Ditching Bell POTS for VoIP around Toronto

SPA2102 ATA

I’m always looking at ways to run the house more economically.  I was already using TekSavvy for home phone, but my average bill was still around $40 then, and that was just for visual call waiting, and $0.03/minute long distance.  I was curious about switching to VoIP, and specifically, voip.ms, so I decided to give it a try.
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OTA Digital TV in Oshawa

Oshawa is one of the best places in North America for over the air TV.  We get signals from the CN Tower, Hamilton, and many of the Buffalo stations.  Using the setup I’ll describe, I’m currently receiving 21 (or more) digital TV channels with no rotor, and many of them are HD!  Digital TV provides a crystal clear signal.  It provides a higher quality signal than Cable TV, particularly with the HD signals, as there is no compression applied to the channel.  Best of all, your monthly payments are reduced to $0!

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FreeDOS 1.0 USB Boot Image

Update (2012-01-17) new version available: FreeDOS 1.1 USB Boot Image
Update (2011-10-20) download the FreeDOS USB Image: FreeDOS-1.0-USB-Boot.img.bz2

I was trying to update the BIOS of my new SATA controller (a Syba SD-SATA2-4IR, or SD-81012336 – you decide), as the system will not boot with the RAID BIOS, unless you have a logical drive defined.  Since this fakeraid is generally garbage, and I’ll be using ZFS as well as gmirror, I thought I would try and work around it.

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Snakes on a Plain

Eastern Garter Snake
Eastern Garter Snake

So, doing my usual morning garden check-over, I found a new friend!

When I went to check in the evening he was gone, so I don’t know if it’s a permanent resident or not.

Toads and slugs both happen to be on this fellow’s diet, so I have mixed feelings about whether it will ultimately be good for the garden. I figure the more diversity the better though.