random ramblings of a crazed nerd

So far so good, got a good night’s rest, little over 6 hours, twas nice, so today thus far its been a fun day, now that hard part…. lunch. Part of me is considering ChiliDogs …. but another part is thinking Burger King.

I really need to go shopping and buy some “meals” not just “things” - though the Corn Flakes this past week were delightful.

Well tomorrow a few webservers covering the WWDC will be pounded as his Steveness talks most likely the next version of OSX, so we shall see what happens there, my big Apple related announcement tomorrow is a 2GB stick of RAM for MyFruit, taking the MacBook Pro up to 3GB of ram, should be a nice jump.

If your lucky enough to get to see Doctor Who Season 3’s latest episode, the idea of time travel is well shown, with a nice story to boot. I think if I ever was offered a job in the UK, it’s one of the big reasons for going I have Season 2 Disc 1 & 2 right now from my Blockbuster Online, I am planning on purchasing them all for real one day

Anywhoo -  doing some research on a project to integrate some various things together, so far no 100% luck, already have some code in my head though - have some rough ideas I am going to put down on paper this week too for the 8 Only deal, so lots to do this week, hopefully I’ll get some sleep this week Have a Good Week Folks!

Well after being sick the last two days (don’t blog sick -or- tired) I am feeling loads better, and prep’d for this week’s hosting drive, going to offer 8 packages a month - once those 8 are gone, they are done, each month the amount will reset, and the game begins again - I am considering making it the standard account packages, and just re-doing billing entirely (sounds fun right?) - but one step at a time.

Also looking at re-arranging the hosting environment, getting a larger pipe, a larger backup system, and a larger range group of customers - I have been throwing the idea around in my head for months, but only about a week on paper, going to make some calls this coming week - my hope, my goal, is to get things moved around easily, and with as little disruption as humanly possible - thus allowing me to migrate customers, servers, and hardware as needed - going to talk to a networking buddy to see if my concept of a load balancer or a high-end switch could re-direct entire groups of IP space to help ease the migration to the new IP’s as new DNS propagates.

About 6 years ago I picked up one of my first FH customers, a site hosted on a free “fan-site” hosting, and brought them over to my new hosting, and for 6 years this gal has hosted her website with me thru the ups and downs, gone to experimental servers, gotten more perks than I can count, and has kept a wonderful site - however she is stepping down from her site. I imagine the combo of that dreaded “real life” sneaking up with College/Work/Etc. running a site and doing web things seem to take a backseat - so I wish Rachael all the best, and her site will be missed!

Lastly, I want to thank those who prayed for my health/work - feeling a lot better, but I do have another prayer request, for this week - I have a few projects in the pot, and I want to get a few completed, not just “another step forward” one involves a lot of coding and tweaking of PHP code, and the other includes trying to rustle up more monthly revenue to possibly buy a house, or get an apartment -  so both projects lead to that goal at some level, so prayers are appreciated.

Anywhoo going to try and get some sleep going, need to change my laundry around first though, but have a good week folks!

So hit the 8pm showing of Pirates, the show started with 9 people in our group, some left in the middle due do fussy baby I am guessing, but I got to sit next to Angel who kept tickling me! (kids are silly) but it was a fun night, a mixed day, but the night totally washed away all the junk from the day and while I’d love to vent it all, part of it is just my own frustrations in things - and such is life I suppose.

The movie was good - some said “confusing” I thought it was a good flick overall, had some “made you think” spots, which my brain of course enjoyed - but by far is the dynamic duo of Jack (the monkey) and the parrot who’s the voice of the tongue-less pirate - classy indeed, but some interesting mix of mythology, action, hint of romance, and of course, Cap’n Jack Sparrow - but while leaving, I was asked what the next flick we were going to see - options were Transformers, Harry Potter, “???” - not sure what comes out next in time-tables, so I’ll hafta refresh my trailer watching

I will say this, it is WIDE open for a Pirates 4, but I have a funny feeling they may try to make it into a spin-off based upon a character who I will leave nameless - but we shall see I imagine.

Tomorrow is the final stage of sprinkler day I think, so I should probably head to bed here shortly - but knowing me, I’ll probably be up for a few hours thinking about sleeping as I work on a project or two thats hanging around in the back of my mind - one project is coming along nicely, and if I can get it done by Monday - I hope to reward myself with an iPod or Camera Lens (leaning towards lens really).

Anywhoo - have a good evening folks.

So I have been asking around for folks to goto Pirates today, but no one wanted to go, and some folks I kept missing (ie. Jake) but today Jake caught me before he logged off to go home and said “Same group as Spidey 3, you game?” (or something to that affect) - and of course, I 100% am.

The cool thing about now having “mega plexes” here in bako, is that the one near our larger mall does big openings on ALL SCREENS - so tonight at 8pm - I will be going to the theater at the little mall, which isn’t huge, isn’t fancy seating, but:

1. I have a gift card there.
2. Closer to Home.
3. Empty when the other theater does ALL screens.

So at 8pm tonight, I’ll be seeing what happens to witty jack, I missed pirates 1 in theaters but I saw 2 and now am definitely going to see 3, so pretty excited to say the least, just hope I can get everything I want to get done today done before 8pm, which I don’t think will be a major problem, but I do hope to swing out early (3pm or so) snag my ticket, so I can just go right in and find the crew, hopefully we don’t bother anyone too much this time and I think I am going to snag some snacks and find someone with a purse to smuggle them in, and just get the essentials (ie. popcorn + drink).

Today was an okay day, taste buds are all out of wack, so ate some food, and went “ACK!” spit it out, just didn’t taste right, so I then of course went back to working, and forgot to find something else to eat, which led to woozy chuck, not too fun, but I found some cheese, so I made some quesadilla’s in the pan - has held me over and heck its 2am!

I am also working on some pricing for my services, I have some folks I help out, but more and more I feel like I am becoming a full-time employee - or at the best “on-call” where when I get a call, it’s priority sounds like “DROP EVERYTHING AND DO THIS!” - granted in most cases, I know the person does not mean literally drop everything, but at the same time they are nervous and anxious, but still had one call (of 3) in which the person wanted me to “get to a terminal and fix this” - of course I had my hands full, keyboard was covered with papers - so really irritating, but the thing is, while I love to help these folks, my time anymore is becoming scarce and in the end I have nothing to show for it, not a step closer to the lenses I’d like for my camera, that 80gb iPod, or that 52inch LCD TV I want for my wall… (okay so not really 52, but a TV would be nice in general here in my room) - so I am going to write up some support plans, 2 by ticket, 2 by phone, 3 by the hour - just lay it out, various support levels, and see if I can’t get myself a few extra hundred a month in being on-call during business hours.

Have some stuff to pick up at the ol office #2 today, a chair, a filing cabinet, and a server - other things I need to get too - but all in due time - today should be mild at best, so I hope to either get the stuff before noon, or shortly after 2 (at the latest), and I may actually at this rate have a place to put it the chair I actually “need” as both my chairs here are old, and have literally fell apart, for instance no back on this chair, and the other has no arms or back - so a new chair will be handy, also going to pick up a AC unit for my window I think, and then re-arrange my wires/power/network a bit, to be better positioned.

Lastly on the docket today, is the re-tasking of 2 servers - I have 2 servers, they handle backups (one for servers, one for local) however the one for servers is old, clunky, and needs to be retired - so I am going to take the new 200GB drive and drop it in the BfP linux box, mount it in fstab and have myself a big beefy server - might re-task the older machine as a windows workstation for a family member, not sure yet.

But thats the status of things - so I say, have a good Thursday!

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!