I have not forgotten this place

greetings oh fans of mine. I Just want to assure you I have not forgotten this place. Just had a million things happening and haven't been writing anything anywhere. What I have done is build up some frustrations so expect a weekly whine very soon!

ADSL2+ Vs TESLTRA CABLE

For the purpose of this column I will try and keep opinion out of it and just present the facts.
Please know that these facts pertain to me and may vary at your place.

Firstly I will say that I was a Telstra Cable customer for several years and found the service to be reliable and fast. However, without going into it Telstra recently pissed me off so I decided to look for some alternatives.

Having enjoyed cable speeds, a regular ADSL connection was going to seem pedestrian so I looked at IINET’s ADSL2+ which promoted speeds up to 24000kb’s per second. That sounded okay so I thought I’d hook up with them. Below is the comparison.

It is important for you the reader to know that I am comparing Tesltra standard cable not Cable Extreme (which is one of the things Tesltra did that pissed me off!)

Speed tests for this exercise were done with Line Speed Meter, an awesome speed tester which I recommend everyone have. Go to www.tcpiq.com to get it. Its free!

Prices for Internet access quoted here are based on having a full phone service with the same company. The phone plans are so similar as to not have made a difference for me but for those who are interested I did do a quarter comparison. I make one local call a day and four to five long distance calls a week and the price difference was negligible even with Tesltra’s free local calls!

TELSTRA STANDARD CABLE UNLIMITED: $59.95 per month

You get 10Gigabytes of usage and then will be shaped to 64kbps after that.

Uploads are counted in your usage.

Speeds advertised is up to 8000kbps down 128kbps up.

I got around 7900kbs per second download on a regular basis. Upload speed was around 112kbps

A good stable connection

IINET ADSL2+ LIGHT $49.95

You get 10gigabytes down peak (8am to midnight) plus 10 gigabytes down off peak (midnight to 8am) you will then be shaped to 64kps for that period where you have exceeded your quota. IE if you have downloaded 12 gig peak but only 5gig offpeak you will not be shaped during off peak hours.

Uploads are free and do not count towards usage.

Speeds advertised are up to 24000kbps down and 1000kbps up.

The fastest Speed I have achieved is 15482 kbps down. Upload is consistent between 700 and 800kbps

Not as stable as cable but not to unstable either.

Oh and with IINET you get a free dial up account so if you travel with a laptop you can connect anywhere in Australia to the dial up account. Handy when I go to my sisters who has a PC but no internet

I have not for the purpose of this exercise included extra’s such as web space or extra email addresses because who uses these things anyway?

The Armchair Bookers Tackle the Draft Lottery

Welcome to the second edition of the Armchair Bookers tackle……

Just before I get into the column I just want to digress for a moment on Mickie James. How good is this girl? Very I say. When the crowd cheered her at Mania she went with it and played up to them. The hand on Trish’s crotch and then the licking was classic stuff This reaction to Mickie shows once again how out of touch WWE creative are with their audience. I find it increasingly amusing to hear the commentators on raw talk down her huge face reaction and call the crowd bizarre. Heres a news flash for you WWE. Your core audience is 18 to 35 year old males. From the moment Mickie said "Nice boobs Trish" we loved her. Did you really expect your core audience to boo a psycho lesbian who wants to get it on with Trish? Hello? We want to see it damn it, hence we boo Trish for not letting Mickie do what she wants.

Okay now I have that out of my system lets move on. Mania has come and gone so now the Armchair Bookers all across Cyberland begin to turn their attention to the Draft Lottery. Some will say will there even be a draft lottery this year? Maybe the brand split will end. These people need to quit drinking peyote tea. With Smackdown having quietly and without fanfare renewed the UPN contract for two more years we will have the split for at least that long, and we will have the draft because it draws in viewers. Draft=ratings=money. Simple yeah?

So now that we accept that 1)there will be a draft and 2) the brand split isn’t going anywhere we can all have some fun from our armchairs and tell everyone who we want to switch and why. I believe there will be five wrestlers from each brand change on over. My picks are not necessarily what I want and not necessarily what I think will happen but a mixture. Since I am not a booker and never have been a booker they probably won’t happen.

First up….

TO RAW:

1)JOHN BRADSHAW LAYFIELD – JBL should be raw bound with the US title. Why, I don’t know. It just sounded good and there is more of a midcard there for him to feud with. Also he can take Jillian Hall with him. As I understand she is not bad in the ring and the woman’s division could sure use another heel seeing as Mickie is getting huge face pops.

2)BAH GAWD MARK HENRY: job him out to Smackdown’s main eventers so he can go to RAW and do the same over there before he finds himself unemployed at the end of the year.

3)JOHNY NITRO: Since tag team wrestling is dead in the WWE you might as well put the final nail in the coffin eh? (I Kid he can get traded back for Marlina, yep the guys whore out their manager to get Nitro back and raw gets another chick who can wrestle a bit) Okay this won’t happen but it would be fun.

4)Some lower card wrestler that hasn’t been on TV for ages then appears just before the draft and wins some matches in an attempt to get people to care that he got drafted. A Basham anyone?( do they even still have jobs?)

5)UNDERTAKER to Raw, well why the hell not? He only works half the year anyway

TO SMACKDOWN:

1)CHAVO GEURRERO: A cruiser weight to Smackdown (albeit a heavy cruiser weight) he can then also feud with Rey Mysterio over who gets to use Eddies soul to draw strength from. This feud will be money I tell you, money, the final match will be Eddies Soul on a pole match. (note: no disrespecting Eddie was intended in that. It has just become ridiculous how the WWE is using his name)

2)SHELTON BENJAMIN: brings the intercontinental title over to Smackdown. There are better opponents for him on the blue brand and over here he can also be eased into the main event. Lahley Vs Benjamin for IC title anyone? Benjamin Vs Angle for WHC anyone?

3)ROB VAN DAM to Smackdown to help out the main event picture, he can still use his MITB against HHH at One Night Stand, everyone knows he was always going to lose that match anyway

4)KANE: To smackdown, the big red monster dentist needs a breath of fresh air so over to the blue team he comes.

5)KENNY to Smackdown. Ken Doane can go in the ring and is great on a mic. Don’t believe me? Watch some of his OVW stuff.. What better way to relive him of a lame gimmick and start anew?.

So there you have it. From that I’d say Smackdown gets the better deal and so they should because even without the recent injuries their roster is a bit thin

Mania thoughts

As I sit back and wait for the smarks to fill up the forums and newsites bagging Wrestlemania. (the same mania they said they wouldn't order, but did anyway) I'll put in my two cents.

I thought it was a pretty damn good show. Boogeyman Vs Booker was terrible as was the pillow fight but overall I found it to be a pretty sweet show.

Could it have been better? Probably if you want to nit pick everything. Seriously though how could you turn of your tele after that and say it was terrible. Some people have though. I say this to those people. If you didn't enjoy this years Mania then you are never going to be pleased by the WWE product so I suggest you do what you are always saying you will do and stop watching.