We went to look at a house this evening in the North Hills area. Its priced right and on a dynamite piece of property but it’s a got 1960’s era look on the inside. Lots of updating would need to be done. The upside is that we have enough money to hire this work out, which greatly eases my mind about it.

The Eastgate area of Raleigh has quite some appeal to us. Within a mile are a major bookstore, a coffee shop, a jazz club, and a city park. The Beltline is a stone’s throw away, too. Then there’s Raleigh’s newest mall (The Lassiter) being built within that distance, too. All in all, not a bad place to be.

We’ll have to decide quickly if this is what we want, since homes get snapped up around there.

Right now, though, I hear the bed calling me.

The News and Observer has an article in the Connect section about some guy’s baby blog. I’m not impressed, what with Hallie‘s page and Hayley‘s page being around for what seems like forever. The Trixie Update is just the new kid on the block. Literally…hah!

Still, I have to admit that the gauges and dials are impressive.

[Update] I have to give credit to Scott Reston for giving me the babyblog idea.

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I was also geeking out with the phone system last night (surprise, surprise). I got the 8×8 DTA 310 working with Asterisk, and crafted a nifty use for distinctive ring. Configuring Asterisk brings me back to the phone-phreaking days of the mid-1980’s (not that I ever participated in such stuff, mind you).

We had to use the fax machine for our house negotiations, so I thought I’d see how to make it work with the new setup. I remembered reading that the fax could work with distinctive ring. I also remembered that Asterisk could send distinctive ring. What I didn’t know is if my terminal adapter supported it.

After some tinkering, I found the setting which made the TA send distinctive ring. There were five cadences I could choose from, so I picked a long-long cadence to start with. I then turned my attention to the fax machine itself. The book pointed me to the proper menu, where I experimented until I found the same long-long ring style. Bingo! The fax automatically picked up whenever that cadence was sent!

This is handy because I constantly get junk faxes to my home office number. For that reason, I often left my fax machine on the manual setting, only turning it on when I was expecting a legitimate fax. Now I can filter out the junk faxes with Asterisk by assigning the fax machine its own “virtual extension” using distinctive ring. I can give legitimate users the proper extension and they can fax me. With a separate extension, I can prevent voicemail from picking up on a fax call, or confusing it with a voice call. This hack is like discovering a separate line on my Sipura terminal adapter. Pretty cool.

I also discovered quite by accident that my Packet8 DTA 310 terminal adapter now works with Asterisk! Seems the upgrade I made to Asterisk 0.9.x was what it took. Curiously, the locked DTA is the one that works: the unlocked one literally locks up when I send a call to it.

After mucking with the DTA 310 for a while, I determined its sound quality is superior to the Sipura, since I hear lots of hiss on the Sipura. I think the hiss is caused by lack of isolation of the power circuits from the audio circuits. It makes it almost unusable.

Now the only thing left to do is re-flash the unlocked DTA into the old firmware. Then I’ll put the right SIP settings into it and re-flash it to the current firmware. That should fix both DTAs and give me a total of four extensions in the house.

I’m such a phone geek!

We drafted counteroffers for our house last night. If all goes well, we could be signing papers by the end of the week. Things are moving along!

Now, if anyone knows of a nice house…

I switched the home phones over to my Asterisk server tonight. It’s doing lots of tricks for us now, like long distance for 1.5 cents per minute, programmable voicemail, etc. I’ve had a blast learning how to make this thing work, too. In fact, I volunteered today to teach a class on the Asterisk PBX system on June 12th for the Triangle Linux Users Group.

I have three hours alloted, though frankly I’m wondering if that will be enough time. This software is a full-featured PBX system and there is plenty of ground to cover. Based on the interest I’ve seen on this topic on the mailing list, I expect this to be a very popular class!

It seems we underestimated the demand for our home. We learned tonight that another offer is on the way! We should have that one by tomorrow evening, at which point we’ll sort things out and plan our next move.

Now if we only knew where to find our next home …

Well, we got the offer for our house. As expected, there are a few details we will want changed. I will refrain from mentioning the negotiating stage here until any deal is done. I will say, however, that I think we can work something out.

I got home to a message on the machine from the agent of the woman who saw the house with her two daughters Friday. The agent wants to negotiate an offer! If you’ll recall, the prospective buyer has lived in her house for 26 years, and is thus a nervous wreck about the whole process. Kelly and I can understand why she would bring in an agent.

We will have to negotiate a commission with the buyer’s agent, which will obviously all be dependent on the offer price. It only occured to me now how we’ve really got the agent over a barrel. If the buyer is so set on this house — which is probable, from what I’ve seen –, what happens if we refuse to pay the buyer’s agent? The agent won’t say “I can’t sell you this house,” would she? The agent was brought on at the very last minute (without our knowledge and prior approval, as well) and will essentially only be gathering the paperwork. It seems to me we’ve got a strong hand in the commission negotiations.

Of course, we’ll treat them fairly. I myself can honestly see her living here. And besides, we’ve got a favor to ask of her. Since we don’t yet have a place to “land,” and she hasn’t yet put her home on the market, we will ask to rent back our home for a month or two until these things play out. That will make her purchase easier by providing money to cover dual mortgages. It will give us time to find a new crib. And, it will give time for the interest rates to go up two more points. (One of these doesn’t thrill us. Can you guess which one?)

Kelly and I will chat with the agent today and see how we can make this work. If it all comes through, it could be the best possible outcome, for us and for our buyer.

Stay tuned.