01711: Telephony Solutions

Well, I'm back on my normal schedule starting today, which is a very good thing indeed. Despite yesterday's rather challenging schedule changes, I made it through the day, got all my tasks done and managed to handle one more conference call upon arriving home. Then it was some blissfully wonderful sleep which has done me a lot of good. There was a bit of a break in-between, but then I managed to go right back to sleep soon enough. I often tell friends that when you work nights, sleep is a gift.

The whole conference calls bit is rather interesting. Today was the first time I had tried taking the call using Google Hangouts integrated into Gmail, and unfortunately things didn't work as hoped. Audio seemed to be fine but for one reason or another the service did not pick-up my netbook's microphone. When I switched back to the old Gmail chat, the call went through as normal. I'll have to expand testing efforts to see if I can get things resolved.

Another option is to consider using Skype instead for such calls. That way I can leverage my mobile phone for such activities instead of being tied to a computer. Skype has the advantage of supporting calls from their mobile app as of this time, but I expect Google Hangouts may catch up in time. Once they enable calls to landline phones, I'm definitely going to be eager to test the service out.

Today is also the first Wednesday of the month and we'll be doing our usual grocery run later once Tobie arrives home. Grocery runs are always fun.