What have they done I hear you ask?

If you've been following my blog you'll know what I mean!

The worst kept secret is finally out - Vodafone NZ will be selling the new 3G iPhone when it's launched very soon. I've known this for several weeks now but resisted the temptation to post about it but the news is now public, and I'm sure very exciting!

This is a huge coup for Vodafone NZ to have over Telecom! Vodafone's 900MHz UMTS network is going to be fantastic!

As we know BP are a bunch of idiots. They've lead every petrol price increase in the NZ marketplace for the past 18 months, consistantly raise their prices for long holiday weekends and in general shaft their customers.

People seem to have the misconception that all fuel companies charge the same price or when one raises their prices that all the others follow immediately. This is absolute rubbish! Over the recent Easter and Anzac weekends BP have had fuel prices up to 9c more than other fuel companies for up to a week.

If you're somebody who buys petrol then look around - not every site from every fuel company charges the same price. The only thing that can virtually be guaranteed is that BP *will* have the most expensive fuel.

Now you can do your bit! Visit this site and do your bit!

www.boycottbpnz.info




And for those people who have followed by blog and anti BP rants in the past this is not my site - there are other people out there who dislike BP even more than me!!


Edit: Today the NZ Herald have run both a story on pg2 and also a letter to the editor from AA. The AA are trying to distance themselves from the growing discontent with BP's pricing strategy. The reality is however that the AA can't distance themselves from BP - they are a partner with them. If the AA were serious about distancing themselves from BP they would have issued a press release last week encouraging their members not to shop at BP because they were in effect paying between 3c and 9c more for their fuel compared to every other chain. Had the AA done this I would have put money on it that BP would have buckled under the pressure and backed down on their price increase. By not doing this AA in effect were supporting BP's pricing strategy.

Don't shop at BP!

On Tuesday morning BP yet again lead the way by increasing their price of petrol by 3c per litre and diesel by 5c per litre. BP have lead every fuel price increase in New Zealand over the past 17 1/2 months.

Lots of people (including the AA) keep saying that it makes no difference who you support as they all raise their prices very soon afterwards anyway. Why is is then that 48 hours afterwards no other fuel chain in New Zealand has raised their prices to match BP? Some Chevron (company owned Caltex sites who make up about 10% of the total number of Caltex sites) did temporarily raise their price but have since dropped back.

Gull even responded yesterday by *dropping* their prices by 5c per litre. This meant you could buy a litre of 91 for 8c per litre less than the price charged at BP. This competitive reaction was matched by many other fuel companies with sites located near Gull who all dropped their prices and still have these lower prices this morning.

If you've been to BP and filled up with 91, 95 or diesel and been overcharged in the past 48 hours I'd love to know why you went there and were happy to pay more for your fuel than you needed to. Do you like paying too much for all products & services or is it just petrol? 
 

BP (Biddle Petroleum), a well established petroleum company has today unveiled plans to enter the New Zealand mobile phone market with the launch of it's subsidary BT (Biddle Telecommunications).

"New Zealanders have been paying far too much for their mobile services" says CEOCFOCTO Steve Biddle. Biddle's aim is to revolutionise the mobile market with innovative products and services never seen before, and aims to deliver 100% nationwide coverage. "We have developed technology that allows us to use every tv aerial and clotheslines in New Zealand as as cellsite, this will give us virtually 100% coverage at launch"

BT has chosen to go with it's 5G technology which is based upon the UMTS 3GPP ELTE (extremely long term evolution) technology that will deliver unparalled speeds for end users who want to download their favourite TV shows and pr0n direct to their mobile handset.

It has also announced plans to give it's service away for free. "IBM (interplanetary business machines) approached us and told us that it would cost $300 million to build a billing system" says Biddle. "We figured without this unnecessary expendature we could pass significant savings to our customers"

A full range of handsets will be available at launch which is expected within the week.

Don't call us. We'll call you.

It's happened yet again - BP have once again lead the way with a 3c increase at the pump.

My boycott of BP products has now extended to taxi's - if you're a taxi driver and use BP fuel I will not be using your taxi. I now check before I take the taxi! Support BP and I won't be doing business with you!

I'm actually getting sick of blogging about BP. By now everybody should know that they lead every petrol price increase and to be complete honest I think you're an idiot if you support their company by purchasing any of their products and services. Forget those AA reward points - they are a scam. The AA themselves are in bed with BP and won't even condone BP's pricing strategy of leading every price increase depite their claims that they "will speak out when they believe increases are unjustified"

With rising fuel prices supermarket fuel dockets are becoming extremely popular and in Wellington competition between supermarkets has resulted in discounts of up to 20c per litre over the past few months.

Pak 'N Save stores in many parts of New Zealand now have fuel stations attached but fuel discount vouchers can only be used in the store they were obtained.

Caltex will accept all fuel dockets however they won't necessarily redeem the full value - stations that participate in the scheme with have a sign outside that clearly shows the maximum discount. In many cases this is only 4c however in Wellington this did increase to 10c due to Woolworths, Countdown, New World and Pak 'N Save offering 10c fuel vouchers.

The beauty of Pak 'N Save vouchers is that you can "double dip".

Use your voucher at Pak 'N Save by entering the PIN number on the voucher but rather than throwing this away save it because it's valuable! Because Caltex accept these vouchers you can now use this at a Caltex station for your next top up and save twice with a single voucher! Just make sure you redeem the voucher before it expires, Pak 'N Save vouchers are typically only 14 days which is less than the month that other chains offer.




BP* - helping your money go further.


Note: BP is Biddle Petroleum. BP the fuel company will not save you money. They will cost you money being the price leader in the New Zealand fuel market having lead every fuel price increase in the past 17 months.

Once again BP have lead the market and today raised their prices for both petrol and diesel.

They've maintained their record of having lead every single price increase in the New Zealand marketplace in the past 17 months.

Unleaded 91 has now risen 3c to 185.9 in the major centres. Diesel has risen by 5c to 151.9 and both of these price points are new record prices for the New Zealand marketplace.

As of late this afternoon no other fuel company had announced that they would be following suit.

Not content with their price increase on Wednesday BP have once again lead the way with another 5c per litre price increase for diesel. This now means BP stations are selling diesel for 146.9, a new record high for New Zealand.

None of the other major chains have followed suit and are all still selling diesel for 141.9 in major metropolitan areas.

BP = Be Patronised (thank's paradoxsm!)

If you're following my blog and still purchase your fuel at BP I really have to wonder what you're on!

This is part III in my DIY guide to installing a structured cabling system in a new house. Part I is available here and Part II is available here


First up is configuring the new 16 port patch panel. I purchased a regular 16 port Cat5e panel and jumpered ports 13-16 together for the incoming phone line. This means there are 4 phone ports that can be patched to any of the 12 ports throughout the house. To do this I simply stripped some cat5e cable and looped the blue/blue white pairs through the 4 ports and left about 150mm of spare cable at the end.




Next up is installing the wall enclosure and regular BT phone jack. This BT jack is the only BT jackpoint in the house and also serves as a test point.









Showing another angle. Note BT socket is clearly marked as a Test Point - something Telepermit regulations state you should be doing.





All wiring now completed. I use a regular RJ12->BT adapter to plug into the wall socket. This means that to convert the existing house phones to a VoIP provider is literally a two second job - unplug the RJ12 socket and then plug this into the ATA phone adapter or residential gateway.

This RJ12 patch cable is then connected with scotchlok connectors into the blue/blue white pair that are jumpered across ports 13-16. If you are installing an alarm you will also want to connect it at this point, in this case the cable from the BT socket was run to the alarm and the return pair from the alarm was connected to the blue/blue white pair jumpered across ports 13-16.

Most alarm diallers have their own built in line grabbers and so they need to be wired in series with the existing phone cabling. Most alarm alarm installers will cut the phone cabling in the roof of the house before it reaches the first jackpoint in the house however if you do this then if you move your phones to VoIP you won't be able to use your alarm over your VoIP connection without rewiring the alarm. 
 
Just be aware that not all alarms will work succesfully over a VoIP connection however most that use the ContactID protocol should work correctly as it's actually only sending burts of DTMF tones - I do know that AlarmNZ have spent quite a bit of time testing their systems using WorldxChange's VFX service and it does work well.








Cat5e keystones and F connectors all ready to go. I just use regular PDL faceplates and PDL F connector inserts. I also use compression style F connectors and would avoid using screw on F connectors at all costs - they really are a bit of a waste of time and to be completely honest when you can pick up a good crimping tool for no more than $30 you should do the job properly the first time!

There are two mains styles of crimp connections for F connectors - radial and compression. There is plenty of debate over which is better but I personally prefer the compression connectors.





Now screwed to the wall. One important thing that you should always do is ensure that wire is looped below the socket inside the wall cavity. This forms a drip loop and means that if water gets inside the wall and runs down the cable it will get to this drip loop and drip off. If the cable is tight and runs directly to the back of the cat5e keystone or F connector drips of water will run down the cable and directly into the back of the jackpoint.

Labelling on the ports is also straight forward - TV's are just labelled with numbers and the data ports are labelled with an A at the start which is standard practice so if additional patch panels are installed they can be given a new designation such as B1, B2 etc. You can buy PDL F modules with text on them, in this case I have purchased some with TV as these are wired back to the TV aerial. Modules with Sky are also available and of course blank ones. I have one for the TV aerial and one blank as this cable is not currently used for anything and just runs back to the splitter and could be used for a satellite dish or as a return to feed a modulated output back into the main TV output.




TV wiring running back to a 6 way splitter. Note that a 75ohm F terminator is screwed onto the unused port. Ideally these should be left on the F sockets of any unused TV sockets around the house if they are wired back to the splitter to minimise interference.  





Alarm pinpad





And one of the best inventions ever - Wallmate fasteners! These are great for things such as alarm pinpads where you may not have a stud behind the wall to screw directly into. These screw into the jib and they'll take a 10kg load!






Hopefully this guide has been helpful, I know I've received a lot of good comments from people who have found it useful. I plan to incorporate all three posts into a single one and also add a few more helpful hints when I get some time over the next week or so.