To setup a SOCKS proxy to tunnel traffic through a semi-disagreeable firewall, you can use this command line:

ssh -N -c 3des -D 1080 user@hostname

This is simpler than doing the "regular" static port forwarding by setting up each port separately with the -L option.

In addition to hosting phone services for other people, I also host my own phone numbers (personal and business).  I prefer to not have different phones for each line, but I like any phone to be used for either number at any given time.  I haven't gotten around to setting up distinctive ringing for the different lines, but instead, our home computer audibly announces the caller's name and number, and, for the business calls, which menu choice they made.

Some of my customers have a hard time creating the space-efficient .gsm files for their voice menus, so I created a simple extension where they can call up the Asterisk server, and record the menu as they want it, and then it can be placed into their dialplan.  (The number of voice menus that are created are small enough so I haven't gotten around to making the system more robust, where it would automatically move the file into a customer accessible place (and keep track of which customer recorded which menu).

There are a number of tutorials for people trying to setup blacklisting for their Asterisk server, but they all seem to assume that there is only one user on the server, or at least all users want to share the same blacklist.

Since I host for multiple, unrelated people, they don't necessarily want to share the same blacklist, so I had to come up with a configuration that would work for all customers.