Cool Cordless Phone

I was out shopping the other day with Mrs. Alphageek.  We wandered by some cordless telephones, and I noticed that the phone said something cool on the box: bluetooth.  I thought bluetooth would just let me use a headset with the phone, so I passed.

I was at home enjoying some Wild Turkey Rare Breed and I decided to research the phone and see what the blueetooth was about. It is made by Vtech (great name) and is a model DS6322-3.  It turned out that there were some really interesting aspects.  If you are looking for a through review of the phone, I suggest using looking the thing up on google.  If you want to hear about some cool features that other phones don't have, pour yourself a bourbon, or you favorite drink, and read on.

The bluetooth feature allows the syncing of a cell phone through the base of the cordless phone to all of the cordless phones that come in the kit (three come in the kit) and that you choose to purchase, up to twelve total handsets.  You simply sync your cell phone, via blue tooth, to the base unit.  Now, one phone system will answer up to three phones in your house!   That's right, you can sync two cell phones to the base unit at any time. 

This system offers several advantages, at least that I can think of.  The first one is you can place the base unit and your cell phone where ever you get the best cell coverage, and still use all of the phones everywhere in the house, maximizing the cell phone location and giving you the flexibility to use the cell phone without carrying it around and risking walking into a bad location in the house.

The second is that the base unit will allow you to download your cell phone  contact list into the entire cordless phone system.  That's right, no more re-entering your phone numbers into this new cordless phone system!  While not quite as convenient as my blackberry, it is much improved over older systems.

The last advantage I am going to write about is savings.  You can use this phone and combine it with your cell phone minutes.  We have not had long distance service since we moved, and this new phone system makes long distance needs a thing of the past.  I know we always have minutes left over at the end of the month, so this is a great way to use those minutes, and not pay those stupid long distance fees that verizon charges.


Oh, and it has an answering machine too.  It does not combine your cell voice mail with your home answering machine.

I hope you enjoyed your bourbon.  I would encourage you to leave comments, but history has shown only about six people know how to do that and the rest get confused.

Alphageek Art Studios


Alphageek
Originally uploaded by AlphaHokie
The Alphageeks recently moved into a new house. One of the advantages of the new house is that there is now an art studio in the basement. Well, art studio might be pushing it. After all, it is really a space where I am allowed to spill paint without getting in trouble.

Shown here is my second attempt at the same painting as before. Some things went better than others, but overall I think it is better. I had some trouble with the happy trees, but the bushes were much improved. You can click on the picture itself to see my comments on the picture. If you have a flickr account, you can even add your own comments!

This time, I tried something new. Two other artists joined me in interpreting this picture. While I was interested in copying Bob Ross's vision of this picture, they each added their own interpretation to the painting. It was incredibly fun to have several guest artists join me. They were very patient, even when we only had one knife and had to wait on each other to paint.

You can click here to see Hannah's picture.

You can click here to see Emma's picture.

I am quite pleased with the results because in all three cases, you can tell what we are painting. I will take that as success given that the only art training I have is from watching some tv shows and reading a piece of paper that came with the kit. Emma and Hannah also showed me another way to paint trees, proving that these kind of paintings are pretty hard to mess up.

Try your own painting today. Just go buy the kit. Stay tuned for more pictures because a new book arrived in the mail the other day.

Make Your Own Hot Dog Buns

During this incredibly difficult storm, I have decided to enjoy a bourbon and entertain you with some new ideas. I will do my best to entertain you with original content on today's Internet. You can thank me later. Today's idea is based on necessity but is very clever and I am busy here congratulating myself for thinking of it.

I stopped by the store on the way home during this awful storm. So the roads were very wet, but very scary during the day. I arrived at the store and discovered that I could buy just about everything I needed for the day with one glaring exception: hot dog buns.

I really was set on having some hot dogs this weekend. After all, I was going to even make my own chili. That is when I discovered that the hot dog buns were cleaned out of the store. I also noticed that there was almost no instant soup, and that everyone in the store was either at the check out line or at the seafood counter. I decided to think the problem through. Seeing nothing that helped, I wandered over to the bakery aisle, hoping they might have bakery buns. That did not pan out. However, I found that there were some sub rolls. I decided "close enough" and headed to the checkout.

I got home, and decided that these sub rolls seemed to be about four times the size of a hot dog bun. I decided that I could cut the sub roll in half, perpendicular to the long axis of the hot dog. I then took each half and cut it in half with parallel to the long axis. Finally, I cut a slit lengthwise into each half that was left. I now have four hot dog buns!

I know this is a little confusing, so I took some pictures to show exactly what I did.

Go enjoy your hot dogs!
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