Free Skype->PSTN this whole year

Who does not know skype….okay granted not everyone is a geek like me but still skype made VOIP a household term more than Vonage and other real VOIP providers….reason…because skype meant free and was straight forward….did not involve and tinkering and just worked which is what is needed to appeal to the masses which is where the real money is.
Anyways…the big news is that Skype is offering free calls to PSTN/Cellphone within US and Canada if you are calling from within US and Canada. So thats the good news. For people from rest of the world, if you are calling US, standard rates would apply. They are determining based on the IP address if you are from within US or from somewhere else. Now if you are smart and know a little about networking, it should be pretty easy to get around this restriction if you know someone here in US willing to offer you a termination point and allowing you to use some of his bandwidth and viola!! You have free calls to US and Canada for full 6 months…no restrictions whatsoever.
Although, I dont have any real motivation for this because as I mentioned in my earlier post, I already have my setup in place and I dont mind paying the $5.99/month, but the geek in me wants to do it.
Here is the outline of what I am thinking:
1. Setup a ssh server here in US. Search and you would find so many examples of how to do it.
2. Use putty to setup a tunnel from outside US to direct all your traffic through this ssh server to the internet.
3. Now start Skype on the remote PC and try to make a call and see if it works.
Questions that I have in my mind:
1. Does Skype have something inbuilt mechansim to prevent or detect this kind of tunneling.
2. Even if it does, what happens if I go one step furthur and install a virtual network adapter on my remote PC (like the ones you install when you install a VPN) and connect it to a server here in US. Will the Skype mechanism work then?
Any Comments?

When 2 mins == 45 mins

I was just talking to a friend of mine and was surprised to see that he still kept a diary even though I he is in hi-tech…so I asked him why he did not keep all the info in a digital form like someplace online and he responded back that he was too lazy to convert or enter all the info online so to pull his leg I responded back with the following scenario. Leave a comment if you think this applies to you too…

well the motivation for me to convert all my post-it tid bits into digital format is something else…imagine this scenario…you need some info you needed on a piece of paper but forgot it at home…no biggie…call up wifey and ask her and she will read you the info…so you call up thinking it will be 2 mins and you can get back to what you were really doing or wanted to do prior to the call….so the conversation goes as follows:

She: Hello
You: Hello…can you help me with something that I forgot at home?
She:let me call you back…I have something cooking on the stove and the clothes are in the dryer and YOUR daughter has pooped again….this is third time since morning…do you think I should call up and talk to a doctor about this…though I have read that this is normal for kids but do you think I should still call up?
Me: Yeah why not its not going to hurt to talk to her doc (trying hard not to forget the real reason why I called her).
She: You are on the net…why dont you lookup her number and tell me, I will have to goto my phone menu and pullup her number…
Me: okay….but what about one quick thing I called you for?
She:right after this…gimme the number, I want to call her else she will be gone for the day…today is Tue and she leaves early today….
Me: okay here is the number but call me back once you are done…I need some info i wrote on a paper on my desk.

She calls back after 15 mins:

She:Hello, see I told you she leaves early today….if you had given me the phone number earlier rather than all the talk then I would have been able to talk to her today….anyways….so what did you want?
Me: Goto my desk and there is a paper on which I have someone’s phone number…can you give me that number….
She:(goes to the room and even before looking for the paper) I just dont know how can someone live and work with this kind of piles of paper all around…I have told you so many times to keep your desk clean…you dont clean it yourself and you dont let me clean it but you know what, this desk is also a part of the house and if you will not clean it by today evening then I will be forced to clean it and then don’t complain about your papers…its not going to be my fault…
Me:Okay, for now…can I just have that number and we can have this conversation later and you will have much more time to tell me about how disorganized my desk is…
She: whose number do you want…..there are so many stickies here….oh yeah that reminds me that we need some more stickies…can you pick some up while coming from work…
Me: Its Josh’s number
She: Who is Josh…oh that guy you were talking to about some stocks….dont you have his number on your cellphone…
Me: well that was 2 weeks ago and no…the number falls off the phones memory after 20 some numbers…so whats the number?
She: here is the number 1-222-333-4444
Me:Thanks….
She: wait…what time are you coming home…
Me: Same time as everyday…..gotta go now…bye

So you see my friend…something that would have taken me 2 secs (dependent on internet speed) took me close to 45 mins so I think I am better off spending that 45 mins in advance and entering the data in digital format so that I can use it in 2 secs EVERYTIME
….. maybe I should post this on my blog…whatdaya think?