could’ve so done it myself!

Recently I had to have my photo taken for an ID card. Without giving it much thought, I headed straight to the photo shop. Yes, you’ll be surprised, they still exist in this day and age of do-it-yourself digital photography.

And they exist for a reason: because dum-dums like me are still running to them when I could have take a photo on my own digital camera, done my own online printing and voila, I wouldn’t have wasted my 19 bucks on those darned photos !

Stinkiest customer service in town

Imagine I went to pay my cell phone bill over the weekend and they wouldn’t let me! Yes, such a joke, isn’t it? I offer them money and they just wouldn’t take it!! And why? Because the phone service provider has set a cap on the number of payments they can accept each day, and by the time I got there in the evening, they’d used up all the spots available for the day!!

They asked me to come back another day! Quite frankly, this is what I call sucky customer service!! Your customer comes in to pay, you refuse to accept their money, instead you ask them to make ANOTHER trip to do exactly what they came in to do in the first place! So what do you think of that?

the basics of web hosting

I recently received an SOS call from a girl friend who is trying to set up an ecommerce site to sell clothing. It’s something she’s been wanting to do for the longest time but between getting married and the birth of her baby, she’s literally had to put this online business project on the backburner.

Well, now that she’s settled into a somewhat sane routine again, she’s all excited about setting up the store. The only problem is she’s clueless but luckily for her, I’m not too busy right now to help her. First things first, she needs to decide on her domain name which, as it turns out, is the easy part since she’s had so much time to mull over it during her maternity leave .

The website hosting part took a bit of explaining on my part but now I think she finally gets it. She’s so used to free blogs she just can’t see how important it is to have her own small business web hosting. I mean, free is good but if she’s serious about her business and wants to project a professional image, then obviously paid hosting is the way to go.

It doesn’t cost much. Like I always tell people, go to Web Hosting Geeks to do your research. They’ve got the price and feature comparisons all laid out. I mean, that’s what I really love about those guys, they’ve essentially done my homework for me. So there’s no need for me to tear my hair out working a spreadsheet.

I can find the “best” of everything from domain web hosting to reviews submitted by users. When I’m busy, I get my friend to read up so she understands what’s going on and doesn’t need me to hold her hand on the future projects she has planned.

what’s up with my internet connection?

If you know me, you know I’m constantly griping about our super-s-l-o-w internet connection here in the city. I get into a really foul mood when modern technology which is supposed to make things fly is crawling instead.

Admittedly we can’t live without the internet any more. I don’t think many people can these days. The kids can’t and I can’t, ’nuff said. I’ve asked around my neighbors and they too are complaining about how slow our connection is, so it’s not just me being picky.

The excuse I always seem to get is that oh, there’s just too many people online so it’s slowing everyone else down. Try getting online when everyone else is asleep. Oh right? Well, then we should all probably move to the country where the deer run free and the internet runs at, well, the speed of lightning .

Anyone with me? I hear that there’s an internet provider who offers rural high speed internet that can beat the city’s any time! Forget the dial-ups. Wild Blue offers satellite high speed internet at very affordable prices.

And quite frankly, anything that’s worth the money I pay is, is definitely worth considering since we practically can’t live without the internet these days.

lighter is better

My son and his computer have become almost inseparable since he started college. There’s just so many assignments and projects they need to do that’s closely tied to the internet.

Seeing that he spends so much time online, even at college, I’m so glad I bought him one of those new-fangled netbooks which is much smaller and lighter than the laptop he used to carry around.

The heavy laptop is a big strain on the back. I’ve lugged it around before and man, did my back hurt at the end of the day! So these lighter models are certainly a worthwhile buy.

trying to catch up with technology

We spent the weekend looking at what netbooks are available on the market. My son needs one for college as age is catching up with his current laptop which is a couple of years old now.

With technology moving at this speed, anything you buy is rendered practically outdated  in a couple of months. We haven’t decided which one to buy yet but we’re prepared to shell out a few more bucks to get the latest technology. At least hopefully then it will last us a little longer before it becomes obsolete or needs to be upgraded !