I will probably be doing a majority of my interviews over the phone. In this age of mobile telephones, I wasn’t sure exactly how this was going to work, mostly because I have discovered that T-Mobile’s signal is terrible at my house, particularly in my bedroom at my desk. So doing them that way is a dicey proposition. Also, I really don’t know how recording cell phone calls works.

A Google search turns up a couple of options. First, you can pay a service to record your conversation for you. It basically is a three-way call between you, the person you are talking to, and a recorder that is on the site of whatever company you are using. You can then either retrieve the conversation over the phone, or you can download the .wav file. It sounds like a pretty good system, right? WRONG! 250 minutes for 100 bucks! With interviews expected to run 1 – 1.5 hours, that’s basically a hundred bucks for every two interviews. Out. Then there is a machine that you can hook up your cell phone that will record your phone conversations. It also doubles as a normal digital voice recorder, which would be super handy. but again, you run into price tag problems, as the cheapest model goes for 216 bones. Out. There’s also the option of reestablishing the landline. Like most people, we got rid of ours once everyone in the house was equipped with a cell phone. And last I remember, dealing with the phone company was a big hassle. On top of that, I’d still have to find a digital recorder that I could somehow hook up to the phone. With phone startup fees, long distance charges, and the recorder, I’d say we’re still looking at about 300 dollars total. So what am I going to do?

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