In this blog entry I will post photos of our new unit, before it was renovated. It was interesting to revisit these photos, I had forgotten how bad things looked. The photos of the finished renovations are here if you missed them: Finished Renovations
Finally I have the internet again. I can’t have Optus anymore, so I have a TPG account with 500GB download limit, shaped to 1Mbps IF I run out. From September 1, TPG will have a new plan of 1TB, so I may as well upgrade to that for the extra $10. Well, then I could then just get the unlimited plan for an extra $6 from that, it’s only $75 for unlimited ADSL2+ broadband and the plan is available at my local exchange.
Speaking of the exchange, I only live 816m from the exchange, so I am getting very fast speeds. Currently I am connected at 21824 Kbps downstream and 1020 Kbps upstream, my modem stats are only fluctuating a tiny bit. These are pretty stable stats at the moment, my sync speed is constantly over 21000kbs. I won’t speak too soon in case it all becomes an awful crawl. You never know with TPG. It’s the first time I’ve had web pages appear on the screen instantly, rather than gradually download and appear.
It’s a bit slower in the real world, but not bad for on-peak 8.30pm:
I’m really late to the party with ADSL2+, but I’m loving it. Good riddance Optus! Talk about an ill wind that blows some good!
I haven’t got as much time today as I hoped to post photos today, but here they are. These photos were taken on the morning we moved in, just before we moved in.
Things to note, we have curtains now, and the colour of the floor is a little less saturated in real life. The bathroom tiles were not what we asked for originally, but we compromised. We wanted larger black tiles. The flash of the camera makes them look more glossy than they really are, the black is not so heavy in real life. With all that in mind, below are the photos of our empty unit.
There’s some pretty wild lens distortion in the photos, but that’s wide angle lenses for ya! 
I’ve moved house, or er, unit. It has been a grueling couple of weeks of packing, throwing out junk, moving, throwing out more junk, more moving and throwing away things that weren’t junk but we couldn’t fit into the new place.
Now we are unpacking and finally I have got the computers set up. I don’t have a landline yet, I am hoping the phone will be on tomorrow. I will have a new phone number, I’ve left Optus since they can’t provide a service to our new place, and am now looking into a new internet service provider. TPG’s latest deal is 500GB for $59.99. I was paying the same price with Optus for 150GB. I’ve been unsure of the reliability of a TPG service, but people who live locally said they’ve never had a problem with their TPG service. Time will tell.
Everything we own (except for our cars) fits into this small one bedroom unit. That should give a good indication to some of you of just how much stuff we had to throw away and give away. We had to hire a rubbish truck to take a big load of stuff away.
I came home from work this afternoon and found an ad in the letter box advertising one of Optus’ new broadband plans.
$59.99 = 150GB (75GB Peak + 75GB off peak).
Well, I am paying more than $90 currently for 60GB (20GB peak + 40GB off peak). That 20GB peak is the killer for me, having to make 20GB last for a month. The evening time is when I use the internet the most. 75GB would be heaven.
I have been out of contract for a while, so I went ahead and signed up. From May 22, I will start my 150GB plan. Obviously I can’t download 150GB in a month. Very clever Optus, I am really paying $59.00 for maybe 80-90GB. Unless I can think of some more things to download!