as a follow-up to this post my outrage at Bell remains, although it’s lessened by the fact that our old ISP, iStop, may not be as innocent as they proclaim… if the message board rumour mills would have you believe anyway.
Who knows. What we do know is the company was sold Cybersurf, Cybersurf are the parent company of 3Web, and 3Web has one of the worst reputations for any ISP (even worse than Rogers and Bell). We’ve done the Sympatico route, were not at all impressed with it, so we’ve been exploring our options.
The highest recommended company so far has been Magma, which some people swear by for durability, longevity and quality customer care. 3z also has a really good reputation for ISP (but their primary business is Co-location services). Unfortunately both were above our price range for the services we want, and 3z is doing some upgrades to their infrastructure and won’t be accepting new customers until next week.
Electronicbox.net also came highly recommended but again their services are high-price (it seems to be catering to the gamer market). Teksavvy.com is who we’ve ultimately decided to go with. Right price, right options… they don’t have a bad reputation, but nobody praised them either.
The problem in looking for an ISP is they offer all these things like filters and email accounts and other “features” which neither Emm nor I give a crap about (we both have server-based email accounts for one) so all we basically need is a dependable connection. That’s it. Nothing else. Who can offer us a dependable connection without all the bells and whistles?
Anywho, we’re waiting for Bell to reconnect our high speed capability, we’re a day or two away from telling Cybersurf to stuff it, and we’ll breath a healthy sigh when we’re back on-line.
London Calling
As many of us did this morning, I woke up to the news reports of the bombings in London (I’m refusing to succumb to Bushisms and call them “tarist attacks”). The situation sounded awful, but nothing dire to a country that, until recently, was accustomed to dirty bombs in trash cans and the like from the IRA. The most thankful part is no chemical agents were involved, thus keeping the ongoing danger to a minimum. But still, brutal stuff.
My company’s corporate office in London is on light duties for the next two days because of, but thankfully all employees are safe, (they were the second, thought I had, the first being - in brutal and ashamed honesty - that the French can’t be that upset about the Olympics, can they? My third thought, by the way, was is Toronto next, which is completely irrational and was dismissed promptly as such).
I don’t really know what to say, I have no consoling words. I just hope the casualties are kept to a minimum (37 at latest word is already too many) and that those who are responsible… hmm. Also don’t know what to say to those who are responsible. In their delusional eyes, what they did was right. Perhaps I hope some day they can understand why what they did was wrong. I dunno, these things go beyond simple psychosis.. religion and politics are far too complicated as motivational factors to just frivolously say “I hope those bastards get what’s coming to them” because in the perpetual cycle of violence, nobody learns a damn thing.
Anyway, I’m getting rather muddy about all this… feel free to share your thoughts.
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This London Times Article puts together some blogger reactions.
or “Wha’ happened to my internet connection”
or “I went into work on a national holiday to do my blogging (and some other work related issues)”
So our internet service provider (ISP) called “the Internet Stop” (or “iStop” for short) has been a victim of some monopoly railroading. As basically a reseller of Bell Canada’s high-speed internet services iStop depends on Bell’s infrastructure to provide their clientele with internet service. So what do they do when Bell decides that they’re not happy with the fact that hundreds of Sympatico customers are switching to their “competition” and pull the plug on them?
What can you do, especially when the CTRC don’t give a damn.
Okay, I have to say up fron that it may not be a malicious “attack” on Bell’s part, but they’re certainly not doing anything to rectify their relationship with iStop, and in fact, they’ve since went to all iStop customers’ and disable their high-speed capabilities (or at the very least my internet capabilities, and those few friends of ours who are experiencing a similar situation).
The official word from iStop’s news page is as follows:
Bell has cut off the DSL service used by IStop.com. They chose to do so even though they received a $300,000 deposit for the service in March 2005. In addition, they have been paid well in excess of their General Tariff Item 5410 rates. Considering the situation and the lack of support by the CRTC, IStop.com has made arrangements with Cybersurf to continue service for our customers… Bell has apparently expedited the disonnection of IStop.com customers, so some lines have arleady been cut off.
For iStop’s part they’ve quickly set up a new arrangement with Cybersurf, however, Cybersurf must still deal with Bell’s infrastructure and Bell certainly isn’t going to step up their activity especially not during a long weekend.
All I have to say is, and I don’t like to swear too much but… MotherFuckers!!!
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(I’m finally making use of the “wha’ happened to …” category)
Remember this guy? He was one of the first hosts of the awesome CBC consumer reports show for kids call Street Cents (remember “Fit for the pit” and “What’s your beef” HA!.
He also had his own teenybopper talk show, Jonovision (which was intermixed with bad sketch comedy).
That’s right, it’s Jonathon Torrens.
Whatever happened to that guy?
Well, tune in Tuesdays at 9 to Spike TV for Joe Schmo 2 and you’ll see Jono is no Gerald, the Gotta-Be-Gay-Guy. That’s Gerald (with a soft “g” [guh], not a hard “g” [juh]).
He’s actually quite funny on the show, which is, if you don’t know the premise, a mock-reality tv show in which (this season) two real people are thrust into a fake reality tv show where every other contestant, unbeknownst to them, is an actor.
Last year’s show (coming very soon to DVD, and well worth watching) was an absolute riot, with shocks and “is he gonna figure it out” moments roughly every ten minutes.
This year’s show now has a Schmoblog in case you were curious.
So, anyway, good on you, Jono. Congrats for finding limited US success.
The Bangles: yeah, that’s right… I wanna know what happened to them.
I was listening to this Kid 606 album (”the action packed mentallist brings you the fucking jams”) and he mixes it up with some “walk like an egyptian”. Being the total child of the 80’s that I am, I have fond memories and a complete disdain for the “music of my era”.
But alas, I remember that Susanna Hoffs was one of my first childhood crushes…
I mean, look at this picture… Who could not be attracted to that at the tender age of 9? (and still…(raises eyebrow))
According to their website they last released an album in 1995. They’re still together, but in the past 7 years they’ve only released three compilations…
I think Susanna shoud be a huge part of the retro wave. Hot DJs or producers like Dan The Automator, or UNKLE (aka DJ Shadow) or Moby should get Susanna’s sexy voice on their freaky-tweaky tracks.
Yes. That would be awesome.
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