SugarSync – The Black Cloud

Posted by on December 30, 2012 Comments Off

About, well, exactly this time last year I had a look at SugarSync, a competitor in the cloud storage space. They had a deal of 49.99 for 60GB of space for a year. I was reminded of this today when I got a billing receipt for $99.99 for my next year of service. This is the only communication concerning this account for the year other than the general marketing blurbs about their new and improved 2.0 beta. To further place them in the halls of evil, the receipt actually came from my billing service so I have still never been notified by the company. Neither reminder/notice before the transaction, nor even a receipt after. Nothing.

This situation is in direct contrast to DropBox, a company that sent out a nice reminder of my subscription with actual information about what would be happening, when it would happen, and how to easily make any changes as to exactly what would happen. Others such as Apple, and Skype also sent me reminders so it’s really not an unreasonable expectation.

So, I decide to dump SugarSync and proceed to their website. Looking through the options, the answer to the question “how do I cancel my account” is to email them or use the support portal. Clicking the support portal link and selecting email allows me to input the problem. Clicking submit asks me to see if my question is answered by the note “how do I cancel my account” which directs you to the support portal. We will see if they ever get back to me. This is seeming like one of those impossible to escape billing scams I had been lucky enough to avoid so far.

To at least get the account settings right for future, I then try to downgrade my account to the basic free one. This offers a warning that if I consume more space than the maximum I will be charged another $99.99 or whatever they feel like never notifying anyone about when they initiate the secret ninja billing again in 365 days. The question as to why I might be allowed to casually exceed maximum disk space is an incidental imponderable. So, to get the space down below the “limit,” I go to delete things. I had basically used the service to back up my iTunes and never touched it again so there were huge numbers of files and directories. Apparently you can see 20 of those files at a time (which is apparently not adjustable), you can “select all” and “delete” them. Okay, so now the space used is unchanged. This is because the items just went to the “deleted items” folder. Great! Just empty that? No, no, no, no, no. You can see the “deleted items” … 20 files at a time, “select all” and “delete them permanently” after clicking the pop-up asking if you really want to do that. Every click of every page, waiting for reload, and more clicking has given me plenty of time to write this consumer report … and there is plenty more clicking left to do.

Conclusion: Avoid SugarSync like the plague and use DropBox instead. SugarSync does not integrate well with iOS apps I use, and DropBox works with most everything. SugarSync billing practices border on slimy, while DropBox notifies customers in advance of any activity. It’s really not worth it to deal with a company with so little regard for customers when there are others doing it right. It’s a shame because SugarSync does offer some promising features such as the ability to sync specified folders external to a central sync directory without the linking workaround required by DropBox.

[It should be noted that I have no affiliation with either of these companies, but if you feel like checking out DropBox and sign up with this link we'll both get some permanently free additional space.]

UPDATE: SugarSync support promptly issued a refund, but then stated that they don’t issue any notifications “because you can check on the website.” Great! My opinion has entirely solidified.

Re-Textdrive

Posted by on December 8, 2012 Comments Off

After I got back from the US, I finally got the welcome mail to the new Textdrive servers. I transferred everything and got this blog up and running again. I’ll have to go through and make updates from earlier in the year, but at least the server transition went well. I had actually requested an EU server so things might have to be changed again. In the mean time, I ran into some difficulties with mail service on the new system. Reading the discussion groups led me to several comments that “it might be highly recommended” to use Google Apps for mail rather than the default local sendmail. This would mean turning over the last of any imaginary perceived control to giant global corporations, but I had a look and signed up for the free individual ( < 9 accounts ) domain service. Google Apps seemed like quite a great thing, but I couldn’t quite test it all out owing to non-access to MX records unless I change my DNS … to make a short story long … I figured there was no hurry. This morning I noticed a little Wired post entitled “Say Goodbye to Free Google Apps.” It looks like the free accounts ceased to exist on December 6th. Usually being the one to find out about such occurrences a day late, it is with thankfulness that my haste to set up mail allowed me to get one of the last remaining free individual slots before they faded away.

CELTA: Day 5; TP 3

Posted by on January 19, 2012 Comments Off

I got the first chance to observe an experienced teacher on Tuesday. It was only the first two hours of a four-hour class, but it exhibited in reality what we’ve been dwelling on the theory of quite well.

Yesterday, I had quite some difficulty with my third practice. It all boils down to a microscopic level of planning that I just didn’t have. The problems I anticipated were not the problems that occurred and that threw my timing off and made the planned activities impossible to complete. The tutor’s words really strike home now as I’m preparing for my lesson for next week: “The lesson plan must read like a recipe that anyone could pick up, immediately understand, and be able to perform.”

In the real world, my lesson would have been quite adequate, but for the CELTA program there must be a somewhat unnatural level of exaggerated clarity. It stuck me that the course is just like a driving test. You may be a good driver and check your mirrors, but during the test you must be seen to visibly demonstrate that you are checking, pronouncedly crane your neck to look at the blind spots, etc. Even if your actions in the class are understood by everyone in the class, it’s still necessary to check off all the boxes for every element of a “good” lesson.

CELTA: Day 3-4; TP 2

Posted by on January 15, 2012 Comments Off

Last week was quite something. I taught my first 40 minute skill class on gist and detail reading. It went quite well but I need to work on time management and my own voice projection. After doing the reading class in the morning we had a tutorial on how to do a reading class. The reverse planning there was not such a bad thing.

Having the chance to observe the other trainees on Wednesday was almost a more valuable learning experience than the regular “learning” sessions. The afternoon session covered learner focused activities.

Coming up this week will be my first “professional” observation, my third day , the submission of assignment one on grammar and language analysis, and an interview with a student in preparation for assignment two on learner style and motivation and how those traits inform effective lesson planning.

 

SingTel Mystery Fail

Posted by on January 8, 2012 Comments Off

I was humming along on the internet last Tuesday when the ‘next page’ link didn’t work for some reason. That’s not so unusual so I tried another site. Nothing. I rebooted. Nothing. I rebooted the router/etc. Nothing. I repeated this for hours. Nothing. I tried my mobile phone internet to see if there was some reported problem with SingTel. There was no internet there either. I tried calling support and the call failed. After dozens of attempts the call connected but the line sounded like a modem from days gone by. I finally had to borrow a Starhub phone from a friend to get through to SingTel support to be told that there is no problem with anything. Of course we had to reboot everything again and again to have a tech sent out … on Saturday! This was my first week of a class that is incredibly dependent upon being able to connect to the net!

On the side of the mobile phone at least, it suddenly started working around lunchtime on Wednesday. According to the Strait’s Times the SingTel 3G network was out for most of the country for a day and a half. And the “customer support” line just lied. On a hilariously infuriating note, after getting through for a few seconds and being disconnected, I got an immediate SMS asking me to kindly rate their service! It would have been considerably less slimy if the largest and most stable phone company in this country would have thought to send some sort of notice to their subscribers (by SMS which worked through everything) rather than lying and causing everyone somehow suddenly out of communication to try reinstalling their phone and other destructive behaviors.

Back to the internet. We have high speed fiber. All of the router lights were green. I would have been happier if they were red since that would be more believable. The tech confirmed, what they didn’t want to believe when speaking to them, that even the admin interface to the router was inaccessible when directly connected to it while all lights still happily smirked green. He replaced the router and it worked. Then it didn’t. Replug. Reboot. Works. Doesn’t. Hard-Reset. Okay. Happiness. I feel a bit bad for the tech since we still don’t know what was wrong, why it was wrong, and how on earth the lights were green despite everything being wrong. He promised to write up the whole situation in their records to that if (when?) this happens again someone might believe me. I somehow doubt they will.

For now, the lifeblood flows …