Joining the century: Part 2

It has been a few months since I've written here as I've been busy working on my reading goal for the year (more to come on that later). I plan to write more consistently as the new year comes. I wanted to make a quick post to share a deal that my wife and I just got in on.

If you've been following my blog very long or looked at my older posts, you might remember that about 2 years ago we joined the century. After a couple of years with T-mobile, I was ready to get out of our contract. We are now with Virgin Mobile (which uses the Sprint Network). Not only that, but we are now part of the real century - that's right, we own Android phones!


One major reason we switched to Virgin - price/cost:
With T-mobile:

• 2-year contract


• 700 minutes


• 400 text messages each (800 between the two phones)


• $80 a month (ok - $70 but with all the fees and stuff it was a consistent $83)

With Virgin Mobile:

• No contract. Prepaid phone.


• 300 minutes each (600 combined)


• Unlimited texting and data (yes, unlimited data)


• $50 a month ($25 per phone which is actually like $26.50 with tax)

So we lost some minutes in the deal, but but we are saving $30 a month. The other thing was that we had to buy the phones. We got in on this deal. So that was $400 to get the phones (Christmas gifts), but in 1 year we will have saved $360 ($30 a month over 12 months) and actually a bit more because we are going to disable one of the phones for a few additional months during the summer. So as long as we have our phones for a year, they will pay for themselves. If you interested in the other Virgin plans, here they are:

(yeah, we could have gotten more minutes for the same $80 we were paying for T-mobile)

Oh yeah, and my phone is all setup with my Google Voice number with a flawless integration. So far, loving the phone.

Google Voice

Google seems to be everywhere. Google practically monopolizes my time on the internet. My blog here (blogger.com) is obviously on a Google service, I look at my Google Reader about every 5 minutes to keep up to date, and I only search on Google, unless for some reason Google is down and then I resort to some other service. A year or so ago, Google came out with a new service called Google Voice that I have been using.


Check out the above video to see what Google Voice is all about. A simple way to manage all of your phones and manage your contacts and a lot of other stuff. I wanted to do a quick review of the service, the things I like and the things I think could be better.

After signing up for the service (you will pick a phone number for yourself and a couple of other things), you get the main Google Voice page. If you use any other Google services, then the layout will feel familiar and intuitive. Like most of the Google services (Gmail, Reader, etc.) you can archive your old messages, star the important ones and delete the useless ones. Nothing too spectacular other than the fact that you can hold onto the messages for as long as you like. At some point during the setup process, you have to enter a current telephone number that you already have.

You can see from the above screenshot that the setup is pretty straightforward and you determine when calls come through on the phone you setup. There are a ton of different options from here and I will just cover a few of my favorite. First up, I love that I can use my Google Voice number for texting instead of my regular cell phone. When people write me, I can have the SMS forwarded onto my cell phone, sent to me in an e-mail, or just sit in my Voice inbox. Since I am not very good at writing text messages using my phone, I much prefer to type answers on my keyboard.

Another feature that I love is that I can access my messages from anywhere when I miss a phone call. On top of that, people have to say their name when they call me from an unknown number so when I pick the phone up, it tells me who is calling (as they state it). If I don't answer or reject the call, they leave a message (you can customize what message people here based off of what group you put them in - for example, I have a custom message for my wife that she hears when she calls that is different from what others hear) and that message is available to me by calling my Google Voice number from my phone, but also available to me online to listen to. There is also the option to transcribe the message to text but it could definitely use some work. Anyways, since I am online most of the time, I will typically find out that I missed a call through my e-mail rather than seeing it on my phone.

That is just a quick overview of the things I like. There are a couple of things on my wishlist. Currently, you have to have a phone to actually use Google Voice (in other words you need a cell phone or home phone to actually place calls). Ok, so that isn't completely true. However, you could have an account with Gizmo5 but Google recently acquired the company and it is no longer open for registration (you can enter your e-mail to be notified when it opens again). So I really wish that Gizmo5 was opened up again.

Also, I wish there was an easier way to call people using my Google Voice number from my cell phone. In order to call people I have to either call my Google Voice number and then enter the person's phone number that I want to call (or retrieve a saved GV number), or else I have to enter the person's phone number into the GV interface online. I'm not sure what the better solution is, but it would be awesome if there was some easier way.

The final feature that would be really nice is if you could add a phone number that had an extension involved. I would prefer to forward calls to my work phone during work hours, however this isn't possible because my phone number is behind an extension.

Overall, I have been quite pleased with Google Voice and would definitely recommend using it. Let me know what you like or dislike about the service.

A couple things:
Whenever I give out my phone number, I give my Google Voice number. I have updated all of my credit cards, services, and such things to use my Google Voice number as well. The only people who have my cell phone number is my family really, and that is because I just haven't informed them of the new number. I prefer people to call the Google Voice number though since I like to have a searchable record of my calls.

Reading and More

Time sure flies. I haven't been very good at updating the blog here about what has been going on. So here is a quick glimpse of what's new and happening.

As most of you know, my wife has been going to school. That has kept her pretty busy and left me with lots of free time. Probably my new favorite hobby is to read. When we moved into our home about a year ago I started to read again and with my new Kindle I usually read a couple hours or more a day. I keep track of all my reading and books on Goodreads(post devoted to Goodreads to come).

With reading, our TV doesn't get much use. In fact, we usually turn the TV on for 2 hours a week. Typically on Sunday evening we will watch Extreme Makeover and Desparate Housewives. That is it. I don't even turn the TV on to watch sports (instead I tend to use a site like justin.tv). We don't have cable and some of our channels don't work. Whenever I see an awesome deal on TVs (Slickdeals) I have to remind myself that this would be the most pointless purchase. We just don't use the TV.

The time that I do watch TV is in the morning. I have been getting up every morning and going over to our clubhouse that has a pretty nice workout facility. I run 3 times a week and usually turn on Sportscenter while I am there. However, I have started listening to a lot of audio books now on my phone and so I don't watch a whole lot. I do turn it on though.

I went to the theater for the first time in almost a year last week to see Avatar. We saw it in 3D and it was alright. I quite enjoyed the film itself and the graphics were absolutely awesome. 3D technology, however, has a long way to go. The glasses are pretty limited and hurt my eyes. They also make it so the colors aren't as bright in the film. If I was going to see it again, I probably wouldn't go to the 3D version of it. I would definitely see it in the theater though as I am sure the film just won't be the same on DVD. My wife didn't really like the movie. I would give it 8 out of 10. And yes, it's better than Titanic in my opinion. I am laughing at the difference between those movie sites. Clearly, times have changed.

I have been trying to come up with good food ideas. With Anya going back to school, I typically get to make the food. I like to make homemade bread, lasagna, and chicken enchilada casserole. If you have a favorite recipe, leave it here. I will post a more detailed post about preparing food at some point.

Work is going good. Still using and working with Drupal. In fact, there is a group meetup coming up next Tuesday in our offices downtown, if anyone is interested.

I know this post was all over the place, but I wanted to get caught up.

Joining The Century

I haven't written for a while, but I am going to try to do better. Just wanted to make a quick post that we have officially joined the century (according to my mother). Santa was nice and brought us cell phones (and kind enough to land me with the monthly bill). Here is the phone that I got:





The big difference between mine and this is that it is white. All the same, if you want my number, then let me know. We are with the cheapest guys (T-Mobile). I guess now people can always find me...This is my first time ever owning a cell phone, so we shall see how it goes.