I placed a 911 call from my house last week (don’t worry, everything is fine now). Nothing unusual about that except that I’m in my 5th year as a Vonage customer. As a VoIP service, Vonage has the advantage of allowing me to connect the hardware to any broadband Internet connection and place or receive calls to the same number. In theory, I could take my Vonage hardware to China, connect it, and receive local Seattle area calls with no one on the other end being wise to my location. The downside to this mobility is needing to manually enter your location into the Vonage system for the purpose of 911 call routing. I had entered the correct address for our old residence, back when 911 support first became available, but hadn’t updated it when we moved to Bainbridge Island in 2008.
This illustrates an important difference between landline phone service and VoIP. With the landline service, the phone carrier knows the exact physical location of call routing because the phone carrier owns the network from their central office all the way up to the point of demarcation on the side of your residence. With a VoIP service like Vonage, all they know is that somewhere out on the Internet there’s a box with a specific IP address and MAC address combination associated with your phone number. When a call comes in to Vonage for your, it routes that call out to your box.
For purposes of 911 service, the phone company provides location information for phone numbers, so the 911 operator can use caller ID functions to identify your location. I believe they still verify this data when you call them, but it is seldom wrong for traditional phone service. With VoIP, the providers rely on you to keep accurate data in the system. Failure to provide accurate data may slow down the ability of the emergency services to respond to your call.
In my case, this simply meant a transfer I barely noticed while on the phone to the Bainbridge Island 911 operator, which translated to quick service in a small community setting. For places with traffic congestion and greater geographic spread, it could be more serious.
Bottom line: take my failure to update the 911 address in my Vonage service as an opportunity to make sure your VoIP phone service is updated with the correct physical address for your location, so that when you need to call 911 they know where to find you.
I follow lots of searches on Twitter and happened upon one denying some guy his right to learn how to lie on a resume. His grievance is none of the search results for How to Lie on a Resume actually turn up any advice. He’s absolutely right, learning to lie on your resume is a tricky thing. The key to any lie is the truth it contains, so use your language skills creatively and you’re sure to succeed at lying on your resume.
Brandon has some great thought provoking phrases in what I would call the ultimate guide to lying on your resume. I don’t think that’s what he intended, so I’ll analyze a few of his gems as a great starting point:
Trying to downplay your lack of employment or temporary self-employment in your quest for a sales job, try this: “Worked with a constricted budget was careful to leverage sales”
Need a temporary PhD? A search engine won’t notice the period (or the rest of the word) when you randomly add the sentence, “Tested water Ph.Determined amount of chlorine to add accounting for the volume of water.” Bonus reference to accounting helps you rank better in resume search engines too.
Under-qualified for that Java programming position? Make up for it with clever keyword usage: “Played Elf Bowling and other Java games.” I’m going to co-opt this one and suggest that rather than admitting to playing games, you might state you did “scalability testing of Java applications through hours of rigorous testing.” This not only sounds better, it gets away from admitting to game play.
Notice that none of these things are outright lies, they are merely creative uses of language. Think of them more as positioning statements, not lies, however, if you are caught lying, it’s not my fault. You simply weren’t creative enough. ;) Go forth and update your resume.
Feel free to share your resume lies in the comments below.
Robin and I were blessed with our new baby girl, Geneva Rachel Ludington, at 10:49pm on April 6. She weighed in at 7lbs. 12oz (or 3.5 kilos). Whether you are new here or have been reading me for a long time, this will likely come as a surprise, because I haven’t mentioned we were expecting.
It turns out I’m superstitious about these kinds of things. I got it in my head somewhere early in the pregnancy that talking too much about it online would cause some form of bad luck. Like skipping the 13th floor in a building, I have no logical basis for my reasoning. Since everything went smoothly, my superstition is reinforced by the idea that if I had talked about it something certainly would have gone wrong. ;) Now that Geneva is here, I’m taking a moment to brag like any other proud father.
We had a home birth, which made perfect sense because Wyatt, Geneva’s big brother, was also born at home. Robin didn’t fall into any of the categories that suggest a high risk pregnancy. I don’t have a hospital birthing experience to compare the home birth to, but I honestly can’t imagine doing things any differently. It was great to be able to settle back into our own bed for a frequently interrupted night’s sleep, with Robin’s parents and Wyatt just down the hall, rather than spending the night in a strange place. Geneva was never out of Robin’s sight at any point following the birth and I got to be actively involved through the whole process. I realize this is currently a highly controversial topic here in the U.S., so I may be opening a can of worms by bringing up home birth in this forum, but there are very few instances where being at the hospital for a birth is medically necessary.
If you happen to be thinking about a home birth or have a family member who is considering one, email me and I’d be happy to share our experiences in greater detail. I’m not going to offer any medical advice, but I can certainly offer my perspective on what additional material you might want to refer to in making an informed decision.
I must be getting old, I can’t think of a scenario where a shirt like this is appropriate Married to the Mob OBJF t-shirts make a statement, but I’m not sure anyone will appreciate the $40 this t-shirt costs when they see you in it. The rest of the Most Official B*tches clothing line is equally classy.
I arrived in Denver today to deliver the hardware from the HP Magic Giveaway to Elaine Jordan. I will admit to shipping a majority of the hardware via FedEx, because I realized that it was highly impractical to haul everything on the plane. Frankly, I have more faith in FedEx than I do in the commercial airlines. While the first half of the packages arrived by truck before I had even left Seattle this morning, I was still excited to get the chance to meet Elaine. I exchange emails with so many of you throughout the year, it’s nice to get a chance to meet the people behind the messages. I’m making it a personal goal (an early New Year’s resolution) to meet more of you in 2009.
While I’m sure many of you who entered the HP Magic Giveaway here have real needs that could have benefited from winning, I’m happy to learn Elaine, the person who did win, will both directly benefit from winning and be able to share the “Magic” with others close to her. Elaine has her own small business building Websites and is in need of some new computer equipment to help her business grow. She’s keeping some of the hardware for that purpose. That’s good for the Denver economy in the long run, which is indirectly good for many other economies throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world. Other hardware is going to relatives who either don’t have computers or are in desperate need of an upgrade to be functional. It’s refreshing to hear stories of people helping family in a country that’s largely known for thinking of the collective Me first.
That’s one theme too frequently lost in the frenzy of holiday shopping this time of year – the importance of helping others. We get caught up in making Christmas lists for each other, essentially telling people what to buy because there isn’t really anything we need. It’s certainly more fun to get a new Xbox game, or a collection of favorite movies on DVD, but often what we really need is someone to listen to our troubles, or help fix that leaky faucet because hiring a plumber over-extends the budget. No one will remember the stuff you did or didn’t give them when you’re gone, but they will remember that time you lent a helping hand. So with the holiday season in full swing as people send you lists of stuff they want, buy it for them if it’s in your budget, but see if you can challenge them (and yourself) to provide you with one or two things that would really make a difference in their lives.
If you haven’t been to a live performance by the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus you really should go next time they pass through your town. It’s a throwback to traveling performances with all the fire eating, contortion, and other oddities you could ever hope for. They performed at my bar about 10 years ago and it was one of the most entertaining shows I ever hosted. They recently launched a new video show, simply called The Bindlestiffs, offering a behind the scenes look at the artists who perform in the Cirkus. Video will never do the live show justice, but the behind the scenes POV is excellent.
I’m not sure what kind of drugs you’d need to be on to ask me to sign your shirt when Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard are standing by (along with Mark Arm and the rest of Green River), but this guy was insistent enough that I went ahead and signed his shirt.
Since moving out of Seattle and buying a house on Bainbridge Island in April, I’m finding that the types of gadgets in my life have taken a dramatic shift from consumer electronics to the home improvement variety. While we rented a house for the past three years, I did very minimal handyman type stuff because I never felt particularly motivated to invest time and energy into improving someone else’s property. Now I’m constantly on the lookout for the right tools for minor home improvements. My friend Tim Carter’s site, Ask The Builder, has become a regular destination for me.
I’m also cooking more than I ever did when we lived in Seattle, which is a good thing. Growing up, I always loved helping in the kitchen both at home and at my grandparent’s house, where my grandma would tease me about being unsure if my left-handed mashed potatoes could possibly be good to eat. The bowl was generally empty by the end of the meal.
Before moving from Des Moines (the IA one, not the WA one) to Seattle, I remember having converstations with my friend Harry from Sausage Software about both of us finding the kitchen to be a great place to releive stress. Sometime after leaving Iowa, I forgot that I really love being in the kitchen. Or maybe I just got lazy because I’m married to an amazing chef and Seattle has some of the best restaurants in the country. Regardless, it’s great to be spending time in the kitchen again.
This summer I’m encouraging Wyatt to cook too, finding some fun summer recipes that keep him entertained while he’s on a break from school. He shows great enthusiasm for almost anything we try. Knowing there’s food coming at the end of the process is certainly a great motivator.
I also finally convinced Robin, my wife the chef, to work with me on starting a new food-themed site, which further provides me with an excuse to keep cooking more frequently. The result is a work in the work in progress, Daily Munch, which combines some of her great recipes with many of the simpler things I’m making at home with her much needed assistance from her chef skills when I don’t get things quite right. There are also some great contributions from Seattle food blogger Keren Brown, aka the Frantic Foodie. Ultimately I’d like to get a few more people writing about food, so that the site updates more frequently. There will be video in the future as well. In the meantim, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.
Three of the last for HP HDX Dragon contests are now live, so the chances to get an HP HDX Dragon are drawing to a close. Geekzone simply wants you to find the locations of their 3 pizza gatherings and post them in the forums – you do need to be a registered member of the Geekzone forums to enter. Full details here.
The Tablet PC and Mobile PC World contest gives you several chances to win in their giveaway. You simply register to be a member of the Mobile PC World forums and answer 3 questions for each day of their giveaway. You get an entry for each set of three questions. Full details are here, questions you need to answer are here.
Last up is the Gear Live giveaway. You need to participate in the Gear Live forums in order to win. Here’s a video showing you the package of stuff and more details on what you need to do.
One of the things we’re doing before we move into the house on Bainbridge Island is installing hardwood flooring in the bedrooms and some of the living area. I’ve had some experience installing hardwood floors about 12 years ago working for a company that specialized in gym flooring, so I’ve got thousands of square feet of experience. For the floors at the house, we opted to go with Vida Grandis Eucalyptus hardwood flooring, in part because we like the way it looks, and also because we liked that it met a number of excellent criteria for sustainable and responsible produced wood. The flooring manufacturer is FSC certified and participates in a number of community initiatives in Argentina where the wood comes from to help with disease prevention and community sustainability, along with responsible forest management.
I must be getting old, I can’t think of a scenario where a shirt like this is appropriate 
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