Migrating My Blog to Wordpress

Recently, several friends of mine suggested I try Wordpress. So I created an account and started a new blog: tektake.wordpress.com - My Take On Teknology.

I've spent a few minutes with Wordpress and I'm impressed. Blogger's interface seems archaic to me now. So I've decided to try and migrate this blog over to my Wordpress account. Only, I'm not sure if that can be done automatically. I figure I can at least copy my posts manually since there are only about 5 in all. But what about the comment threads?

Wateen's Sucky Service

I’ve been staying over at my cousin’s place in DHA, Lahore, for about 6 weeks now. He’s using Wateen’s monthly prepaid Internet plan (512kbps/4GB). That’s right – monthly “prepaid”. What on earth is a monthly prepaid plan anyway!? According to Wateen, you’re supposed to pay a fixed amount (Rs. 850 in our case) on the 14^th of every month or your connection gets blocked (i.e. you run out of credit). And when you do pay up, it’s like charging a prepaid account, scratch cards and all, except your account isn’t charged on usage (unless you cross your plan’s download limit, upon which they start charging you Rs. 25 per 100MB). Makes half sense to me, but that’s just half the problem.

When our account was blocked on the 14^th of last month, we didn’t pay up till the 18^th. It’s cool that you don’t have to go to their outlet to pay your monthly bill because they have scratch cards available all over the place, just like any other network operator. So all I had to do was get a Rs. 850 scratch card from the neighborhood store and recharge my account, right? Yeah, except they don’t have a Rs. 850 scratch card. Now, I do understand that they offer several bandwidth/download limit plan combinations, each at a particular rate, so it’s obviously impossible to have a scratch card denomination for each combo. But then they don’t recharge your account upon cash payment at their outlets either (maybe I went to the wrong outlet though). The cashier just gave me a couple of scratch cards for my cash (Rs. 500 + Rs. 250 + Rs. 100) and told me I’d have to recharge my account manually!

So I went home and entered the voucher numbers into the account, one-by-one. In jumps of 500, 250, and 100, their horrible web interface (http://prepaid.wateen.net) showed the Rs. -758.00 balance (??) move up above the magical Rs. 0.00 mark (what the hell!?). Anyway. Finally, I would be able to take a breath of fresh Internet. Except the Net still wouldn’t work! Apparently, I had to wait around 45 minutes before their system was able to unblock our connection.

So I charged our account on the 18^th of last month and was expecting it to work till the 18^th of this month, except it got blocked on the 14^th. I swear we cursed Wateen exactly 850 times – I went at it 500 times, my cousin 250 times, and his dad tried his best to do 100. I called their helpline and they confirmed that I’d have to pay up if I wanted the connection unblocked. What the hell are they smoking up there at Wateen!? Give me back my 5 days, CHEATS! Highway robbery!

One more thing: according to my cousin, he signed up for the 512kbps plan. I ran a speed test and all we’re getting is 256kbps. Even worse, latency is 3000ms! Pathetic!