The Wonders of Modern Technology
I wanted to be involved in a phone call with work last week as they kick off the next phase of a project that used to be mine (writing the Final Environmental Impact Statement for US Hwy. 14 from New Ulm to North Mankato). I looked into a bunch of ways to communicate with folks and settled on Skype.
I loaded Skype (this was effortless) and bought myself a microphone (not quite effortless - I had to walk about 12 blocks to go to a store where the guy didn't speak english, but was patient enough to deal with my Czech). I bought some credit because, while Skype to Skype calls are free, I would be calling out to a regular landline. At 2.4 cents per minute, though, you can't beat it.
I made a test call to the office last Monday. I called my friend Rebecca in the cube next to mine. It sounded better than had I called from my phone there. On Tuesday I spent about two and half hours on the phone with the project team. It was great. They sent me PDFs of the designs and there wasn't a hitch.
I tried surprising my Mom by calling on her birthday on Friday. She wasn't home, so we left a message.
Then, last night we called our friends Wes, Lisa and James Taylor back in Mankato. We started with a call to their phone, but Wes fired up his laptop and the next thing you knew, we were on a video call. It was not smooth as silk, some choppiness to the video, but it was more than adequate. And, it was free. We gave them a tour of our apartment (we're wireless so we tromped around with our computer). It was a blast.
Anyway, it made me hearken back to a time 21 years ago when I was a student at North Dakota State University and Kristine was at the U of Minnesota. To call her I had to get a load of quarters, walk to a payphone, and feed that machine continuously. Our good-byes were always like "Bye, are you still there? Bye, oh we got a few more seconds. Bye, I can't wait to see you. Bye, I really lo...click."
By the way, we want the Taylors to come see us and we think you want them to also. Why should you care? Check out some of Wes' photos and see. There are so many things so worth photographing and Wes is so good.
As a final note...Caleb gave a talk in church on Sunday...in Czech. That takes some guts.
Peter
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Wes is amazingly talented, for sure! I'm glad that you were able to use Skype to make your calls. It's a great technology, although it DIDN'T help with our stake conference yesterday. That was equipment and user issues, though, and not Skype's fault. We spent two hours listening to the stake conference broadcast using Aaron's cell phone up to the microphone in the chapel because we couldn't get the audio portion to work. It was interesting to say the least.
We need to have a potluck at our house on a Sunday afternoon and invite the Harffs via the Internet! The Harffs would usually have Sunday evenings free which would be our afternoon. What say folks! We shall need to pick a date! This Sunday or next?
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