Thursday, October 13, 2005

VOIP DAY 01

The Packet8 box arrived. Installation was as painless as hooking up a phone. Plug in the box and go. Nice. However, a strange thing happened with my DLINK Router - the wireless portion of it vanished. It required shutting down, waiting, rebooting, to get it to reappear. I hope this was just a hiccup because the last time this happened, the fix required exchanging the router. Don’t think it was coincidence; something about plugging into a packet8 box adapter messed with its head.

So far, the voip phone thing has been working - pretty well. There are the occasional strange digital hits. I upgraded the firmware, so we’ll see if that fixes it in any way. The most novel thing that I have noticed is that caller ID now works on the phone. It’s cool to see your handset suddenly tell you something new.

It’s been a good day of writing (re-re-re-writing) thus far. I’ve been playing with “the big board” again, which means that I’m breaking the story down into plot elements yet again.
For those of you who write or are planning to write, you probably know what “the big board” is. If not, try it – it’s a super tool, and better than anything you can do in front of a computer.

Snippets of paper on a cork board. Some people recommend 3x5 cards. Personally, I think they’re too big for what I do. I cut tiny pieces out of scrap paper. Anyway, time after time, I have found it to be a more effective way of organizing stories than any software solution.

So why am I blogging about 3x5 cards on a supposedly good day of “real” writing?

Because I’m procrastinating!

Today (because of The Big Board), I’m writing inside. I’ve been out on the patio for the past week. Lately though, the birds in the trees have given me pause. In a way, the fears being presented on the news are a bit more insidious than anything presented in that ole Hitchcock film, aren’t they? A Bird Flu case here, one there… all the special reports on CNN describing what could happen. No question, it is scary. Somehow though, with all the orange alerts, and all the “threats” we’ve been warned about over the past several years, I’m getting a bit suspicious.
What exactly is in it for the government if we’re all afraid of birds?
Hmm.

Hopefully, this will vanish like so much SARS.

3 comments:

  1. God God, all of this technical talk!!! I thought artists, musicians, movie makers, etc. etc liked to discuss things like the meaning of life, pretty clouds and flowers, and what's wrong with the planet.

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  2. Surprising how it's become "new" news here, it was a major story in SE Asia a year and a half ago.

    Some mornings in the hotel on CNN Asia we'd watch stories from Japan of poultry farms being burned and covered with lime et.

    All poultry sales were halted the month I was in Vietnam, no chicken in restaurants and so on. Even the bird sanctuaries I wanted to visit were closed.

    The end of my stay they (mid March 04) they announced that poultry sales would start again.

    But the country was on an alert mode.

    -Sam

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