@NetworkNerd okay. That is pretty funny.

Texas has gotten insane with the huge, rapid temperature swings.

Youtube Video

One of the most popular TED Talks ever. Very good one.

@Dashrender said:

I've toyed with the idea of doing what Scott does (use Asterisk at home) as a way to force myself to learn how it work. With that in mind I would require cordless phones at home to work on the system.

http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/08/doing-it-at-home-the-home-pbx/

@Dashrender said:

Scott, you run Asterisk as a VM, right?

Yes, on Xen and VMware.

@ajstringham said:

@Dashrender We run it hosted. As far as phones, that's the beauty. Use pretty much whatever you want. Only one I know doesn't work is the 3CX softphone and it used to until they locked it down to 3CX systems only.

The issue there is that 3CX isn't an open SIP softphone, it's just a client of 3CX, not an open phone system. It doesn't work with anything except 3CX.

@Dashrender said:

Scott, you run Asterisk as a VM, right? What kind of phones do you use? Do you use any wireless/portable phones on this at home?

Combination.... Yealink 3 series, Snom 3 series for physical phones. Linphone for softphone.

We were at 50 a week ago. Thought that maybe this was all over.

@Hubtech No, I didn't have to pay. It was a freebie for being a VMware vExpert, companies give free stuff to get advertising and their name out there. But this one turned out to be a scam.

They are very yummy.

I've heard lots of good things about VoIP.ms but have not used them (yet) myself.

VoicePulse in NYC is pretty awesome. They have a four trunk, $11/mo deal that is really great. I use that for my home line (yes, I have an Asterisk PBX for home use) and a lot of businesses that can work within the four trunk limit use it. They scale up from there but at four trunks they are unbeatable.

I was listening to Patricia Barber.

11 degrees right now but hitting 30 later today here in NY.

@ajstringham said:

@Dashrender I know. I'm on a home account. Ok, I think I just answered my own question. They will block requests being sent on those ports to your IP but if you are the one requesting they don't block them. pounds forehead

That's how a normal firewall works. You home firewall does the exact same thing.

Can't remember now who owed it to me. Obviously their advertising failed!

It was bound to happen. Voice controls are a big part of mobile devices. I still have not enabled Siri though.

@ajstringham said:

@scottalanmiller And that's what everyone is saying. I'm getting different stories from higher ups though. They say it works with UT's O365 but they are using some sort of weird relay and I'm not sure what it is. Going to have to look into it some more.

It's a relay, plain and simple. We know that that works. "Using a relay" is a term of "it's not supported." That means that you have to build a proxy email server that handles Office 365 on UT's behalf because UT doesn't support it. It's like how 12 year old's are "able to drive a car" meaning "they can be a passenger in a car that someone else drives."

@ajstringham said:

@scottalanmiller I am going to have to look into that. I'm not sure how you'd go about doing that on a UT box...

Last I knew, it wasn't supported.