Monthly Archives: June 2009

Summer Vacation 2009

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This summer, we took an awesome house-boat trip on Dale Hollow lake with a fun group of people.

In all, 22 people went on 2 boats (10 on ours, 12 on the other) and everybody lived on water for 4 days. It was simply awesome.

We took turns cooking meals, got too much sun, bought over 50 bags of ice, and in general had an awesome time being disconnected from the real world. There were no computers, no Cable/Satellite TV, and my blackberry got NO reception.

At first it felt a little strange, but it really helped me relax and have a completely care-free vacation. I tried to be careful with sunblock, but I ended up pretty burnt on the first day. I had a great time all around even with the burn though.

I’m still sort of in vacation mode, and it’s been a little harder than usual to come back to the real world. Anyway… hope we can do that again sometime. A good, fun, and surprisingly cheap vacation.

The End of an Era

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I have made an impulsive decision to migrate my personal blog/website to a new URL today.
PalmerForPresident.com has sort of become stale as a name. Really, it’s almost totally irrelevant considering the reason I initially registered the URL was to support the fictional character “David Palmer” from Fox’s show 24 who was killed off many years ago.

Bottom line is that the URL “www.palmerforpresident.com” is very long to type, and it’s just past it’s time.
I felt like it was time time to move on to something shorter and more “personal” to me.

There will be a migration period; but from this day forward my new website will be www.ericvb.com.

Anyone who follows me on any various outlets such as GoogleReader, if you would be so kind as to update your subscription URLs accordingly that would be a very good game.

WordPress Update

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This morning I updated the site to use WordPress 2.8.
Looks like everything still works at this point, so I’m happy.

I am so glad that CSH pointed out using subversion to manage updates to WordPress awhile back. Can’t beat 1 line commands that update your wordpress install.

Google Voice – Two Weeks In

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Thought I’d quick post a few thoughts now that I’ve been using Google Voice for a couple weeks and have had a chance to get my hands dirty.

The basic functionality alone makes Google Voice totally worth using. Being able to have 1 number to give to friends, family, or co-workers and have that single number ring all your phones depending on different schedules is pretty much priceless. That, combined with unified voicemail that is also available online and is even transcribed has been amazing for me. But as I’ve used and explored Google Voice a bit deeper, I realize there’s a pretty good slew of features that I hadn’t even tried out.

Recording Calls.
Apparently you can press “4” to start/stop recording any phone call. These recordings are then saved and accessible via the web. This is something I haven’t really done too much with as of yet, but its nice to know that feature is available. The possibilities are endless here. My inner child longs to make prank calls using Arnold quotes and post them online for everyone. Just kidding! But seriously callers beware I may record your call and publish it. 😉

Transferring Calls.
While on a phone call via Google Voice, you simply have to press the * key. This keypress will then begin ringing all other phones that you’ve registered with Google Voice. This functionality I have used: Walking into my house while on my cell phone; I hit the * key and picked up my home phone which immediately began to ring. Nice, simple, easy functionality that allows you to switch phones without the person on the other end even having a clue that it happened.

VoiceMail ListenIn.
If you happen to just miss a call or send it to voicemail – Your GoogleVoice allows you to eavesdrop on the person currently leaving you a message. Even better, if you like what they’re saying you can press * to override the voicemail and pick the call back up. This one isn’t something I see myself doing very often, but it’s good to know that it’s there, and is a pretty cool added benefit.

Those are the main things I’ve found recently that were pleasant surprises. Overall, it seems like Google is constantly molding this service to do more with communications in general. Even in the beta stage it’s been a very solid product that I have really enjoyed having.