Author Archives: Ingoal

New phonelines + dsl provider

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“Konkurrenz belebt das Geschaeft” is an old german saying (roughly translates to: competition is good for trade), which seems to be so true in the current online- and phone-market. We’ve had our phonelines and dsl-setup from the biggest german provider (Telekom (T-Com + T-Online)) forever, but it seems it’s time to move on. We were paying a nifty amount of 74,19€ basic charge for a ISDN-connection (two digital lines), dsl-setup with 768kbit down, 128kbit up and a flatrate. As they’re changing their port-setup you’re forced to upgrade to 1MBit down, 128kbit up on January 1st 2005 – as this is an auto-upgrade there’s nothing you can do about it, apart from moving on or paying 4 €/month more for this “speed increase”. This would bring up our basic charge to 78,19€ which equals 106,10$. :brickwall:

As I think this is ridiculously high for the provided service I told my folks that we should look around for alternatives. As I’m the geek of the family I did the checking and came up with different solutions.

  • Leave ISDN-connection with Telekom and switch online stuff to cable. This would have cut the online-costs to 39€/month (Telekom: 16,99€ + 29,99€ flat = 46,98€) – an improvement, but not quite the cut I had hoped for. :tdown:
  • Switch complete connection (ISDN + DSL) to the competition. In this case to the second largest phone provider (Arcor)…and bingo. Just made the switch (just waiting for the paper work being sent our way and we’re gone – see more details below) :tup:

The Arcor deal is quite sweet:

  • ISDN just like with Telekom. They’re handling all the switches and legal stuff (canceling the old commitment to Telekom, switching over all our MSNs, etc)
  • They’re offering both a DSL-flat and a phone-flat (all calls are free, except for calls to mobile phones).
  • The DSL basic charge and the flatrate are way cheaper.

Cost factor:

  • ISDN basic charge: 19,95€
  • DSL basic charge: 10€
  • DSL-flat: 9,95€
  • phone-flat: 19,95€
  • upgrade DSL to 2MBit (2MBit down, 192kbit up): 5€
  • Grand total: 64,85€ (equals 88$)

Now that looks more like it. We’re saving around 14€/month, but wait, that’s the absolute minimum as we’ve got a phone-flat now, which we didn’t have with Telekom, so it’s gonna be even more, month after month after month (we had one invoice of less than 100€ in the whole year 2004) – and I’ve got double bandwith as soon as the switch is made :mrgreen:

Happy New Year

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After using the first 6hours of January 1st 2005 and the next 7 hours for sleep, it’s 13:18. So, a new year. I wish it to be a happy one for all of my family, friends, readers and generally everyone that knows me!

Recent browsing…a is for…

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Inspired by Aaron‘s and Jeremy‘s posts:

A is for Arlt.com – computer store
B is for Bloglines
C is for Coresite
D is for Dict.leo.org
E is for ebay.de
F is for fcm2.info
G is for Gmail
H is for heise.de
I is for Ingoal.info (hehe)
J is for tragically null
K is for Kundenbetreuung – eplus (customer service of my mobile phone provider)
L is for Landkreis Coburg (went there during research for wikifun.de)
M is for My Ebay
N is for NBA.com
O is for Osthoff innovations
P is for Paypal.de
Q is for nothing
R is for ranking.com
S is for sitepoint.com/forums
T is for t-com.de (checking around for a new phone contract)
U is for Brian’s blog
V is for vr networld ebanking
W is for Wikifun.de Homepage
X is for nothing
Y is for nothing
Z is for zdf.de

Almost everything filled I guess – it seems I’m browsing the web a little bit too much these days :smile:

Different device, different edition?!

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It’s been a long time since I added the WAP-version and I didn’t even link to it. So today I thought that I could add yet another edition, making Ingoal’s Insight… even more accessible, especially on the road.

So I added the WP-Mobile plugin and put up a new category in the right hand menu “editions” – there are now three of them: the standard xhtml one, the wap one and the mobile one (for pdas). Groovy stuff.

On the backend I embedded the WP grin plugin so now it’s no more smiley-writing, but smiley clicking :tup:

screenshot of the backend extension/plugin

Week 17

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Ingoal’s score: 57 pts (total: 549 pts)
Mr. Price’s score: 35 pts (total: 688 pts)

Woohoo! The first week in ages that I was able to get some points back, maybe it isn’t over after all. Watch out, here I come ;-)

Indian Ocean Earthquake

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It’s been some time now since the first news struck, and tbh I’m still shocked. As more and more news emerge the death-toll is rising and rising and has hit 50.000+. What a tragedy!

What makes it even worse is the fact that at least some deaths could have been prevented, if there would have been a warning system. I just watched the latest news and they said that a US earthquake and tsunami warning system suggested the danger of emerging tsunamis and that they wanted to contact the countries in danger, but were unable to get the message through, due to a missing system – hence no central contact persons, no emergency plan, no nothing. This is really said. I guess hundreds if not thousands could have been saved. Hopefully the countries of the region will come together and get a system up and running in the near future…(I heard Indiana and Australia have already plans to do just that).

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and all people in the region.

More infos can be found in the news, the tsunamihelp-blog and on the wikipedia-sites:
german wikipedia, english wikipedia

New Gmail invites

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Update:It seems like GMail could go public soonish. After reading about people having 50+ invites I’m in that club now, too. So if you want an account, just post a comment, atm I’ve got 50 invites sitting here…

Update: The request are flowing in as are the new invites…the number below is still accurate, so if you’re still in need of an invite, just post a comment here (ideal would be a post with full name)…

Update: It seems that my account is auto-refilling itself…I was done to two numerous times now and it seems as soon as my account hits 2 it is refilled to 4 invites, let’s see how long this will go on…

After a really long time there are some new gmail invites waiting in my account. So, in the spirit of sharing the good stuff: anyone who wants an account, just post a comment to this post with your email-address and you shall receive an invite. (Offer valid while stocks last ;-) ).

Current status: 6 30 available

WordPress 1.2.2

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After reading that the new version 1.2.2 fixes some security bugs (see here), I thought it was a good idea to upgrade, especially due to the fact that I missed the 1.2.1 update.

Everything seems to be working just fine and everything is uptodate again. :tup:

AMD vs. Intel uptime stresstest

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The german division of Tom’s Hardware Guide is doing a major head to head burn-in stresstest. A AMD64 3500+ system is running head-to-head with a P4-system. Both systems are equipped with the latest boards and components and are really packed. Both systems are running round the clock with numerous test applications (benchmarks) to really stress the components to the maximum.

The created a site which shows both systems and a shot out of their computer lab and stats about the current up- and down-time along with the number of reboots (see here)…so far the AMD system is “in front” with 0 reboots and 0 downtime (current status: AMD, up 3 days 0:08, 0 downtime, 0 reboots; Intel, up 0 days 4:59, 0 downtime, 1 reboot).