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11/11/2009

Used avionics - who knew?

Tags: Avionics
Everything aviation related is expensive.  I once bought a flashlight worth over $30.  Except that I bought it from an astronomy website and paid only about $12.  When I bought my Grumman Tiger I invested in a lot of new avionics.  Very expensive, new avionics.  The old stuff that I ripped out of the plane has been sitting in a box in the attic ever since.  My wife wanted to throw the junk away but I kept it.  And just a few minutes ago I realized with some shock how much this old stuff is worth on eBay - it's nuts.  Sure, it pales in comparison to the cost of the new avionics, but since my ELT apparently just gave up the ghost all this old stuff may pay for a pretty good chunk of a new one.  For starters, the very old Narco NAV 121 that I pulled out to make room for a $10,000+ GPS looks like it might still be worth almost $1000!  Who knew...?  Gotta love eBay.  I have some work to do now.

11/06/2009

Google Voice for kids

Tags: Telephony
I've been playing around with Google Voice for a while now.  I haven't decided exactly how to best make use of it though.  My main phone system is an Asterisk version called PBX in a Flash, which I've written about before.  I've played around with connecting Google Voice to Asterisk but outgoing is currently not working.  Incoming comes to a trunk I set up specifically for Google voice and goes right to my extension, bypassing my IVR (auto-attendant..) There is also a great application for it on the iPhone (although you have to be jailbroken to use it.)

But this post isn't about all that.  This is about my 12-year-old daughter who said she downloaded a free ring tone and ended up getting on some $10 premium messaging scam.  Now both she and my 15-year-old son have Google Voice numbers that point to their cell phones.  Not that they do this often, but if they ever need to give out a phone number for any reason, other than kids at school, they can use their Google Voice number and keep their real phone number hidden, definitely a good security screen.

As for my usage?  I don't know yet what I'm going to do with Google Voice.  Do you use it?

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