Neal Waterstreet

VoIP with OBi100

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We decided to cut the cord a while back and overall that has worked out fine. One of the things I found that I missed was having a phone at the house. Its also convienient to have a home phone number instead of using a mobile one. Using a VoIP service seemed like a good solution, but there were always some issues with it.

I read about the ObiHai ATAs and selected the OBI100. It was inexpensive, but the deciding factor was that the ObiHai devices all work with Google Voice. I think ObiHai has a VoIP service you can use, but the flexibility of having another Google Voice number was too much to pass up.

You can read about the setup here, and it was very simple. It took just a few minutes to get installed and configured.

I am really happy with it so far. It seems like a good solution for those of us that no longer use analog phones.

Sling TV trial

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I signed up for Sling TV as soon as it was announced. I was still looking to replace Aereo, but couldn’t find anything. Sling TV is a lot better, but it doesn’t really have a DVR. I finally got my invite yesterday.

Sling TV seems to provide what I really wanted – ESPN/ESPN2 and CNN. Those were really the only channels I missed that were not provided OTA. There is a pretty good set of channels inluded and for an extra fee you can purchase more channels. The sports channels package includes all the ESPN channels and I may add that in the fall. For now I think I am going with some channels for the kids.

At first glance, the picture quality is very good streaming on my Roku. I was able to install phone it on my phone and tablet and the quality was good there too. One problem is see is that it looks like only one stream can be used at a time. When I turned on the tablet the television paused. This could be a problem but we’ll have to wait and see.

No picture quality problems with college basketball on ESPN and the other channels look great too. I just wish I would’ve had this during the college bowl season…

Update: AMC is now included in the base package – Better Call Saul/The Walking Dead/Mad Men.

Pouring coffee on your laptop checklist

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Just in case you ever pour an entire cup of coffee on your laptop here are a few things to think about.

1. Turn it off immediately. This is the most important thing to remember. Hopefully you won’t just restart your machine like I did. Make sure it is off and disconnect the power supply and the battery. I pulled the power cord but forgot to remove the battery. Ouch.

2. Don’t touch the keyboard. I found this post which details why. I did not realize that the keyboard is designed to help protect the internals. This probably works well unless you try typing and break the seal on the keys like I did.

3. Disassemble it and wipe it down as soon as you can. Do you put sugar and cream in your coffee? In this case I hope not. I didn’t need to worry about that, but it didn’t really matter in the end. Take the laptop apart and break it down as far as you can. Let it dry and don’t mess with it. Even if the laptop is dead you still want the components, right? You can try to clean your keyboard in the dishwasher. I thought it was worth a shot since it was probably ruined anyway.

4. Put it in a bag of rice? I heard about this, but it didn’t work for me. I was very skeptical, but a person I work with had success with it. I had probably done more damage than drying out could help.

5. Wait… Don’t mess with it.

6. It is probably a good time to check your backups. You had them right? I created a backup solution based on Scott Hanselman’s backup strategy. I completed backing everything up just 2 days prior to the spill. I was extremely lucky to have gotten that completed when I did.

7. Wait… Don’t mess with it and don’t try to dry it with a hair dryer.

8. Run a consistency check on the hard drive. My SSD drive was fine – it wasn’t touched, but the HDD was toast. I tried copying the data as I had before but it didn’t go well. Luckily, only applications were on my HDD and those could be reinstalled.

9. Test it. You waited a few days right?

10. If your laptop runs, you may want to back it up right now. I ended up needing a replacement, but on the bright side I now have an extra power supply (sold!), battery and a clean keyboard.

Any other ideas on what I should have done? This must happen to people on flights all the time.

Cutting the cable cord…

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I finally decided to cancel my cable service and go with streaming services. We looked at what we really watch and found that it can easily be replaced. Football is going to be the only problem and I am still looking for a solution for that.

Now that I the service was going away, I needed to figure out what to replace it with. For hardware, I looked into a few options for a DIY HTPC. There are a lot of options there and the cost can be very low. The downside to me was that the DVR features don’t appear all that great. I got used to being able to record on a channel while watching another with my old service. It looks like this requires multiple cards which could add to the cost. I also thought about getting a Tivo, but I didn’t want the monthly contract since that was one of the reasons I did this in the first place.

Instead of a HTPC, I purchased a Roku and OTA antenna. Roku adds new channels regularly and is a much simpler alternative to a HTPC. The model I bought has both USB and Plex support. The OTA antenna was very inexpensive and was easily installed in the attic. I just used the cable wire to connect it to the TV. The channels look much better than I was used to. The antenna receives about 25 channels, but that is OK since we will only watch 5 or 6. If not having a DVR becomes a problem I may look into it, there are some other services out there. Another option is to convert an old PC to a HTPC/DVR, but I think I have all I need at this point.

I made the call yesterday and had the service disconnected. I increased my internet speed to the next level up to help with streaming. It was easier to cancel than I expected and just need to drop the equipment in the mail. I’ve already received an email offering the same service for a drastically reduced rate, but it is too late.