that it was going through the net. My comms set up basically has the DSL modem, then the Linksys router, the Moto VoIP modem plugged into the router along with the GigE hub and other PC’s. So I’m not relying on what I’ve been told is crappy Moto routing in the VoIP modem.

I won’t really get into the back end stuff that Vonage has in terms of extra features, needless to say CID works great, along with the little message waiting light I have on the Vtech phone, call waiting, the works. Only real minor issue that sometimes crops up is with three way call disconnects; once had a third party still on after switching. I haven’t had any hidden fees or anything to complain about, I don’t consider the $1.80 and $1.50 crap tax to be anything major, expected really.

The real test I had with Vonage was when I was up on Slashdot, not only did my DSL service and server survive, I was able to test out the VoIP service as well. Amazingly I made and held a good quality conversion with Jon in Canada and even managed a three way call with the UK (which btw only costs like $.03 a minute, or $.28 for a mobile). It never disconnected and only garbled once or twice, pretty sweet.

I’m not too sure when they added these UK virtual phone numbers but I just noticed them the other day. Which is what these free calls from the UK are all about. Basically since all these VoIP services allow you to be anywhere with that has an Internet connection, you can pretty much choose a phone number in any area code they have allocated. I can have a number in 760, 408, 425, 310, whatever, all ring here, all would be local calls for anyone in that area code. In addition they’ve got these virtual numbers in addition to the primary, which is basically the same but is receiving only and costs $4.99 a month more. I added a London virtual number to my account and now because I’ve got unlimited calls and it rings me here basically I can have anyone in the UK call me for free. At least on my end. At the other end of course it’s the cost of a call from wherever in England to London. For BT and NTL lines it’s usually 1p - 3p a minute, on mobiles it’s usually included for free with the inclusive minutes on various plans. It’s actually rather scary. I still can’t figure out how Vonage is able to make money on this. And it’s definitely free, I’ve had 4 people in random UK locations call me.

Last but not least, you can have Vonage ring a second number at the same time as your primary home phone before it sends the call to voicemail. I’ve got it going to my mobile. So in a way I’ve kind of got a incoming UK mobile. Very scary indeed. But damn, why did Americans ever allow themselves to be screwed by the providers here and let themselves be charged for incoming calls on mobiles!? Probably that 51% that figured it was okay because it was “air time”. Bastards!