Well, I'm back. Less so given that I've got school now, but back nonetheless, barring any spontaneous failures.
Looks like my ping to the lolcat might be worse on this provider, though

--- 69.41.162.130 ping statistics ---
100 packets transmitted, 98 received, 2% packet loss, time 99063ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 125.658/176.088/282.062/37.059 ms
The frustrating thing is that the minimum time is a good 20 milliseconds faster than Pipex ever managed, but the mean is a good 20 milliseconds slower.