Lots to blog in small, short bursts… we’re back from vacation and it’s been several days already, and the blog-kage is starting to give.

David is out of town on business, and was a little bummed that he had to leave on Monday after we only arrived home on Sunday evening. He hasn’t even seen Rileycat yet; we boarded the cat at the vet for the trip and I couldn’t pick him up until after work on Monday, several hours after David left again from O’Hare.

If you don’t have a headset, microphone or speakers, you can still use Skype to send and receive instant messages. However, to make and receive calls with Skype, you need either a headset, or a microphone and speakers.

Skype requires a computer headset, not a telephone headset. A computer headset has two separate connectors – one for the microphone and one for the speaker. Some newer headsets connect via USB.

Ensure that the headset has a microphone. Alternatively, you can also buy a handset, as long as it has two connectors so that it can be plugged into your computer.

via Help for Skype: How do I use a headset, microphone or speakers with Skype?

We’ve spent the last couple of days trying to get Skype working on either my cell phone or my desktop computer; tonight we finally SUCCEEDED after I went through some troubleshooting yesterday. I think the problem was that I had my headset mic enabled, but had the built-in speakers on the monitor enabled instead of the headset speakers. Thus, I could only hear myself (test echo) and not David the other day.

My fancy headset just paid for itself in LOLs; just now while talking to David I flipped the little voice-mod switch to morph into Space Squirrel. This cracked David up, so in revenge (REVENGE!) he activated the speaker on his cell phone, so everyone he works with that’s on this trip could hear me squeakily laughing and joking.

General hilarity ensued for a short time. A VERY short time. And then it was time to put Space Squirrel back into stasis.

This is the mixer panel for my headset – I have the ability to morph my voice using various preset mods, but Space Squirrel is the likely choice if I ever decide to do voice on Second Life while logged in as my male alt (who is a Victorian Steampunk version of my dad, really). To voice-morph, all I have to do is hit the third “gaming” switch on the left hand side of my headset, it’s set up to invoke WinAmp (for internet radio and music) and switch streams on the other two buttons.

That’s about enough blogging for the moment, I was on a roll cleaning up the kitchen and doing laundry when David called and we messed around getting Skype to finally work.