The Notion to Blog

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while DARING GREATLY so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Having been with Mweb Uncapped for half a year, I decided to sign up with Telkom again because of their reliable network and speeds.  For R250 a month, I get 40GB of traffic.  Thats still unbeatable.   Below is my latest speed test:

An economics professor at a local college made the statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

It could not be any simpler than that.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for,that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”
~~~~ Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

After a long day at work, its great to collapse on the couch and watch something to help unwind. Subscribing to DSTV for R620 per month seems like a lot of money, but I have a few genres of TV I enjoy. Motoring and Science is one of them.

Its 7pm on a Monday night, prime time TV viewing (when most viewers switch on the TV). I scan the channels to find Top Gear being show (my all time favorite TV show). To my horror I see its 7 years old (12 seasons ago).

I saw it 7 years ago, why can’t they show something more current….like maybe from 2 years ago. Current season would be GREAT, but I would settle for 2 year old episodes.

SABC 3, is currently airing more up to date episodes of Top Gear during prime time.

This is why people rather give their R600 to MWEB uncapped and download the latest seasons (from MWEB servers of course). DSTV aren’t giving the public reasons NOT to download, in fact they are giving the public no choice.

Its not just the Top Gear programme. My other favorite is Time Warp. Here too season 1 is being aired AGAIN on prime time, while season 3 is currently available.

For the record, I don’t have an MWEB account and I don’t pirate Top Gear or Time Warp episodes.

I know, I’m really behind the times if I’m only posting my first YouTube video NOW.

The thing is, I’ve waited for posting something thats worthy of posting and something that I really enjoy (and hopefully others will too).

This breathtaking drifting duel was taken at Killarney Race Track.

I applied for a home loan through a bond originator. Herewith the comparative rates offered by the banks:

I’ve been a loyal Standard Bank Customer for 30 years and twice they have responded with the worst home loan rate, forcing me to choose another bank for my home loan!

I’ve been told numerous times by the Standard Bank call center and my bond originator that I have a very good credit profile and I’m a Titanium customer (meaning I am one of their “valued professionals”).

Why does Standard Bank offer the the lowest rate discount and essentially tell me they don’t care to give me a home loan and make money off me?

Standard Bank have made it very clear that they don’t value 30 years of loyalty to them and would rather I take my business elsewhere.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do!

This is a short post with a quick message:  Do NOT sign up with Axxess Express Uncapped (the R496 deal) because they throttle your line so that its useless.  Below are 2 speed tests, conducted 30 minutes apart. at roughly 9pm today.

Axxess Express Uncapped Speed Test	MWEB Uncapped Speed Test

As you can see, the speed differences are astounding.

I too decided to get on the bandwidth wagon and try out the uncapped offerings that sprang up in the ADSL market.  Mweb started the trendat R520 p/m  and soon afterwards, other smaller ISP’s undercut Mweb’s prices and offered the same uncapped offering.

Axxess was one such company who I signed up with.  For 2 months now I’ve decided to stay put and wait for the dust to settle and any teething problems with the SEACOM cable to be sorted out.

I have a 4MB line. While with Telkom, my speed test was 3.4 MB/s  That’s practically full line speed.

With Axxess Express Uncapped (the R496 deal), my 4MB line has been throttled to useless speeds.  My upload rate is better than my download rate. See the speed test taken this morning.

I contacted them and they said that the uncapped offering is not meant for heavy downloading.  If “heavy downloading” means not being able to download emails while browsing the a webpage then you must be the most idiotic ISP in the country.  It used to be Telkom that were ripping the country off.  They still are, but now we have the smaller companies piggy backing on the IS backbone who have found a way to do the same.  I would rather go back to Telkom and pay more, and get my full line speed back so that I can watch a YouTube video without it buffering.

Whatever you do, DO NOT SIGN UP WITH AXXESS’s UNCAPPED ADSL OFFERING!!!

As a line-manager of one the top performing companies in South Africa, I receive many CV’s a month. Having been in the IT business in Cape Town for 15, you realise that Cape Town is actually a very small community as far as IT companies and IT professionals go.

Its quite common that you’ve worked with somebody before.  You’d be stupid to leave on bad terms or create a reputation for yourself that could damage your chances of employment down the line.

Two incidences are worthy of mention:

Pitch for work on your first day

One high-profile candidate accepted an offer in one of the previous companies I worked for, signed on the dotted line but simply failed to pitch on the starting date.  That same CV is back on my desk this week.

Don’t sue, unless you REALLY have a strong case

The other incidence doesn’t involve me but it certainly could later.  A software developer is suing a very high profile company for discrimination and unfair termination of employment.  He goes into great detail (much of it petty detail)  and wants payment of something like R70 000 000 for compensation of dignity and loss of earnings.

When this CV makes the rounds a few years later, what are the chances of somebody employing him for trying to “topple” a large company on flaky grounds.  (I used the word “topple” because that’s what he says he’ll do on his website.)

If he wins the case I guess he’ll never have to work again.  If he doesn’t win the case, he might never be able to pay the counter lawsuit.

Facebook is a wonderful tool and has helped me get 2nd opinions on potential candidates many times. I have many friends on Facebook, especially in the IT business. So simply typing in the candidates name, tells me which friends we have in common.

Turns out this person only has 24 friends on facebook.   Not many by any standard. Doesn’t say much about how many people want to be his friend.

I’m dying to mention this person’s name but because this is a high profile case, I probably shouldn’t and don’t want to damage the poor soul’s reputation even more.  He could well try to sue the pants of me!

There is a website with full detail of how he was discriminated and even publishes the legal document.  I’ve tried googling the site but it isn’t listed. Maybe he wants it that way.