Today I experienced the ‘caravan’. Nearly two dozen people traipsed into my building and inspected my apartment. They were only there a couple of minutes, and then a photographer took some photos and they all buggered off.

But now apparently since the auction is this Wednesday, they want to bring people through today, tomorrow and Wednesday morning. And since I work and can’t always be here, they want me to leave my keys at the front desk so they can get in whenever they like. The people on the front desk are quite pleasant, but on the whole, not very competent. There appears to be little communication between them, and I’ve experienced them losing track of my courier parcels several times. I’m not very inclined to give them my keys. I also just don’t like the idea of people coming into my apartment without me being here.

I believe the Residential Tenancies act says the owner/agent is allowed to enter the place at any reasonable time to show a prospective purchaser, but they do need my prior consent. I’m not allowed to unreasonably withhold that consent either. Is it unreasonable of me to insist that I’m here whenever they let people in?

Last Tuesday morning, a dozen people walked into my apartment while I was in the shower. If you take one step inside the door of my apartment and turn your head to the right, you are looking straight into the shower. It was pure luck that that morning the bathroom door was more closed than open and they didn’t actually see me. I normally don’t bother closing doors since I live alone.

It was also pure luck that I wasn’t singing at the time. I normally sing in the shower, but it just so happened that I was brushing my teeth the moment they walked in.

The dozen people were real estate agents. My apartment is up for sale at the moment and the company selling it does what they call a caravan, where all their agents go and look at the new listings or upcoming auctions. It generally happens on a Monday morning, but it had been canceled three times before (usually with little or no notice given to me). After they canceled the previous Monday, she mentioned contacting me to reschedule for the following week but they never did. And since they hadn’t contacted me, and Monday was a public holiday, I’d figured it would be the following week instead.

What I didn’t expect was them to just walk into my apartment at 10:30am on a Tuesday morning. I have the only key to the property, so they’d convinced the hotel staff that they had permission to be there and to let them in. And to give them some credit, at least when they realised I was there, they backed out the corridor again. I told them to give me two minutes to get dressed but they couldn’t wait that long and left.

To be fair, they had tried to call me at 8:30 that morning but my phone was flat. When I woke up on Tuesday I’d put it on charge and then got in the shower, so didn’t get the missed call messages until too late. But not being able to reach me, they apparently decided to just come on in anyway.

Everything about this process of selling my apartment has lowered my opinion of real estate agents (if that was at all possible).

I know, I know, I post way too many YouTube clips. But this one is really short and very funny.

Hat tip: Dwindling in Unbelief

When I started this blog in 2003, I signed up with kiwiwebhost as my web hosting provider.  They were excellent - accounts were set up within minutes, requests were actioned within an hour even on evenings and sundays.  They were cheap, at $1 a week (+GST) for 10mb space & 1gb bandwidth, when many other providers were charging $15-25 a month for the same package.

They even sent you a free Whittakers Peanut Slab (good honest chocolate) when you signed up.

I didn’t notice any difference in service when in 2004 they were sold to iServe.  They continued to offer the same good pricing and good service, and I still happily recommended them to clients and friends.  Things do seem to have stagnated a little bit.  Their space and traffic on their plans hasn’t increased in years, despite both space and bandwidth becoming cheaper, and their versions of php and mysql are a couple of years out of date.  Still, they have rock solid hosting and great customer service.

So, it is quite sad that I am now planning on cancelling my kiwiwebhost accounts and moving to another provider.  You see, all my sites have outgrown the 10mb allowance, and so I am paying $5 a month for 50mb extra across my sites.  I needed additional mysql databases and so I’m paying an extra $1 a month for those as well.   This all adds up to over $250 worth of hosting each year, not counting the domain registration costs (and kiwiwebhost charges about average on those - another $250 a year).  For that cost, I could upgrade to one of the bigger accounts (or a bigger account with another provider), but they all have limitations on hosting multiple domains (and I now have at least 6 domains).

With some reluctance, I have realised I have outgrown kiwiwebhost and I have decided to switch my web hosting and domain registry to other providers.  After much searching through the hosting providers and comparing offerings, I have decided to go with dreamhost.com in the US for my web hosting.  

With 200gb space and 2tb traffic (to start with - increases weekly), there is absolutely nothing available in NZ that even comes close to dreamhost.  When you throw in true unlimited multidomain hosting on a single account (which most NZ providers don’t do), unlimited mysql databases, choice of php 4 or 5 on each domain and just about every other hosting feature you could want, they seem unbeatable.  Especially when you get all of that for less than NZ$150 and it can scale to an unlimited number of sites!  

The cost depends on how many years you pay for in advance - prepay further and the hosting is cheaper.  Of course, there is exchange rate risk - but it still beats any hosting deal available in NZ.

One thing I particularly like is their blogs, the main dreamhost blog and status update blog.  When they experience technical glitches or downtime they are very frank about what has happened and what they’ve done to fix it.  They have had some reasonably serious problems - several power failures and network issues, and a billing error that led them to bill lots of their customers for a full year in advance.  However, they have fully explained each issue and how it came about (including posting the buggy code that caused it) and explained what they have done to stop it happening again.

They also have a very clever referral program. I get $97 for every person I refer, but if I choose I can give them a discount of up to $50 and keep the other $47. So, if you want a great new hosting provider with $50 off, use the promo code THESIS50 when you sign up

And besides, how could I not like a hosting provider whose server names include absinthe, bourbon, caramello, fudge, kitkat, licorice, ouzo, schnapps, scotch, toffee, toblerone and tequila!

This blog is currently undergoing renovation. Feel free to poke around, but don’t be surprised if something breaks.

Check back in a week or so and it should all look as good as new.