See Part 1 and Part 2. Last fall, I began a series of articles about my journey to “phone independence.” Basically, I found a way to make and receive free phone calls (yes, free) using an actual telephone and a free Google Voice account. This is possible through a gadget called the Obi 100 or Obi 110. This graphic pretty much says it all: If you are fuzzy on the details, please see Part 1 and Part 2 (listed above). I don’t plan to rehash everything here. Unfortunately, I’ve now hit a setback, and I wanted to be honest about it, since I agreed to document every step of my journey. This spring I was planning to port my landline phone number to Google Voice and take the next step. But then Obihai, the company that makes the whole phone-calls-through-Google-Voice thing possible, announced that Google plans as of May 15,…
I did it! I can now make long-distance phone calls to anyone in the US and Canada. Absolutely free! And I’m using a telephone to do it. Back in August I wrote about my new venture in pursuing free telephone service, thanks to the suggestion of a Facebook friend I’ve known since college (I won’t say how long ago). I was already aware of how to make and receive free phone calls using Google Voice, but I had to place calls from my computer. Now there’s a way to make a Google Voice call using a telephone instead of your computer—and that’s what I’m writing about today (and introduced in part 1). Here’s information about what you need and what you need to do as well as an update on what I’ve done so far on my journey to attain phone independence. Setting yourself up for free phone service is simple…
I’m hitting the road early today, so today’s post has got to be short and sweet. But I wanted to tell my readers about something exciting I recently came across. If you know me, you know I like free. I constantly post about free Kindle books at my Facebook, so if the idea of free Kindle books appeals to you, please come and friend/follow me (https://www.facebook.com/adamblumer for free nonfiction and https://www.facebook.com/AdamBlumerNovelist for fiction). But free phone service, not free books, is why I’ve come calling today (pun intended). A few years ago, I came across Google Voice, and I can’t speak more highly of it. Google Voice gives you a free phone number, and you can send and receive free local and long-distance calls—even send text messages—within the US and Canada completely for free using your computer (via Internet access). Read more about it here: http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html. If you have Internet in your home (and most of…
Exactly a week ago, my father-in-law and I tackled a two-day project to cover the old basement floor of my home office with a product called DRIcore subfloor. Last Friday, I blogged about the history of the home office and detailed the ongoing struggle to keep the floor painted and dry. I finally concluded that based on counsel from others, DRIcore appeared to be the best product for me. The fact of life is that for many older basements (our basement floor was poured in 1926) there simply is no easy way to eliminate all moisture. As the DRIcore website says, “98 % of basements will have a moisture problem.” Lifting my house and pouring a new basement floor simply isn’t an option for me, and running a dehumidifier around the clock is costly as well. The benefit of DRIcore is that it actually raises the floor by about three-quarters of an…
