A dent in the pile

So I got onto billing finally today, and got a dent in it, by no means the size of the dent I wanted to make but shot off some emails, re-processed some billings that failed, all in all made some progress, but tomorrow if I can wing it, I want to really push more and do from Client #1 on, one by one, if their account is all canceled, be done with it, if there are standing invoices, deal with it - just get the ball rolling on all of them.

Today was a good day though overall, even got some time to jot down a plan for a website, even talked to some folk about working on it, but I am going to have a 100% plan, before I pitch it, but it seems promising, and if I can get on normal sleep again here soon, who knows, I may even have energy for it just felt wiped lately - so hopefully I can get a good night’s sleep tonight, going to go give it a whirl now.

Have a Good Friday folks, hope your weekend is relaxing!

PHP Work… yay?

So the day hasn’t really gone as planned, seems they rarely do, so this afternoon, and I am sure into the evening short of someone calling me to goto dinner somewhere else, I’ll be tinkering in PHP, two projects I am going to toy with, one is a paid projects I have gone slow on, I think I am just going to finish it and be done with it over the next few days, the other is a CMS, going to re-vamp the old system I wrote for a few clients, and tune it up for a larger-scale application.

I want to get out of the house tomorrow and do some photography weather willing, with the recent rains, some things are green, so might be nice to journey up the hill, was thinking of going to Lake Isabella - goto Ming all the time (easy drive) but the big lake is up the mountain on a 2 lane road, so its a little more of a stressful drive at some level, but who knows - it could be fun!

Anywhoo - just wanted to breathe for a moment why I was waiting for PHP to re-compile - take care all, remember My Name is Earl returns tonight, FREE EARL!

Cutting the Fat

Well tonight I canceled two services cutting over $40 from the budget a month, I think I am going to do some more with the cable here at the house, go back down to the last cable package, the “Digital” cable package was neat and all, but the only real “digital” bit I watched was Heroes in HD - but I can live with the standard bit, just trying to lower the monthly bills a few hundred dollars, and try to get my budget in check for living on my own.

One of the things to take the hit tonight, Blocksbuter Online. I love the service, it’s nice, but the price has crawled up, now making things that were standard features like “In-Store Exchange” either a mid-range priced bonus with 1-5 in-store exchanges, or a high-priced bit for around $25 a month for 3 out.. so it took the cut, but I am going to continue to cut out little things, like World of Warcraft, it dies at 3:34am - so like 2 hours left to play if I want to - but little less playing for a while I guess.

Still a tad worried about the finances, they’ll eventually bounce back entirely specially with these cuts, but I still need to get revenues up, and I know specials in October, changes in Credit Card Processing, they are all going to help, but the pinch on the coinage is now but tomorrow that is my goal, focus on the online billing, and start doing one monster audit, and probably purchase not 1, but 2 copies of the billing software, decided I am going to simply get one for each domain, get SSL & a IP for each domain, and set them up separately, sort of wanted to get a DBA for FH and make TN and it 100% different companies, but not sure yet (at least on the DBA bit) but for sure getting them setup, and folks switched over, if I can do this before October is 100% here - I can roll out the new CC processor mid-month once my app clears, and in the middle of the night cut over, would be wonderful.

So thats my plan as-is, wether or not that stays the same over the next 24 hours, is yet to be seen, but I am hoping for the best! If I can wing it, I’d love to have finances fixed up, cash-flow up at least an additional $500-$1000 a month ($500 is the bottom of the equation) - and get out to my own place, I love my current situation, but at the same time its time, I need to stretch these wings again, and have my own place - so as I have said before, anyone wanting to sponsor me lol feel free, but I am going to setup a tip jar here soon for folks again, and I am still considering my options for a community website, have some ideas in mind, a staff in mind, but instead of trying the whole “online-pow-wow” again, I am going to write up my own game plan, approach folks and go from there.

Anywhoo - thats my current bit of life as it is, thanks for reading (or at least attempting to) hopefully things will continue to evolve over the next few weeks! Prayers appreciated! Take care all - have a good Thursday!

Amazon MP3 vs. iTunes

So Amazon finally released their MP3 (DRM Free) Music store, and as usual with new store releases, beat out the price on some Apple store prices so why not take a peek and see what makes this kitten purr, and with the music being easy to use across the board I should have no problems transferring files across MP3 players or my phone for ring tones, so on with the show!

(more…)

Back Online!

Well internet is back online, and seems like they have done some upgrading on the backend, as things seem a tad more speedy:

Pretty slick, now I just need to get my IP updated across the servers, as my IP has changed (figured it would) - ah the joys of internet.

Oh Happy Day

Well as it stands, still on the cell for internet access, kind of figured I would be and that the whole “by midnight” bit wouldn’t pan out, I mean come on, lol - but all in all, today was good, got some good headway on my work area, got the APC UPS in place, so now my Mac, Linux, Modem, and Router all are on battery backup if the power goes out, just need to get the APC on the Mac so that it can know when it should shut it self off based upon it’s power levels.

But got some good thinking in today, thanks to Jon who sent in a reply to my hosting needs question, if you want do send it to me via email, that works too - but gave me some ideas his email alone of making some simple options for hosting - but even more so, I am going to try and re-vamp costs again, as usual when I try to get my budget up, or on track, it gets horribly knocked off, so right now the budget is tight, so I think after today of having no cable, no internet, it’s time to re-vamp my ever-growing cable bill back to either basic cable again (non-digital) and also for a few months, stop BlockBuster online as the local store is not easy to get to due to road work.

So lost to work on, and I am excited about Crazy October this next month, going to bring it back, and setup some PHP magic to truly setup random deals, I am going to add in a feature to limit the random deal to 1 deal per IP per day, so folks can’t simply refresh till they find the deal they want lol - but all in all I think it’ll sell some accounts, plus I want to do a big drive towards a lump of cash, try to get some cash in pocket to do some re-vamp of servers, so 2k-4k in liquid cash to do some big upgrades/changes across the board.

Anywhoo - I think I may give up here soon and crash out, coming up on Midnight, having missed the premiere of House, and the new episode of Eureka, nothing left to be awake for lol - so I may turn in, or maybe go soak in the bathtub for a while and see if I can get my back to stop hurting. Have a good Fake Friday folks!

No Internet?! OMW!

So what does one do when their internet is down? Oh relaxes… takes a nap… nothing? Naw - most of the day the internet has been down at 9:30am or so access just stopped, connections I had to servers went down, email pop’d up saying it couldn’t reach the server, and of course IM logged out of everything, so it seems I’d have no access today, but of course one thing I had been thinking about dropping from my cell phone plan, came in very handy (as it is being used now too) GPRS/EDGE on T-Mobile, the Dash is sitting over on the printer in sharing mode and a little Bluetooth PAN is setup between the Mac & the Dash.

So internet access hasn’t be stellar, but it was enough to get online and keep an eye on things through out the day, and so far so good, I just called my cable company again and the automated message notes that it will be down “most of the evening” so that translates to “See you in the morning!” which isn’t a HUGE deal, I do have unlimited data on the plan, so I am in no-risk of some major overage, and if I REALLY need speed - granting Starbucks doesn’t use my provider, I can always get a cup of tea & surf at a T-Mobile hotspot.

So prayers for the techs workin on this, they had 2 major outages today, one was a fiber cut, so I imagine a majority of techs went off on that, and now that its off the list, we *MIGHT* be back up soon, but I’m not holding my breath.

Anywhoo, off to find dinner! Or at least a snack… what to eat… what to eat…