Telephone Problems

I have telephone problems. When I packed, I made sure to bring two things with me to Elena's place so I could use my Vonage service. My Linksys router and my Vonage unit. Today I decided to hook them up because I have to make some phone calls.

So it turns out that Elena doesn't have an old POTS style phone handy. OK, no problem. I remember buying one for $5 at Radio Shack several years ago. So I head over to London Drugs. They have some old POTS phones, but they are $15 and super ugly. So I head down to "The Source" at Burrard and Davie. They also have nothing cheaper than $15. Their phones are burgundy and ivory, but neither model is in stock. So I head up to Future Shop. Of course, they don't dabble in such low level crap that you could buy in a pawn shop--they're Future Shop. I make one more stop at Sears--same stuff as Future Shop. Oh well. Back to London Drugs where I have a choice between girlish pink, baby blue, and pastel green. I get the green.

I come home and look for the AC adapter for the Vonage unit. Well, it seems that when I packed the router and Vonage unit, I only packed on AC adapter because both are made by Linksys. So now I only have one AC adapter--though it would work in either unit. So I decided to try to connect the cable modem straight to the Vonage unit. The power and internet LEDs just flashed. I'm not sure what the problem is, but when I hooked up the router, I had to clone the MAC of Elena's computer. OK. So I'll need to go through the router. Dammit. That means I need an AC adapter and an ethernet cable which I don't have--though I could use the one that goes to Elena's computer. I looked for another AC adapter that's 12V with the - on the outside and + on the inside that's the right radius. No luck.

I give up for today. I'll have to buy an adapter and that means maybe a run to either one of of those computer consignment stores or to London Drugs/The Source again.

Why can't I just use my cell phone? Well the roaming is like $0.90 per minute. Damn corporate cellphone pirates!