sevenfold – Yeehaa!

We had a blast last night. It was great fun. We ended up performing about 10.40pm, and seemed to be well received. The stage was a little small but we managed to fit all 7 of us there (and Billy-Bob said they once had 14 so we’re not the largest group to play there).

The quality of the other bands playing was very good, but I think we held our own. No word from any record companies wanting to sign us up yet.

We all got a free drink voucher, but curiously they insisted the voucher was good only for a schooner of beer, even though all I wanted was a “raspberry” (surely soft drinks cost less than beer?). I bought one instead, but had to tell the girl how to make it - “just raspberry cordial and lemonade”. Yum.

On an final note, I also discovered that “pub rules” for playing pool do exist – fortunately I wasn’t the one who failed to pot any balls :-)

Looking for a new printer

I’ve decided we need to get a new printer for home/home office use. The main requirements are for black & white, with some colour printing (but not necessarily photo-quality). We’re happy to continue to get our digital photos processed commercially (eg. when Harvey Norman has a special!)

We’ve previously had a old Canon BJC-2100SP, which was never that impressive. More recently Gary gave me a second-hand HP LaserJet 2100, which does a very nice job except when it jams (which is becoming all too frequent).

One thought was to get two printers – a B&W laser and a cheapish inkjet colour printer, but talking to the guys at work yesterday, Timothy pointed out that if you don’t use the colour regularly then it can dry out. So maybe a colour laser printer might be a good option. The idea of having a network-enabled printer is attractive, though obviously you do pay more for that feature.

Here’s a few of the models I’ve been considering, and a rough calculation of the cost per page for black and white printing.

Maybe the network option isn’t really necessary. Going on the figures above, the Canon 5200 does look like a good compromise between upfront and ongoing consumable costs.

Any other suggestions?

Goodbye Domain Central, Hello GoDaddy

The domain I registered for our band SevenFold is up for renewal in a couple of weeks. I’d received a few reminder emails from Domain Central and as it was getting close I decided today to get around to paying the money.

First stop, I went to their website, but was surprised to see that their online price was now $AU17.95 for .com domains. That’s a fair bit more than the $AU12.50 they’d listed on the tax invoice they mailed me.

Not wanting to pay more than I had to, I then rang them up and tried to pay over the phone. All was fine until they repeated the amount – “Hang on, my bill here says $12.50!”.

“Sorry, our costs have increased so we increased our prices just over a week ago”.

So they refused to let me pay the tax invoice they sent to me, and insisted that it was a “mistake” – even though the invoice wasn’t due until 1st November (and today is the 31st October).

I rang the Office of Consumer and Business Affairs and they confirmed that I should be able to pay the bill I had received for the amounted printed on the bill.

Figuring that I’m not likely to have any more success ringing Domain Central back, I’ve decided instead to take my business elsewhere.