I bought a new phone jack contraption so I could move my main phone and answering machine into the kitchen without rewiring and adding a jack. It's called an InstaJack and is made by GE.

For $39.95 this thing allows you to turn a common electrical outlet into a phone jack. "Alchemy -- the devil's work for sure!" Well, not exactly, but it's a solution to a problem I've been having.

You see, I don't know how to add additional phone jacks myself. A lot of people I know claim to know how to do it, but no one has ever shown up with the tools and taken care of it -- or even made the offer for that matter, so I guess I'm on my own.

At any rate, Lileks mentioned a wireless phone jack in his blog a couple weeks ago. That got me thinking. "Wireless you say?"

I did a quick search on the internet and came up with a bunch of sites offering an RCA model for $59.00 or something-- which wasn't bad, except when you add shipping. I almost ordered the darn thing, but figured I'd check around here first.

Ha-zah! I found the lower priced GE model at Menards. Wow, looks like I saved money, right? Yeah, except that I bought an $80.00 rug and some more hooks for the garage while I was there. Oh well, I needed that stuff anyway. So no big whoop. There are, however, a couple problems involved with the new miracle phone device.

Problem #1
It needs to be hooked into an electrical outlet and my house, being older and all, doesn't have many electrical outlets. Well, I knew that going in, but I figured I could give up one section of an outlet in the kitchen without a problem. Of course, I didn't take into account the fact that the cordless phone base AND the answering machine also need to be plugged in. Hmm. . .

Okay, no big deal, that's why they make outlet extenders. I have one of those big, power surge protecting extenders with two, three-prong plugs on the back. I relocated the things plugged into said extender and moved it (with no small effort) from the living room into the kitchen. I got the whole thing set up, and a dial tone even, before I encountered:

Problem #2
Saturday morning I was just coming inside the house while the phone was ringing. I figured I'd let the machine pick up and call the person back. But the machine didn't pick up. Instead, it beeped loudly and hung up on the person. Hmm, that seemed odd. I called my home phone from my cell phone with the same result. Sh!t. Since I didn't have time to screw around with it Saturday, I disconnected the whole mess and put it back into the living room.

When I finally looked at the instruction manual, I found out that you aren't supposed to plug the InstaJack into an electrical extender, power strip or surge protector. Oh my no, precious InstaJack can't be expected to share. And so we run into:

Problem #3
How am I supposed to plug three different devices into an outlet with only two slots (or whatever they're called)? I'm still working on this one. I was thinking I'd either use one of my non-cordless phones, which wouldn't need to be plugged into an outlet. Or get a smaller outlet extender, so that I could plug the answering machine and cordless phone into that, but still have room to plug the InstaJack directly into the wall.

At this point I'm thinking it may have taken less time to learn how to rewire and add another phone jack.