I finally got Gizmo to work properly, that is, make outgoing phone calls from Gizmo.
In the past few months, the GNU/Linux Gizmo client kinda crapped out—I could receive incoming calls, but couldn’t make a successful outgoing call or do anything on the dialpad (in or out). It probably has to do with some protocol change—the GNU/Linux version hasn’t been updated since 2007.
So, I tried installing the Windows version under Wine, and it looks like it’s working better than the outdated GNU/Linux version, so I guess I’ll use this from now on (or at least until the Gizmo credit I have runs out).
P.S. I also got ALSA properly set up on my system with software mixing. Now I don’t have to periodically kill Firefox to kill its child Flash processes which are hogging the sound card.
As I’ve spent more time marking spam comments (7 so far, I think) than approving comments from real people (0 so far, at least on this website), I am installing reCAPTCHA. This will involve minimal inconvenience to anyone who actually wants to leave any comment on my website, while reducing my (currently not so great) effort in blocking spam comments. It also serves a good cause, as you can find out on reCAPTCHA website.
Also, I enabled Mailhide which is supposed to help with email harvesting issue. Not that it’s going to do much good for me at this point, since my email address byun...@berkeley.edu has been out there for a while.
So, even though the trip to India couldn’t be made as planned, Dima encouraged me to make the remainder of the trip to Poland and Russia. I didn’t have as much time for planning as I would’ve liked, but thanks to the swine flu, I could still get tickets at a relatively reasonable price—provided that I made the trip in a series of round trips, like this:
- Round trip from San Francisco (SFO) to Frankfurt (FRA)
- Leave SFO at 8:46 am, May 24, and arrive FRA at 9:55 am, May 25
- Leave FRA at 12:20 pm, June 17, and arrive SFO at 7:10 pm, June 17
- Round trip from Frankfurt (FRA) to Krakow (KRK)
- Leave FRA at 6:20 pm, May 25, and arrive KRK at 8:00 pm, May 25
- Leave KRK at 3:50 pm, June 16, and arrive FRA at 5:30 pm, June 16
- Round trip from Krakow (KRK) to St. Petersburg (LED)
- Leave KRK at 6:00 am, June 7, and arrive LED at 2:45 pm, June 7
- Leave LED at 3:45 am, June 15, and arrive KRK at 9:50 pm, June 15
Surprisingly, the most expensive segment is the last segment to and from LED, but overall, the trip cost even less than last time. I’m a bit worried about the series of round trips that are booked separately (for one, if one flight changes the rest may have to be changed as well), but hopefully it will all work out.
Update: Apparently there was one other way to schedule my trips that might have been cheaper (at least by $150 or so): use Frankfurt as my “hub”. i.e. roundtrip to FRA from SFO, then roundtrip from FRA to KRK, coming back early enough for a roundtrip from FRA to LED.
Oh well. The tickets have been booked already, and this potential saving probably isn’t worth the hassle—not to mention it would be wiped out by the time all the ticket change fees have been paid for.
It’s published more than 5 years ago, but still every bit true.
Some materials cost so much to recycle, that if it weren’t for forced, tax-supported (think CRV) recycling programs, no one would bother recycling.
Some programs, especially ones that recycle metal resources like aluminum cans, are highly successful, but even for those there’s no need to support such programs with CRV. If there’s demand for such recycled material, someone will step up and fill the niche. It doesn’t have to be the government.