So, one of the advantages to using a voice-over-IP carrier such as
BroadVoice is the ability to actually do cool things like run
Asterisk as your personal phone system.
So, now when you make calls to the house, you'll get a greeting that goes something like "Welcome to
the Shadow Sanctum. Press 1 for Paul, 2 for Nonny, 3 for Morgan, 4 for Nathan". Don't worry, you didn't get the wrong number, it's just me playing with geekery.
So from work I can make a SIP connection to my home machine and check my voicemails. Or receive calls placed to my home for me while I'm not there. Or I can call Nonny and talk to her without actually tying up a line at the office or the actual home line, either. I also get emailed when a voice mail message is left for me, too.
People like telemarketers and automated spam dialers? Get hung up on when they don't press a button in a few seconds. The fuckwits that have been calling and hanging up after a moment or two of dead air? Gone.
I also have 2 other numbers on my account; one is local to Washington state for Nonny's parents to call us on. That number now rings Nonny directly; it skips the menu completely. We also have a "private" number that a few close people have; that number rings all phones at the same time (and should dump into my voice mail box if no one picks up).