PolarLava::Blog

You might have noticed that things look  just a bit different around here!  ;)  If you haven't…well then you must be blind and or using a screen reader.  In any case, it was time for something new and I've finally gotten a decent logo (via Rob) from Erik Eggleston at Eggleston Design.  So I've now rethemed everything to coordinate with the colors in the logo.  You should note a new icon in your brower's address bar also.  I think I've weeded out all of the old color scheme, but let me know if you stumble across anything odd.  I may tweak things a bit, but for the most part I think it's pretty well "there".  Feedback is always welcome.

Here's some funny holiday amusement for you…Pimp My Nutcracker.

And here is yet another example of the pitfalls that occur when you don't host your own blog.  You get Big Brother censorship with no recourse.

This is just one of the reasons I —and you should, host your own blog.  The only one that can tell you what you can and can't link to are the voices in your head.  Want to take back control of your own thoughts?  Then I'd recommend you bounce on over to PolarBlog and exercise your freedom.  (Yeah I'm biased, but why should I plug anyone else's work over my own?)

How can you not find humor in santas who "urinate on passing cars and smash beer bottles"?

This isn't what I intended to do this morning, but the pinheads at LocalNet made the decision for me…

So now that I've completed The Quest for DSL, I cancelled my very pathetic dial-up access via LocalNet.  Actually at this point I should say "I attempted to cancel…" because these asshats who call themselves an ISP can't even accept a cancellation via the internet!  Of course they were more than willing to sign me up over the internet without any problems, God forbid you should want to cancel.  Nope, we wouldn't want to make that easy.

After getting my DSL working the other day I went to their website and sent the following message to their "Customer (We Don't) Care" department:

Please cancel my dialup access effective 1/1/2006.  If you need to contact me further please send it to kevinp AT polarlava.com as I've never used the localnet email account.


Regards,

Kevin L. Papendick



And in return I received the following reply this morning:

Dear LocalNet Customer,

Cancellations can be accepted only by written confirmation through a letter or fax. Please include the account holders name, LocalNet Username, reason for canceling, and the signature of the account holder.

Letters can be mailed to:
LocalNet Corp
287 Commerce Drive
Amherst, NY
14228

Faxes can be sent to:
716-210-1052

All accounts are deactivated at the end of their current month of service.

Thank you,
LocalNet Customer Service
1-888-488-7265
Hours:
Monday through Friday: 8:00 AM - 1:00 AM (EST)
Saturday & Sunday: 8:30 AM - 8:00 PM (EST)

What?!  I can signup and cancel web hosting with companies all across the country, but I can't cancel my ISP that's only a few miles away?  Like I said, "asshats".

So in order to put this nightmare behind me I've sent them a letter as requested including all the problems I experienced with disconnects and non-responding connections.  So if you're doing research on LocalNet - A crappy little ISP you never want to use, consider yourself warned.

If you're still interested and looking for more, you can read more LocalNet horror stories.