A little less rant, a little more rave.

This weekend, Jock was giving Jac a little footy-team captaining pep talk. The advice basically boiled down to: "In one hand you have a stick. In the other, a carrot. You need them both. Keep the stick close at hand, but always use just a little more carrot than stick."

I love a little rant and I love a little rave.
I certainly keep one in each hand.

But if the advice holds true, (I'm stretching the context here; go with me) life's better if you're always throwing a few extra pennies in the rave jar. So get excited and stay tuned.

Today, however, I will continue to rant. I am justified and I am shocked and I must share these feelings with you, oh infinite, readerless universe!

Back up.

Remember when the iPhone 4 was released and the plans changed from unlimited data downloads to different plans with different gig thresholds? Sneakity sneaks. If you're not careful, they'll backstab you with overage charges. Now imagine that this same process applied to all WiFi. Imagine that when you install a router in your home or office, every time you watch a YouTube or buy a song or Skype with a faraway friend or spring for a late-night iTunes movie rental -- all of those practices chip away at your download limit.

It's garish. And it's reality in Australia.

(I found out about this reality after deciding I needed to watch all of the Harry Potter movies before the seventh one came out last November and rented them off of iTunes and sucked the entire family's internet experience away for the month. Really cool introduction to the new family you'll be living with for the next year, Hannie. Really cool.)

Because this system is just so absurd to the humble American mind, I've found it quite difficult to start thinking in MGs and GBs. While I did learn that downloading a whole album is about 2GBs, how much would an hour of streaming Grooveshark be? Watching an episode of Farmer Wants a Wife online? These are the questions I ponder.

As with most people, my bosses (at the small not-for-profit where I work three days a week) don't check their plan often. I made a (subconscious?) decision not to find out -- because I live by a simple mantra: forgiveness is better than permission.

Well it turns out the office only had 10GB.

And the bills were not pretty.

(It's not all my fault, since this plan is shared by four people, [insert excuse], [insert excuse], [insert excuse].)

So as a peace offering, I offered to go into the ring with the beast to get our plan upgraded, streamlined, bundled and cheapified. How hard could it be? Call up the large, presumably professional phone/internet company and get 'er done. Rightio, mate.

Kaz gave me a hug before I made the first call. "I once wanted to change the name on my account. It took 26 phone calls for me to give up. The name never changed."

My first call was an hour and a half. There was talk of filling out forms, submitting paperwork and I was told I would "know something more in 3-5 business days." Those days came and went and I called back to check the progress. Turns out all of my requests had been rejected and they were never going to tell me if I hadn't called back. Cool. Even better, the customer service rep couldn't even access my account, because their system had been upgraded and none of the accounts from the old system were migrated. "So you're telling me that your job is to access accounts and you physically can't do it?" "Right." "Wow, so your job must be really horrible, huh?" "Yeah, it's pretty awful." The only solution she came up with was for me to physically bring my bill to the Telstra store and try to get one of the reps to sort me out.

Jock, suitably riled by this scenario and not close to giving in, revved up the Kluger and we jetted off to the closest retail store, where we descended on an unsuspecting business plan consultant about 27 seconds after the shop opened. She sympathized with our plight, but things weren't looking hopeful when even she had to give recorded voice commands and landed in a call center in India.

Today, three emails and five phone calls since then, I finally raised our gig limit to 50/month.

At least I hope I did. It was hard to tell with the din of Chennai in the background, but I think I heard the guy say it's going to take 10 days for the order to be processed. Kaz suggested that maybe this is because they transport the reams of paper forms on camel back, which I would say is a viable option.

The last time I tried to call our consultant, her assistant told me she had a concussion on the way to work (surely a violation of employee health disclosure of some kind). If it's true, I hope she seizes this as the perfect exit from a horrible job.

I'm literally stunned that Telstra is in business.
I can guarantee I'll never take Pandora for granted again.