TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

I tend to at times predict where ‘things’ in general are going – it’s part of planning. Monitoring, matching strategies to progress and applying actions as necessary to reach desired goal posts.

The goal posts for me in many aspects are always changing, they are static for weeks / months or even a few years, and they’ll change shortly after.

Take for example, education – I planned Certificate III and figured – I’d go into Helpdesk or PC builds with a local joint, and see what goes from there.

This didn’t actually occur- instead, I got Cert III, and figured “that wasn’t difficult”, and then thought about where I currently sit – I’m not exactly old, so there’s no need to add to the list of employment, and whilst I am young, it’s very easy to add to education / skills.

With this in mind, I moved the goal bar forward for the next year, and aimed for Cert IV in IT – it’s acheivable. It might take some hard work, but it’d pay off. How wrong was I! It was ‘bloody easy’ and didn’t really give me much of a ‘feeling of acheivement’ with exception that I had a bit of paper that said I was Cert IV qualified.

The next goal post was easy to set. Diploma in IT – if anything, this would require hard work and strategy, to reach. Hardly. It was a few rainy nights at the PC punching out the word documents required after I finished work and on weekends.

Now – I’m Diploma certified and currently supply client support for a company that is fantastic in its flexibility to allow staff to work at home.

I like what I do at the moment, it’s a settling 8 hours a day, and then if necessary, put the extra work in to complete what is left, and call it a day. Work on my personal projects where the motivation and momentum exists.

Where do I set the goal posts now? After one reaches “Diploma In IT” you can only go to “Advanced Diploma”, or into industry specific certifications.

There’s problems with all this, when planning a strategy that will also advance my career with the company I am with.

I can’t go with any Microsoft specific items, such as MCSE / MCSA – worthless to say the least, but they aren’t useful with the current company (non Microsoft environment).

I can always go and get the CompTIA Linux+ certification – but that’s not exactly meaningful, it’s basic Linux, and I already know this anyway – much of the CompTIA skills are very basic items. This reminds me of the poor planning into Certificate III in IT.

Ideally, I want to advance within Systems Administration / Development. I like creation. I put a lot of tools in place that I use in my current job, to make it as efficient as possible (and I could always go further).

Anything language specific is good and bad – if it’s language specific, and later on, I apply for a language specific job, I’ll have the advantage with the resume already demonstrating skills in that language. It’s also a drawback – if I want to apply for a job in a different language, I’ll shoot myself in the foot with another ‘useless’ certification.

With uncertain times ahead, I need some flexibility in planning, so ideally, anything I choose to study further should be a ‘broad’ generalisation. Which brings me away from language-based certification, and back to the Linux or Microsoft argument. I forgot to add… Cisco – CCNA, it’s a possibility. From looking over the CCNA items, I would need to skill up in this, but it wouldn’t require significant study.

Linux – It’s a useful certification in the current company – the systems they operate are all linux based – Debian if I am not mistaken. So, CompTIA Linux+ is the most recognised accrediation I can find – yet it’s basic. It’s an exam, pass the questions, and ‘done’.

Microsoft – It’s not useful in the current environment, and many of the certificates are rubbish anyway – if you can’t setup a Microsoft Domain, then you really are lacking. But, the companies that employ staff obviously see staff of various qualities, from low end trash to high end quality. Clearly, they pay accordingly for quality staff.

I don’t put a lot into pay when thinking about a job. Yet, I must wonder how answers can be found to “How much do you want for this job?” – and this is a VERY tricky question. If the work is very simple (to me) – then should I still tear the arse out of the company for it? Of course not. But, if the work I provide is quality, when compared to others, then that’s a factor that should be considered.

My location restricts access to quality jobs such as Developer and Systems Administrator roles. It’s a tough ride to Sydney and back each day for that – and I’m not that flexible. I am not gonna piss away big dollars on fuel to get to and from work, and time to simply get a job that I’d enjoy more than a support role. It’s far from worth any extra income it would bring.

Then, I say that and think – How nice will it be to own a house?

There’s too much flexibility required in my planning to choose an education pathway for the coming year. I can add to my skillset, but what do I add? I can’t keep skilling up in Networking, otherwise I’ll be doomed to be a packet monkey because my resume makes a tough sell to Development or Systems Administration.

To push myself into those arenas, I first need a job opening (and thus far – one this year locally), and secondly, I need my resume to target me to such a job. Advancement within the current company hasn’t ruled itself out either – I could possibly advance into such roles, it’s not technically impossible, but the opening and invite hasn’t found its way to me.

I’ll have to ponder this one in more detail and determine what’s in store for the future.

I was bored tonight – and after watching videos online titled “The Crash Course” by Chris Martenson, which detail much of the problems faced by the World, with a specific focus on the US, I came to an item I can’t explain.

Much of the US, according to the research and facts supplied by Chris demonstrate the US is in piss poor shape, and they have nothing but bad government management and bad fiscal policy to blame (poor savings, poor views, poor review of GDP).

Ignoring the US, I figured let’s have a look what’s happening in our own backyard (I wish it was mine), or more to the point, housing locally.

I can’t finger it. The house prices here are ‘affordable’ – I have previously accepted that house prices are out of reach, but reviewing the current prices for Homes locally, many of them suitable, are within acceptable boundaries for price, and can be paid for in a very acceptable time frame.

My concerns can’t be easily pushed aside. Buying a house isn’t like buying a car. A house is a fixed object, you can’t simply move it elsewhere by fuelling up and hitting the freeway. But, also, life isn’t always meant to be a movable object. I’ve lived a fairly ‘mobile’ life thus far (I am young by the way), travelling up and down the east coast of Australia, and settling the last few years in the local area.

The review, of online prices of the local housing market aren’t easily explained. Housing Affordability in Australia is a ‘key crisis’ noted in the media and even by our own PM. Yet, I look at prices locally and now am ’emotionally’ convinced of buying.

I don’t always act on emotion, I act more on strategy, on facts and logic, and then finally, I will consider the thoughts, emotions of others and myself. I can make many of these decisions quickly by putting it to a ‘beneficial’ thought process, and in doing so, I can calculate risk and then determine my next move.

I’m stuck here though. Why can I not simply ‘buy’ one of the few houses I can identify? Why am I now considering concrete financial advise from a financial panther on the best move to take with the property market?

A house isn’t a constant fixed asset though – you can always sell and buy elsewhere (selling at a profit intrigues me). Employment is also something to consider. Whilst Management has advised me that there is nothing to worry about, the risk (see Chris Martenson’s videos) is certainly not 0% that my employment will always be solid. Therefore, if I lost employment, we’d have to sell the house and move to ensure survival (as the house would in effect be locked to my employment – without it, the idea is a dream).

The living costs are there, and considered.

The questions that remain:

1. If I were to no longer be employed – I would then need to consider how we can secure accommodation as a result of the lack of employment (or quickly change to an alternate job).

2. If the house wasn’t ideal – and we found ourselves selling for something more suitable, how do we ensure there is a profit, and not a loss?

3. As a young family, the ‘true’ costs of living may not be fully considered – we must consider the costs of ‘now’ and the costs of the future (ignoring any possible further pay rises, because you can’t bank on them).

4. My partner isn’t well informed in this area – I can’t expect a yes or no from her without her also being fully aware of what we’d both be joining into.

Many of the risks I believe present are ‘manageable’ that is, it is not a high liability that we’ll lose our shirts trying to buy a house. In fact, my calculations so far suggest a shirt, and a jumper is easily possible.

What’s happened in the market to cause this ‘drastic’ change? Are sellers being screwed?

I think I’ll locate a ‘non-bank financial planner’ – at the very least, we can pick their brains on how the current situation looks, and why they would believe we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ buy a house.

The advantages are clear:
– Buying at a young age means in the future the money won’t be tied up in mortgage repayments and instead will focus towards ‘other expenses’.
– Rent money is ‘dead’ money. It’s a roof for a week, and then it’s rent time again.
– We’ll be creating wealth via an asset (assuming house prices ‘rise’ again).
– House prices are low. They ‘shouldn’t’ sink lower, thereby creating a strong asset.

The disadvantages are not so clear:
– We’ll owe ‘someone’ or ‘something’ money – and for a considerable time.
– We’ll be paying more for something due to Interest Rates

It is tough to explain how the market has come ‘down’ from where it was before, it is tough to predict where it’s going to go – if it’s up, we should be buying now, and either securing a house for ourselves, or even considering selling a house to take advantage of the high housing prices should they ever eventuate.

I must consider what a financial planner can tell me that isn’t clear already. If anything, it’d be good to bounce ideas and thoughts off one, and confirm previous and future plans as they are currently.

Currently, I’m employed with a company in a client assistance / support role. The objective of such is simple, look after customers with genuine issues, and get them resolved.

I believe I do this well. I also believe I am employed in a job that is not a match for my skillset – but that’s another story. It doesn’t concern me that I am not using all my skills as such, it doesn’t make the day fun, but I still do a quality job where I can.

I find myself (not necessarily this position though), delivering the best performance I can for employers, and strangely, my ‘best performance’ outweighs that of others by exceptional percentages. It’s not entirely explainable though – I have different work methods, different work flow choices, and perhaps even stronger work ethic than those that watch YouTube throughout the workday.

The tough economic climate means that it’s not the best time to ask for a pay rise, no company is going to simply give a ‘blind-yes’ to a pay rise in these times without strong consideration for the employee, the company, and the end result.

I imagine that the forecast for the future, for my position alone will be bought into question, and then consider the value of replacing me with someone else. Asking for a pay rise isn’t a simple “I want more money”.

I get the idea that it is going to require analysis of the work that I perform, and how long it would take to train other employees to do the same task (employees, because I can find my own performance can be at least twice that of another).

I placed a great deal of thought into it, I didn’t want to ask and annoy upper management – any request for money is likely to not be seen ‘lightly’ – but, bricks and land cost money. Building a house costs money (I hope to someday). Savings is not at higher interest rates anymore. That’s ‘a plan’ for the additional income from the pay rise. But it also begs to question, why get paid less, if others are being rewarded for performance which is not of the same quality / quantity? It’s an uneasy thought, that continually leaves you considering ‘why’!

I did indeed seek alternative employment, to better match my skillset, but I currently don’t see the need to ‘let down’ / ‘disappoint’ the current organisation. I took a holiday recently, and came back to something ‘extreme’ as a result of a short stay away. This point is something that I consider a ‘key’ item to my value, as such activity had not occurred previously in my time with the company, evidence that I contribute a substantial amount!

Part of asking for a pay increase is the careful wording of the request – I spent a fair amount of time considering the wording. I know that upper management will easily see through a letter taken off some random site, and should easily see through a request for a pay rise on unwarranted terms – further instilling confidence that they aren’t as likely to bluntly say no.

I’m not asking for an extreme amount – actually, I didn’t specify an amount at all – I feel they may in fact be able to align my pay rate with performance rather easily – by taking the pay rate of others doing similar tasks, and finding a percentage point that best matches the work output. Basic logic would suggest to double it – but I would easily reject such an offer, because the position isn’t worth ‘double’ – they could have me 24 / 7 for ‘double’! – I think it’s simply finding a point that they believe reflects the performance.

I of course, do have a figure in mind, it’s only a relatively small increase percentage wise – but leaving the figure out gives oppourtunity for discussion between us, if they have no figure they can settle on, ask. I know, given a similar email, I would probably suggest a figure and if this wasn’t acceptable request what they would like.

But, we also arise at the question of career advancement – where will I eventually go? Eventually, I will want to take advantage of the skills I have. The company I work for can utilise the skills, but not in my current capacity. It’s not an urgent pressing topic, because I’m getting really comfortable where I am!

It’s an intriging and interesting wait – considering I do have a great deal of respect for the management of the company!

Enjoy, hopefully I will too!

I heard back from the company I had applied for a new job with, and was unfortunately, unsuccessful. They had advised it was a difficult decision, and choosing between 1 of 2 people, can be difficult where no one person stands out.

I understand that theory very well. It’s never easy to pick when your faced with two people who may be able to deliver the same. It can come down to money, or on the other hand, experience.

I don’t think I aimed high for the position, in fact, I thought I aimed to be the ‘lowest’ bidder, because changing jobs wasn’t about the money, but rather, finding a job I was ‘happy’ with.

The decision means that I will need to remain in my current position, and either wait for advancement oppourtunities to get away from frontline inventory, or continue to monitor the various locations to locate a more suitable position.

I personally believe I am at an age, whereby it would be expected to have a career plan, and that plan is put in place in terms of previous employment on the resume (not necessarily previous employment, but rather, having that job in place on the resume, will make it easier to get a job in the same arena).

I no longer enjoy customer support, maybe this is due to the different experience and context that I am supplying support – the previous customer support roles have been in positions where I have seen the results of providing quality support. The current position, no matter how good quality I supply, or how high the quantity, the end result will always be ‘crap’.

The above is simply because there is no “I” in team, and many of the setbacks come from knowledge of the previous advertised positions filled by others, and knowledge of the workflow, and ummmm quality.. produced by others. There’s no incentive for me to perform better then those who are paid more, and whilst not absolutely certain, even if I was paid more, I doubt there’d be a lot I could do to increase the appearance of the support supplied.

I do regularly get at the moment, that I am the most helpful person they have spoken to, after of course, 6 or 7 calls. I’d publish case studies, but I’m not keen on identifying or shaming anyone. I simply cannot perform where the others around are continuously ‘undoing’ and ‘reversing’ the service level quality.

So, here I am, back in the corner, answering the calls, assisting the n00bs, resolving the real issues, and fixing the f#$kups – tho I try not to now, I think that if I don’t sort them, then it’s someone elses problem to find and fix.

I’m still pushing forward on my own personal projects, but the measurable results of those are reduced due to the time consumption involved in supplying the resolutions, and assisting the n00bs. Though, the equation of ‘personal projects’ requires ‘personal income’ – this is of course reliant on the fact that I am outputting assistance and resolutions.

The new year may look a little more interesting. I might even get time to have a holiday this year for the first time in.. 4 years. That’ll be interesting with a child, should be fun.

Back in the corner.
Enjoy.

I’ve discovered another job locally, that I think will be a bit more entertaining and interesting than my current role.

There are key differences to consider however, without even thinking of the pay rates or hours.

The current position:
– Is a client support position, meaning I ask the same questions and advise many of the same people the same things day in, day out.
– Is a busy position, many phone calls of support and sales nature, emails and follow up are needed in a day to assist in resolution of issues.
– Is boring.

The position is better than others in the same sort of industry and field in that when someone is asking for support, they generally need it – though a large percentage that do ask for it could solve the problem themselves. The pay is good, the job is work from home, meaning there’s no travel time wasted.

On an ongoing basis however, in order to complete the overdue tasks that I have assigned, it requires some overtime from time to time, therefore a 40 hour week can easily transition into a larger week on a regular basis.

The company is adding extra services from a different nation, where such support staff is approximately 1 to 4 (or even more). Simply, as an Australian support consultant, I couldn’t possibly compete with the wages. From a financial point of view, if I were the company owner, I would consider not continuing the employment of the Australian staff. However, there is one issue that would prevent taking out the Australian support staff, being that the staff in the other nation don’t always get the right response or right solution to the ‘obvious’ problems. Sure, Australian staff have similar issues, but the accuracy rate is far more accurate (however, I only have a top level overview of that to base that comment off).

The new job:
– is a role in systems administration and development.
– is expected to be far more interesting compared to support.
– is for a local company, so travel time, whilst required, is not far out of the question.
– has better hours compared to the current role.

Assuming I am successful for the upcoming interview, I’ve got a choice, a gambling decision if you will, of taking the new role and putting faith into the role being a successful position with a company that has been around for some time.

I’ve heard a rumour that the company I am currently with has never sacked anyone, and has plans for all staff in Australia – those plans do not obviously have a strong indication of ‘what that is’ – without knowing that, I have to gamble on what ‘plans they could have’ perhaps being more suitable for me.

I’m burnt out on support. I simply cannot tolerate supporting other people’s problems. I used to enjoy it, but I’ve been doing that for 4 years between a few different companies – the first role of support was fun, I enjoyed the company I worked for and helping wherever I could to make it grow.

The current company is a larger company, but still in business for a similar length of time, the company has more staff, and I don’t really care if it grows. I don’t like Sales, yet I’m forced to provide sales support to customers, that said, at the previous company, I’d have happily supplied Sales, Support and Faults advice all in the same hour.

I’m not happy in my current role, and with the imminent completion of the support services in the other nation, I’m not too sure what plans they have for me, and whether those plans will satisfy my desire to develop, rather than support.

I enjoy working from home – I don’t really care if it requires extra hours, but because I’ve always got access to family if I want to, and there’s no time lost in travel. But, if working from home is simply going to mean I continue working in a role that is not satisfying, then it’s probably best I do look at what else is available in the interests of personal happiness.

Working away from home – offers more advancement – the new role will be a true employment role in the area I enjoy, Systems Administration and Development. Having this role on my resume could assist further in advancing my career as opposed to simply having a company with a relatively big name on the resume.

I’ve got a big decision to make soon if I’m successful after interview, and that decision is likely to be unaffected even if the pay rate was lower.

I know of another individual in the company I currently work for, who joined a role shortly after I did, who gets in the order of 10K a year more than me, yet on many occasions I cross this persons work in the course of my duties and wonder – ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ – which adds more disappointment, another person gets paid more, to do the same job with poor quality.

There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of quality performance reviews done at the current company, meaning that this person could go on for an infinite amount of time, being paid significantly more, and from crossing paths with the activities they do, they do a poor job of it.

I’ll see what the interview holds and check out the pros and cons of it, but from the outset, the newer position looks more and more juicy by the minute.

Our driveway is a place for our car to be parked. Not so.

The car below, is a clear example of the same idiot who has no idea of how to park. The first failure is to park within 50cm of the kerb – he may as well as park out in the traffic.

Our driveway, with the same car from previous weeks and months blocking approach.

As you can see, greater than 50% of the car is completely blocking our driveway.

Then, earlier, there’s a 90kM/hr stretch of road near us, and I was cruising down that road, and there was a C4WD – C, cause it’s never touched dirt, who was tailgating me at 90. So I slam on the brakes to simulate what would happen if there was a fuckhead up ahead – it is NSW, fuckheads are aplenty – and he starts getting pissed off that I slam the brakes on to demonstrate he was following too closely.

He then comes across a roundabout, and doesn’t indicate to turn right, either.

NSW has to have some of the stupidest people on the roads.

That said, the reason why our speeds on our roads are lower than those of other nations? The drivers on our roads wouldn’t stand a chance if they were faced with conditions such as Germany’s AutoBahn, or other high speed circuits. The speed limits are for many of the users own good, because they clearly can’t look after their own self and maintain a safe following distance, indicate intended direction of travel – or even park a car.

They are stupid. Yet, they are in control of a > 500KG machine capable of inflicting serious injury in their own incapable hands. I sort of think of arranging it to be towed away, just to make an example, but the person who drives it is an old fart, who probably is demented, and we’d just be making an episode of “Dude, where’s my car – Old Fart Edition”.

I think it’s something I can say is one of my qualities. I generally look at something, be it a task, be it a fridge, whatever the case, and find myself looking at whether this is the most efficient approach.

I find myself looking at the things I do, and questioning if it is an efficient use of time. I previously went through as much as our house as I could, and looked at what energy usage was occurring, and looked for as many cost effective efficiencies that I could find.

This saw us purchase a new fridge, for example, because the payback time is short enough, and the efficiency is improved. It’s faster at cooling, uses less electricity, and will pay for itself inside it’s expected life (10 years).

Then you have the time based efficiency. I look at the activity I am presently doing, and determine, is this an efficient use of my time, is there anything that could be done to get me the information I desire, quicker, so that the time isn’t used on looking at existing information. Yep, Google isn’t exactly the best search engine, because they are yet to give an ‘efficient’ query. Finding the exact information, whilst removing all the information I already know, or don’t ‘want’ to know.

I don’t exactly take short cuts if I can avoid them, because a job done well is a job well done, but, I’ll try and trim the fat off a process if possible.

I recall at a previous place of employment, we used to look up stock codes in an excel spreadsheet. Highly inefficient, as the user had to filter through all the information, to find what they wanted.

I created a database, and tapped an asp page, and used some javascript in that scenario to make finding product details, and suppliers a very quick, ‘efficient’ process. I just don’t like to see something take longer than it should. Heck, if I could, I’d hang up a phone call quicker because someone is babbling on needlessly and won’t get to the point – I don’t, because it is rude, but, if it wasn’t rude, I’d definitely hang up. It’s a waste of time listening to someone babble on about how their son ‘Joe’ has done this and that. I don’t really give a shit, just tell me what you want ME for.

That’s what I do, I like to find the fastest path through something, naturally, fast isn’t always accurate, but, if a combination of fast and accurate can be found, then, there isn’t much harm in trying to ensure an efficient use of time / resources.

This brings me to the next point. I took the car through the car wash today, wash all the dust off it. I think they use reclaimed water at that car wash, and I think that’s a great way to ensure the reuse of a item, but, the clean isn’t exactly accurate, leaving a bit of crap on the car still, and I can imagine a fair bit of water wasn’t actually used on the car, thereby being wasted.

 

As you can probably see, the last week, I haven’t been able to do much in the way of posting to my blog.

This is related to a new job I have taken with a prominent Australian company.

I’ve found working there to be an absolute pleasure. The trips to Sydney this week were good, the pain of being stuck at 90KM/h is a real pain on long trips like to Sydney and back. I think they should really do away with speed limits on such licences on Freeway conditions where fatigue might be more of a danger than a ‘Provisional’ driver doing 110KM/h.

I definitely want to get a car with cruise control, if I ever find myself doing long trips. The constant feeding of fuel to the car becomes a bit tiring on a long drive.

The TomTom GPS, works good. It does have a few issues though, for example, travelling along the Freeway at North Sydney, I found it was beeping at me for speeding in a loud manner when I was infact doing 80. It thought the limit was 60. You can never rely 100% on technology.

The job realises a lot of my skills in networking, and was put through a test today when I assisted a user to network an ADSL modem to a router, and join his network to that.

Why do I do that? Well, when a user gets something working from the help they get from you, and they are thankful for it, it’s a good achievement. The user learns a little something new, something you consider simple has benefited someone else greatly, and the user is happier as a result of it.

One of the big annoyances on the trip home were trucks really. Not that they were annoying, but rather they would overtake, and of course, a hill up ahead sees them barely pushing 40. I can climb a hill at 90, so why would they overtake! But, even more annoying were the numbers of people who think a lane change involves nothing else but a quick flick of the indicator, turn it off, and just .. change lane. Hey. Who cares if the person on the other side can’t realise what you are doing.. Stupid people.

The job, again, great job. I get to do it from home now, which means no more waking up early to zoom down to Sydney and get to work half an hour early.

Another item I noticed, in North Sydney. A 1 hour lunch break. Sweet. I get 1 hour to do whatever I want with. Early bird parking means I can’t take the car anywhere, so I have to use that 1 hour in North Sydney. Hmmm.. Nope. Not a lot can be done with 1 hour in North Sydney. Personal opinion? Lose the 1 hour lunch break. Probably not the popular opinion though!

I believe I’ll be a efficient, productive asset to the new company I work for. I’ve been very excited since, well, weeks before I started the job, and still am excited, even after working the first week already.

I won’t name names, I have a simple reason for this, to maintain my own privacy. It’s a good company though, one which has shown itself to grow continuously, and rivals other larger companies. It is an absolute pleasure to be working with this specific company, a very enjoyable company to work for. No, it isn’t Google.

Enjoy!

I recently purchased something that is intangible, and the seller used PayPal as his payment method.

It wasn’t anything overly expensive, but I get annoyed when someone is paid for something and they do not deliver.

So, I lodged a complaint with paypal, that the seller didn’t actually deliver the intangible item, and there was no evidence of any attempt to deliver, the mail server logs prove it.

In my dispute opening with the seller, I advised that he should instead post the intangible item to PayPal, or a copy of the initial email to prove that he indeed did provide the item purchased in the manner requested.

The seller didn’t even refer to me via my correct name, and referred to someone with a different surname.

I escalated the claim for review with PayPal, mentioning, if he did indeed have this intangible item, he should indeed post the item to the complaint process, so we can see he did indeed deliver it, and leave the dispute at that.

He didn’t do that, and what’s worse? PayPal find in favour of his sorry ass.

This has to be the weirdest scam yet. Offer something intangible for sale, don’t really need to deliver on it, when the complaint is made, stay silent, PayPal find in your favour because they don’t bother investigating anything intangible. Nope, don’t even go as far as making the seller prove they delivered it, or require delivery of the item in the dispute process.

And of course, they don’t refund if the seller doesn’t deliver.

It’s disappointing, because the item, being a simple ‘code’ could easily have been provided to the PayPal process if he did indeed have it. Heck, if the code didn’t work, OK, my fault for buying, but, he didn’t deliver at ALL! Nothing at all came from him, and he gets to keep the funds.

I’m contemplating finding a way to get a chargeback put forth for the transaction, because it is really just stupid of PayPal to be siding with the seller for their own profits in the case. They should be able to easily see what was purchased was able to be provided through the dispute process, the fact he didn’t provide it when asked, suggests that he didn’t have it to start with, and that to me would warrant the refund unless they could prove they delivered the item by alternative means.

The owner of the product is apparently Japanese, so I’ve decided to kick a few stones over in that direction and see what comes of it, don’t really hold much hope though. It looks to be the antics of a scammer, relying on PayPal’s intangible item policy to protect him from having to deliver on the purchase.

That’s easily worked around, you only get so many strikes before they’ll suspect something is astray and suspend the account and terminate the membership. That should learn him.

Enjoy!

Eftel, an Australian ISP plans to roll out VDSL2+ MSANs to select exchanges.

VDSL2+ doesn’t really seem to have a place however for home users, because the performance from the internet isn’t likely to reach the speeds capable of VDSL2+ connections.

Further, worser than ADSL2+, VDSL2+ will drop speed faster than ADSL2+ technology due to the higher frequencies used.

It does however have a place in city centres for example, where many businesses might be able to take advantage of the technology to deliver faster speeds, to their business, or multiuser environments, for example, internet cafes, where multiple users might be on at the same time, accessing high bandwidth resources, like BoobTube, the video sharing site.

It allows connection to such type of businesses that wouldn’t find it economically viable to install ethernet connections for example, or where the only input is the phone line.

WiMAX still has a clear advantage over VDSL2+, going faster, I believe at 100Mbps, and dropping off further from the base station (with range in the area of 30kM or more),  so it offers faster speeds at longer coverage – though the technology is still in development.

If FTTN were to proceed, I imagine the wise network builder would put in VDSL2+ to make the right move ahead of time, otherwise they’d find themselves upgrading equipment in years later.

Eftel are playing the waiting game at the moment, waiting on the technology to be ratified, before proceeding with deployment.

It’ll be interesting to see the progress in that arena over the next two years, this year alone should see progress, next year, we will hopefully see rapid deployment, coinciding with the PIPE international cable launch, and possibly FTTN as well.

Enjoy!

A Buzz Broadband CEO recently stated that WiMAX was a ‘disaster’ and it suffered from high latency, and other issues.

He also made comment over the coverage of WiMAX, saying the coverage was non existent indoor at just 2kM.

Airspan, the supplier had followed up the comments made by Garth Freeman, stating reasons such as poor backhaul, lack of QoS, and the company choosing ‘cheaper’ options to cut costs, and cut performance.

I know if I spend $20 on a product, I expect a $20 job out of it. The same reason, if I spent $500, I expect a $500 job from it. I expect to be able to look at it, and decide, yep, that was worth $20.

Naturally, the more I spend, the better the quality of a product or service that would be received, so if you want top notch, pay more sort of runs rampant throughout many industries, one which to not believe such, is web hosting, which can be very deceitful. But that’s another topic.

Buzz complaining seems to stem from their desire to get WiMAX, but make sure they don’t pay the correct premium for WiMAX, so, when the service performs poorly, rather than look through and decide, OK, Internode have good results, we have bad, they are using outdoor technology, we are using indoor, he simply thought – let’s go bash the technology, screw the supplier and move on.

Sure, if there are issues with something, go back to the supplier, don’t go ripping into it in public, customers generally take matters to the TIO when things aren’t working out, Buzz, decided instead of spending the required money to bring the network up to speed, they would just whinge and whine.

Not a smart move, and not a good way of getting a positive view from customers, bagging out a technology when there own cost cutting seems to be the blame.

Airspan naturally have a technology, company name, and reputation to protect from Buzz’s complaint, so the responses are all about damage control, Internode, much the same, they have customers to bring on to a WiMAX network, they are seeking to cover their asses, but that said, they wouldn’t be resorting to mistruths, like it would seem Buzz has.

I don’t get a full 24Mbit service. Do I blame the DSLAM? Do I blame the space the exchange is hosted in? Do I blame the DSL technology, or do I blame the distance where I am, and the quality of the copper wire to provide the service?

Perhaps if Buzz looked at it that way, they might see blaming the technology is pointless if it is all about the quality of the equipment used in the technology deployed, or the quality of the network that drives it.

WiMAX, isn’t the blame, the cheap arse ISP is.

Enjoy!

Soul Telecom seems to be suffering some form of value decline, at least on the sharemarket, where in little less than a year, they have gone from being $1, to close to $0.25, losing 75% of the share value.

They recently announced they had plans to buy TPG, for around $200 million dollars or so, which would add significant customer numbers and infrastructure to the mix, resulting in them seeing stronger financial data, but how will they pay for it? I can see that they have something near $20 million in cash. They probably need an additional $180 million or more to complete the deal, which means they will have to get some form of finance to complete the acquisition. I am aware some of the payment is with shares, so it could be less than $180 million, but they still need to get the financing for it either way.

What is left to consolidate in the industry? All the ISPs would be doing if they did continue to buy is to simply make bigger companies destroy some competition, and find that they can reduce some costs somewhere due to network merging (ie. Soul and TPG merge networks, all of a sudden, they don’t need ALL that capacity).

The mess is, as iiNet will tell anyone, in the integration of the existing system, so that customers become “Soul” customers for example, which means moving billing, customer data, support, addressing, all that information under one roof so that the customers, and the staff supporting those customers are on the same platform.

iiNet when it integrated OzEmail had a few hiccups with integration from what I recall, they fixed them, and they weren’t significant blunders, but they did cause some customers to get confused.

Another Blog I have been reading a little of lately, is John Linton (Exetel Management), and a recent post by him was talking of a ‘per customer’ price.

The prices spoke of in that blog were in the area of $200 – $800 a customer! A customer can, in real terms be considered a ‘6 month customer’ – some might stay 12, but the average user on Whirlpool Surveys commits to only a 6 – 12 month contract. That customer, they would likely be making around $10 off, assuming the company didn’t make any expensive errors with a customer service, like Netspace did with me, when they provisioned a 512k service instead of the paid for and requested 1500k service, which according to my knowledge would have cost them the 6 month break fee for cancelling the service, and then submitting a new order – they were true idiots, but enough of that.

With the commit times being in the 6 – 12 month arena, the most profit one could hope to make off a customer without any upselling of VoIP or the like is $120 – $150 or so dollars. Paying $300 a customer? Who on earth would do that. On each customer, you are losing somewhere between $50 – $500 dollars. I must be missing some hidden value here with a customer, customers add to profit lines and also increase costs, so the ‘advantage’ can’t be in adding customers, it might be an increase in word of mouth marketing, but, if you botch a few services, well – some customers can be like me. Never let you live it down. Others will simply just not recommend you to anyone.

So, with that factored in, the purchase of an ISP at $300 a customer would still be extremely expensive, unless there was something else to gain. What that is, aside from a larger network and some cost savings is rather unknown. $200 million over 200,000 customers – $1000 a customer? A little crazy. But then, the DSLAMs and so forth would bring that down to $600 or so, still an insane amount per customer unless those customers carry some kind of ‘we will always bow down to our loyal leader – TPG’ mentality. Or, if all of them employed mafia techniques and made sure any new customer would be a new customer of the ISP, then, well $1000 is a bargain. But I have my doubts.

It’ll be interesting to watch what Soul and TPG getting together will do for the shares. I know there will be some devaluation due to the merger,  but also an increase because of the asset, profit, finances and customer gains.

Enjoy!

Telstra might find itself reducing prices for a change.

The reasoning behind that is Telstra is forseeing a threat from LSS based competition, which allows others to provide ADSL2+ and VoIP services to consumers, effectively removing a good fair chunk of Telstra’s retail revenue for each customer they move over, and Telstra’s gain after such a significant loss is a $2.50 wholesale LSS charge from the gaining ISP, plus any line rental the customer commits to pay. Assuming the customer was on Home Line Budget before the so called ‘charity change’, Telstra would receive $19.95 + $2.50 for a customer service, and the rest of the revenue would find its way to the ISP and any suppliers it would use.

That’s a fantastic move, as it will now encourage Telstra to be competitive, but, if Telstra isn’t careful in it’s pricing, they could be forced to reduce existing wholesale prices on other services, such as ADSL1, to ensure they don’t breach the Trade Practices Act – something they have breached so, so many times before.

The retail price adjustment is of course a market share gaining move, they provide ADSL2+ at prices inline with competitors to make moving ISP less attractive to those that don’t have a significant interest in changing ISP on the grounds of downtime.

Telstra, in it’s typical fashion still likes to keep any decision made tied into an appeal, so that they can find someway to argue against it.

To date, of all the appeals, only 1 has been successful. They have a pretty poor record, and it gets poorer with each and every vexatious case they choose to bring before the courts.

It’s only common sense! Others want to use a part of a network as part of providing PART of a service.

Telstra get paid for providing PART of a service. It’s really that simple. I don’t get what Telstra can’t see there. It’s a $2.50 charge on LSS to cover any reasonable billing costs, since Telstra don’t exactly providing anything additional on an LSS service, and they still collect all maintenance and line costs from the customers line rental anyway.

Enjoy!

At least, I tried to trick the new TomTom GPS Navigator we picked up today.

I tried, and tried, took wrong turns and ignored every direction, waiting for it to at some point say … I quit.

But, it was too good. It was a little slow at some points to tell me of how to take another turn, and suggested that I took the 3rd exit at some non-existent roundabout here locally.

It was also cut off a few times, such as “Turn Rig..” – heh, I ignored it.

It suggested I take an illegal turn today too, travelling down the wrong side of a local road, to go up a street that was essentially left turn only, not a good state to be in.

I only wanted to get this because I plan on doing a few trips in unfamiliar territory, and after our, well, OK zoo trip, I figure that I’ll need something giving directions and the ability to assess hundreds of thousands of streets in a few minutes.

The TomTom One does that really nicely, and even helps avoid tolls – where is the future of tolls now?

I also took out a new comprehensive insurance policy on our little ride, not because it’s worth a shit load of money, it’s because there are so many idiots in the Sydney area, that don’t believe indicators work for example, that it’d be a very cost effective option to take out such a policy!

I was amazed at the huge expense they wanted to hit me up though, it seems to be based off years driving, and well, with not even 1 year there yet, they want to charge a huge premium for it, simply put, it’d cost $2K a year to insure a car that costs around double that to replace.

If I’m accident free for 2 years, then I’d have been losing out to the tune of $4K. I could have replaced the car in that amount of time, so that doesn’t seem like a viable long term thing, but if they pay the tow truck and repairs and trip for me home if some dick in Sydney got their licence by pure luck, then I can rest easy in the fact that they pay the bills, I pay no excess, the idiot at fault well, pays everything.

I’d only really need it for the trips in Sydney, we don’t do a lot of them, so it’s not worthwhile for a long term thing, and as mentioned above, accident free for 2 years means I’m ahead another car.

Back to the TomTom, a few issues that annoy me: Non-existent roundabouts in the local area, advertised, but unavailable camera alerts, sometimes a little slow at announcing upcoming turns where the route has been travelled off, and other similar data.

We plan to take another trip to Sydney at some point soon, using this device to see if it can hit the markers spot on, and how it responds, and test for anything inaccurate. I hate having to be somewhere at a specific time, and a wrong turn screws that up completely, so knowing timing data in advance is good, and we just have to add time if there is any traffic flow issues.

I do have a good sense of direction, and I hope that in Sydney, this device has a good sense of one way streets!

Enjoy!

Should Telstra build FTTN, they insist on a return of 18% as a minimum.

That’s a lot of money to be forcing from consumers struggling with mortgage rises, and other factors, more so in a market where the pressures are on the price being dropped, and value for money being increased.

What makes Telstra so sure it should get 18% or more on a network investment? Considering a FTTN network is more than a 30 year investment, they could easily survive and do well from an 8% return, so why 18% is beyond me.

The costs of the network only go up when someone smashes down a node, which would be ‘rare’, or if a fibre cable was cut through, also not a very common experience when you have metro and regional areas with in place cable locations.

Further, why on earth should they get 18%? We could argue all the way about why they shouldn’t get it, starting with the lack of competition during Telstra’s construction, through to now, where competition has a difficult time taking a dominant lead due to Telstra.

Why should they get it? Shareholders can easily find somewhere else to invest their money. CEOs can easily find a new company to be a dickhead at the helm of. And networks can be built by many other companies than Telstra.

So, what makes Telstra so special to ask for 18% return on any FTTN investment? It all just looks like they are the dominant provider, so they’ll say this and if no one takes it, tough luck, you get none at all.

An 18% return on $4 billion is equal to $720 million. That $720 million will be coming from around 7 million consumers pockets, which means they are seeking around $121 off each of the 7 million customers to pay for and build the network (ie. the cost of building and the cost of the return). This is compared to $45 off each of the 7 million customers on an 8% return, so you must ask, why does Telstra feel they are entitled to that extra $76? What does it get you? Nothing. What does it get Telstra? Phil, with a lot more weight added.

That is $76 per customer per year, so it is clear the prices will go upward to cope with this, as in the current environment, profit per customer for non Bigpond customers is near the $10 mark, I’m sure.

Which reflects again, what need is there for FTTN if prices will soar, and performance will be pretty much on par with current ADSL2+ deployments? Doesn’t seem necessary.

Phil even went as far as to claim it was ‘high risk’. FTTN isn’t high risk. You build the infrastructure, and it lasts for some significant time, that time period allows for Telstra to suck up profits each and every year, for 30 years or more.

And due to the nature of the environment, FTTN will be practically competitor free for some significant time due to the high investment costs and the lack of technical viability of node to node interconnection.

Seems like Phil has not much of an idea of what high risk is, FTTN would be very low risk, and given an overbuild protection agreement to ensure Telstra doesn’t try and force me out of business, and $4 billion in the bank, I’d not hesitate to build for an 8% yearly return. It makes sense, it’s MORE money for shareholders, without pickpocketing the consumers.

The high-risk component of FTTN is only with Telstra, no other competitor has the ability to overbuild nationally, another FTTN network, it is not financially viable, and it is not technically viable to overbuild, unless, you are Telstra, who will happily run at even a significant loss, just to maintain dominant marketshare and force competitors out of the market.

G9 still have my vote on this regard with just a 10 year overbuild protection arrangement makes it worthwhile. Telstra had at least 30 years. G9 getting 10 ? That’s a peice of cake.

Enjoy!

 

That’s of course the male lion at Taronga Zoo, where we decided to visit today, and take a look around at the various animals on display.

The Lion in the above picture is really cool! They keep them in behind ‘glass’ type cages, so you can see them in full view.

The bear wasn’t very playful, and didn’t seem to have any other mates to play with. So, I was curious what they do to keep them ‘social’. Perhaps captivity isn’t about maintaining social aspects.

No visit would be complete without of course meeting Dumbo. The elephant with eyes that look like he has been eating some grass of a questionable source, and a smile that stretches from ear to ear.

Dumbo looked very happy munching on the grass, and I have a few guesses why, perhaps he is content with his environment, or perhaps his smile was unintentional. Still a good view of an elephant.

We actually have a group of pictures for this one, where he is picking up, eating, and coming back for more. This was perhaps the not the best of them, as there is one which makes him look a lot happier, but I skipped it.

I was curious how much these two charge for cleaning gutters, as I simply don’t want to go get a ladder and do it myself. They didn’t seem to give a price, but they weren’t willing to do it for free for some reason.

The giraffe exhibit was a bit packed due to feeding and a demonstration in progress, but we did manage to fetch some good pictures of those two.

 

For some reason, we couldn’t get through this wire fence to get to the stepping stones in the water to get to the other side. Not sure why that is, there was nothing to suggest we couldn’t go through, just the wire fence wouldn’t open. Oh well.

 

The seal seemed to be one of the most active animals there, swimming, and surfacing continually, and ‘blowing’ water from it’s mouth. Very active, very playful animal.

Unfortunately they had closed the seal theatre exhibit, where they show you activities with the seals, as it was undergoing redevelopment.

Parking was also not nice there at all!

The drive down was good, with exception of a few wrong directions, but on the whole we did pretty well for our first time down in Sydney (and my first time driving in Sydney). The trip was intended to get familiar with some parts of inner sydney, so I can drive those comfortably, but it seemed a little pointless driving 3 hours all up for a ‘getting familiar’ trip, so we also decided to get a little more familiar with the Zoo too, which was only around 15 minutes or so away.

The traffic flow in Sydney is a little awkward, for example, many of the roads there mean you are able to reach out the window and kiss the passenger in the car beside you, there doesn’t seem to be much breathing room – amazingly there are still a chunk of 4WD/ SUV vehicles on the road with not a single scrap of mud on any of them – yet, hit by another car, or hit by another 4WD, the passengers inside could face severe roll over damage. Some people are just pure idiots. It’s like a news item I read recently, it was titled in such a way it read US gives Kosovo weapons to create peace.

Yep, throwing weapons at something sure generates peace. Not. That said, give me an AK47, and I am sure I’ll have peace. A lot of peace. And a fantastic ‘peice’. Funny title, funny news, stupid government though.

Anyway, the Sydney trip down to gain familiarity wasn’t a successful trip, it was incident free, but due to the wrong directions (ie.. turning off the freeway some 50kM sooner than we should have – sorry, my human GPS isn’t accurate) we couldn’t get accurate timing for the raw trip down, not to mention that but, the chosen car park, we couldn’t find the exit to as well, which sort of sucked, but we got the trip back nutted out, and I reviewed the maps myself (never rely on a human GPS), and I can see the trip down is just as easy, it was just made difficult due to wrong directions from the GPS.

The Zoo was a fantastic day out, and really is a great sight to see if your looking to fill in time, have something to do when there is nothing else to do, or simply ‘for the animals’.

Enjoy!

The Buzz Broadband CEO has labelled their deployment of WiMAX in the Hervey Bay region a “miserable failure”.

The CEO described problems which are generally common with wireless technologies in poor environments, such as packet loss, low speeds, poor signal, and high latency.

The network is an Airspan supplied network, and Freeman (Buzz CEO) has been previously praising the technology, however, that praise seems to have disappeared at this year, he has labelled their specific deployment a failure.

I believe WiMAX isn’t the solution for all areas. That’s easily understood because you simply cannot expect wireless from one side of a mountain to work on the other. You would build it ontop of the mountain. I’m not saying that has happened here of course, but I suspect there might be solutions to their coverage issue by fixing deployment areas.

It remains uncertain what spectrum they were using for their network, which could also be a contributing factor to the failure. 

The company has dropped WiMAX and now will head towards “TD-CDMA” technology, which provides similar service to the WiMAX standard, with assumably better penetration due to a different frequency, and also a wireless DOCSIS network, which much like Telstra’s Cable network, allows speeds of up to 38Mbps in a 3.5Ghz spectrum range.

Internode have previously praised their very own Airspan deployment, claiming 6Mbps at 30KM with a constant speed, and Simon Hackett himself has backed the technology.

OPEL is the key subject here. With 1 deployment showing it works ‘exceedingly well’, and the other being a ‘miserable failure’, will we see similar results with OPEL? Miserable Failure + Exceedingly Well = “Normal Service”? Probably not, it’d be similar to what happens today, there will be blackspots, but the blackspots it fills and fixes will likely outweigh those that fail.

I’m not sure if WiMAX is a complete failure, or Buzz usage of the technology was the failure. Just the same like WiMAX is a complete success, or Internode usage of the technology was the success, without that detailed information, it’s hard to form a true conclusion.

I also am unfamiliar with the Hervey Bay surrounds, but I guess that they could also have interfered with the technology, if there wasn’t plenty of planning.

Enjoy!

Just .. not as fast as trains in some cases.

It’s amazing that I can move 1GB 100kM faster by rail then I could the internet.

Heck, it’d be quicker to deliver 2GB 100kM away, using a car then it would the internet, yet the internet would be the medium of choice to save on driving time, petrol costs, etc.

Labor however, in a recent article are quoted as saying broadband is as much important as rail.

I’m sort of convinced on that point, for my example described above.

How does big business decentralise if they can’t get stuff between offices at speeds that would be quicker than driving there? Naturally, it’s not a problem for Telstra who can setup a fat tax payer built fibre pipe wherever they see it fit, but that isn’t going to help industries expand out into regional areas and solve Sydney’s Housing Crisis.

You know something else I find amazing? All the petrol companies deliver petrol to the service stations using trucks, ie. They use more petrol to deliver petrol. Doesn’t seem very efficient for a delivery method, espiecially if those trucks are travelling hundreds of kilometers to deliver a few thousand liters of petrol, only to come back a few days later.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient to send those products by rail to the nearest regional area, and deliver what they need, and keep supplies in secure storage at many areas? Or they could of course have ran pipelines to the stations, but, that would probably have been extremely costly to build in the ground, and I imagine that others would try and break the pipe open for free juice.

That doesn’t seem to happen with gas pipelines tho, which probably would have given the idea a little more consideration, too late now though, with supplies of world oil apparently depleating and no certainty on future fuel. And add to that the consideration of air compressor powered cars, or even genetic modification which turns cells to produce oil. A few of those in a refining fuel tank and that spells “your broke” to many oil companies.

Back to broadband though, trains can carry more data, faster than our broadband connections. Probably is time for an upgrade, but not the ‘premium retail / wholesale price’ upgrade Telstra have planned. Probably better to look at wireless.

Enjoy!

I’m getting a new design done for Downtime Web Hosting, I think the current site that I did, whilst was intended to be a simple layout, doesn’t have some of those qualities about it that ‘impress’ the viewer.

So, I’m outsourcing that one, to see what we can get back in a creative design.

One of the key issues I am having is trying to express what I am looking for. I’m far from a good person for artistic impression, so I’m probably not the best communicator of what sort of colours, styles, layout that I like.

Generally, I prefer a tableless design, which leaves plenty of screen realestate for the content, the navigation is simple, yet colourful, and the style is clean. I like ‘vibrant’ colours I think. Vibrant. Heh, that’s an interesting word. Google defines it as “colors that are bright and striking” – Yep, that’s what I like. Bright colours.

I’m also a big fan of embossed lettering, and gloss effects. But that said, those might not fit in with the design.

The hard part about communicating this to the designer, is not only is he from a different nation, it’s more the point of he is in a different timezone. So I’m waiting, waiting, waiting for him to get back to me with his proposed designs after describing what I like.

I did get a mock design back recently, and the logo was way off the mark, as was the font, and the structure, BUT, the navigation was getting closer to what I wanted, and it means that he can set about getting that done right.

I suspect with a much more sleek design, we might impress the viewers a bit more and not be paying for marketing, for what resembles a probably poor colour scheme and look. I absolutely suck with graphics. I’m sure I could work at getting better, but the problem there is, that would take a lot of time to go through and learn all the different effects, and how to do many different combinations, and even then, I’m probably no artist anyway, so the effort would still mean I produce poor quality graphics.

We shall see what happens!

Enjoy!

As I mentioned yesterday’s post, I setup and have established Downtime Web Hosting, and it’s ready to accept customers.

I started marketing it some point earlier, to see what sort of turnaround it’d have with visitor responses, and I have to say, Google Adwords is disappointingly expensive.

You’ll get the idea of what I mean when the cost paid per click is near $8, and those clicks are from ‘visitors’ who either don’t actually read the website, or view the website and walk away without touching the plans.

It doesn’t seem to be delivering the hits that equal customers, and it is a fact I get more interest from my whirlpool profile then I do from Google – and whirlpool don’t charge – though, I’m not actually using it for marketing, rather, just simply as a representative so I can post in the Web Hosting forum still.

I guess there must be some form of optimisation possible to try and get the ads working well for us, but, with giant US hosts paying big bucks for what essentially amounts to 3 seconds of a prospective customers time, it definitely isn’t worth it!

Perhaps it’s something for someone more interested in online marketing. But, the dollars aren’t there for this to pay someone for something that can be done by me, freely, if only I had the knowledge.

I think I’ll start investigating alternative avenues for marketing, to see what stones we can turn over and make some online marketing work.

Enjoy!

I’ve finished the setup of Downtime Web Hosting.

It is a web host I have setup to offer stable hosting in a market where hosts can be unpredictable, and in other cases directly mislead and lie to consumers.

Simply put, I’ve seen bad, I’ve seen so called ‘quality’, I’ve seen ‘business’, and I find that the quality of all those services are in many cases far from what they get described to you as.

I’m not promising the world to anyone, because whilst I maintain a solid environment for webs to be hosted in, the internet at large is not in my direct control – unfortunately.

I do however, and have for some time, been able to host and rather reliably, the websites of someone I’ve known for many years, and in the many months (yep, months, this isn’t an overnight operation), we haven’t had any downtime from poor management.

I have a set plan for this server, it’s to host websites, and give them reliable, yet far from expensive hosting, and give them quality customer support to go with it. At least, I think I offer quality support. Feel free to disagree with me.

I’m waiting for some customers to sign up, but, I have an anti-spam part in me. I simply don’t want to spam everyone, but rather, still want to gather up some customers interested in a non pricey quality web hosting environment. So, I have no plans to spam. I’m now a whirlpool ‘service provider’, and I must say, it’s a little different for the change.

For example, there is a new forum, and my name is now a little more visible, and I have the name of the biz bolded under my name.

Marketing isn’t my strong point, but I do have plans for some marketing to see how it goes!

I know what I am doing when it comes to hosting websites, I have maintained servers hosting websites which had uptime for a full year (gotta love Linux).

I do know our offering in the Australian Hosting market is a little unique, we aren’t trying to bend consumers over for example like some of the so called ‘quality’ hosts, and of course, we aren’t trying to attract the “I must have every last dollar” market, like others who can barely stay online, although, our plans are priced at rates which near reflect that.

With Downtime Web Hosting setup, my time is again a little more available, which is good for OzVoIPStatus, but, I won’t promise anything. We are still pulling the financial strings in closer to try and get ahead, so anything else that can consume some time, and help fund the bills and the like is good, or if Downtime Web Hosting takes off with some marketing, that’ll be even better.

On that note however, I wonder if the name will have a positive effect on marketing, or a negative effect? Will people be interested in the name to see whether there is a joke there, or will people simply not investigate due to the name?

Does name really matter when it comes to marketing, or does it all come down to the service supplied and any word of mouth that is attracted as a result of impressing users?

If you have no users, or first users, how do you get word of mouth from impressing users?

Marketing is a world full of questions to me. I’ll see if I can get some answers and make a real go of it.

Enjoy your Downtime Uptime!