Taxes Due

The Dreaded Deadline for Taxes … I hope to be done before then!

Greatest Company…

… in the world!

http://cbs5.com/investigates/local_story_103023852.htmlÂ

Another fine an example of Apple loosing touch with reality - I remember the good old days when companies sued you if you even wrote their name (ie. Palm Inc. / Blue Cross) Good times. Go 3rd grade girl, go! Fight the man!

Good Stuff!

Mark 8

33 Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. “Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works.”
34 Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how.
35 Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self.
36 What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?
37 What could you ever trade your soul for?

Some good bible readings tonight, just had a odd night, friend’s server had some hacking done, which of course makes me a tad uneasy to say the least as for them it is 1 server, for me it’s 4, and 2 others which I manage - so needless to say I am wrapping up the night with some good time in prayer, and bible time.

This verse above hit home, reading it in The Message really did take it from the more “classic” memory of it “Get thee behind me Satan!” and make it hit home even more - lately at some level I have lacked on my work, the things God has blessed me with, I have been putting off some changes because part of me feels ready to do them, another is worried about losses, issues, errors, things essientally out of my control - aka trying to keep myself in the driver’s seat, as the message so quaintly translated it.

For over 6 years of business I have kept busy, late nights, long days, sometimes never seeing friends, etc. many reasons I could go into as to why, but if you read my blog on a semi-regular basis, you’ll know my problems with Anxiety, various secret sins, etc. recently things have flipped in realm of priority, and a plan formmed up so awesome, I was moving forward with it, till business got busy, lots of clients chimmed in needing me on projects, etc. Well as of 5 minutes ago, I am on a project freeze, I need to finish what I have on hand, and I need to start moving clients slowly but surely from their current servers, to ones managed by an outside source - I love working on servers, it has gave me great joy these past 6 years, but the bottom line is, it’s a stress I don’t see as a priority - by that I mean I can’t keep up - this company can, they have proven themselves to me hosting some test sites, no outages, no visible hacks, no issues.

Could I keep hosting my own servers, do all the management? I suppose so, and I am praying about keeping 1 server max, and having a backup DNS server here in Bakersfield (if the issues with the office line levels out - more on that another day) - but my priorities have shifted, what was once a desire to hide away, work, work, work - as the scripture said:

What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?

That is so true, I have gotten a lot of things, I have fun toys, great gadgets, and technology galore, but it’s only been in stepping out of this work lime-light that I have truly had a chance to live, be me again, hang out with friends, work on projects of personal nature, heck see more of the carpet in my bedroom and office than I have in years (not entirely clean yet, but still working on it) and enjoying music again, taking real time to sing in the car at the top of my lungs, and get them (my lungs) back in shape, so who knows - the thought alone of not worrying about outages, crashes, hacks, etc. peace of mind and then some, which is definately key in taking a road trip as I’d be at times without net access, so I’d hate to be on the road in the middle of Oregon and find out “3 servers are down!”

So, simplify life is my plan, stop focusing on what I want, and really strive towards what God wants, now that my Anxiety is less than it has been in several years (PTL!) I think it’s time to plug back in at a church, not sure where, maybe with the rents, maybe somewhere with none of my family about. Time will tell, but as we hit this Easter weekend, and for Christians remember the sacrafice Christ made on the cross, trading his life for ours, and defeating death, it’s just a good time to really reflect and re-grasp the gifts God has for us on His path - may be ruff sometimes, but as many scriptures and many musical tunes have noted never said it’d be easy, just said we’d never be alone - or as a more modern artist has recently recorded and brought mainstream “Jesus take the wheel”

That’s all I got for this evening, which was to be waffles at denny’s at midnight, but instead turned into a awesome evening all the same! (I still love you Jake & Matt) - Today will bring about getting my Taxes done, as well as some other misc. work towards writing up to clients about the change, and praying more on keeping a core server for SSL clients (shopping carts, etc.) and getting the ball rolling for next week to move forward on all of this. God is Good! Thanks for reading.

17 hours ago…

…. I got the most interesting search result ever - I mean I get some weird ones now and again, some searching for Chuck Brown . com etc. but this one… it stood out: porn distrubitor

I have no idea why/how/etc. but I am #6 in the Google search - the link is a little out of date as it points to the old link format.. but it is refering to this post [link] - who knows… but one thing is for sure, not distributing porn, so if your looking for some, you get nothing, not even Kitty Porn, as my family’s cats are not that way.

One project down…

… so many more to go. Oi.

Taxes are getting there, still crunchin numbers, and seriously considering Quickbooks and trying to find some happy way to keep the web based stuff sync’d with the print copy goodness - that way I can track everything a little smoother so when tax time comes around next year, I don’t have to do the usual game of doing the books.

Got the server setup finally, nearly 20 hours of my life dedicated to a single project, a nice payment recieved today for that work, and a very wow’d teller at the bank, it wasn’t the largest check I have ever deposited, but for a single “quick” job, it was pretty darn good. Client was VERY happy, and enjoyed the inter-office emailing + shared contacts & calendars, so may be able to distrubute it out to more clients, granted, not the same paycheck as it was to set it up here, but still, deployment now would be a little more streamlined as I spent an extra 2 hours upgrading Outlook for this client.

Update on Rosie’s fam, her dad made it safely to Mexico, her grandfather doesn’t look too hot they say, but at least her Dad gets to be with his dad again for even a short time, so prayers have been greatly appriciated.

But for now I guess, that’s all thats on my mind.. thinking of wandering off now from the PC for a while, enjoy some time not looking at this screen… time shall tell.

I need food.. I think.

My eating habbits have been odd lately, some days I go without eating entirely, some days I eat 2 big meals, not “healthy eating” according to my trainer - but then again, haven’t seen him in a few months either So with all that said, I think it’s time for lunch

I have now re-done the server I have been working on 4 times, and 4th time was the charm, Fedora’s RAID facitlites were angry with me, and I with them, but after some poking, prodding, I have RAID1 working, Scalix working, Samba working, it’s a little slow with the software based RAID1 - but the onboard Intel set was software and worthless from the linux standpoint without some love after the fact.

All in all though a nice product, should be a semi-smooth deployment tonight, not sure about how the PDA will sync in, but we shall see! Anywhoo - food beckons my stomach!

That’s what you get for playing around….

…. it’s like that old line “you’ll put your eye out!” or “don’t touch that its hot” a few years back I had been playing with CafePress.com, makin shirts, hats, etc. Sold like 6 things total, but when CMC saw I had made a bear, they used it at GMA Week time and time again.. this year no different - but thought it was cool that my more or less arrangement of this silly bear has got to visit with various CCM artists:

It’s pretty cool however GMA week as a whole probably caused me more headache this year than any… lot of strain on the server, lot of blips, and irritations from piddly to fun stuff like the hotel blocking CMC’s server entirely… go figure - needless to say I feel like it’s time for a vacation from CMC, more or less have left various things at a stand still while I rest, have a wonderful day planned, even have a fancy movie day with friends all lined up, and trying to avoid as much work as possible, but I am sure someone will have something for me sooner or later in the day.

Anywhoo - that’s my rant for the evening, if you want more CMC GMA photos, they are raw, and online at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmcphotos/

Sure sure, we have a whole gallery in the works on CMC, just need to change some path’s and it’s all live and online - may even do it before I crash, in which case, just hit the photo gallery link and you’ll see anything and everything that’s on the flickr account.