April 28, 2009

Tools that Help this Deployment (1 of 4)

You can read this post to know that the Navy hasn't pleased me this week. Not one bit! I have been waiting for a time to blog about some handy tools that have helped me tremendously during this deployment. I want to count my blessings, so each day the rest of the week I'll be listing a different item that has helped me this deployment. Item #1:
K7 is "unified messaging" (whatever that means) that the military uses when a ship is deployed. Each service member is assigned a U.S. phone # that automatically connects to a voice mail. This way I can call him in the middle of the day when some random thing happens. Now I can't hear his voice, but it's so nice that he can hear the joy or pain in my voice about the ups and downs of my day.

And he loves hearing the kids' voices! The last deployment Timothy & Samantha were so young that they didn't know to have to actually listen to him. I would dial the #, and then they would talk and talk "to daddy". It was funny.

The recorded message becomes an audio file attachment and is sent as an email directly to his inbox. I was just told by wives from other ships that their K7 was stopped because people were leaving inappropriate messages. I hope that doesn't happen to us because I really love it!

Family note: If any friends or family want to leave a message on K7, I'll be happy to give you the phone # via email. Just let me know!

3 comments:

Kristen M. said...

That's cool. I will pray that your ability to leave messages isn't taken away.

Jenn said...

I'm wondering if there's a way to get all the kids to send him a K7 message? Since they all enjoy his emails and pictures so much... just a thought..

Stephanie Kay said...

That is super cool! I can understand why you like this tool! I often call Joel for random reasons throughout the day. I describe some cute thing the kids are doing or just said. Or how they are making me crazy. Totally random. If he doesn't answer I leave a voicemail. I do it because I know I'll forget stuff before he comes home or I just need someone to listen to me say that if I hear another person cry I'm going to lose my mind!

Thanks for sharing about this great tool. I also hope you don't lose it.