My web wanderings

Kerry Garrison - Building your own PBX
Building Your Own PBX with Asterisk
Kerry Garrison
What would it mean to you to have your own full-featured PBX system at your home or small office? What would it mean to you if you could build an entire PBX system (minus the phones) on hardware you probably have laying around, AND that it can probably also save you money on your phone bill? Sounds too hard to believe doesn’t it, but using old hardware and some open source software, you really can build a commercial quality phone system that would normally cost thousands of dollars.

The Hardware
As I mentioned in the opening, we are going to build our PBX system from equipment that we have laying around the house. After cannibalizing three spare systems, what was left was a PII 450, 386mb RAM, 12gb HD, 48x CDROM drive, and an Intel Pro 10/100 network card. This is all you “need” to get going as long as you are going to get VOIP dial tone service from a company like BroadVoice (more on this later). If you want to use regular analog phone lines you will need modem card. Not every card will work properly, however, the most recommended card is the Digium Wildcard X100P FXO card which can be purchased brand new on eBay for $6.95 each. So far, total out of pocket expense for the card plus shipping: $12.90.

I haven’t posted much personal stuff here but I just wanted to tell everyone about how happy I am being married and that my wife Ellen is very good to me. She helps me tremendously and I am so lucky to have her in my life. She and her wonderful family have made the last 3 years some of the happiest of my life. Thank you honey!!

I have to say that I got an excellent MP3 player from my wonderful fiance’. We go jogging most mornings and I have always dreaded it because it is just me alone with my thoughts, how scary is that? So anyway many times I have almost just gone ahead and spent $30-50 dollard on a cheap mp3 player but I am glad I didn’t Ellen bought me this awesome MP3 player that has a voice recorder so I can record thoughts and ideas I have while jogging and it scroll’s the tracks that are playing on the screen. The sound quality is excellent and I now feel bad that I have the better MP3 player of the family.

Ellen I love you so much

P.S. this was a birthday present. Shhh….

Do you know what the most beautiful light in the world is? I am sitting here typing at my computer and the most beautiful light is shining in my window at work.. It is sunlight filtering through a young spry willow waving in the wind. It is so nice to be able to see the sun and sky after so much smoke and haziness over the last few days.

With the holiday’s coming up I have family asking what I want for a present. Well what would any information junkie want… More information.

I typically buy about 3-6 magazines a month and browse many more while Ellen and I are at one of our favorite weekend hangouts Barnes and Noble. So I figured I would put up a list of the magazines I read monthly and see how many people I can con into buying them for me. So without further ado here is my list.

Oh and I also want this clock for work.

< rant begin >It seems that everytime Ellen and I go to the movies we encounter some young kids acting like they are five years old. At what point does it repeating someone cease to be funny? In case you can’t guess we went to see Kill Bill for a matinee show. The movie was excellent. It definitely is not something you would want to take grandma to but if you are a fan of action movies and/or samurai movies it is a must see. So back to my story we are sitting in the theater and five teenage boys sit down in front of us and proceed to talk through the entire previews, that isn’t what made me upset it was that once the movie started they continued there discussions. So I decided to shhh them at which point the started to loudly shhh and “Please be quiet” the entire audience. Well little did they know that there was a gentleman in front of them that was even less impressed with their antics than I was. Just as I was about to say something to the little Sh%ts the guy in front of them turned around and laid into them good and loud. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long while. They deserved it and tried to mask there embarrassment in giggling to themselves. At what point do teenagers grow up? I am sorry ladies but I can’t single out the boys on this one I have seen teenage girls be as rude and discourteous as the boys.< /rant>

BTW if you aren’t a geek like me the < rant begin >< /rant > is an homage to html.