Swimming In Thought

OK, I’m going away for a trip. A long trip (well, not that long. Gonna swing through Africa and Europe to clear my head.) So I decided this would be a good time to test VOIP on the Road. I initially had a few thoughts about how to approach this whole thing and here are my solutions / concerns.

Concerns:

I’m currently with ATT Wireless (yes, the “New” ATT.. Geezus) and I checked on their website as to whether my phone / service was gonna work in those countries. Long story short, yes, but at a price. $2.50 per min. in Africa and $.99 per minute in Europe. Personally, it’s not too appetizing for me. Since I have a few businesses I run, I decided that not having a cell phone would be (marginal) career suicide. I figured it would be safe to get the International Roaming option + their $5.99 world traveler plan that allows me to get “discounted” rates as posted earlier in this page.

Now, me being the “f*** the system” kinda guy, I believe there’s always an option. So, I took a good hard look and put on the thinking cap. Here are my solutions that I will be implementing (while keeping the ATT Wireless solution as an absolute backup).

1. I have a VOIP PBX System (CentPBX) that I’m using. So I figured it would be prudent to leverage the power of the net. The first step was to leverage VOIP to provide awesome rates to my cell phone (call forwarded calls), but that wouldn’t stop me from getting the charge. I did, however, figure I could simply let my calls go to voicemail, but the problem is, as per ATT, “If you leave your telephone and get a call, Calls going to Voicemail will be charged at the per minute rate of $2.50 per minute. If your telephone is off, you will get no charge.” Kind of retarded, huh? So here’s my solution and a little bit of an explanation.

Buried deep in your telephone is a voicemail system telephone number to forward your calls to. If your cell phone is on when you receive a call, after 4 rings, the phone itself tells the switch to forward the telephone to your voicemail system. (This means you’re paying for someone to leave voicemail for you). When you update the telephone number in your phone, it updates the setting in the switch and the call is forwarded directly to your voicemail system (even if the phone is off).. I know.. complicated and just “retarded”. This can easily be tested by messing with the telephone voicemail settings in your phone. (It works with mine).

So.. I simply get a DID and set my phone to forward all calls to my DID (telephone number) and that subsequently forwards calls to my voicemail on my PBX system. Once a message is left for me, the PBX system notifies me of a call via SMS. Now, remember, I can’t have my cell phone on right? Right. How do I bypass this whole mess? Simple.. There are 2 solutions.

a. When I get to Africa Country 1, I’m going to buy a SIM CARD (Prepaid) from the local cell phone store and pop it into my unlocked phone. I will update the info on my pbx remotely to forward calls to my new African number (which recieves incoming calls for free). I will get text message notifications from my PBX that people have called and left a message for me on my African SMS telephone. Got it? I don’t pay for people to leave me messages and I still get immediate notification that people are calling me and leaving messages (the difference is now, the messages are left on my PBX phone system and not on the Cell Phone Carrier’s phone system).

2. I can check the phone messages a couple of different ways. I can check my voicemail via my voicemail portal (website), I can have the messages emailed to me for laptop checking, or I can simply call in to get them. Problem is.. I’m not going to pay $2.50 per minute to do it. Since I had my African Sim Card in my cell phone, I would only be charged $1.25 per minute. Uhm.. Not as bad as ATT wireless, but still unacceptable. I went online to look for a VOIP DID in the country I was visiting only to find that there are no VOIP providers in that country offering DIDs!!! ok.. I’m S.O.L. right? nope, I’m not.

The hotel i’m staying at offers Free Wireless Internet Access. N’est Pas? So I could just get a softphone client on my laptop with a headset and be done with it right? Unacceptable. I’m not going to carry a headset and be tethered to my computer. It just isn’t happening. I bought a Linksys WIP 330 from Mike over at .e4 Communications (877-434-VOIP) or simply http://www.4e4voip.com. I received it via overnight mail (saturday deliver), because I didn’t want to wait.

I configured it and will now conduct some field trials before my trip. The phone is configured to connect to any wireless hotspot / Access Point and become an extension of my PBX. This will allow me to roam relatively freely to Starbucks, places that just happen to have open wifi, etc.. If someone calls, my wifi phone rings..

Now.. Off to test.. Will post follow-ups as I run around and pound on the system.

Driving around, I found an open access point called ‘Free Internet’ so I accessed it. The phone seemed to connect and I could make outgoing calls no problem. When I dialed into the PBX from a Cell Phone and punched in the extension of the WIP330, I got nowhere. I have since added a STUN server to the configuration of the WIP330. I will be experimenting with this later on today.

I’m running PFSense Firewall at my office, so I decided to try NAT Reflection. Needless to say, it was a miserable failure. Turning on DNS RELAY and Masquerading seemed to help as long as I put a static address mapping for the server to the DNS tables (to resolve internally). So the WIP330 now works within my network and outside without reprovisioning. It’s not a fix for NAT Reflection, but it’s a temporary fix.

UPDATE -

I decided to set up a secondary network on another static ip and of course, a secondary Access Point (well, more of a router). So basically, I’m Double Natted to the Internet through this connection. It was more of a test and I really didn’t expect the WIP330 to work, but to my surprise, it does!!! It’s been about 2 hours since I connected it and I still have connectivity! The WIP330 gets the calls transferred to it and makes calls out! Pretty damn stable if I say so myself! If I had to guess, I would say that the STUN server setting made a HUGE difference. I wasn’t expecting much, but surprisingly, it works quite well! I’m going to test it throughout the week as I run around to various locations. Things are looking up! Yay!!!

There are a couple of things that bother me about the WIP330 though. Specifically the lack of features that work on the phone. For example, the headset jack does NOT work, nor does the speakerphone. Further analysis and a little bit of googling has determined that the speakerphone functionality isn’t enabled.. yet. Since the speakerphone isn’t enabled yet, I would venture to guess the headset isn’t either. That’s ok.. I’m looking forward to it.

It seems like Linksys rushed this phone out to market (probably because they had a potential deal with Skype) and it fell through. This is also the ONLY wifi phone that will authenticate via those crappy hotspot web authentication portals. So… I really can’t complain, but that was my big beef about any of the other phones out on the market. They couldn’t do that!

While things look promising on this telephone it’s still a long way from being *complete*. There are features that aren’t activated on the phone yet, but that’s something I’m willing to deal with, as the base functionality I was looking for is already here. The firmware update feature is slick, but required a little bit of modification of the download URL from Linksys. That’s ok too.. but for the average “non-techy”, this would have been a major problem. For someone who’s well-versed and isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty, this is a phenomenal phone once you get it set up properly.

I’ll be using the phone throughout the next week prior to my trip and if all goes well, it should be a success!!!! (hopefully). We’ll see…

———Update——————-

I tried the “overnight” regular usage test.. Running around the house with all calls forwarded to the phone. Performance was very good. Didn’t drop a call, although, callers said they heard, “minor echo”. They said it didn’t affect the call quality though. It was still usable. I didn’t hear the echo on my side so.. I wouldn’t know.

Gonna run to the airport to test it today (2 hour drive roundtrip). This should be a good test.

—————- UPDATE ——————

OK.. Stopped by the Mall on the way to the airport and tried it out in a few places (hotspots). Worked Flawlessly with a few free wifi hotspots.

The Airport, however, was a different story. It’s all Pay Service. So… To use it, I either have to pay $8-10 per day (buy at the time of the service) or.. I can sign up for Boingo (the provider partner of the service) on a monthly fee. I decided not to pay the fee to test it, but I will be signing up with Boingo or an affiliate partner to test it when I go to the airport on Sunday.

Interesting bit of news though.. I was gone 4 hours, had a relatively well-charged phone, used about 10 min. of talk time and the phone was dead within 4 hours.. I don’t know if the phone was partially charged prior to me leaving for my little excursion. I’ll be testing battery life throughout the week.

————UPDATE ————-

It’s been 3 days since I’ve charged up the phone. I just let it sit by my desk (it shares a miniusb cable with my Razr) and it’s received 5 missed calls. So We know standy time rocks! Talk Time testing begins today.

————UPDATE ————-

Well, I’m back from my trip and here’s what I’ve learned.  The WIP330 did it’s job in my hotel room / lobby.  It was good for keeping the fort down and handling incoming phone calls.  I did have some trouble with phone calls outside my hotel, but I attribute that to the lack of access points available rather than telephone performance.  My goal was to have a landline available and my business phones ring me when I was in the hotel room.  The WIP330 performed flawlessly.  Battery time for talk was ample as I was always in / near my hotel room.  I just remembered to plug in to the charger after telephone calls.

My little experiment was definitely a success and the WIP330, while not perfect performs it’s functions well. I will be traveling with this little dynamo again in the near future.

Tags: VOIP by admin
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People ask me all the time (well the friends that know me well) how I always manage to walk away from the market relatively unscathed. The truth of the matter is I do it with a little bit of common sense, a lot of foresight, and big ole BULLSHIT meter. Being a former corporate executive in Healthcare, Advertising, and Manufacturing (weird combo, huh?) I can tell you that spotting the bullshit is pretty easy for me. So after many years of deliberation, I’m going to release my picks / portfolio to the people who actually take the time to read my rhetoric. I don’t claim to be any super financial genius, I don’t claim to be an avid follower of the markets (although I do a lot of that these days), I’m just a guy (who’s turned down a few opportunities to work at some hedge funds) who wants to share my knowledge.

There are a couple things one has to do prior to deciding to invest in the market. Investors all make the same mistakes; even the seasoned ones.

1. Don’t *not* invest in a company, just because you don’t like them. Case in point, there are tons of people who purposefully keep AAPL (apple) out of their portfolio, because they’re microsoft people. You’re investing with your heart, not your head. Look at the company as a whole, their market penetration, products, etc. Do you think they’ll be around in a growth capacity in 5 years, 10 years? Don’t answer me. It’s not the point. It’s about the point I’m making. While you may not like AAPL, or Exxon Mobil or any of the War / Weapons manufacturers, these are the companies that are fiscally sound and most likely to turn a profit. In other words, get over it; when it comes to investing it’s not your heart, it’s about making money.

]2. Look at where the world is going. Where are our exports going? or better yet, where are our imports coming in from? Chances are whoever’s making those products is doing pretty damn well.

3. If you’re looking for the quick “hit” you’re in for a big surprise. Nobody can predict the market and those who claim they have a system are full of ****. Day traders are nothing more than gamblers. If you tell me that you can definitively walk into a casino and play roulette with a “winning” system every time, prove it. I’ll put my money elsewhere in the meantime. If you’re not in the market for the long run, you shouldn’t be in the positions you’re in. I never play with “borrowed” money (margin), nor do I invest in anything I wouldn’t be willing to hold at least 2-3 years. I have the “buy it and forget it” attitude. I follow the stocks, but I know my picks will do well in the long run. So I just sit back and let it happen.

4. Buy low, sell high. We’ve all heard that adage, but the reality is you can never predict how low a stock price will go, but if the stock is undervalued (based on EBITDA) and their assets, you should be fine. Perfect example, CFC is worth about 20 per share, it’s at $7.00 right now. I bought in at 6.xx. Don’t get greedy, you need to be willing to take a risk, but a calculated one.

5. When you don’t have the time to manage stocks, look at mutual funds. Here’s a really important rule. Remember it, but also, remember that a mutual fund manager is still human and only as good as he/she can be based on experience. Do research and choose a fund that has a manager that knows their backyard.

6. When In Doubt, What is the UN doing? A lot can be told by the state of the world, politics, and military actions. Take a look at things like what would happen if this country got invaded by the US or if it didn’t! Look at their financial and political stability and where they’re headed. Bottom line.. If it’s worth protecting, there’s gold in them thar hills!!! If it’s worth invading, same thing. If we’re going to war, look at military stocks (“defense” contractors). If we’ve “stabilized” a government, look at financial stocks and most importantly, look at what the country has to offer. Now, this may sound fucked up, but there’s a reality to the fact that first world countries will “strip mine” the hell outta 3rd world countries. It’s just unfortunate, but if you don’t get rich on it, you’re gonna pay for it.. n’est pas? So if a first world country is going to do something like “rebuild” a nation or “introduce” democracy, it’s your tax dollars that are paying for it. So… If you get my drift; you might as well make money from it rather than lose money from it. The UN is incredibly ineffective at “keeping the peace”, but they are incredibly effective at making money for certain groups (AIPAC, Vulture Funds, Oil and Energy Companies). So.. take a good hard look at what the UN is doing and you’ll see where the opportunity is.

7. Don’t put your fucking eggs in one basket! Yes.. I used profanity, because most people just don’t fucking get it. They put all their money in energy, tech, or one country’s financial system and when it all blows up, they’re in a pickle. In other words, DIVERSIFY. If you don’t understand the meaning of that word, you shouldn’t be in the market.

So.. now that I’ve spouted my rhetoric, let’s see where I was, where I am, and where I will be..

My current holdings comprise mainly of international stocks due to the fact that there are certain countries I wouldn’t want to be in economically (read the financial news). If you can’t figure out what I’m talking about, just stop reading and assume that you should just put your money in bonds and CDs and call it a day.

I’m invested in:

Europe, Africa, South America, Russia, and of course Asia internationally. Most of these are funds and I carry roughly 1000 shares of each in my portfolio. My holdings include: TREMX (bought at $36), TABRX ($15), TRAMX ($10), EMCGX($21), PRLAX($48).

I have some US domestic stocks, but not many: CFC ($6), RICK ($24).

I even it out with some Gold ($830) and Platinum ($ 1912).

So.. If you take a look at how I’m distributed, you’ll see that YTD I’m doing.. *better* than most people are faring in this market. While I don’t believe Real Estate will devalue much further than where it currently is, I do believe lenders need a good spanking (and that’s what’s happening now). I never invest in REITs, I’d rather just buy it for myself and take the tax write-offs.

Where was I a year ago? Getting into these markets and pulling out of tech stocks for the third time in 5 years.

Where do I predict things are going? And here is where I get to prove I’m either a genius, or an idiot… *lol*

My predictions:

Long Term Propositions: Continue investing in the BRIC countries and Africa. I hold onto South America as a safety net. The mediterranean stocks are going to rebound due to increased shipping (SEE SHIPPING STOCKS) and demand for dry-goods will increase into Western Europe and Africa.

Commodities like Platinum and Gold will be relatively stable (+/- 10%) over the next few years unless the stocks tank, but the reality of this portfolio performing badly without covering losses is really minimal. In the meantime, I enjoy the offset from precious metals to shield me from the credit crunch.

OPEC will standardize on a basket of currencies and the US dollar will become increasingly weaker while the Pound and Euro will increase in value.

Central American countries will continue to prosper and real-estate and tourism speculation will do well. I will stay out of airline stocks, but move into European, African, and Asian Hotel stocks. Over the next 2 years, I will slowly move out of the Asian markets and move into African Natural Resources Speculation while increasing my holdings of South American stocks (particularly financial institutions in the Southern Countries of South America).

Technology is a dangerous proposition and continues to trade at ridiculously high P/E ratios and until that breaks somewhat soon, I’m going to stay out of there (AAPL, MSFT, IBM).. you get the idea. There’s more money to be made elsewhere without the pain and danger of a new technology completely decimating a staple technology such as (ink jet printers).

Biotech and Healthcare.. Stay the fuck away! Until there’s change, it’s just a really bad place to be. Take a look at companies like Merck that swing high and low. People love to sue and class actions are plentiful. Stay away.. for now.

Green Energy companies.. Let’s be honest, they’re novel, but unless we figure out how to make 50% efficient solar cells or decide the new pebble bed reactor technology is publicly acceptable, it’s not gonna go anywhere significant. Put some money in some companies if you will, but don’t expect amazing returns.

I would look into Eastern European stocks centered around Kosovo financial organizations. That’ll be a big one, but it’s a 3-5 year hold.

I’ve almost doubled my money in the last 3 years. So I’d say I’m either extremely lucky or I’m doing something right. While I am by no means giving people advice on financial planning or stock tips, I am merely pointing out my “personal” strategy. It seems to be doing well.. Hope this helps some of you reorganize your finances, because the heart is not where the money is.. it’s the head.

***I AM NOT OFFERING FINANCIAL ADVICE NOR AM I LICENSED TO DO SO, THESE ARE MERELY MY OPINIONS, SIMPLY, THE RAMBLINGS OF A MAD-MAN***

Tags: Finance by admin
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Pretty serious stuff.  Lots of it.  I didn’t even know it was coming, but I’m looking at 9 inches outside of my window.  I was thinking about buying an outdoor wood furnace to power a heated driveway (probably be used no more than 10 times a year), but one load of wood and just walk away.  No shoveling!

I considered tying the stove to the internal systems of the house, but I don’t see myself running the thing for extended periods.  I’d just go to solar energy for that.  Blah.  Any suggestions on what else I could use the wood furnace for?  other than melting a driveway? If I can come up with 2-3 concrete ideas I just might do it.

Tags: General Observations by admin
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I’m not much of a Democrat, but right now, I’m not feeling real Republican either. Bush has just taken this country into the toilet in an incredible way. He’s completely decimated everything from our economy to our relations with other countries. I figured Ron Paul would’ve been a contender, but the reality is, he just can’t get enough traction. So it looks like I’ll be voting Democrat this time around.

Let’s see, Hillary or Obama. There’s really only one real choice for me. Hillary is the only one with concrete answers about how she’ll run the country. She doesn’t give generically obtuse speeches about issues like Obama does. I feel confident she’ll run the country right, whereas, Obama will be another LapDog (See Bush) for god know who. She’s got a strong character and is concise with her answers. I like that in a person, however, she’s not too good at diplomacy (hell, I should know, I suck at diplomacy).

I’d rather vote for someone that’s gonna screw me after she tells me, rather than vote for someone that screws me after they tell me “It could happen”.

Ugh.. Moving to the EU wouldn’t be a bad idea

Tags: Politics by admin
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With Gas Prices Reaching $4.00 per gallon, I’m thinking of switching 2/3 cars to Biodiesel.  I figure I could put a biodiesel processor in my shed and basically save myself a whole bunch of cash.  A 100 Gallon processor would be about $1500.00 (alot less if I build it myself).  Cars, they’re cheap enough.. A Diesel Car (maybe a VW), and replace the Expedition with an F-350 or something completely ridiculous like that.  (I like Big Trucks), but it would be burning B100 (100%), so the cost of the truck would be offset by the cost of fuel pretty quickly.  These days, I drive *maybe* 20 miles a week.

Biodiesel would cost me approx. $1.50 a gallon to process, so fuel prices would be minimal.  It makes sense, but the gelling issue is something I’d have to deal with for 2-3 months out of the year.  (I guess I’d just run 50% petrol mix).

Tags: Energy Efficiency by admin
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Well, I can say that it’s pretty fucking ugly.  Gas + Electric more than $1000.00 a month.  I wondered if I could do anything about it, so I took a look at a few things and figured, why not give it a shot?  Worse Case, I hate the implementations and I undo my actions.

I went to Costco and bought about 50 Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs and just started swapping them out throughout my whole house.  Figuring 350 Watts was better than 5000 watts.  Well, needless to say, the electric portion of the bill dropped A LOT.  My Electric went from $500.00 per bill to about $235.00.  There’s one thing I don’t like about the new bulbs; the color.  It’s a little too “cold”, but for that kind of savings, I’ll live with it.  I looked into LEDs, but the lumens per watt vs. price just wasn’t there yet.  I figure it took about 2 months to pay off the bulbs in savings alone!  YAY!  New York for the highest energy rates in the country!

Gas.. The other ugly thing.  I’m planning on putting in 2 On-Demand Hot Water Heaters in a parallel circuit to help replace the 75 Gallon Water Heater I currently have.  It seems a little extreme considering there are only 3 people in the house, but I do have 2 guest rooms.  I’d rather be safe than sorry.  They’ll cost about  $2500.00 for the pair + labor and some piping and electrical work.  I own a construction company so it’ll be cheap enough if I let my crews do it or I just might do it myself out of boredom.  That should take another $100 or so off my bill a month.  That’ll pay for itself in about a year or less I figure.

My end goal is to bring down my bill to about $300-400 per month.  I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it, but I figure it’ll be a good start.

Tags: Energy Efficiency by admin
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