People share the gift of gab between themselves

I am a Google Voice user, and I have been since it's been GrandCentral. I use it because voice mail connecting to email is an obviously good thing, transcribing your voice mail is a really good thing and the dial-in voice mail interface is an obvious dog. Also, I work in a sub-basement where cell phone signals do not reach. If I want to know that people are trying to get ahold of me, I had better have a voicemail service that uses email.

But that just means that I can hear the voice mail. What if I want to answer?

Lifehacker has a post on using Gizmo to do just that. They make it sound so simple. Set up Gizmo. Tell Google Voice you have a Gizmo Phone. Have Google Voice confirm your Gizmo number. Then you're golden.

Unless you're not.

Here is my entirely unhelpful order of events.

• Tell Google Voice I want to verify my Gizmo phone.
• My computer rings.
• Time passes.
• Google Voice gives up.
• Gizmo's soft phone pops up to tell me I have a missed call.

I have tried Skype and it has ... kinda worked. The problem is, nobody I know uses Skype. On second thought, the problems are and they are nobody uses Skype, and if I'm being cheap (and I am) I'm not going to pay for SkypeIn.

It might be something simple and stupid. My current cannot-be-checked-at-work theory about my wife's laptop is that it's a permissions error. I'll work it out and see.