I’m used to tapping out entries at PolSpy on a high speed cable Internet connection. I’m currently sitting out on my in-law’s farm and connected to the Net at the blistering speed of 28.8 Kbps (with a 56K modem, no less).
This sucks.
I am utterly amazed that Kate has been able to keep up the blogging pace that she has for the past couple of years using dialup. I’ve been bugging her on and off to get satellite for the last few months, but she’s the type who is afraid to open her wallet in case she accidentally lets the moths out. So she continues to suffer along on an Internet connection that moves slower than Canada’s parliamentary process.
An Xplornet KA band dish costs about $400.00. I’m guessing installation is around another $400.00 as the dish has to be installed by a certified technician. The service itself costs around $80.00 per month.
Folks, there’s gotta be a way that we can help Kate get herself one of these high speed satellite dishes. Would those of you can’t get through your day without a visit to SDA be willing to donate a few $$$ towards Kate’s connection if she added a PayPal Donation button to the site? Would you buy merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, posters, etc.) with her art work on it from a Cafe Press store if we help her set one up? Would you like to buy some advertising space on what looks to be a well-run, very high traffic site?
Please drop a comment if you have any ideas on how we can help Kate out here.
And you really should, because at some point the ten minute page load times are going to cause Kate to snap and plaster SDA from top to bottom with Google Ads. You may think that’s not such a bad idea, but think again. Google Ads are context sensitive.
Yeah – now consider I deal with that excrutiating load time with three different blogs – and Typepad at the Shotgun takes three times the time to load as MT, for some reason.
I doubt there will be Paypal here soon, unless I can find a way to retrieve my account from the twilight zone. It has me trapped – wont allow me to access funds, won’t allow me to cancel, wont’ accept a different address, and nobody will reply to my emails.
And after Kevin Aylward’s experience of Paypal cancelling his account and keeping the money in it, is there any other service out there with a better rep?
Kate – we could email you and you could email back a mailing address for a few cheques.
While you’re in there poking around, Sean, raise that godforsaken small text-size a couple/three pixels would ya?
Georgia is a nice font face. 11px and up.
Satellite is great for download speeds.. but not always so good for uploading. I have a couple of clients that use satellite, but still hang onto their dial up accounts.. because uploading via dial up is faster than satellite.
Kate, where do you bank? I know my credit union has “hyperwallet” which is likely shared with other credit unions, and I believe the big banks have something similar. I have no idea how to make the two talk to each other but would certainly be willing to find out.
Please come up with something, Kate. I come here everyday for the news – that is at least 4 dollars I save because I don’t have to buy a newspaper. Maybe you could rent a PO Box and have e-mail “mail – contributions” mailed to that mailbox so you would not be disclosing your address. I know an artist who does that so he does not get bothered at home and so no one raids his mailbox.
When I was in small order busness, my supplyer gave me their bank number, and I just sent the money to the bank with that number on it, if one needs to confirm real fast the money being deposited, which in this case would probably not be necessary, just get a receipt from the bank and fax the receit to the other end. I can’t see having a bank number as a threat, one bank for this special work, how could anyone write the signature required to draw funds out, and if he funds are drawn out regularly, and kept the acct “broke” there wouldn’t be much to get out even if the acct was ” hacked”, but Kate dealing with her local bank the Bank would know her. Just a thought, what say Kate?
Stephen WW 2 vet, trying to be helpfull LOL
” … but think again. Google Ads are context sensitive.”
Well, Praise Goog!
No doubt there’s a government grant somewhere that we could apply for, especially if we could get Kate a temporary address somewhere east of Lake Winnipeg.
How about a SDA t-shirt with the dead animal… 🙂
Try going with Interact — I’m not sure how to get it, but I’ve seen it on other sites (not blogs, though) as an alternative to PayPal. People can simply use their debit cards to deposit directly into your bank account, but your account information stays confidential. No Post Awful to mess with. No delay. And it’s as secure as you can get with electronic transfers…
Kate’s artwork rocks. So yeah, a t-shirt (or whatever) with some of her artsy goodness on it would be A Good Thing(tm).
I’d also do PayPal — Hell, I’m one of the very few people in cyberspace who’s donated both to Colby Cosh’s and Andrew Coyne’s sites, so giving it up for Kate wouldn’t be a big deal…
I run two websites on 28.8. I know how Kate feels.
Kate: Get Netscape highspeed dialup. It is $19 bucks per month, requires no hardware, and allows you to surf 5X faster than dialup using a regular dialup modem. It isn’t nearly as good as highspeed but it is a big improvement over regular dialup.
Sell t shirts and bumper stickers. Sell copies of artworks. Put links to your helmet and tank painting work. I’ve got a tank and brain bucket that both will need paint this winter.
PayPal ain’t a good idea: cheques would be better, I think.
What about offering sponsorship of the site for a month? I’d sponsor a month once a year: $80 is a pittance for a site so valuable.
Cost of the dish and installation? T-shirts, mugs, badges—all good ideas, but they need investment to start, and volunteers to organise and sell them. KATE should be doing what she does best, not running a mail-order operation. Anyone in the Calgary area want to volunteer to help me get something organised?
Patrick
bramwell@shaw.ca
Patrick, the cool thing about CafePress is that they handle the manufacturing of the product and the order fulfillment. All Kate has to do is upload graphics and place them on products. CP will do everything else from that point forward. Best of all, there is no charge for creating a CafePress store.
I’m pretty good with Photoshop and Illustrator and I know my way around CafePress. I’ve also got a kick ass scanner at home and would be happy to scan Kate’s work for her. All you folks need to do is ride her ass until she gives in and lets us help her start making some money. 😉
PayPal seems to be hit and miss. I’ve been using it for two years without any problems, and the one time I needed support I got it. I’m sorry to hear that others have had so many problems.
Hmm .. missed this… been real busy…
Kate, if you get, or got, a merchant account I can set you up a secure contribution system, and retrieval administration. Only issue is that you would have to, by law, process your own transactions until such time it was set up for automated transactions. If you had a US postal address, it would be real easy to route it through a lot of the processors down there.
It would also be nothing to set up a form to get you going were the user fills out, prints off, and mails you the contribution, and auto-magically emails you a copy to get it started.
In Bananada they don’t allow master merchants yet, so I cannot process them for you.
I can also set you up an online store, as we have a lot of them running, but the fulfillment from your end might be a lot of work as well as product sourcing, printing ets.
You would, of course, have full administration to any of the above systems all for the total price of FREE.
Put me on the list for a ‘Liberanos are Meat’ t-shirt.
Hyperwallet is the Canadian equivalent of PayPal, and they’re pretty good!
(if the link doesn’t work, you can C&P https://www.hyperwallet.com/ )
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