Well Friday was a early day, started in a little red truck, going to pick up “The Trencher!” - which was huge - and took a while to get used to, but it led to trenching the lines for my sister’s up-and-coming sprinkler system - and I must say, we did well, until about 1ish, then we were dead lol - but we got all the lines done, found a few later that were not so done - but all in all, it came out good.
Had a nice dinner that night, then I slept, and slept, till 645am when my alarm went off, to find only a server online, performing fine, and no tickets to really even note anyone else experienced outages - but the server reported that thru the day, finding out that 2 of the nodes that check my servers for outages, were having high latency thus causing the outage reports, they tweaked their system about 25 minutes ago to do a 3rd check from a good node before sending me another txt msg. - so pretty happy to not have another 25 txt alerts while I am sleeping tonight!
So that’s been my weekend, mildly stressful with the server stuff, but all in all, things are going smooth, and I have some plans for the servers this week, finally ironed out a server blip while watching the servers tonight, going to fine tune the order and make it happen slowly over the process of the week if the server I worked on has no issues for 48 hours.
Things with me are good though, someone commented the other day that I seemed “not okay” but it was IM, was just short as I was exhausted and about to pass out, plus had a trouble ticket poking me - so been mildly distracted by work - but that should cool out in a few days as things level out, this new server system has me excited, and the idea behind these two new plans, and making billing down to only 4 plans total, super small, normal, large, and domain package - is really exciting! Should excite some customers too - as they will see some benefits - at first only those who are new sign-ups, but long-term, everyone will slowly move-over - step by step.
Anywhoo - midnight draws closer, I need a bite to eat here since, but then its off to bed, have a blessed Sunday folks - and if anyone is interested in doing Kosmos every 3rd Friday of the month, let me know!
Boy howdy does it. So I am going to go and crash out now, or at least try my best to, tomorrow I am helping my sister trench her back yard for sprinklers! Pretty excited, as we found the wiring & line for sprinklers that her builder said was back there, only he forgot to mention, under about 2 feet of dirt (wire too) - but we found it, and my dad figured it all out in his head, we bought the supplies, tomorrow at 6am, I’ll head to get my sister from her house, we’ll snag the trencher @ 6:30am, then at around 7:30am - we trench.
Quite a day, got some good work done on the billing front again, some was already in motion by the time I woke up, the latest hosting solution looks good, good support, good uptime, pretty excited actually, just going to pray on it a bit more, and see what becomes of it, as the last one left me with a sour taste in my mouth - no names mentioned as the solution seems to of not billed me in the end, going to call on Monday and confirm, but so far I am walking away happy and simply wishing them the best.
Non-Work related, I am doing good, granted not as much time out with friends lately mainly because I am focusing a lot on business work, but at the same time its finals time it seems, plus were coming quickly on Summer Break - so soon, folks will be free again for late-night hanging out (aka teacher friends) and hopefully I can get a group of my camera friends locally to go on a nice photo day somewhere fun, thinking the park or the lake (boat races?) could be fun, but hopefully, by the time that comes around, I’ll have some things re-arranged and flowing good!
But that’s it for me tonight I think going to drop in a dvd, curl up on the couch, and wait for the alarm to buzz @ 6am. Night folks - have a awesome Friday.
So following up on my last post a bit about the hosting system that made me cry? (okay.. not cry - but weep softly in a manly, viking sort of way) - I searched around for something similar, something managed, something setup a tad more to my tastes with great features, great backbone connections, and well cool things like Quad Cores, 6GB of Ram, lots of storage, and cool programming language functionality - and I think … “think” I may have found it, and needless to say I am excited.
First round of testing is coming up, and going to offer some BIMBH Specials (Boy Is My Brain Hot) - I have been actually considering these for a while, in a effort to expand up to this functionality for customers, but it leaves me with one downside, I can’t “guarantee” backups, so with that said the idea is to increase space greatly, on two basic packages 1/2 GB and 1GB in size - granted for most “common” sites who are only doing HTML and some database driven goodies, backups will be swift, but for those NOT and have a lot of media (audio/video) thats where backups can get gum’d up.
Lots on my mind about this, but strangely I think for once, even with as much as there is on my brain, I am ready to goto bed - but the specials are coming up, have a FH newsletter going out, new billing system getting all lined up, and if all goes well, and billing levels out (caught up about 15 customers today, waiting on more emails back) - but if all goes well, then I’ll get a test setup of this other hosting system, and go from there! Woohoo!
Anywhoo (<- thats how you know I’m wrappin up) - I am off to bed, or as I like to call it, putting in a DVD and waiting till I pass out on my couch. Night Folks.
Well some things came across my desk about a week ago with some potential on a new hosting platform which could really benefit both myself in the realm of time spent monitoring servers to the size of accounts customers could have - and needless to say I was stoked. The profit margin was nice, and would give me a little pad in the pocket to help pay off some investment bills in the company, and also have some for savings - so I wanted to get a test drive in to see how this wonderful system worked!
It didn’t.
Even with several positive reviews by companies I trust, I must say my experience has been anything but stellar, and I recall now all the reasons, that I decided to get going in hosting myself. Many functions were simply not there, things were made more complicated by not having features like PHP running in Suexec mode, and shotty FTP server which at times even prevented me from deleting files - and this new “control panel” functionality was very much lacking, and I found myself barely 9 hours in, regretting putting down the money to test the system, so I emailed the company asking for a refund, as even this morning similar issues were still around, and I am still barely 24 hours in.
So what I had hoped would be a nice benefit to myself, my customers, was indeed too good to be true, and thus I am back where I started, a few other avenues I plan to explore of course, as the world of hosting tech is always changing, and while I am very blessed with my current setup, I am always wanting something more for my customers, more stability, more enhanced infrastructure, etc. and while I would love to sink another couple 10’s of thousands of dollars into totally revamping things, I simply don’t have the money to throw that into, with the above system, it was set, it was created, you just leased the space - so much cheaper than doing it myself.
So the search continues, I really want to find a system that I can migrate customers to that will give them the greatest benefit, and I can provide them with greater resources, security, stability, and value, granted there are hosts out there now officially offering terabytes of storage space - I would at this point settle for giving customers standard sizes like 500MB and 1GB for affordable pricing, but sadly for now, that’s a ways away it seems.
The day goes on, aside from work research, had a fun dinner with Dan last night, tonight I have a meal with Kynan, and Wed. I have a meal with some un-named people possibly (long story) - but things are going good, getting some fair personal time in too, so trying to find/keep that balance of work/play Anywhoo - 9am, back to it, been up since 6am… ah the joys of being me Have a Good Tuesday Folks.
Well it was bound to happen, Vista really just bored me. I know it was supposed to be the greatest “WOW” for Windows since VB3, but it just got old for me, no real “WOW” for me that I haven’t had in Linux or Mac for a while - and I won’t be doing away with it, just not devoting a big workstation for it, bare-bones is the plan so I can do some screen-casts for Vista customers.
Enter Ubuntu (7.04) - a very nice release, good features, and I must say, a much quicker install than Vista was for me, even doing all the updates Ubuntu - it was done in quite a flash, so having 200GB drive on board, I started the process of backing up the iMac, and getting all my Music & Photo’s rsync’d off to the linux box, onto music now, all 29GB of Photos backed up (yes yes, im a photo bug) - but Ubuntu runs really smooth, even have a DVD on behind me now.
I also think I figured out the Router problem, was moving the power strip it’s on today, and the plug was falling out! So I changed it to a wall plug, and it seems to have stabilized quite well thus far, but I was starting to think between the Mac’s the DIR-655 did not agree with it, but so far it’s all leveled out, even the Wifi on the Ubuntu box works great - so a fun day as far as all my nerdy stuff is concerned.
Mothers day was actually yesterday @ the coast, had a nice lunch, hung out with my brother and his family, twas fun fun but now I head into the new week, Monday and Tuesday night both taken up, probably each night this week are going to be taken, as a few people want to chat with me about things, but hopefully I’ll get some work done, and get a few gigs lined up for the month in the way of extra cash, as I am eyeing a 80GB iPod @ Apple.com - $249 (after my $50 gift card applied) so basically the price of the current 30GB iPod - so pretty excited about the possiblity, as I have the cable to hook it into the TV so would be cool to watch some flicks on the big screen
Anywhoo - rambling more and more, so going to go now and read some email, watch elf, and write a script or two for screen casts, may even record some voice work and then play it back as I work out the video recording.. I know a wild night. Night Folks.
So its 2:17am according to the clock up in the corner on the iMac, the internet is stable once again, probably need to call on it though, its getting really irritating its blink off/on every other day, probably doing upstream tweaks since they keep selling that stupid “Digital Phone” service, come on people, just sign up for Vonage LoL.
So what have I been up to? Well I found something to really make the “friends” server move forward, it’d mean a bit of cash a month, round abouts $150 not horrible, but also work-able for some other clients so probably squeeze that $50 off to new sign-ups, and friends get con’dbeggedaskedtold the option to kick in a bit a year or a month as most of the friends would get a nice bump up in resources, granted we do loose things like Fantastico, but really - if you need help installing a Wiki, Blog, Message Board… I’m your guy.
Long term this solution if pans out well with misc. tests could work well for my general hosting, I know many customers would be sad to see things like Fantastico disappear, but really in the end, my life would become a lot easier, hosting even more stable, and I’d actually be able to have a staff on-call who would answer from a toll free # for a small fee a month ($5 for unlimited toll free help) so kind of excited, thinking of shelling out some cash to test drive this system and see what it’s made of, but not sure - if I’m up in an hour… I may give it a whirl.
I think I have been sick the last few days, just sort of realized it today as it was 95 degrees or so outside, and I was cold. LOL - So got a lot of sleep, worked on projects & client issues between naps, and I am feeling better - even better enough to hit Denny’s with Jake @ 12:15am, too much food though, but it was fun and got to catch up a bit - and discuss plans to build a NOC in Jake’s garage and install the new 10×2 line there, which means I’ll be snagging some drywall to build a enclosed room for a few servers, 1 or 2 of the UPS’s from the office, and a hole in the wall for a wall AC unit to keep the enclosed space cool. Should be very nice for the servers & allow me and Jake a platform to design and develop our own projects long-term and if they take off we can simply migrate them to a dedicated server elsewhere.
So good things in motion, I still want to buy a camera lens, but for now, server bits seem to be taking up my funds, but such is the life, but this year I hope to draw a real salary from everything and get past the building phase and back into the “makin money” phase to really allow me to do some things personally I have been wanting to do (apartment, piano, gym membership where they have a pool, travel) you know just the little things
Some things on the horizon I don’t want to gush about too much just yet, but working with some friends to develop a website that is really exciting and is something I was working on in concept before even working at sites like CMC, HappyPalm etc. and with the evolution of the web I have had to tweak the plans a bit, but really for the better - so just have to push forward, part of why I like this new hosting platform, it would really allow me less time at the console on the server, more time in projects which do tend to help pay the bills a bit more
Anywhoo - time to fire up the laptop and work from the couch, so have a good Thursday folks, and remember, mother’s day is Sunday (tell your friends).
yes i am too lazy to hit the shift key, but hey shift happens. (man I crack myself up!)
So for the last 2 early nights in a row I have had a similar dream, and from this dream I can come to only one real conclusion… I need to stop watching Jericho it actually has a few of the cast from Jericho in it, mixed in with folks from my own life, and instead of a series of neuclear attacks on the US, it is global warming took its toll and my town specially is flooding and folks are going in the words of Strongbad “Crazy Go Nuts!”. Odd dream, intense, of course I always wake up at the low parts.. silly brain.
Doing a little better today, a lot of sleep, and some food seems to of helped, however I think I am going to try and head to be again before it gets too late, if not I get into trouble with nothing to do so with not much going on, I bid you all farewell, time to go and count the lights on my router and goto sleep. Night.
Posted on 9 May '07 by Chuck Brown, under Uncategorized. .
Night Folks.
Anywhoo - 9am, back to it, been up since 6am… ah the joys of being me 
