So, here’s my tale of trying (and so far failing) to get Internet access on at my new apartment.

(with apologies to Dreamhost for nicking their headline AND public domain photo)

December 13th: I get the word from the real estate agent that I’ve got the unit. Immediately sign up on the iiNet website for Naked DSL.

December 19th: iiNet respond to my application with the message “Service Address Not Found”.  I contact iiNet and ask what that means, turns out they need a phone number.

December 21-22nd: I move in.

December 24th: I finally go back to my apartment, plug in a phone and find out the number. I give that to iiNet, they re-submit.

December 28th: I get an email from iiNet with “Service Address Not Found” again. I call, they do some quick tests - the number doesn’t show up in their access to Telstra’s provisioning systems.
I call Telstra to get the phone connected, it’ll take several days because as it turns out, it’s on the Optus cable network. Appointment made for January 4th.

January 4th: No Telstra guy.

January 8th: I get a call from a Telstra guy: “Umm,I’m at the premesis now…” me: “Well, you wern’t 4 days ago when I was there…”

January 9th: Telstra call back to reschedule, and say has to be all day. I ask for Saturday timeslot if that’s the case, sure - January 19th. Ugh.

January 19th: Line connected. But after the Tech leaves, I find out the line is a Silent line, and 12722123 to find out my number doesn’t work.

January 21st and 22nd: Too busy at work to call Telstra before their Sales centres close at 5pm.

January 23rd: Call Telstra, get my line number. Go sign up again at iiNet.

January 30th: Email from iiNet: DSL Connection will be on Feb 5th, but I don’t need to be home (because provisioned line).

Feb 5th: No line sync. iiNet connection email says might take a few more days.

Feb 7th: Still no line sync. Call iiNet, on hold for ~30mins (on my mobile) - Guy says it looks like my entire DSLAM is down. But, (good news for me) they work on Saturdays (9th)- so, give a call then or Monday.

Feb 9th: (Still no line sync) Call iiNet, on hold for another 30mins, guy says Telstra have to fix it, and they don’t work on weekends, but should know more Monday (11th)

Feb 11th: (Still no line sync) Call iiNet, on hold for ~45mins. Guy says they’ve added my name to a list to send to Visionstream, and they’ll call to let me know when it’ll be fixed.

Today (Feb 13th): Visionstream calls me at about 10 am  -

VS: “We’re calling to make an appointment for your ADSL Installation”
me: “err.. don’t you mean fault repair?”
VS: “Oh, I don’t know… So, will Friday (15th) be ok?”
me: “Uhm, What time?” 
VS: “You’ll have to be there All day”
me: “Oh, no, that’s really not possible, any chance for a shorter time period?”
VS: “No, sorry - you can leave a key with a friend family member and they can be there instead”
Me: “Err, no, I really can’t.”
VS: “Okay, well, we’ll send this back to iiNet then”
Me: “Fine, I’ll call them” 

I call iiNet, left on hold for 45mins.  I explain the situation,

“Well, you’ll have to be home then”
me: “But I understood the issue to be with your DSLAM, not with my line - everyone else on the exchange was down”.
“No, that’s been rectified, you’ll have to be at home for them to fix the issue”.
me: “Well, that’s just not an option for me at the moment.”
“Let me talk to a senior, see what we can do”
Me: “okay”
(5mins hold)
“We’ll try rebuilding the port, but, that might not help”

I get home tonight, and, well… they’re right, it didn’t help.

So, ~3hrs in total of calls on my mobile, and I’m still no closer to having proper internet access on. I’ve sent a ’support form’ in telling them that if they can’t narrow down the appointment timeslot to 3-4 hours, then just to cancel my account.

I suppose if they go ahead and cancel, I’ll be able to get the line reconnected (and if necessary, do it on a Saturday), then I’ll get normal ADSL2+ with someone else. Which has far less chance of f’cking up.

Seriously sucks.

Addendum: I’m not blaming iiNet that they can’t fix something when I’m not home - I’m just saying that the whole process of getting internet access is a disaster. It’s now over 2 months, for something that should have been fairly simple.  If the Telcos stopped playing bullshit politics, we’d all be in a much better situation.

Someone asked me recently what my opinion of Dreamhost was. They knew I use Dreamhost for a variety of sites, and were looking to sign up.

The short answer is that Dreamhost are “variable”.

I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for about 3 years now, and I’ve seen some pretty wild thing happen.

They’ve had several major power outages which took down their entire datacentre. They’ve had significant network issues for a period of months. They had a major data security breach where someone managed to get several thousand usernames and passwords. And, to top it all off - they recently overcharged about half of their customers by several million US peso dollars. (It would have been up around 10 million, if it wern’t for a bug in their software).

Oh, and it’s probably worth mentioning that as I write this, all my sites are down, because the servers they’re on are being driven from one side of LA to the other.

Given all of the above, most ordinary, sane people would probably be shouting “run for the hills!” at the top of their lungs. And, in many cases people would be  quite justified to run as far as they could from Dreamhost.

Here’s the thing, however - apart from the power issues (and the scheduled cluster move mentioned) my sites have worked just fine for the most part. 

Yeah, there’s been times when a server has been down, or when some sort of glitch has slowed things down - but lets look at the big picture here for a second.

Dreamhost’s business is to sell reasonable quality webhosting, with large gobs of disk space and bandwidth, at a very cheap rate.  I pay something like USD$20/month (on the old plans) for my Dreamhost service. 

What do I get for that USD$20/month?  I get to host 30-something sites, occupying 20GB of disk space, and transferring about 150GB per month. No, that’s not the limit, that’s what I’m actually using. This month. Dreamhost have absolutely no issue with me using a lot more than that - even if I went to TWENTY times that, I’d still be well under the limits of my account.

I also get the security that someone else will take care of the servers, and keep them patched and secure. In the event that something goes wrong, I can lodge a ticket and have someone else fix it at 3am.

So, does that mean I’d recommend Dreamhost to everyone? Heck no - there’s heaps of situations where I wouldn’t recommend Dreamhost.

Any time you answer “yes” or even “maybe” to the question “Will this being unavailable impact my business?”, you need to be looking at a managed hosting solution with a proper contract/service level agreement.  Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, and definitely don’t try reselling this to your customers.

Dreamhost are also not suitable for a variety of “big” applications/sites - despite the label saying you can get 5TB of bandwidth and 500GB of disk space, actually using all of it is possible only under very specific conditions. Most of the time, anyone running a site that is that popular is going to be using so much of the resources on their server that they’re going to be causing issues for other users on the same server.

It’s like the speedo on your car, if you’re actually hitting 240KPH or 30,000RPM, something is going very very wrong, or is about to.

So, with that out of the way - I am actually starting to look for some dedicated server options - not because I don’t like Dreamhost (I do) - but simply because I want to do other things that I simply can’t do with Dreamhost.

My options are limited, because I want to be able to manage the server myself, I need a reasonably large amount of disk space and bandwidth quota, and I need to run Windows.

What are your experiences with Dreamhost, and/or dedicated hosting?

I hope everyone is well and relaxing during the Christmas / New Years break.

I was busy over the weekend moving into my new appartment. Having to carry all your posessions up 3 flights of stairs gives you a whole new understanding of how much stuff you have. A very big thankyou to Mitch (my uncle) for helping me move.

For Christmas I’ve been back up in Toronto, and heading back to Sydney sometime Boxing Day.

In other news: Congrats to Ian on getting engaged a few weeks back. Great news

Catch y’all later.

Last weekend I went out on my apartment hunting rounds, and found a place that I thought was fairly reasonable.

So, Monday morning I applied for it - and then Tuesday I got a call from the estate agent saying I was successful. Thursday I signed the lease, and as of Friday, I officially have an apartment, yay!

It’s in the “Paris” end of Potts Point (according to Mitch) - I was thinking Paris, but Mitch assures me he meant Paris. Although, by the sounds of it I guess I’ll be seeing more celebs around (We saw Indira Naidoo at a Deli just around the corner).

Note: First image from Domain.com.au, supplied by the real estate agent.  Panorama image by me.

Just testing this lightsabre thing on my Nokia N95.

Install from this server. (rehosted to fix MIME Type issues)

Will also need the N95 Accelerometer plugin too.

Readers of XKCD (one of my favourite webcomics) may remember this strip:

Well, Randal Munroe (the genius behind XKCD) recently decided to get a ball pit instead of a new couch.

I agree.. the results look really awesome.

So, I’m into what - my third week at the new job. Several people have emailed/called/messaged asking “So, what’s going on”. 

Here’s the ‘executive summary’:
My first two days were just wrapping my head around what it is the company actually does, induction, etc.
On my Third day I basicly got thrown in the deep end in terms of learning one of the current projects, which runs on the software that this company makes. 
Since then, I’ve taken on responsibility for working on one portion of the product - cleaning up existing code, expanding it, validating output, etc.

So, in terms of technology - It’s pretty much what I’ve been doing before (.NET stuff), but on a larger scale.
It’s been hinted at quite strongly that I’ll be working on some new technologies, which sound pretty cool too.

The people are great - they ‘get’ the geek/tech stuff. All in all, my impression so far is that it’s a really good environment to work in. (And I’m not just saying that ’cause they read my blog!)

On non-work related things:
I’ve been house hunting (yes, really). I went and saw three apartments on the weekend: One a definite no (When I say there was room for a fold-down bed, and thats it - I’m not joking), one a ‘hmm, maybe’, and one I really like (which I applied for today - Monday). It’s a really competitive market.

I also wandered around a little on the weekend doing the photography-thing - down taking photos of the Flying Foxes in the Botanical Gardens.

I’ve also been catching up on my Aus-Food blog reading, finding out where the good places for food are.

The weeks ahead: Saturday is the Election (oh joy!) and I’m heading back to Coal Point to catch up with my Grandmother, see what’s happening, etc. Then the weekend after that I’ll be flying down to Melbourne for Natalie & Paul’s wedding.

I can’t think of anything else that’s happening at the moment. So, stay well folks.

If you’re inclined - you can follow me on Twitter*, or add me on Facebook**. I’m generally more active on Twitter than Facebook.

* = Not for kids or the easily offended. Not Twitter itself, just my Tweets in particular. 
** = Be warned, send me lots of “Application” requests and I will block you on Facebook.

(writing this on my mobile, so please excuse the writing style)

So, I’ve moved up to Sydney, and staying with my uncle Mitch. Went house hunting on saturday, the rental market is pretty hectic.

Today is my first day at the new place. Currently sitting in a cafe around the corner with a hot chocolate. The usual first day jitters, etc.

Well, here goes…

–
Update:

The day went well - the people I met are pretty cool. It’s a pretty good atmosphere - flexible working arrangements - smart folk - good support.

On the house hunting thing, an agent to back to me, and I’ve got an inspection appointment lined up for during the day on Wednesday.

Anyway, it’s now midnight - g’night folks.

Today is my last full day here out at Coal Point. Tomorrow I’m packing laptop, camera, and clothes and heading to Sydney. The rest of it can wait until I’ve found my own place to live in the city.

By the way - If you know anyone who is looking for a tenant for a 1-2 bedroom apartment/whatever within about 20mins walking distance of Surry Hills, I’d really like to hear from you. It’s probably a really long shot, but who knows, right?

I finished up at Telstra last week. A big thanks to the folks there in the Newcastle building giving me a great farewell during lunch on Wednesday. It was great to catch up with the old gang who’ve left before me, and those I hadn’t seen for ages. 

Anyway, I’ll be on Three’s X-Series (2GB)  for internet access, plus whatever I can get on WiFi until I do get my own place.  Here’s hoping it’s not too long.

Until then - Adios

(This is for the folks who didn’t see this post on Facebook)

This is Claude, he’d just like to let you know that he really dislikes:
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- Zombies
- People who Poke/Prod
- And other silly Facebook applications

Claude says he’ll come visit all the people who send these through.

Just… y’know, so you know what to expect.

PS: Claude is a Huntsman Spider. He’s currently residing in my bedroom, and plays around on Facebook and Twitter whilst I’m asleep.