Right. I've been researching internet service providers (ISPs) at our new location, and when it comes to ISP service reviews, ProductReview.com.au is amazingly helpful.
Here are some highlights (note, I edited these for brevity and inappropriate language):
Pros: Hasent broken yet
Cons: slow very very slow
Pros: Great, if you want to lose your hair and raise your blood pressure
Overall: I must say that in all my years on this planet - I have never experienced such gut-wrenchingly awful customer service. It still traumatises me to think back to when I tried (in vain) to get my broadband provisioned using this sorry excuse for a company. This was over a year ago now and I'm still in counselling.
Cons: on the odd occasion where it cuts out, Optus are an absolute NIGHTMARE to deal with. Terrible customer service, waiting on hold usually for minimum of 30 minutes (regardless of time of day)... it must be their screening process - if you're not willing to wait 30 minutes, your query obviously isn't THAT IMPORTANT.
Cons: Sometimes line's unstable and always slow. Making a call to a customer service centre is time comsuming job(about an hour and a half).
Pros: don't know
Cons: Staff have only the same information as what you get on the net, so what's the point in having them.
Overall: Lets face it, if you have to deal with voice recognition and staff on the sub-continent then it would be less frustrating to just slit your wrists
Cons: Their customer service is really strange, as it makes you go through a series of talking to answering machines first.
Overall: Extremely poor. Support is also poor. Poor. Very poor. Did I say that it was poor? Feels like we're wasting our time with this provider.
Pros: None
Cons: Poor customer service
Overall: I telephoned this morning to find out about buying a 24 month 20GB ADSL2 plan. Made the mistake of asking if I could cancel the 24 month contract within a certain period if I cannot get it set up with all of my kit and working at acceptable levels. Woman was incredibly rude and hostile. Said their product ALWAYS works. I tried to explain that I was moving and have no idea what the lines are like at my new place or possible interference. She got more and more hostile and insistent that there could be no problems with their product. Gave up and hung up. I dread to think what they would be like if there was a problem after I had signed up.
Pros: Nothing!!!!
Cons: i was conned into getting this service, that was the con!
Pros: I hate to say this, but I can't think of any.
Cons: Very long wait times to speak to anyone about technical problems (2 hours plus) although, suspiciously, if you want to sign up, it's very easy to get through.
Cons: you took a month before you got around to restoring my phone line and charged me while i was on hold for almost 2hrs on my mobile before hanging up on me
Pros: There is nothing to like about it because it never works
Cons: Everything(a piece of string and two paper cups would work better)
Overall: None of my experiences with TPG have been very pleasurable and I have tried both their dial up and broadband internet.
Cons: cant connect to internet (i'm typing this on a friend's computer)
Cons: Where do I start! Still waiting after a working connection after 4 FOUR months, yet they still attempt to direct debit my account.
Overall: I wish I didn t sign long term contract. I wasn't happy the virginbroadband but this is even worser and it's only my 1 week of the 2 year contract. STAY AWAY FROM THEM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean it.
Overall: I didn't want to go to Supernerd and have cancel the service with them but guess what? They still debiting my bank account without my permission. Where is the ethic?
Overall: Theiving rip off. waste of time and money. WARNING TO OTHERS TO CONTACT BANK TO HAVE CREDIT CARD DECLARED LOST OR STOLEN.
Cons: Complete and utter lack of service. Not able to contact anyone from this company at all.
Overall: Avoid Blitz like the plague. I am not kidding. For the last 2 days their entire ADSL network has been down for the whole country. Call their number and you get told via recording that the ADSL is down nation wide, they have no further information and the call volume is so high they are not answering any calls. So i have paid for a service I am not getting and I cant even speak to anyone about it nor can i get any idea when it will be fixed, If indeed it will be fixed at all. A company I would guess is run from someones backyard, only a lot less professional than a backyard company should be.
Cons: i primus internet is soooo slowwww ,you know what! a turtle would move faster than my broadband , lags , pages take ages to download and seems to have gotten alot worse this past year. A Customer service operator from iprimus rung me 2 months ago and asked me whether i was happy with my broadband connection i was quite frank with him.. i said it was *bleep*!!! he laughed and then tried to convince me to upgrade to a higher plan
Thank you, reviewers, for making this an easy choice! To leave you with a good review, here is what one customer had to say about the ISP we have chosen...
Overall: Came burnt and bleeding form DODO - so far billing great - one problem our end - tech spent ages with us till sorted - cannot believe have finally got a decent providor - speed as promised - could cry with happiness - even pay their bill early each month
Maybe it's the plethora of friends and family who have birthdays this month. Or perhaps it is something to do with the department stores here already putting up their holiday displays. Whatever it is, I have been thinking about gifts recently.
I love online shopping, and often I will start out looking for one thing, then get sidetracked as I notice another thing which would be perfect for so-and-so. Unfortunately so-and-so's birthday is 8 months away!
In the past I would have bookmarked the item, then been unable to find that bookmark again in 8 months time. Or I would remember the item, but not its name and would spend useless hours Googling for "you know, the perfect thing for so-and-so" before throwing my hands up in despair and sending them... an e-mail.
Then there's that other dilemma, when I'm asked what I want. Usually I can't think of anything sensible off the top of my head.
Thankfully the clever people at Wishpot have come up with a simple, free solution to keep all this straight.
Sign up for a free Wishpot account, and download their button for your internet browser. Then, whenever you see something you might want to buy in the future, whether for yourself or someone else, click that button. Wishpot brings up a screen that saves the item to one of your lists. Easy!
Now if only I could remember the dates of my friends' birthdays. If anyone can figure out how to get Wishpot to do that for me... well, you're just that much more likely to receive a gift on or around your birthday! But then if you know me, you'll know that's still extremely unlikely!!!
Since moving over to Wordpress.org, I have learned far more than I wanted to know about the nitty-gritty behind-the-scenes of blogging.
Fortunately, it's not all boring!
A fun thing I stumbled across is how to add your own picture next to your comments. This will work not just on BlissfulE.me, but on lots of other blogs as well.
AND, it's free!
Five simple steps:
Ever since an IT director made an offhand remark that could only have meant he had been reading my e-mail, my eyes were opened to the world of online privacy - or lack thereof.
(a) I don't want to turn over my personal photos and other information to a faceless corporation. The following is a direct quote from Facebook's Terms of Use:
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
(b) Facebook is addictive (so I've heard...) and I only have so much time online. I would rather use it updating this blog and checking e-mail, as well as for research and shopping!
(d) I'm already connected to colleagues and former classmates via LinkedIn. Using a professional network helps me keep in mind that whatever I post online could be used by any future employer (and maybe even my children's future employers).
Even if I weren't so concerned about online privacy, I would still be concerned about Facebook:
(e) Facebook initiated an anti-breastfeeding campaign, prompting a response, "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!" Even during the "virtual nurse-in" Facebook continued to remove photos of mothers breastfeeding. I'd say they are pretty committed to "uphold policies that label breastfeeding as obscene or objectionable."
At the same time, I don't have any objection to other people using Facebook. You can even continue to invite me to join. I just thought it's only fair to explain why I've decided to let the opportunity pass me by.
Thank you for all your kind comments on the new site!
The real kudos go to my wonderful friend, Chrissy, who designed the header. She is just amazing!!
For anyone thinking about moving from Xanga to WordPress, I will briefly outline the steps I used:
Use Tim Wylie's Xanga to WordPress Exporter. Without Tim's help, I could not have made this work. Thanks again, Tim!
Open the .XML file from your Xanga site in Notepad.
Do a CTRL+F (find) to locate any <DIV ... > and </DIV> code in your file. I found that these appeared wherever I centered text or pictures in Xanga, and at other places as well. You want to remove all the <DIV ... > and </DIV> code because WordPress doesn't like it.
I also took this opportunity to edit all my posts at once to do a find and replace for my children's names to add a little more privacy.
Two options on setting up a Wordpress blog:
Free: Go to Wordpress.com and sign up for an account
Not free: Buy a domain name and hosting, get WordPress.org running on the new site.
On your WordPress dashboard (www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin), use the left-hand menu to go to Tools > Import.
Choose the WordPress import option out of the list, upload the .xml file from Tim's Xanga to WordPress Exporter, and watch your posts appear! Very exciting.
Then (at least for me) the fun part begins and you get to choose a theme for your blog to determine how it looks. I tried eight or so before I settled down with Fervens. (In my opinion, a lot of the available WordPress themes were designed by men and have a masculine feel. Elena's work at Design Disease was a breath of fresh air to me after trying a bunch of others.) Try a Google search of "Best Wordpress Themes", which was a better source for me than WordPress.org's theme page.
I've still got some work to do on the About page and adding my links back in so you can continue spying on each other. LOL!
But now that we're all happy with the design, it's time for me to move right along and start posting family updates again!!
As my theme for NaBloPoMo, I am reflecting on thirty things I've learned during the past two years living in Egypt.
Since this is National Blog Posting Month, I'm forced to consider... which nation?
I looked it up, and this is an American initiative.
Fortunately for me, the internet has no fixed borders.
Unfortunately for me, setting up a new internet connection in our Australian home will take a little while. Right now the technician is scheduled for the morning of 10 December, but the appointment is subject to change - later, I presume. Please be patient as we wait to be reconnected to the world wide web!
In the meantime - you can vote for the top three November posts you most enjoyed!
It's Halloween, and I'm a little bit scared. I have madly agreed to post 30 blogs in 30 days!!
Thousands of bloggers have signed up to the challenge of posting at least once a day during the entire month of November, in what is known as National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo.
I have joined the Breastfeeding and Mothering NaBloPoMo group . That doesn't mean I am limited to posting about breastfeeding - to join
the group you simply need to be a current or past breastfeeding mother
who writes about the daily life of mothering. This will be a (scary!) challenge with the international move, but at least I should have plenty to write about!
My productivity online has taken off recently, and I have several people to thank.
First of all, Ben, for searching all over Maadi for an answer to that age old question... how do I get these pictures off my phone? Answer, a USB memory card reader .
I also must thank Laura , who introduced me to the Delicious Baby travel blog . From there I found several other blogs I was interested in reading regularly. And so I now use Bloglines to track the feeds and keep up with the latest from friends, family, AND the world beyond.
Sudden self-realisation: I love time capsules. When Yahoo! mail placed an advert in my inbox that I could write an email now and open it in 2020, I couldn't resist contributing to Yahoo!'s self-proclaimed ' first-ever electronic anthropology project. '
The aim is to capture contributors' view of the world. I submitted three never-before-seen photos demonstrating different aspects of our family life.
Aileen:
Simply beautiful - I have never heard this song before but it is so touchingly beautiful, all the more so at the image of Ben with two of his children
Poppa & Grammie:
Happy Father's Day to you, Ben. So grateful that you are following your heavenly Father's leading in love with your children!
Jen:
Happy Father's Day, Ben! The video is great and you are amazing for multi-tasking so well!
