My wife and I have been on a bit of Scrabble kick the past couple months–it’s good cheap and fun entertainment that makes you think. A few weeks ago we were in Wal-Mart and picked up a card game called Scrabble Slam! It looked interesting and was very inexpensive so we thought we would try it out.

The original rules of Scrabble Slam! are pretty simple:
- Begin by using 4 of the cards to create a 4-letter word, such as PARK.
- Deal the remaining cards between the players equally. Note that there are 55 cards total.
- When the game begins, players change the word by changing one letter at a time. For example, PARK may be changed to MARK, then MARE, the CARE, then CORE, the BORE, etc…
– Each player plays as fast as they can, announcing each word as they make it.
- The winner is the first player to play all their cards.

We played one game by these rules and realized we didn’t like it. It was just too fast for us. It may have been more fun with 3 or 4 players, but we didn’t care for it with just the two of us. So, we were stuck with these 55 Scrabble Slam! cards. I thought about how we might be able to play a game with them that was slower paced and allowed the players to add some strategy to their play of the game. I was able to come up with a variation that has worked fairly well for us.

Here are the rules we play by now:
- Play begins by choosing a 4-letter word for a base and spelling that word with cards from the deck. This can be a mutually agreeable word, or you can take turns selecting the word. In this example, we’ll assume we begin with the word PARK again.
- The remaining cards are dealt and divided equally amongst the players. So, if there are 2 players playing, they each get 25 cards and the last card to be dealt is set to the side and will not be in play. If there are 3 players, they each get 17 cards. If there are 4 players, they each get 12 cards and the last three cards to be dealt are set to the side and will not be in play.
- The first player must change the first letter of the word to form another word. In our example, we’ll assume the player changes it the word to MARK.
- The second player must form a new word by changing the second letter of the word. If he can’t form a word by changing the second letter, then he loses his turn and the next player gets to try forming a word by changing the second letter. Let’s assume the next player forms the word MIRK. Yes, Mirk is a valid Scrabble word!
–  The next player has to form a word by changing the third letter. We’ll assume he changes it to MILK.
- The play continues with each player having to change the next letter of the word. Any player that can’t form a word with the cards in their hand by changing the next letter loses their turn. If all the players should be unable to play on a particular letter, then play will continue to the next letter. For example, if no player could change the K in MILK, then play would continue to the next letter, which also automatically rotates back to the beginning of the word.
- The first player to get rid of all his cards is the winner!
- A couple of important notes: Word can not be repeated. For example, you couldn’t play an S on the S in SILK to make SILK again. However, after SILK had been changed to  FILK, it could be changed to SILK again later. Also, the regular rules apply regarding acceptable words as in Scrabble. Words may be challenged. If a word is found to not be legitimate, then the last card played is removed and the player loses his turn. If it is found to be legitimate, then the player who challenged it will lose his next turn.

So, it’s still a pretty simple game, but it slowed it down enough to make it more enjoyable and to make us think a little more. It also allows you to use some strategy as you think about what words your opponents may, and may not, be able to play on.

If you have a deck of Scrabble Slam! cards laying around, give this variation a try and let me know what you think in the comments!

I purchased a Motorola Droid back in November and I absolutely love the phone. Although I am a developer, time just doesn’t allow me to create everything that I would like to create. So, I’m passing along some of my ideas to you, absolutely free! If you see an idea here you like, feel free to run with it. Ideas are a dime a dozen and practically worthless. The value in ideas comes only from execution. Hopefully some of my readers will execute some of these ideas.

Flight Path – I fly quite a bit and I always try to get a window seat because I love looking out the window and admiring God’s magnificent creation. However, I’m always wondering which lake, river, mountain, city, or other landmark I’m looking at. I would love to see an app that would use the built-in GPS (which is allowed to be used on many flights) to display a map of prominent landmarks that are visible from the current altitude. I realize that until Internet is available in the air on all flights that maps will need to be stored on the device. It would also be nice if notes could be made so I could look up information about a landmark later, or even at the moment if I had in-flght WiFi.

Jigsaw Puzzle Helper – Have you ever been working on a jigsaw puzzle and wondered exactly where a piece goes. I think it would be cool if a user could take a picture of the completed puzzle on the box top and then take a picture of particular puzzle piece and the app would then show where in the picture that particular piece would go.

Radio Now – I have very eclectic tastes in music. I would love to see an app that showed me a list of stations that should be available in my current area (using the GPS and station tower location and power). The app should also display the format of each station and what song and artist is currently playing. Some of this data could potentially come from station Twitter feeds.

Airport Guide – Since I fly often, it would be nice to have guides to all the major airports in my phone. Show a map of each airport along with gate locations and the locations of stores and restaurants. It could use the built-in GPS to show me my location in the airport and the fastest way to get to a certain gate.

Email Voice Reader – I have the windshield mount for my Droid, which really helps when using the built-in GPS Navigation tools. One feature that I would like to see added is that when the Droid is in this dock, and an email arrives, I would love to see in really large letters the subject of the email and who it is from along with two buttons to ‘Read’ or ‘Ignore’. If I clicked on the ‘Read’ button then the phone would use text-to-speech to read the email to me. This would allow me to keep up with incoming messages without taking my eyes off the road.

Location-Based Alarms – I love the Locale app that allows me to make my phone behave in different ways depending on my location (for example, when I’m at church or the library it automatically switches to silent vibrate mode). I would love to be able to get alarms and notifications when I’m in certain locations though. For example, if I needed to pick up something at a particular store, as soon as I was near the store I would get an alarm reminding me to do whatever I needed to do in that location.

USB Direct – I would love it if the USB port could talk to other USB devices. For example, if there was an adapter I could plug a USB thumb drive into to move data between it and the phone.

It’s possible that some of these apps already exist for the iPhone (I wouldn’t know since I don’t own one) or even for Android and I just haven’t discovered them yet. If you know that apps like this exist, please let us know in the comments.

I was running dangerously low on gas Monday night and had to stop and fill up at a station I don’t normally visit. I always run Regular Unleaded in my truck and never use Plus or Premium–they just aren’t worth the extra amount I would have to pay. Having said that, I have run Plus and Premium in some older vehicles because I would get a nasty spark knock if I didn’t. At this particular station I almost filled up with Premium Unleaded but I caught myself just in time.

So, how did they trick me? Here is a picture of the pump:

You’ll notice two things:

• First, notice that the grade selection buttons are out of the normal order. Most stations place the lowest octane fuel on the left and the octane increases as you go the right. The station I visit most recently even offers 10o-octane Race Fuel (of course, I live in North Carolina, which is the heart of NASCAR country) and it is always to the right of the Premium 93-octane fuel.
• Second, notice that the 93-octane sticker is very worn. You would expect that the grade of gasoline that is purchased most often would be the most worn, right? It appears that they’ve recently added new stickers over the 89-octane and 87-octane buttons, but left the old sticker on the 93-octane button. In fact, it appears to me that they may have even scuffed the Premium Unleaded button up some to make it look more used. In my opinion the scuff marks just don’t look like they came from regular wear and tear.

After I finished filling up, I pulled out of the station very slowly so I could examine all the other pumps. Every pump was like this! They all had the highest octane button the left hand side and the Premium Unleaded button looked very worn while the Unleaded Plus and Unleaded Regular buttons fairly new.

So, the bottom line is don’t get in too much of a hurry when you purchase gas or you may be tricked into buying something that you don’t really mean to buy.

Caveat emptor! That’s Latin for, “Let the buyer beware!”

About once every 2 or 3 months I’ll purchase a car wash when I fill up my truck with gas. The station where I usually fill up has an automatic car wash and the menus on the pump allow me to easily add a wash to my fuel bill and pay for it all right there at the pump. It’s all really convenient!

At this particular station, they also give you discounts on your fuel, depending on which type of wash you purchase:
- Ultra Wash costs $9 and you get a $.15/gallon discount
- Super Wash costs $8 and you get a $.10/gallon discount
- Basic Wash costs $7 and you get a $.05/gallon discount

I’m sure that a lot of customers are swayed by the cost per gallon savings. However, I know that is just a gimmick to get you purchase a car wash. Most people aren’t going to take the time to calculate what the car wash actually costs. Of course, I’m not like most people.

I usually fill up my truck when it is very close to empty–my wife hates that I do this, but it just makes the most sense to me to use as much fuel between fills as possible so I don’t waste any more time than necessary in the entire fueling process. Usually I can pump 16-gallons of gas into my trucks fuel tank when it is near empty. So here is my fuel savings for each of the different wash options:
-  $2.40 for Ultra Wash (16-gallons x $.15)
-  $1.60 for Super Wash (16-gallons x $.10)
-  $.80 for Basic Wash (16-gallons x $.05)

Remember that the gas savings is just a gimmick. However, you can deduct the fuel savings from the cost of the wash to calculate the actual cost of the wash like so:
-  $9 Ultra Wash – $2.40 fuel savings = $6.60
-  $8 Super Wash – $1.60 fuel savings = $6.40
-  $7 Basic Wash – $80 fuel savings = $6.20

So, if I’m going to pay $6.20 for a car wash anyway (the Basic Wash), it’s probably worth it to pay the extra 40-cents to get the extra benefits of the Ultra Wash. And if I was purchasing more than 20 gallons of gas then Super Wash becomes cheaper than the Basic Wash and the Ultra Wash becomes cheaper than the Super Wash. And if you happen to have a large truck, or want to fill up multiple vehicles at once, you can get an Ultra Wash for free with a 60-gallon fuel purchase. If you purchase more than 60-gallons of fuel, they will be saving money so it’s like they are paying you to get the wash!

Now, it’s up to each person to decide if it’s worth the cost of an automatic car wash to use it instead of just washing your car yourself with a garden hose, bucket, rag, and detergent, but at least now if you are going to use the automatic wash you know how to calculate the actual cost.

Remember, as my wife says, “A clean car is a happy car!”

Over the holidays, I was introduced to a fun card game called Bull Crap. I won’t go into the details about how to play it here, but the rules are simple and you can learn how to play Bull Crap on Wikipedia. As we played, I quickly began to learn how to apply some basic strategy to give me a significant advantage and I was soon winning many more games. I won’t go into those strategies here, but there is an excellent article on How to Win at bull Crap at Wikihow.

One of the key strategies to winning this game is to think in advance and count forward in your mind to know which cards you will need to play on your next turn, and indeed on every future turn. It’s certainly possible to do this in your head, but as there are more players in the game, it can become a daunting task to count forward and also pay attention to what other players are doing at the same time–especially if play is going quickly.

So, I developed a little business card that would fit in my wallet that would help me with games of up to 9 players. Your opponents may, or may not, allow you play with this in sight, but it can help if they do. My original intent for this card was to help my memorize the sequences for varying numbers of players so I didn’t have to count off in my head. It may help you with your memorization too.

You should be able to print this on regular paper, card stock, or copy and paste it into a business card template. If it helps your Bull Crap game, or you have anything else interesting to share, please let me know in the comments.

Enjoy!

Use this card to help you learn the sequences for the Bull Crap card game for varying numbers of players

Ideas are a dime a dozen. That means that the average idea is worth less than a penny. the value in any idea lies in the execution of the idea.

I’m an idea generator. I generate lots of ideas–constantly. Many of these are ideas for new products, enhancements to products, and sometimes even full business ideas.

I keep lists of many of my ideas. I’m sure that I miss the opportunity to document many of them, but I do make notes about any ideas I think I may want to begin executing at a later time. I also make notes of ideas that I may want to share with other people.

As I reviewed many of my idea lists while setting my goals for 2010, I realized that it’s time to start sharing some of those ideas with others. After all, each one of them is only worth less than $.01 as long as no one is executing it. It’s rather stingy of me to hang on to all these pennies when there are people in the world who are just looking for the perfect penny–a penny only they can invest and turn it into much more.

So, I’m going to begin sharing a lot of those ideas here on my blog in a new category named, Ideas. I hope that some of my readers will take these ideas and run with them. Feel free to comment on the ideas and add to them.

I can’t guarantee that non of these ideas have been done before but only that it’s an idea that occurred to me that I wanted to share with you. Good luck!

It occurred to me this morning that calendars repeat themselves. 2010 began on a Friday and it’s not a leap year. Every other non-leap-year year that began on a Friday had the same calendar dates that we will have this year. The dates in 2010 are the same as they were in 1999 and 1993. This also means that 2021 and 2027 will have the same arrangement of days we have this year.

It seems that people are always interested in things from their past–you can call it nostalgia, antiques, or retro; and people are willing to pay good money for things from their past, or that remind them of their past.

Although many of us have made the switch to electronic calendars, we still often keep a wall or desk calendar nearby for quick and easy access. I don’t see this trend totally going away. In fact, printed calendars still seem to be a very big business. Companies that don’t sell all their 2010 calendars within the next couple weeks will probably discard them entirely.

Since calendars can be very cheap over the next few weeks, my idea is to purchase a number of popular calendars (with themes like movies, television shows, popular people, etc..–you know, those things that really define our time) and then store them in mint condition until 2021 or 2027. Calendars can probably be purchased for a dollar or less each since the year has already began.

In 2021 or 2027, these calendars will have an appeal again. It’s an interesting conversation piece to have a calendar on your wall that is 11 or 17 years old, yet still accurate. It can help people connect with their younger years as well. And people are willing to pay a premium to have this type of item in their home or office. So, that calendar that originally sold for $15 or $20 that you picked up for $1 or $.50 can now be sold for $40 to $50. I know that 11 or 17 years seems like a long time to wait on this kind of investment, but I think it can have a good return for someone that willings to try it and execute the business of marketing and selling them at the right time.

What do you think?

My friend Russell turned me on to magicJack about a year or so ago. He also evangelized it to several other people I know and about 4-months ago I decided to buy one myself. I was able to get 5 years of VOIP phone service through my desktop, or laptop when I travel, for under a hundred bucks. It’s not always perfect and sometimes the sound quality is not usable at all, but most of the time it’s great and it has allowed me to drop my cell phone contract from 900-minutes a month to only 450-minutes a month—and I use very few of them. I really do get much more than my $1.67/month out of it. However, Monday I experienced a major problem that I feel the need to rant about.

A lot of my business calls are conference calls. When I schedule conference calls I usually schedule them using Windows Live Meeting because I like Microsoft’s VOIP and I also like to use a webcam so I can see the people I’m talking with and so they can see me as well—expressions and gestures add a lot to understanding another party. LiveMeeting has a lot of other things I like too, but that’s another blog post for another day.

The person who scheduled this particular conference call scheduled it through FreeConferenceCall.com. When it was time, I used my magicJack to dial into the meeting at 218-339-2500. Instead of being asked to enter my conference number, I received the following message from magicJack, “Important announcement! Please listen to this entire short message, the number you have dialed can not be completed from your magicJack. For free conference calling set-up you must dial 305-848-8888. You may press 1 any time during this message to connect. Please use this number for all future free conference calling. Please visit FreeMagicConference.com for more information on magicJack Free Conference Calling. Again, that was FreeMagicConference.com.”

So, I disconnected from this call and called the 305-848-8888 number and entered my conference ID when requested. It was not accepted. Obviously, there was no connection between FreeConferenceCall.com and FreeMagicConference.com. I was really frustrated that I was going to have to make this call and use my cell phone minutes. That’s not why I purchased my magicJack.

After the call, I decided to test and see if I could use Google Voice to place the call. Although I haven’t used Google Voice very much so far, I have configured it to ring my cell phone, home land line, and my magicJack when calls are received. When I received my call from Google Voice, I answered it on my magicJack and then I heard the FreeConferenceCall phone ring once; after that I heard a busy signal. I thought that maybe Google Voice was blocking FreeConferenceCall.com as well. To test this theory, I placed the call again, but had it routed to my cell phone instead. This time there was no problem and I was connected. Somehow, magicJack is even hijacking and diverting these calls even when they are made through Google Voice!

I searched through magicJack’s knowledge-base to see if I could find out anything about this and no matter what keywords or questions I entered, I kept getting answers about how to schedule a conference call using FreeMagicConference.com. No explanation at all about why I couldn’t join a conference call.

I did check out FreeMagicConference.com and it is a service very similar to FreeConferenceCall.com and anyone can use it to schedule a meeting, even if you aren’t using a magicJack. I haven’t tried the service, but I may try it one day and let you know how it works. However, being able to initiate a meeting doesn’t help me to attend a meeting at all.

I planned to document all this here on the blog, but I got tied up with other things. This afternoon I read a blog post by Russell, my magicJack pusher friend, about his recent problems (read MagicJack Call to Free Conference Call not Placed to 218-339-2500). In his post he provides the transcript of a chat session he had with magicJack customer service, so I thought I would chat with them too. Customers have to speak out about this and let them know this isn’t good business. Here is the transcript of my chat:

Please wait for a site operator to respond.

You are now chatting with ‘Kiefer’

Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK419075516900X

Kiefer: Hello, how may I help you?

Ricky: Hi, Kiefer.

Ricky: I seem to be unable to join a conference call at 318-339-2500.

Kiefer: Please follow the instructions for making conference calls.

Kiefer: First, dial 305-848-8888

Kiefer: Then press 2

Kiefer: Enter a 3 digit pin to create a conference room number.

Kiefer: And write your conference room number down,

Kiefer: Next is to distribute your dial-in instructions to your conference room attendees.

Kiefer: Dial 305-848-8888

Kiefer: Press 1

Kiefer: and enter your Conference room number.

Ricky: I receive a message telling me I need to call 305-848-8888, but that’s not who my conference call is through.

Ricky: No. I don’t want to SCHEDULE a call, I need to JOIN a call.

Kiefer: Please follow the steps above.

Ricky: My conference call was not scheduled through that service.

Ricky: How do I join a call at this other number.

Kiefer: Thank you for your patience. I will transfer you to a higher level of support. Please hold while I transfer you.

Ricky: Thank you!

Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.

You are now chatting with ‘Kyle’

Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK419075516900X

Kyle: Hi, Ricky.

Ricky: Hi, Kyle.

Ricky: I seem to be unable to join a conference call using my magicJack.

Kyle: May I know the exact nature of your problem with full details please?

Ricky: These calls are one of the major reasons I purchased it.

Kyle: Okay

Ricky: I am trying to connect to a conference call at 218-339-2500.

Ricky: My call gets diverted and I receive a message telling me how to SCHEDULE a call through your service. I don’t need to SCHEDULE a call, I need to JOIN one.

Kyle: Ricky conference call will not work with MJ not unless you will be the host of the conference call.

Ricky: It has always worked before.

Ricky: Why will it not work now?

Ricky: I don’t understand.

Ricky: This just started happening on Monday, and it persists.

Kyle: I’m sorry but we have a new update that you cannot connect to a conference call not unless you’re the host

Ricky: So, I’m just out of luck? There is nothing I can do?

Ricky: Where should I escalate my complaint?

Kyle: Ricky I am at the escalation level and I am explaining this to you,

Ricky: So, you’re the CEO of magicJack?

Ricky: I want to make sure that people there know this isn’t acceptable.

Kyle: No I am one of the escalations.

Ricky: And, do you have a supervisor?

Ricky: Can I chat with your supervisor about this?

Kyle: Our superior will be available in the morning Ricky

Ricky: OK. How should I contact him or her?

Kyle: You can chat us back Ricky.

Ricky: So, I need to go back through all this again? Tomorrow morning?

Ricky: That’s even more frustration.

Ricky: At what time will the supervisor(s) be available?

Kyle: In the morning Ricky I do not have a specific time

Ricky: Do you know a time zone? Morning where? I’m in the Eastern Time Zone.

Ricky: It’s always morning somewhere. )

Kyle: We are in FLorida Ricky, it’s EST here.

Ricky: I’m really not wanting to be a pain for you, but I do want to resolve this problem. I purchased your product as my solution to attending costly and time consuming conference calls and now I find that I’m not able to do so. I just need to make sure this gets fixed.

Ricky: OK. I’ll try back in the morning. If I include my Issue ID, can I skip retyping all this?

Kyle: I understand Ricky as much as I want to help you, but I can’t

Ricky: Thank you Kyle. I hope you have a good rest of your evening.

Kyle: And you as well Ricky, have a pleasant evening.

So, the bottom line is that they are no longer allowing their customers to connect to conference calls via the magicJack unless the customer is the host of the call through their service.

I’ll try chatting tomorrow morning and see if I can get to an escalation supervisor. I’ll keep you posted!

Update: I did some research on FreeConferenceCall.com and how they make money. I found a really short and simple article entitled, The Skinny on FreeConferenceCall.com. I don’t know if magicJack has to pay when people use their service to connect to these lines, but I’m doubting it. I end to think they just want their piece of the free US Toll calling pie and they want to force their users to give it to them. I plan to broach this with the supervisor tomorrow morning if I’m able to actually talk to one.

Update: I have filed a form 2000B – Billing, Privacy, or Service Quality Compliant with the FCC. Here is the text of that compliant:

magicJack no longer allows calls to be placed to FreeConferenceCall.com phone numbers, which means that I can’t attend many conference calls that others schedule for me. They play a message that I can schedule a conference call through their own FreeMagicConference.com service, but there is no way to join a conference call someone else scheduled using the other service. They used to allow this and then suddenly I noticed they were blocking the calls on Monday, August 24. I have contacted customer service and they tell me, “I’m sorry but we have a new update that you cannot connect to a conference call not unless you’re the host.” They don’t give any reason for the change in policy, nor was any warning given.

I don’t know if this is a violation of FCC policies or not, but I wanted to bring it to your attention in case.

I have documented my complete experience, including chat transcripts at: http://rickyspears.com/blog/2009/08/magicjack-hijacks-my-free-conference-calls-to-218-339-2500/

Update (2009-08-27): I was able to chat with a supervisor. The bottom line is that they will not provide any explanation for the change and she says that I can’t chat with anyone higher than her, nor can I call anyone higher. Here is the transcript of our chat:

Please wait for a site operator to respond.

You are now chatting with ‘Morgan’

Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK419075595198X

Morgan: Hello, how may I help you?

Ricky: Hi. I chatted with support last night on Issue ID: LTK419075516900X. Then I chatted with an escalation representative on Issue ID: LTK419075516900X.

Morgan: One moment please…

Ricky: Kyle told me I could chat with an escalation supervisor today.

Ricky: I would like to chat with an escalation supervisor, please?

Morgan: Okay

Morgan: One moment please…

Morgan: Thank you for your patience. I will transfer you to a higher level of support. Please hold while I transfer you.

Ricky: Thank you, Morgan!

Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.

You are now chatting with ‘Myrene’

Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK419075595198X

Myrene: Hi Ricky.

Ricky: Hi Myrene.

Myrene: One moment please…

Ricky: I’m rather disappointed that I can no longer ATTEND conference calls. I would like to get some sort of explanation about why this changed if I can.

Myrene: aRe you having issue with the conference call?

Ricky: Yes. I can’t ATTEND conference calls that other people schedule through services like FreeConferenceCall.com.

Myrene: Alright, I believe you want to Join a confenece call, right? I am sorry but you cannot call that number, magicjack does not support that number. However, you may create your won Conference call . first, create your free magicjack conference room number, – Dial 305-848-8888.

Ricky: I just get a message saying that I have to use FreeMagicConference.com to schedule a conference.

Ricky: However, that doesn’t help me to attend one someone else scheduled.

Ricky: I used to be able to attend them before Monday.

Myrene: That is the new upgrade in our system that i cannot change it Ricky.. I understand how your feel believe me but we cannot change it anymore.

Ricky: Can you tell me why this was changed?

Ricky: Perhaps, why the company felt this would be good for your customers?

Myrene: Before we do not have our own conference phone number but now since we have upgraded you as  a MJ user can create a conference call for free,

Ricky: I hear you.

Myrene: Thank you for that Ricky

Myrene: And for allowing me to explain it

Ricky: However that addresses why you don’t want people to SCHEDULE calls, but it doesn’t explain why you won’t allow people to ATTEND calls.

Ricky: From a customer perspective, it’s rather rude.

Myrene: We are open with your opinions and suggestions Ricky.. Please do not worry… I  let the higher dept know about this so that they are aware of this as well.

Ricky: Can I chat with anyone higher, myself?

Myrene: I am sorry but this is the higher level that you can chat with Ricky.

Ricky: OK. Who can I call and talk to about this?

Myrene: we as a supervisors… and once we end this chat i will copy and paste our conversation so that they are aware of this.

Ricky: So, you’re saying there is nothing more I can do to get an explanation unless I involve a body outside of magicJack? Like the FCC or BBB or something?

Ricky: I would really prefer to talk to someone there and get an explanation.

Ricky: I just don’t see why some explanation is that difficult.

Myrene: If you are going to create a conference call… the other can join the conference

Ricky: Even if you lie to me, I won’t know the difference. )

Ricky: But I don’t schedule these calls. Other people schedule them. I can’t force them to use one service or another–the way you’re forcing me.

Myrene: I know that you are now frustrated with this but i do not want to lie with you because i do not want you to expect.

Ricky: Just so we are clear: are you saying there is no way for me to get an explanation about why I can no longer attend a conference call that someone else schedules via FreeConferenceCall.com or any other service?

Myrene: I am afraid yes.

Ricky: OK. I’ll take this as gospel… for now.

Ricky: Please let my displeasure be known where you can, and I’ll let my displeasure be known where I can.

Myrene: Sorry didn’t quite catch that

Ricky: Please let your supervisors know that I am displeased and why.

Ricky: I will do everything I can do publicize my experience.

Myrene: Affirmative Ricky

Ricky: Thank you, Myrene. I hope you have a good afternoon!

Myrene: I hope so.

Myrene: You are welcome

Update (2009-08-27): I have just found out that calls to FreeConference.com are being blocked in this same manner as well.

Update (2009-10-07): About a week ago I received my paper copy of my complaint to the FCC and I filed it away. Personally, I think these paper copies are quit wasteful in the modern electronic age, but that’s what they do. Oh well. This afternoon I received a call from someone named Andrew at magicJack saying that they had received their copy of the complaint and were offering me a full refund on my 5-year contract. I called him back. He was very friendly and professional; I think we had a really good conversation. I told him that I was generally happy with my magicJack and wanted to continue using it–so I didn’t want a refund. I explained that I wasn’t sure about the legality of them blocking access to certain numbers and the only way I could discover that was to file a complaint and leave it for the FCC to decide. He explained that they had reached out to the free conference call companies but said they don’t seem to be willing to work with magicJack to provide free access to their numbers for magicJack users, so it’s unlikely that this functionality will be coming back any time soon. I expressed to him that the consumer will continue to lose as long as CLECs, the VOIP operators, and the Free Conference Call companies all continue to hold onto their current business models and are unwilling to work together to find a solution that works for their customers. A third party will come along eventually that does meet the consumer’s requests and they will wish they had worked together sooner rather than later. It was nice to get to finally express my opinions to a real person at magicJack. [By the way, I am not at liberty to disclose Andrew's direct phone number at magicJack, sorry.]

It’s not often that I share something here that I write for other blogs. I just published a new article on the SharePoint Solutions blog entitled, “Training – Whose Responsibility Is It?” And no, it’s not an article about SharePoint training.

As an educator, I see all types of people seeking training. Even more so, I see all types of people who aren’t seeking training. If you are a lifelong learner, or even if you’re someone who thinks their education ended in high school (except for the daily school of hard knocks), I think you might want to read this article.

I will warn you that if you pay attention, it might have the effect of increasing your position in your company, or some other company, and increasing your salary as well. So if you’re happy where you are in life, you may want to skip this one.

When I’m working in my home office, I access my laptop via Remote Desktop (RDP). My desktop has dual monitors and I find it easier to use my laptop this way.

My laptop runs Vista Business and one problem I have is that when I need to Shut Down (Turn off) or Restart (reboot) my laptop, those things aren’t options in the Start menu. When connected via RDP you you only have the options of Log Off and Lock.

I’ve found a nifty little work-around that may help you as well. Click on Windows Security instead of where you normally click to turn off your computer.

In the Windows Security area, click on the Shut down options button—this is the little arrow beside the Shut Down button in the lower right-hand corner. Here you can access the options for Restart, Sleep, Hibernate, and Shut Down.

Enjoy!

I recently upgraded the hard drive in my Dell Dimension E210. It came with an 80Gb hard drive and it has served me well for the past 3-1/2 years. However, as I’ve been doing more with audio, especially for the Mindful Worship web site, I’ve been filling it up. I was in a meeting and received a warning that I was down to 15.5Mb! Ouch! It was time to upgrade the hard drive.

I chose a 500Gb Seagate Barracuda 3.5” Internal SATA hard drive. This ought to last a while!

I installed it in my open drive bay and wired it up. No problems there. I did have to change a BIOS setting so the computer would recognize it.

I installed the Seagate DiscWizard software and followed the instructions to clone my old hard drive to the new one. I confirmed that all the data seemed to have copied over properly then I switched their places and rebooted from the new hard drive. It seemed to take it forever to boot up! I was able to see the Windows log-in page relatively quickly, but it took about 45-minutes for all my programs to load and for the computer to stop accessing the hard drive.

This wasn’t acceptable, but I didn’t know what to do at this point. I hoped it would improve.

Every night, my computer seemed to lock up too and was totally unresponsive. So, for a few mornings, I waited patiently while it booted and all my programs loaded. I couldn’t seem to figure out what was slowing down the hard drive.

The last thing I had installed was the Seagate DiscWizard program. I didn’t really need it any more, so I decided to uninstall it and see if things improved. My boot times did improve greatly. It seemed to take only about 15-minutes to boot, load all my startup programs, and quit accessing the hard drive. This still wasn’t ideal, but a significant improvement none-the-less.

Then I noticed that every morning I had a blue screen of death (BSOD). So it wasn’t just locking up, now I could see an error. It said, BAD_POOL HEADER. I hadn’t heard of this before and didn’t see a whole lot about it in searches that was very helpful.

Then after a few days of this, I noticed that my Mozy backup hadn’t backed up in 8 days. That was how long it had been since I had installed the new hard drive. I figured that it must have been trying to back up in the middle of the night and was having trouble with the new drive and so it was crashing.

A few searches turned up some instructions which I wasn’t totally comfortable with, but i figured that I didn’t have much to lose. I could always go back to my old hard drive if I needed to and use the new one as additional storage only. Those posts indicated that when you upgrade a hard drive and clone it that things get mixed up with the Volume Shadow Copy service. Here were the steps that I went through to fix it:

1. Go to device manager
2. Click "View" and select "show hidden devices"
3. Scroll down to "storage volumes"
4. Click on the "+" to expand
5. Click on each one listed and right click and uninstall. Say no to reboot requests.
6. Reboot
7. When windows comes back up it will reinstall the hardware you uninstalled and ask you to reboot.
8. Now the storage volumes are installed correctly. My guess is that they changed to reflect the new drive configuration.

This not only fixed my problems with the Mozy backup, it also eliminated my blue screen crashes at night, and improved my boot time dramatically. It now takes about 5-minutes from pressing the on button until I’m logged in, all programs are loaded, and the computer has quit accessing the hard drive. I think 5-minutes is about where I was with my old drive, and I very rarely turn my computer off, so this is no problem. I’m back in business with a bigger hard drive that is working great for me!

I hope this post might help someone. Good luck!