(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

1. When livejournal changes stuff around, I feel like someone's come into my house and started rearranging the furniture. It really bothers me that the symbol on the tab is a little head now instead of a pencil! Noooo!

2. My sister and I are currently flat-hunting, and we may possibly have found somewhere, but it's a little on the dear side for her/both of us (but less so for me, I could manage it) and also trying to connect power/phone/internet sounds terrifying and we'd have to furnish the place and and and ... I am very excited to move out, but less excited to move in, haha.

3.
Actually mostly for Batman Incorporated. EFF YEAH, CASS!!!!!!!! BUT 1. I wish she'd had a speech bubble, just one and 2. can Steph please please please go to Hong Kong. Please.

Also I think mystery dude was Jason. Maybe. I hope so anyway.

4. In the car today I had this epically awful conversation with the parentals about the difference between "transvestite" and "transgendered" and included my dad saying the immortally offensive "Well we used to know lots of trannies and they didn't care if you called them transvestites" (SO MUCH WRONG WITH THAT SENTENCE) and my mum saying "What you're calling transvestite is what we used to call crossdressers!" (OH MY GOD, ETYMOLOGY, WHAT IS IT). This depresses me because by most standards my parents are fairly tolerant. I think I eventually managed to hammer in transvestites, transgender, Drag Queens, and "OH MY GOD DAD STOP SAYING TRANNY".

5. I think I had other stuff but the awfulness of that conversation sucked it out of me. Oh OK, you people can help me by telling me (if you're NZers)
- Who your ISP is, whether you like them, how much you pay for how much data
- Do we need a land line
- Ditto power companies? I've never lived with fewer than three other people in a standalone house, so I don't even know what a power bill for two people in a downstairs flat that's part of a larger house looks like.

Comments

[hazel]

We are with Telstra Clear, have a 40GB cap, and pay about $120/month for internet and landline. They're pretty cool to deal with, upfront about what it's going to cost, send me nice automated "you have reached 80% of your cap" emails, and are super, super speedy. We used to be with Telecom, but had dramarama when we moved a couple of years back.

Landline: we have one! IDK, none of us really calls people that much? But it would be really weird not to have one, plus all our various relatives use it to contact us.

Um, I can't really help with power bills. We're with Genesis and have been forever (I set up my account with them when I moved to Wellington like 8 years ago); they seem not too shit? But our power bills are massive because our house is and we made an executive flat decision when we moved to heat the place as much as we wanted/run the dishwasher and dryer/take long showers etc - like, I think our biggest one last winter was almost $600. From vague memory winter bills in our last place were about $150/month cheaper, but the house was half the size and might've had some insulation, IDK.

[labellementeuse]

Yeah, my rents are with Telstra too and the speeds are fantastic - we were also with them at my last flat. I feel conflicted because I know their service is good but I see that there's cheaper stuff out there and get tempted, and then worry about speeds. Sigh.

Hah, yeah, we won't even have a dryer or a dishwasher (which I did in my last place), annoying of course but I'm realllly hoping we can keep our bills down pretty low because otherwise IDK how my sister's going to live, tbqh. I have had a bunch of really enthusiastic recs for Powershop, though, so I think I might end up going with them.

[callie]

Another rec for powershop. I'm the type of person who really likes where my money's going. We switched when we moved to a quite different house so I'm not sure if we've saved much, but it seems to work out quite reasonably as far as power goes. If you get bored of managing it you can just wind it up and let it go so it charges your credit card at the end of each month (btw I pay all my power on the credit card which gets me heaps of points at the end of the month) though you'll miss out on the best deals doing that.

Here are our costs for two people in a 3 bedroom standalone house so far this year (per month):

91.90 93.95 137.86 153.02 159.08

Internet and phone - we use xnet (xnet.co.nz). I can't give you costing because factioncat handles that, but it means we have a VOIP phoneline rather than a regular landline, which works out a bit cheaper - it is less reliable but we're only had a couple of issues. Support over weekends can be a tad patchy though, cos it is a small ISP.

[the_antichris]

My mum's with Actrix down here, $85 for 10GB, landline and national calling. Speeds are fine, not 'oh, I blinked and Doctor Who was done' cable stuff but perfectly reasonable 200MB/s plus.

All these recs for Powershop make me wish I could switch, but I have a feeling Mercury would find a way to screw me on the gas if I stopped buying electricity from them.