First, some history. I attended my first AstriCon back in 2008 and somewhere, I still have my Skype for Asterisk button. At the close of the conference Digium asked for comments—I suggested that the convention look at Orlando, Florida. Back then, I traveled from Michigan (the dating Yeni period), yet I still maintained a strong bias for Florida. I thought (with the exception of Australia/Asia) Florida could provide both a convenient travel point (for both International and domestic travelers) as well as combine the possibility of a family vacation in the Sunshine State. Seven years later, AstriCon 2015 granted my wish and I attended Astricon2015 in beautiful Orlando, Florida....

Recently, the FCC decided to publish their “informal consumer complaints about unwanted robocalls and telemarketing calls” to the interwebs. As someone critical of government transparency, I first want to give credit where due. Releasing this information is a great step forward. Good job! Now, if you’re using an open source VoIP system (such as Asterisk, FreePBX, FreeSWITCH, Kamailio, etc.) it would be very easy to automatically block these numbers from reaching your phone. ...

Astricon 2015 will be held in Orlando, Florida from October 13-15, 2015. This year, I am honored to be speaking at the yearly Asterisk conference and exhibition. Besides listening to yours truly discuss the benefits of Expanding Asterisk with Kamailio, you will also be exposed to such experts as Daniel Constantin-Mierla, Leif Madsen, James Body, Tim Panton, and Yeni’s personal favorite Allison Smith. ...

When Yeni and I were dating, her apartment used Comcast for Internet. Like armies of other customers, I experienced numerous problems and after hours on the phone expressed my outrage on Twitter. I didn’t expect assistance. I simply wasn’t happy and wanted to express my anger, to… well, to the entire world. Surprisingly, my small tweet was noticed by Comcast, who replied to me, contacted the appropriate people, and actually resolved my problem. Shocked? So was I. ...

Tomorrow is July 4th, or Independence Day here in the United States — where we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. At the time, what is now the United States existed as 13 colonies of Great Britain. For many reasons, none of which I’ll discuss here, the colonists decided to declare themselves a new nation, independent from British (or any other) rule, with certain unalienable Rights — including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ...

Recently, Yeni sent me to the grocery store to grab some milk for the bakery. So, like most people in the Sunshine State, I headed to Publix and went to the dairy case. A minute or so later, after fighting my tiredness and the tempation to buy a Twix, I slid my card through the reader and got ready to leave. When the cashier handed me the receipt, her words instantly awakened me. “There you go,” she said, with my receipt in her extended arm. “There I go,” I replied as I walked away. When exactly did “There You Go” replace “Thank You?” ...

Recently, Representative Ted Yoho penned an opinion piece explaining that the FCC recent reclassification of the Internet, protecting Net Neutrality, is a bad thing. Ted Yoho is Wrong First, the Internet is not 20 years old. Dial-ups existed in the United States more than 25 years ago, but that’s another story. The Internet was made possible today mostly from the initial support and research of tax-payer funded research, through DARPA and today exists as a globally distributed network. ...

Kamailio 4.2.3 has been released. Kamailio SIP Server v4.2.3 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v4.2.2 – configuration file and database compatibility is preserved. So, if you’re updating from git, the simple way to update is: cd /usr/local/src/kamailio-4.2/kamailio (or your kamailio directory) git pull origin make all make install /etc/init.d/kamailio restart Problems? I had one… When I ran the git pull origin command, I kept receiving the error fatal: read error: Connection reset by peer....

People Mover in 40 seconds from qxork on Vimeo.

I’ve loved Siracha for some time now… and having built up a decent tolerance over the years, would consume a pretty decent amount. It could be the constant mentions in the news, or the Hipster love, but regardless the reason I seemed to have let my supply of the red sauce go dry… for about 6 months. Last night, my wife surprised me with a new bottle, that I christened on an amazing stir-fry dish we made....