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Skype is a piece of software that you can download to call other people on Skype over the internet for free and make and cheap calls to any other phones and mobiles worldwide.

I absolutely love Skype and here is why…

Think about this for a second. The unfortunate part about checking our mailboxes is BILLS!

So I get a water bill and a light bill and (used to be) a phone bill. What happens if I don’t use any water for the month? Water bill shows $0.00.

What happens if I don’t use any electricity for the month? Last I checked $0.00

What happens if I don’t use the phone for an entire month? That’s right, I still get charged like $60.00 or so for fees and the privilege of having a land line phone. At the very least you might be able to get it down to $26.00. This is ridiculous!

It all started when I was at Wal-Mart one day and noticed that they had a super clearance of electronic items. One of them happened to be a USB Skype phone and I thought to myself that for $2.00 I really couldn’t go wrong and should try it out.

Actually to be honest I have always been a lover of prank calling and thought this would be fun. I must admit that was my First thought. My second thought was more along the lines of business.

At that time I was beginning to start an online computer help website after just being laid off from work, and it would involve people calling me with computer problems and I would remote into their computer and help them.

I started to realize that since I didn’t have a house phone, that I would be using my cell phone for business and this would really eat up my minutes. I had an unlimited data plan but only 450 nationwide minutes per month and to this was already costing me $120 a month.

Now I could have purchased another plan to give me unlimited calling for another $50 a month, but this would be just added expense on a per month basis and cell phone service at my home is not the best.

I was thinking that Skype may be the answer to this.

One Saturday I decided to plug in the USB Skype phone and go to the Skype website and download the software onto my computer. It came with 100 free minutes and once I was all setup I decided to call my Dad and see how it sounded before committing to anything more. After all I only had $2.00 in this so far.

I connected with him over the phone and the conversation was flawless. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was crystal clear despite what others on the internet were saying about Skype’s voice quality. I figure this has got to be my solution to a business phone, so I began to look over their packages.

I ended up getting a Skype Out for a year for $23.00.

That would allow me to call anywhere in the USA and Canada anytime, unlimited calling.

Then I needed a number for people to call me, so I bought a number that was local to me since I plan on most of my customers being near. The number was $24.00 a year for unlimited calling.

This brings my total for the year to $47.00 for unlimited calling inbound and outbound with a number for me to give out so people can call me. Not bad at all.

Now I know what you are thinking… do I have to be tied to the computer all the time?

Well for me and with the purpose in mind, I will be in front of the computer all the time, but you don’t have to be.

There are lots of things you can use.

There is a Belkin Wi-Fi phone (Part # F1PP000GN-SK) http://www.belkin.com/skype/howitworks/ that you can use with your wireless network to go about through your home or take with you on the road and use in hotels, work office, airports, or wherever there is a wireless connection.

There is also a desktop internet phone for Skype (Part # F1PP010EN-SK) http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=404607 for those that do not have a computer, but do have an internet connection or simply just want the phone located somewhere in the home and not have it tied to the computer.

I ended up getting a skype headset and a cordless telephone, a cheap one, one of those v-tech cheap ones.

I also got this Zoom Phone Adapter for Skype – Model 5900 http://www.zoom.com/products/voip_products.html#skype_products

You can get more hard ware here

Buy Skype hardware now

I can now use my headset or the cordless handset and walk about the house and even into the yard.

There are a ton of things you can do with Skype!

Cheap calls Call phones and cell phones anywhere at low rates.

Skype to Skype calls are 100% free.

Online number

Friends call you from a regular phone and reach you on Skype – anywhere.
You can pick a number that’s local to your area.
I know people that have parents that live in another state. Their parents do not have a computer so a Skype to Skype call is out of the question. Instead my friend gets a number that’s local to his parents so when the parents call, the number is local to them.

SMS Send text messages directly from Skype. Voicemail Never miss a call. Call forwarding

Get your calls on your cell phone when you’re offline.

There is an option where you can set it to send the call to your cell phone or any phone really after a certain time limit, like 15 seconds for example.

Pay as you go, Pay monthly, or do like I did and just pay for it by the year.
You get it at a discounted price of you do so.

You can find out more about skype here.

3 months for the price of 2 on all 3 or 12 month calling subscriptions from Skype.

Dont forget you can use it for you business too!
Skype for Business

Hey just wanted to wish everyone a happy Labor Day. For those of you lucky enough to not have to work today, check out this funny video below. Its totally unrelated to Labor Day but its still funny, especially for the technical people out there.

* this is not my work – all credits go to www.thewebsiteisdown.com *

After much taping, editing, deleting, drinking and swearing we are proud to present… Sales Guy vs. Web Dude! A mashup of true and mostly-true stories from IT hell. If you’ve ever called tech support and wondered what the hell they are doing down there… well, this should answer some questions for you.

Created by: Josh Weinberg Sales Guy: Casey Cochran Web Dude: Josh Weinberg Trevor from Arvada: Jesse JohnsonWhitefellow (The Boss): Josh Childs

Sales Manager Nancy: Ruth SherrodIrving

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May 30th, 2009 | Jack the Daschund, My Thoughts, Pets

Today is May 30 and its Jacks Official first birthday.

He stayed with me in the backyard and watched me work all day today.

Here is a look back on him.

I recently got laid off from work and decided to write about it.

I call this one “What All I Have Done for the Company” article.

So here I am…sitting writing…putting my thoughts on paper about what I have done for a company that I worked with for the past five years.

As I get my thoughts together I am realizing that it’s really challenging to put into words on paper what all you have accomplished for a company in a five year span.

Let me begin by detailing my transition into the company and what I discovered once I was employed and go from there.

It was February 2003, and the company I was working for Irvin Automotive, a Takata company, was moving its location to Acuna, Mexico. I had a choice to either move to the border town of Del Rio, TX or find another job. I chose to find a job local to me at WACO Construction Company, Inc.

WACO was not only into general construction, but the sawmill industry as well. That was the main staple of work they were doing at the time and at present.

They build turn key solutions for the sawmill industry as well as do upgrades to existing sawmills nationwide.

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Before I came to WACO, they outsourced all of their computing needs to a local computer shop. I think they quickly realized that more money was spent doing this

than there would have been if they had just hired a tech to be there all the time.

When I first came to WACO in March of 2003, I came into a computing environment of about five workstations and two servers. Most of the workstations were running Windows NT workstation 4.0 with a few running Windows 2000. The servers were all running Windows NT server 4.

All of these computers were sharing a single dial-up connection to Dixie-net.com, a local internet service provider.

The users were set up using a non standard email naming convention, which consisted of the three letter initials of their name. They were using pre MS Exchange mail server software, MS Mail which comes with NT Server 4. Their mailbox names matched that of their phone extensions. This was setup in a way that if anyone were to leave the company, the next person would simply sit right there in the same users spot and pick right up where the last person left off, horrifying from a Systems Administrators perspective.

They were lacking proper network shares setup with the proper permissions and login scripts, no website to advertise to the world who they were and how to get in touch with them, they were backing up data, but were using some old archaic software using tapes labeled by the days and not storing them offsite. I’m sure I am forgetting some other details that will surface later in this article.

Ok so what all have I done for WACO?

Well the first thing WACO wanted from me was to build a website. I had begun work on the website prior to taking the job. I already had a preliminary one built and had one working by the first week on the job, hosted at their ISP Dixie-net.com.

Here is what their site looked like when I arrived.

NOTE: I am using the waybackmachine internet archive to try and show you the progression of sites. Sometimes the images were not always cached to the internet archive and you may see grey squares where images are supposed to be.

May 18, 2001

http://web.archive.org/web/20010518072015/http://www.waco-eng.com/

July 21, 2003

http://web.archive.org/web/20030621203804/http://waco-eng.com/

July 30, 2004

http://web.archive.org/web/20040730151910/http://www.waco-eng.com/

Nov 27, 2006

http://web.archive.org/web/20061127091602/http://www.waco-eng.com/

Present day

http://www.waco-eng.com

After setting up a website, I quickly decided that we should get rid of the ISP account with Dixie-net.com and go with a local cable company for faster internet and host all of our own needs, like our website, our own mail server and file hosting.

It was aggravating to say the least when it comes to working with Dixie-net for hosting and email. I felt we needed to control ourselves and it was easily doable.

First I needed to get some of the workstations and servers up to speed. I quickly commandeered a room to call the server room and moved the two existing servers into this room. I got with my previous CDW contacts and ordered a new server that would be our web/mail/ftp/backup server. Once this server arrived I setup
Windows 2000 Server on it as well as upgraded the other two servers to Windows 2000 Server. Installed veritas backup software, and began to make login scripts for the users so that when they logged on to the domain, they would have a shared directory and a home directory for network storage mapped to them easily accessible through “My Computer”.

After setting them up properly on a new Windows 2000 domain with the proper file shares and permissions, proper services running like dhcp, dns, this was starting to come together as the solid network that I hoped it would, and it did indeed.

Time out- just think about this for a second, I mean before, they were not logging into a domain at all. All users logged in locally to there pc and they were mapped to the servers main drive for a share to store files on the network, which was allowing anyone and everyone unrestricted access to the servers main drive. This was terrible!

Once the servers were up to date, several of the workstations needed upgrades so I quickly upgraded the Operating Systems, memory, and other hardware needs. The upgrades went as planned, all clean upgrades by simply backing up all user info to a network share, scrubbing the computers and reloading them bare metal,
then restoring the users data.

Once I completed the setup on high-speed broadbandwe became a lot more productive.

At this time some of the WACO execs had ideas on software they wanted to use, for example MS Exchange for email and Internet Information Server for our web services.

I took this opportunity to open their world to more robust software, free software also known as open source software, software that didn’t cost $15,000 just for email!

I introduced them to Apache web server (cross-platform software) for web services, and Xmail (cross-platform software) for our mail server needs.

As of February 2008, Apache had 50.93% of the web server market share. Since their inception in 1995, Apache has always been above and beyond Microsoft which currently only holds a 35.56% market share. Many people frown upon free software, but they do not fully understand the power of free software. They often feel if they are not paying for it that it can’t be good. That there will not be any decent support for it in case it’s needed. Contrary to that belief, there are people out there that willingly help out on forums and such, and often the support is far greater than any costly phone call.

I could go on and on about free software, its benefits, and how protected you are in using it. That could be a new article in itself. Just remember that Windows is closed source and you really never know for sure if its phoning home, and Linux and the Mac alike are open source and they have very few if any virus threats or incidences.

Ok so moving on, after I had the server running Apache server and Xmail server for email, we were now really rocking and hosting on our own.

This coupled with high speed internet increased productivity tremendously. We were now able to point customers to a website for info about our company, setup as many emails as we wanted for jobs, sales, or anything we wanted on a whim. We had our own spam control and could monitor the logs of mail coming
and going in live action. No need in wondering about an email that may have been lost somewhere in transit on a remotely hosted server. We were in control.

We could host files quickly and easily to share with clients, which was particularly important for the company as it often shared AutoCAD drawings with clients as they collaborated on jobs. On some jobs working with sawmills that were in remote places, the ever increasing need to have internet would pose a problem in these areas where it was unavailable.

Since most if not all the locations did not offer cable or DSL, the solution was satellite internet. I became a licensed DirecWay installer so that I could setup and move the satellites from location to location without voiding any warranty.

Here are some of the installs I completed for the company to allow them to remote back into the office from the most remote places.

This allowed our remote office locations to connect back to our home office via vpn or ftp, to transfer files back and forth and stay in touch with the office through email easily.

For the road warriors, I set them up with cellular data cards to communicate
from their laptops.

WACO had two other companies at the time, Pro-Fab, and Phoenix Pipe and Supply Company. I supported these two companies as well. Hosted websites and email for them at our home office on our new server. I configured routers at each of these locations and allowed them to vpn into our network.

One of the WACO companies Pro-Fab, had specific needs at times. They had an oxy-acetylene cutting table called a burny table that could cut any emblem you configured it to cut. Often the files that were needed as instruction for the table were made at our home office and it was a real chore to email the file to the users at Pro-Fab and they know where to put it on the server there for the burny table to be able to call it up.

This is where I shine. I made an email address for them to mail the files to and the mail server would parse the file, get the attached file from the email, ftp it over to the server at Pro-Fab, and from there the server would copy it into the directory on the server that it need to be in for the burny table to call it up and cut the emblems or logos out of steel.

There were many times at WACO where I did such scripting ideas and solutions to provide efficiency.

I wrote many scripts to manipulate Windows 2000 operating environment for the users. Scripts for manipulating emails to send certain PDF documents we subscribed to over to folders by date. Also to archive all email as was mandated in 2005 by the government.

The list for that kind of thing goes on and on. If it was tech, had buttons, and had to be figure out or manipulated to do things it wasn’t intended to do…I did it.

I feel strongly that I had a big part in taking WACO to new heights enabling them to take advantage of technologies that allowed them to proceed to new levels of success.

I helped them become more proficient using the web, as well as having a strong presence within the web.

I traveled with WACO to Atlanta every other year to tradeshows, setup huge displays with several LCD screens displaying slideshows that I put together to show the companies strengths.

There were many times I also traveled to remote office job sites to setup many computers, plotters, printers, and other networking devices along with cable runs to neighboring offices on location.

Here are some of the remote offices that I setup. Not only did I populate these offices with computers, printer, file servers, and plotters, I also wired them with phone and network cabling. Each of these has their own satellite connection to the internet as well.

Here is another location where we took the trailer off of an 18 wheeler and made it into an office. I wired this one up as well.

I also kept the data on the company airplanes current.

As I left the company, I setup two “trading systems” for the company owners to trade the stocks and futures market.

I consider this event to be a blessing in disguise. I have always wanted to work from home in the computer field or find some way to make money online.
Now that time has come for me to try it out. I may struggle and after a while make it, or after a while be struggling to find a job.

Only time will tell.

Hey! Its been a while! I have been meaning to write but I have been busy with lots of projects.  Sorry about that.

I think maybe in the future I will write once a week like a digest of whats been going on… I dunno…maybe.

I guess to catch you up real fast starting with the latest while its fresh on my mind, I will start with a movie that I saw last night.

I went to the local theater here to see To Save A Life. I gotta say I was BLOWN away by this movie. It was simple film making at its best with several very powerful messages in for all ages.

I am gonna take a moment to rip off  IMDB.com and show you the full synopsis of the movie and possibly spoiling some of it for you but trust me you need to see this movie.

The film tells the story of Jake Taylor, a young man who has it all: a basketball scholarship, the ideal girlfriend, and the right friends. But faced with the demands of the in-crowd, Jake has written off his childhood best-friend, Roger. Isolated and mistreated, Roger finally takes his anger to the extreme when he shows up one day on campus with a gun.

Jake’s last-ditch effort cant stop Roger, and the events which follow rock Jake’s world. He begins to question everything, but most of all, he cant stop asking: Could I have saved Roger?

In his search for answers, Jake finds himself looking for the next Roger. He reaches out to geeks, losers, and loners. But crossing the strict high school caste lines threatens everything Jake values. And pushes him to answer the most important question of all: What do I want my life to be about?

This film doesn’t shy away from the real struggles facing our teens.. It is rated PG-13 because it portrays some of these issues accurately: from teen sexuality, to abortion, to cutting, to drug and alcohol abuse, to suicide.

But because it does so, teens are praising this film for its realistic and relevant portrayal of their world and responding enthusiastically to its message. As teen author and speaker Zach Hunter comments: It conveys the raw emotions of life and the ups and downs of high school My friends who have seen the film are already talking about it and encouraging others to go see it.

A must see for all teenagers and parents.

See the trailer here

Ok…moving on. I have been BAD sick last week with the flu or a severe chest cold. I manage to pull through it and just have a  minor weezing cough right now that fading day by day.

While I was sick I managed to start a few new top secret web projects, so you will to stay tuned for those.

I also managed to watch several good movies at home.

THE ROAD

FLASH OF GENIUS

PERFECT GETAWAY

The Road, I got to see an advanced copy of this. It was well…bleak. Very sad. Its about a boy and his father and their struggle to survive in a post apocalyptic world.

Flash of Genius was a very good movie based on the true story of Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and how FORD Motor Company stole his idea.  He later battles FMC in court and wins, but don’t let these simple sentences stop you from checking this movie out, as you will never look at your wipers the same again. Good flick!

The Perfect Getaway was a movie that I expected to be very scary or suspenseful but it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong it was a GREAT movie. This is one of those who dun it movies and you will never guess, not in a miiiillliiiooonnnn years. Watch it!

That’s all for now, I’m tired of writing and I am sure you are tired of reading.

I will try to post more soon.

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This is an old story actually, but I decided to write it and share it with all of you that visit my blog.

Remember my blog is a public journal of my life activities and other interesting things, so you never really know just what I will blog about.

Ok moving on… I was out of town some time ago doing some computer work for a client.

While I was at this persons home, upstairs with the client, he recieved a  phone call from his son. I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was getting some bad news of some sort. We locked eyes with each other waiting on the call to end he would surely tell me what was happening.

Before the phone call ended I heard the guy ask his son “did it hit the car?”

I’m not thinking oh my god what just happend, is my car ok?

What happed was as the son came home in his jeep, he must have forgotten to engage the parking brake or something and it rolled backwards down their steep driveway hitting their brick mailbox structure, and the mailbox structure came very close to smashing the tail end of my car.

This would have made for a terrible day for me has this happend. Thankfully the most damage to anything was the mail box. [ad#adpost1]

Went to the Bass Pro Shop in Flowood,Ms. This place was OFF THE HOOK!!! I have been to several Bass Pro Shops and this one really impressed me. Not only did this store have everything outdoors, but the level of detail inside was just amazing.

I took several pictures with my trusty Iphone for you to see some of it. The pictures may not be highly detailed, but you will get the idea. Sorry if I didnt take enough, I didnt want to look like a guy that had never been to a Bass Pro Shop before hahaha.

They even had a shooting range and restaurant inside! I didnt eat there, maybe next time.

September 8th, 2008 | News

Slip of the tongue or momentary confusion? In a television interview today discussing his religion, Sen. Barack Obama stated, “My Muslim faith.”

Obama, speaking to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week,” was talking about what he described as “smears” that were claiming he was a Muslim when he maintains he is a practicing Christian…

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Today marks the one year anniversary of seizethepage.com
Wow a year just flies by doesn’t it?

I initially created this website with the basic idea in mind that I would keep a sort of journal of the things I do. I didnt start out wanting to “Blog” about a certain niche, I just wanted to basically keep a journal/diary of things that I did that I thought others would like to read about, and sometimes just throw in some personal opinions about stuff.

I have been really busy lately with lots of projects and just life in general, so I have not written much lately. I do have some topics in mind that I would like to cover, so I will start to do that soon.

Some of the topics will include things like

• Do you think you are better than someone?
• Getting ready for camping
• Iphone earbud replacement
• Music on my Ipod, whats on yours?
• Social Media Facebook and Twitter and why you should be interested.
• Pets – Whose training who?
• Housebreaking your pet
• Budgeting 101, Recession….What Recession?
• How many licks does it really take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?

As you can see I have just scraped the top layer of what all I have to write about, I just need to find the time to do it.

Stay tuned!

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As many of you know for the next several days my Wife and I will be at Disney World with the Grenada High School Visions Show Choir.

During this time I plan to keep all my followers up to date and abreast of almost every passing moment with my trusty Iphone, and www.ping.fm

This site allows me to post my comments to email and it will shoot them out to my blog (seizethepage.com) facebook.com and twitter.com so for those of you that see me on facebook and nowhere else, you will be IN THE KNOW at all times on what I am doing. Same goes for my twitter followers and those that only see what I am up to using this website. Ping.fm is awesome if you find yourself updating several social networking sites throughout the day. They make it soo easy to control. They cover what seems like over 50 socail sites. Enough rattling on about them, you can check that site out later, heh I may also blog about it soon.

Since I will be posting ALL THE TIME over the next several days, I decided to turn off the email notifications that are usually sent to my website subscribers. I think you would get highly annoyed if you got an email from my website every few minutes or several times within an hour, so for now that is shut off.

You will just have to remind yourself to check in on the website often. I will be posting lots of pictures of the trip along with brief descriptions of whats going on, so it should be fun and interesting.

Don’t you just love what all technology can do for us these days? I know I sure do.

Ok Im getting ready to close the lid on my suitcase and get ready to go, so don’t forget to check seizethepage.com often daily for new updates. If you already follow me on twitter through your cellphone or web, you will also be in the know. Same goes for facebookers.

Aight I’m out, see ya on the flipside.