[Contents]Sevilla was spending almost $200.00 a month on long distance calls talking with her daughter. Their conversations centered almost exclusively on spiritual matters, hence, I hesitated on curtailing or limiting shier profitable discussions, as her daughter's husband was also eager to learn of spiritual realities and avidly participated in these conversations. Over the last ten years, Berneice and Don had spiritually and mentally matured through this ministry of my wife.
However, the cost was prohibitive, thus I sought ways of cutting down on the expense. After much research, I settled upon an internet telephone as the most economical measure in the long term. While the calls were free, I needed to purchase a computer for Berneice which set us back $1500.00. However, if I eventually wanted to lower the cost, this expense was unavoidable.
Problems plagued the establishment of the internet phone. After purchasing the computer, I was indecisive whether to give her my old computer or the new one which was better then the one I currently possessed. Deciding to give her the old one, I inadvertently broke the backup tape drive while attempting to configure the internet phone. Next, I broke the floppy drive in the old computer, therefore, I couldn't transfer any files from the old system to the new system. These problems came on top of several mistakes when I accidentally pulled out the wrong internal cables and connections on both computers, thus rendering both of them useless until I called technical support for both of them.
Once these problems were fixed and both systems were configured properly, I thought, I sent the old computer to Berneice. Surprisingly, she was a quick learner, acquiring the necessary skills to operate the computer by following my instructions over the phone. However, we ran into another baffling problem for which I could not find a solution before Sevilla and I moved to Susanville, California. While my system operated fine, hers would only operate on a single duplex sound card. Internet phones are intended to operate exactly like land line phones, supporting sound traveling in both directions, however, her system operated as a single dupes card, that is conversation could only travel in one direction at a time, thus rendering the system awkward.
We moved before the problem was resolved.
While conversing with a technical regarding my attempt to establish an internet connection, so we could resume attempts at establishing the internet phone, I inquired about the problem and received the answer. Her modem, not the sound card, had insufficient power to support the full range of the internet phone. Answer, replace it with a 56k modem.
God invented computers to aid poor mortals to communicate faster and more effectively. He understands their operation perfectly, and used this technical with his computer knowledge to diagnose and resolve the problem. Praise the Lord!
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