Ignore all of the crap in the background

Few things can make me more conscious of the clutter in my house than a webcam.

And right now, the new Logitech Webcam C250 perched atop my desktop monitor makes me want to do some tidying up in our office.

Anyone who knows me knows I love technology and my current technological infatuation is Skype. Naturally, I want to share neat stuff, so yesterday I went to Best Buy and bought a couple of Logitech webcams (about $30 each) to use with Maria’s desktop computer and mine as well.

I figured that my netbook and desktop should both be Skype-enabled, so I won’t miss any calls (Oh, yeah. There have to be incoming calls for me to miss them.) and I’ll have access to the service whenever I’m online.

I even sent an email to my ex in Arizona last night, attaching a screen capture image from our video visit with Steve and his family, and suggesting she might want to look into Skype to keep in touch with our sons and their families. How’s that for being thoughtful?

I was sitting at a table at Books-a-Million yesterday afternoon, sipping coffee and websurfing when Skype notified me that Indianapolis BMW Club friend Rich Nathan was online. I placed the video call and, after Rich answered, we discovered that while we could see each other and he could hear me fine, I couldn’t hear him. He was using a headset with a boom mic that should have been even better than the mic on his webcam, but no sound was coming through. So he grabbed his cell phone and called mine and we ended up using the cell connection for voice and Skype for the video. They were a little out of phase, but it worked.

The Wifi at Books-a-Million was dropping out at odd times a few minutes earlier and my browser needed multiple tries to call up several web sites. The netbook-to-wireless router link seemed fine, but the bookstore’s Internet connection seemed to be iffy. That’s the only thing on my end that I think might have interfered with Rich’s audio, but my money is on it being a software issue on his computer.