Pray for Snow :)

Well I was browsing around, and on hitting my homepage (Google’s Customized Homepage) the weather for this weekend first predicts RAIN for Saturday, and “A chance of snow” on Sunday. Woohoo! Maybe my birthday will be white If so, its gonna be a fun birthday

That was my random thought of the day - enjoy it back to waiting on the curb for the UPS man… Go Brown Go!

Cold!

I am not sure what the weather is up to, first it tries this whole “oh let’s move into spring!” business, then it fails back to winter temps lol - wind chill alone lately has been freezing!

Some good news, my parts hit California about an hour ago, my sister’s birthday from mom hit Texas, they are all on their way… it’s all a matter of time, it’ll be nice to give the laptop a little bit of a rest, and give the new system for a test drive, getting all the software laid out in the morning so I can get things up and running as quickly as possible, and making sure I have all things like BIOS upgrades, new cables, and the case gutted/cleaned/etc. ready for the new parts.

I am sure there are other things to talk about, but I dunno, its getting late, and my brain is getting tired, so I think I am going to wrap up and do one last bit of changes on the flockhosting look and feel (changed some stuff on it today) so its all coming along… who knows might all work out after all.

A better day…

Well it started off rough, bad dreams, lack of sleep, worried about servers, but in the end the day turned out good, got away from servers, got away from email for a short bit taking pictures outside in our strange “Severe Cold” warning weather - got to help an old friend pick out her first laptop, have dinner with two good friends (fine Dining of Taco Bell @ Courtneys) - have semi-ebarassing photos of myself shown to Rosie (apparently I was “cute” in 8th grade lol) and last but not least watched Just Like Heaven (cute movie).

A good change from the start of my day, and here I am hopefully back on track for sleep schedule, and I think I know one of the things I want for my birthday now, a new mountain bike - be really nice to have a good bike, specially on top of that if I had a very RUGGED hard case or something for the camera (just in case I crash) because it’d be nice to ride out there somewhere and have the camera on hand for the wide open spaces of the great outdoors.

Anywhoo I am rambling now, and not only is my journal waiting, but now Apple’s Update is done, and it’s bouncing in the dock saying I need to shutdown or reboot - so it must be time to wrap this up - a good day, and even got some good insight as to some cool perks to kind of keep FlockHosting (not so much Thrust Networks) in a class of it’s own…. more on that by the 28th, my plan, Lord willing is to release the updated FlockHosting on my Birthday, with a slew of specials, new packages, etc. So if all goes well Friday, computer gets in fine, etc. should be good to push forward, spend maybe a few late nights working, and it’ll be a blast.

One last thing, to anyone who feels they have been ignored by me lately with email, understand my PC is dead, so I am living partially off webmail and gmail, so I am not ignoring you, just not too easy to keep up with things in real time without my always on beast (sparky you will be missed - oh and if you have a better PC name that midnite, let me know) Night kids.

Picture of the Day (2-15-06)

Took this shot outside my house, our almond trees started blooming, plus with the awesome clouds today, had to take some shots of that and get away from the computer for a bit. I do have a actual photo shoot this next week with Matt going to take some journies around town taking shots of their shirts on hot models I may even shave!

If anyone has a photo idea for me, random, location, etc. just let me know.

Nightmares…. joy joy

Well been up since 2, got woken up from a bad dream, and haven’t crashed back yet, though I am getting close. One thing I have never liked being in the computer industry as I am, is the dreams I get from it. I remember having the classic dreams, going to school naked, or falling down a mountain, the usual scary/embarassing dreams - however as a guy in IT, its always the nerdy stuff that gets me lately - in the dreams a server has been hacked, somehow I have let my self type “rm -fR /” (in other words force a recursive removal of *all* files on the linux system) - and further and farther scary stuff.

I always wake up and have to look at servers, make sure things are okay - just with a lot on my mind lately both things for good, and things for change (not really bad change, just change, and its hard change possibly) - I do find myself looking at life yet again as to where the next step in life will lead. This week had a lot planned, then Sparky died, computer has been with me, and is responsible for starting FH’s original site, and many years of management, it did it’s job, but I just keep finding myself wanting a break, wanting to escape it all, no responsiblities, only answering calls of people wanting to go do something fun (other than work) and such - just a lot on the table I suppose in possiblitiy and as well for expansion - but moving forward on it, I suppose is a tad scary like my dreams.

While I love the idea of growing FlockHosting which is part of Thrust Networks to a larger, more competitive venture, the catch 22 comes into play, pricing - anymore there are super cheap hosting companies popping up all over, the offer massive amounts of resources to end users - but in my mind, I see that as wasteful, the risk of overselling becomes a very big reality, but these big companies come and go as they usually live on Venture Capital, so once the money runs dry, they either raise prices on things which were once free, or make crazy overages fees “20 per MB over.” etc. Don’t get me wrong, some of these companies have proven themselves honorable, worthy, etc. but it makes it hard for me the small fish in the bowl to really make major/large jumps in profit margins, as I have to offer more to stay ‘close’ to their offerings.
I have great clients - never been a complaint of mine that I have whiny, rude, irritating clients, those folks come and go, but in the end my core, my favorites, those who time and time again buy services from me are a blessing and a joy to have, they make the job fun, light, and their understanding is awesome especailly as I have had increased response times with issues since I have taken a little more time lately to a personal life, but while I love giving them all deals, the catch comes in time management, if I am pushing for a personal life, I need to hire folks to come in, work on servers ( a matter of trust, not only money there ) - and help me balance the load, be able to be on-call for me when I am @ a prior engagement, have someone be there to push the buttons, make the calls on what needs to be done to get things running smooth again.

So time shall tell - if I get a more full-timeish job, to bring in more monthly wage, I may be able to use that, but who knows, again I suppose a lot on my mind, that I guess I really just wanted to offload somewhere, and since my iBook was across the room, there was no place to journal But prayers are definately appriciated - I know God has this all figured out, just wish I did! but there’s a lot of things to sort out not just business wise, but all in due time I suppose.

And that’s my rambling for the evening/morning - whatever this really is here at 4am, I think I am going to slide back into bed, and hope that in the morning my parts for “midnite” (current name for my new machine - subject to change) will be closer to bakersfield than NJ Night/Morning all

Shipped.

Well the parts are on their way to me now, as usual with any large $$ purchase I have been sitting on Newegg.com off and on today, refreshing “Order Status” and it just jumped to SHIPPED - which means by Friday I’ll have my workstation back online and operational - so definately a load off, to have it back and working.

It has been a interesting last couple of weeks, a lot of things business wise I want to move forward on, but at the same time I am looking prayerfully at my business, growth hasn’t slowed, but it has not sky rocketed lately either - so I am looking not only at services and features offered, but sizes of packages, and trying to balance the dedicated server work I do for folks, with time devoted to company work - as I have so much I started on before hand holding various companies servers, but I am going to have to put my foot down so to speak in that dept. plus my taxes are still screwed up at this point as the company in question who has the troublesome server, also W2′d and 1099′d me - and no explination as to how figures were come up with, so not sure if I need to contact the IRS in regards to this or what, but the last thing I want is a audit myself… the joys of being a responsible adult/business owner.

Some days I do wish I had a boss I worked for in all this, someone who paid me a check, and I just had a lot of control in how the company was run and such but thats a dream, but who knows, maybe someone will make me a high-dollar job offer with benefits… get that white picket fence I have always wanted… maybe even the wife and 2.3 kids ah the american dream… i think I need a nap.

If you need a laugh…

then click here:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/nacholibre/

This movie has Oscar/Emmy/Daytime Emmy/People’s Choice Award/etc. written all over it