Bryan Zug, a friend and wedding attendee, gifted us a geeky item that I had placed in our registry at the last minute: a Uniden GMR1588-2CK 22-Channel 15-Mile Two-Way Radio set. Tonight, I gave ‘em a shake around town. Didn’t quite get to the 15-mile marker, but I was still impressed with reception strength clear across town from Ponzi’s location (approximately two miles away). I don’t think we could have found better devices to take with us on trips – or to use as a mobile house intercom. Communication!

“Staying in touch” is a relatively simple task – and this week’s widespread electrical outage (in my area, at least) has reminded me of just how important it is to have incoming and outbound data beacons. At home, we could only rely on the radio; cell towers were down, cable was kaput, and nobody was broadcasting a wireless Internet signal. Newspapers didn’t help us much, either – as we needed up-to-the-minute, community-specific information that wasn’t flowing fast enough. Communication!

Tonight, I saw a strange sight: my dad popped up on the instant messenger! He has finally reconnected his PC (after suffering a fatal hard drive crash a while back). When I set up the software, I made sure he was automatically signed into some kind of IM network so that he could easily reach me if I also happened to be online. We typed for a while, but found his questions easier to answer by phone. Communication!

A couple of minutes ago, as I was cleaning up my inbox, I hit a Gizmo Project message: “The new All Calls Free plan makes calls FREE between registered, active Gizmo Project users in 60 countries around the world. Get all your friends using Gizmo Project and you may never pay a phone bill again!” How’s that for a stocking stuffer? Communication!

[tags]communication, electronic communication, communications[/tags]