Playing with Google Voice

So Google is basically out to rule the world, right?

I mean, honestly. Google Mail, Google Apps, Google Maps, Picasa, Blogger, Google Wave, Google Voice, and something just popped up about "Buzz" when I checked my mail earlier. Don't know what that's about yet, but those are just the things I have been tinkering with! (Editor's note: I somehow failed to mention Google Calendar, Google Docs, Orkut, Google Reader, Google Code, and YouTube... what was I thinking?)

So, Google Voice...

So far, I like it. One number that can ring to whatever other numbers you want, and you can set up schedules for weekdays, weekends, etc, for each number. Voicemail gets transcribed and emailed and/or sent via SMS to a mobile phone, in addition to be available through the Google Voice website. You can make outgoing calls in what seems very similar to a Skype or Vonage setup. It's slick, and I'm sure it will just get better.

Oh, and no baby yet... just for those who are checking...

Ding-dong, the server's down

It's official.

My Linux server that at one time or another faithfully hosted a number of domains, including this one, 02victor.com, carolynjoe.com, pecks.org and hewletts.org, is now powered down. Now that all the domains I have a hand in have been moved to other hosting solutions, I'm able to free myself of running a server at home.

It was a good run!

I've had that machine for just shy of 11 years, and the last 7 it had been on 24/7, except for maintenance, hardware issues, and the occasional power outage! The processor, power supply, video card, sound card, memory, and hard drives had all been either replaced or upgraded over the years, but everything else (let's see... that would be the motherboard, NIC, optical drives, and chassis...) were the same!

I'm going to give it a few days of rest to verify that I don't need anything else off the hard drives than what has already been backed up, and then the hard drives will come out, and the server will be no more. *sniff*

A moment of silence please...

Ok, enough of that. Time to go outside and play with the kids!

Daily Post Challenge

I've just decided I'm going to post something on this site every day until our little one arrives. Why? As Peter would say, "I-unno..."

Maybe THAT will cause Amy to go into labor...

And if nothing else, maybe it will get people to visit each day and see if he has arrived. I'm sneaky that way.

Things I wish would induce labor...

Yes, it's time again to talk about those things I wish would induce labor, but don't. People keep saying "it could happen any day!" While true, it doesn't feel that way...

Amy doesn't want any part of pitocin this time around (due to increased risk given past history), so we're waiting to see if this little boy will decide to come on his own, or if we'll end up scheduling a c-section. In the interim, I keep thinking about things I wish would trigger labor, like

• naps
• Tex-Mex food
• going on a date
• naps
• having a babysitter
• Tex-Mex food
• did I mention naps?

A guy can dream...

Two weeks and counting!

Amy's due date is March 4th, just two weeks from today. Wow, what an amazing thought! I STILL can't believe we're going to have another little one...

There are of course a bunch of to-do items that go with preparing for a baby, like

• pulling out clothes and filling in any gaps created by giving away infant clothing because we thought we were done
• buying diapers
• and so many others...

But those are the obvious ones. When we were in the early stages of thinking about a fourth child, Amy came up with a "goal" for each of the older children.

Read more »

So, some things are broken...

It appears I lost all my followers when I changed around the domain so that www.bredenbergs.com points here. Alas... hopefully they will find me again.

FYI - photos from more than 4 years ago will not appear, as I am still working on updating all those old links to point to the new storage location. I may start on that in my "free time" (cough, cough), so don't hold your breath.

UPDATE - Thanks to Blogger's "missing files host" option, the vast majority of photos included in old entries should now be working.

Site fully converted

I said when we first set up this Blogger site that I would eventually convert my blog from my old home-hosted Wordpress site completely to this site. Well, guess what! It's not as easy as it might sound... Ok, it might not sound easy either...

Anyway, it's finally done. I found a utility that converted most of the posts (and most of the comments, but a few went missing along the way...) into a format that could be imported into Blogger, and I manually filled in the posts that would not convert for some reason. You should be able to see any of the posts back to when I first started posting on ye olde worlde wide webbe, though I can't guarantee many of the links from back then will still work.

I still have to move the images and other attachments off of my server and put them somewhere Blogger can link to them, but that's another step on down the road...

Enjoy!