Giganews was out for most of the day so I attempted to post
using Google. Don't bother. Google is slow, incomplete and
practically useless.

So, I looked around and found a couple pretty good free
news servers. The main trouble with them is you can read
but you can't post.

Here are two good read servers:

freenews.netfront.net
kastor.inf.tu-dresden.de

And here is one that seems pretty fast and reliable for
posting: post.usenet.com

Here is a good link to find more in a pinch.
http://www.canue.com/nntp/freenewsserver01.htm

S.Simon