Search found 37 matches

by rod
Tue Sep 19, 2023 8:18 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats
Replies: 3
Views: 22413

Re: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats

Sometime between the previous post and now, it seems Google quietly enabled incoming and outgoing calls directly in the Voice app for Google Voice numbers. So we no longer need either a separate VOIP service nor a SIP client app.

More details may be found here.
by rod
Sat May 22, 2021 6:17 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats
Replies: 3
Views: 22413

Re: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats

Recently I switched us to voip.ms for US phone service, and to Acrobits as the Android SIP client. Voip.ms because they have multiple servers around the world, including one in Sydney! Acrobits because it supports push notifications which helps preserve phone battery life, and was the best of the lo...
by rod
Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:51 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats
Replies: 3
Views: 22413

Re: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats

Now Google has announced termination of Hangouts support for Google Voice, effective early 2021. I think what that means is it will not support voice calls without being linked to a "real" US phone number. After much digging for information I set up an account with Callcentric, a "bri...
by rod
Fri Aug 07, 2020 10:05 am
Forum: Linux
Topic: Raspberry Pi VPN Gateway
Replies: 0
Views: 28824

Raspberry Pi VPN Gateway

On the client side of my VPN I have a Roku which is quite literally a "black box" and cannot be configured to support a VPN. Many other devices will also present this problem. Once again a Raspberry Pi came to the rescue! I configured one as a "VPN gateway" which means adding the...
by rod
Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:32 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: My First Australian Tax Return
Replies: 1
Views: 16001

Re: My First Australian Tax Return

Just a quick follow-up regarding the US tax return. What I ended up doing for 2019 was to claim the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion instead of the Foreign Tax Credit. The savings (for me) was about the same but this way was a lot easier and avoids the complex dependency on the Australian returns.
by rod
Mon Mar 23, 2020 11:07 am
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Rod Plays Bridge
Replies: 1
Views: 13267

Re: Rod Plays Bridge

And now the local club and many others are closed due to the pandemic. Online play remains for the die-hards, though probably not for me as I was playing to get away from the computer and have some social interactions!

Kind of ironic that I was an early developer of online bridge software.

Sigh.
by rod
Sat Feb 15, 2020 4:13 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Rod Plays Bridge
Replies: 1
Views: 13267

Rod Plays Bridge

Contract bridge is without question the greatest card game ever invented. I learned to play in college and immediately became a fan. From roughly 1972 through 1994 I played often in duplicate tournaments, and also being a software developer I developed online bridge software for OKbridge. Having bee...
by rod
Fri Jan 17, 2020 12:20 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Mobile Phone Service for US Expats
Replies: 3
Views: 22413

Mobile Phone Service for US Expats

In the US we used Google Fi which worked well. It includes international roaming at the same US data rates, and that worked well for the first year and a half of our time in Australia. But then there was email from Google saying they were going to cut off our data roaming due to the amount of time a...
by rod
Mon Oct 14, 2019 5:42 pm
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: My First Australian Tax Return
Replies: 1
Views: 16001

My First Australian Tax Return

I am in no way qualified to give tax advice! This posting is just to relate my experience, having just lodged my first Australian income tax return. This is a topic that I had fretted over quite a bit, as Australia has high income tax rates as well as a 10% value-added tax for most goods and service...
by rod
Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:56 am
Forum: Living in Australia
Topic: Melbourne and Adelaide by Rail
Replies: 7
Views: 20632

Re: Melbourne and Adelaide by Rail

For what it's worth here is a nice article about things to do in Melbourne.