Tag Archives: Skype

Change, and even some hope, for a change

Like the teleprompter reader-in-chief always says, “Change is never easy.” So the weekend shift from my old Dell Dimension 3000 with its dying audio to this new Dell Inspiron 546 has been a trip. Mostly finished now.

Thanks to a $19 Cruzer Micro 8GB flash drive, it was relatively painless. Along with ninety-nine percent of my old files,  I even managed to move the browser favorites and the old email. Can’t figure out how to move the passwords, however, so will do that by hand (i.e., pen and paper).

The only major hassle so far is Skype. I downloaded new software since I couldn’t shift the old over and the new refused to allow me to sign-on using my old account. So now I have a new account and the old one and emailed their powers in Belgium to try and get the new switched with the old. They came back saying sure, you can do that, if you use a new email address. Not wanting to do that, I canceled the old account. I’ll wait a few hours and try setting up the new one based on the same email address.

Skype loss?

The last time I bought a new headphone for the Skype system, the salesman at Radio Shack claimed most people his age (i.e. in their 20s) used Skype instead of landlines. If so, they must make up a good part of the intertubes phone service’s 450 million customers who will be calling the old landline company if a lawsuit comes out the way Swedish company Joltid wants it. It would be a pity, for sure.

Skyper

What I need is a primer on how to use Skype & one of those teensy Bluetooth earsets with a netbook in place of a cell phone. I keep hearing there’s a way. Free calls! I just don’t know how to jigger it.

Visiting Israel

Had a nice chat this morning on Skype with Snoopy the Goon in Israel. It was almost like visiting the country itself, though, of course, I never left my chair in the study at the rancho. Mr. Goon, who prefers to remain anonymous, reminded me that I have said I want to visit in person, and I do, but there are too many complications at the moment. Mr. B.’s mom is afraid of going, hostage, I think, to the MSM’s drumbeat of rockets and suicide bombings. Like the way they cover Iraq, all blood and guts, and no in-between. I doubt she would let me take Mr. B. by himself, and otherwise arrangements would have to be made for taking care of him while I was gone. So, for now, an actual visit will remain no more than a future intention. But Skype brought me a little closer. My voice, at least. About fifty kilometers (thirty-one miles) from Jerusalem, in fact.

Skype

We’re converts, here at the rancho, to Skype, the Internet phone service that works with video cameras so you and your interlocutor can see each other as you talk. My cousin Jerry in Dallas, a ham radio operator since the 1930s, got me onto it, and I talked my out-of-state sisters into it. So the four of us have now had conversations and video visits weekends since the middle of January from one end of the country to the other. The camera and a headset (or a microphone) are all you have to pay for. Skype is a free download, and so are the calls, if you have broadband, of course. The video’s a little jerky sometimes, but it’s still more fun than a phone call–and cheaper. Jerry talks to his son in England all the time. Maybe I can interest Snoopy the Goon in it. It would be fun to talk to Israel.