Linksys SPA-3102 - power to the masses

This amazing little box can do so much on VoIP - so it takes quite a time to learn how to configure it.
But can do wonders.

GE SxS GSS20 refrigerator is not cold ...

After the move, freaking thing is not cold in freezer.
Symptoms:
1) freezer section is not cold enough
2) food in fresh food compartment got frozen
Observation:
air damper between freezer and fresh food section stays open.
So I used sticky tape to close the hole - now freezer is cold, for sure, but no cold air goes to fresh food.
Question: what makes air damper stay open ?

Where almost everything is made

Taiwanese companies made 98 percent of the world's motherboards, 30 percent of desktop computers, 82 percent of laptops, and 72 percent of LCD monitors last year, according to Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry.

Source - Bloomberg.

Zebra Printers tech support activation sucks

First, they send you this:
If you wish to create a Technical Support request in the future, you will need to 'activate' your profile by clicking on the link below.

When you click on a link and activate, they tell you this:
We have recently completed changes to Zebra.com to improve the profile validation process.
No profile activation is required

Suckers !!!

HP NetRAID-4M

RAID controller going crazy way to often.
Reports power failures, breakes mirrors, had to be rescan.
Only good thing is that hpncli utility allows rebuild everything online, without taking server down.
Can't wait to decomission this SCO beast.
The sooner the better.

Dell is crazy

I ordered computer from Dell last month - had to wait 3 weeks, deal with 4 people via e-mail:
Vishnu, Kranthi , Gautam , Maheshwari .
Ordered 5 more again - and now they ask who am I - and order was placed via their own system, with user name and password ...
Name of the new person is Sheela.

Resume: Dell makes good computers, local tech support in North America is good enough, sales support is outsourced to India and staffed with idiots.

WRTP54G - good for VoIP only

So, solution was to put back venerable WRT-54G into service, connect WRTP-54G as one of the ports, redirect some ports and life is back to normal.
Next step - get Linksys PAP2 off Ebay cheaply to try.

More on WRTP54G , Emule, and dropping connection

Problem seems to be that Emule causes phreaking box to die.
This is syslog: kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet
Now what ?
Stop Emule ? Add good wired router in front of WRTP54 and use it for VoIP only ?
Fix WRTP54G ?

WRTP54G is piece of crap in IP side

WRTP54G needs to be rebooted (powered off-on) after a few hours.
What a piece of crap.
Voice works well, anyway, so solution will place this POS behind real thing - WRT54G and disable wireless and routing.

Centos USB drive not working at USB 2.0

For odd some reason (used to work) phreaking stick is not recognized if I plug it in USB-2 port. Works ok in USB-1 ports.
Very annoying.

Best free e-mail service for low spam level is HOTMAIL !!!

I have Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail accounts - and so far Hotmail has the least amount of spam.
It is easy to explain - Microsoft sells real products and doesn't need to rely on spam for extra revenue.
Yahoo and Google are advertising-based so they promote spam heavily - stupid advertises paying them in the hope that somebody will see that message (but both Yahoo and Google honestly put it into spam folder)

Google spam now called "networking attempt"

Received this from Stephanie Buran, Technical Recruiter at Google:

Hello Alex,
My name is Stephanie Buran and I am a Recruiter for the Google.com Engineering team. I found your contact information on the Internet. I am interested to know more about your past work experience and openness to new opportunities. We currently have positions available at Google that may be a good match for you. If you are open to exploring these opportunities further please send an updated version of your resume in word, html, or pdf form to me as soon as possible. Let me know when would be a good time to talk, please include your phone number. (If you have “Google Talk” please feel free to contact me through your gmail account.)To give you an idea of the Engineers I am looking for I have included links to job descriptions below.
Please take a look at these links for more information :
...
I hope you are not bothered by my networking attempt

When I asked her how did she got my e-mail address, she said this:
Hi Alex,

I do various internet boolean searches pairing terms like: Engineer, software, computer science, iPV6, etc. Your contact info came up, so in my routine I sent out an email with the thought that I may get a qualified candiate in return.

I do hope you are not bothered by my previos email, as I mentioned.

Regards,

Stephanie Buran
Technical Recruiter

Linksys WRTP54G VoIP blues

1) Got locked WRTP54G device from Vonage.
2) Unlocked using CYT, after that shows Voice setup page, but kind of screwed, VoIP not operational
3) Allows to upgrade software under the following condition: must be logged as Admin in Voice setup ( Voice_adminPage.html) , then login as admin in general
4) Upgraded to modded 3.17, important - must have factory IP address - 192.168.15.1, otherwise upgrade fails
5) After having 3.17, Voice setup looks good
We'll see what will happen ...

Everything else but VoIP works just fine for this nifty device

Cheapest DID for VoIP in Toronto - VBuzzer

For mere 2$ a month you are getting local (416) number and unlimited incoming calls.
Another 2$ gives you unlimited local calling.
Pretty cool to have fully functional phone for 4$ a month !
Site: http://www.vbuzzer.com

VoIP - Voxalot

Cool concept, bit it has troubles with Betamax sites and with my VoIP provider - vBuzzer.

VoIP Patton M-ATA

Very small device, works very good.

VoIP - Mediatrix 1204

This little device is so complicated.
Managed via SNMP.
Big headache.

Blog again

First version was deleted - Blogger somehow screwed up account, had to delete blog.