So I got home roughly around 10pm tonight, quite a day, but a big chunk of it was hanging at Scott’s after work and enjoying a meal, some games, and good conversation so not much to complain about
I did meet with the insurance lady, it was nice, got some paper work, still going over the bulk of the details, but I didn’t know my employer covers ALL health insurance costs! Yowza! Very nice indeed, only things are optional bits which I am going to sign-up for, mainly Life Insurance ($8 a month), Vision ($8.50 a month), and Dental ($10), so not too shabby at all, going to be nice to have some steady insurance again, might even go in and have them check to make sure I have a brain, or on a serious note get a check up on my liver and see how it’s doing (previously it was over-working) - but nice to know the ability is there if I need it.
Got the bucket list on my Netflix, so I am going to wrap it up here and go zone out and watch it, nice end to a day, I enjoy Morgan Freeman, one of my favorite actors - not just his acting ability, but the man has an amazing voice! He could read the ingredients from a cereal box, and I’d be glued to his every word.
Anywhoo that’s it for me, oh and if this worked as it “should” this should cross-post to Xanga so folks who still for whatever reason follow me there will get to see what’s happening. Night folks!
Update: Looks like a no-go for Xanga… oh well, it was worth a try! Or it does, sadly looks like only if I post from the Wordpress Web End, no XML-RPC posting hrmm.. we’ll see folks.
So busy busy as of late, of course really, when is it not with me? I had a good weekend though, got to hit a party, watch a flick with friends, goto church and eat pizza & wedges, I mean really - that’s a good weekend for me There was a hint of work this evening… of which should result in hopefully a large check no later than Friday… but more on that in a second.
FH/TN news - this week the new mail servers should go online, going to be shelling out some cash to get some dedicated mail servers online and operational - the plan is to really help take some of the load from spam and email from the webservers and really let them do their job when it comes to serving sites & applications, load should drop a TON, so I can fit a few more folks per server vs. buying lots of new servers - does add a minor layer of complexity to configuration, but if I can wing some API magic, who knows - I may be able to write a simple interface from cPanel -> API to deploy accounts in a more native setting.
The check bit above is of course about the never end saga of clients and lack of payment, one is over $1000 overdue - no calls, no nothing, just never sends in a check, or has given me a working card, another one is 1 day late, and they used to be the one I worried about the most, but they’ll have the card fixed by end of the work day tomorrow (or at least that’s how they have been doing it lately when their card messes up) but it just is becoming a normal occurrence in this case, usually 1 month behind, now 2…. and I am out the cash as I am paying for hardware for this “ol friend” but sadly with my own expansion and such I can’t start floating an entire hosting business for 2 months… so boundaries must be set.
Anywhoo - not going to let that ruin my entire weekend, if I don’t hear from him tomorrow, I’ll figure something out - but for now bed time is here, earlier than usual, but I want to get some time to unwind and fully zonk out no later than 1am, and if I start now… I might make it so have a great week this week folks!
Well it’s nearly Friday, this week has flown by, one minute were starting Tuesday, and BAM! Hello Friday. I am going to keep this brief as my brain is sleepy, and my hands keep forgetting to hit keys in the proper order, so this post is taking more work than it should!
Things, Friday night is the official posting of the FH newsletter it will unveil some things in testing, some things coming online this next week, and explain some upcoming options for hosting customers - rather exciting, I am looking forward to some exciting changes, and hopefully… prayerfully… restfully… they will all come about and really help to enhance services and give a good summer drive in new accounts.
Coming up rapidly on the 90 day mark for work, at which point I get health insurance again for the first time in a long time, also vision which means YAY! new glasses as these are bent and nearly broken, I want new frames… something mildly hip… but not too hip, but not the same as I have now, that’s for sure (as they have never fit my head right) - plus I want them to be transition lenses so I don’t have to carry several pairs of glasses.
Anywhoo - more news on things soon, some things not even being made public to my closest friends, but things are in motion, expansion, growth, new territory etc. should be fun, good crazy etc. For now I will say “Good Night!” - Happy Friday Folks!
Busy lately, been working / watching server software upgrades which are slow going, but bring a new optimized version of cPanel which should reduce memory usage quite a bit, aI was bumped from my church’s website project, due to ASP.NET/C# programming, but such is life I suppose, if only it were 6 months down the line when I had a production Windows server online - but sadly the Church site is moving forward sooner than that, but I don’t want to rush it thus I miss out on getting to host them like I had talked with the pastor about so bummed about that - but aside from some minor sad news with that, things are going somewhat smoothly.
New hours at work, not exactly what I wished for, but 8:30-5:30 is a step in the right direction, was hoping for 9-6 so I’d have an hour free and clear to do things like drop the network offline, but now I just have 30 minutes to fiddle - but at least it’s something better than using my weekend for doing work at the office, and leaves time for things like Sleep, Family, Friends, and my own business.
OS Front at work, I ditched my failing XP install, instead of killing it entirely I virtualized it and it’s running on the backup server leaving my primary workstation to become a Linux box, which is handy and keeps folks off it when I am not here, already had someone say “What’s up with your computer?” not sure why they were on it in the first place, but none the less they are confused now, I tried Ubuntu first, it was handy, detected all my hardware without issue, but I wanted each monitor to be a separate screen, with no support from the Ubuntu Forums on my post, I tried Fedora, but it was lacking support for my laser printer, and just felt a little laggy, so I just finished re-installing the latest Ubuntu.
Anywhoo - my day is nearly done, just wanted to post an update on things, going to go check out more of the latest cPanel release, and start the server doing a scan disk and a fresh reboot, ah the joys of file servers which are oddly setup. Night folks! Happy Fake Friday!
Some projects never seem to get done, and others get done in no time! One project at work I started was converting my live workstation which I inherited from the last IT guy, and make it a Virtual Machine for VMWare Player under Linux - so far so good, it’s running full screen over on the backup server, and I am thinking of simply leaving it there, it works, its got VMWare Tools, etc. it’s lovely and I think it’s actually a tad faster than the real thing (Backup Server has a LOT of RAM) - but the next step, after lunch (going to keep toying with it) is to make the move for the primary station to Ubuntu Linux, may do it sooner if I still can’t find anything wrong, but thus far I can do all my DOS apps, the new Windows based replacement for the DOS software, and backups seem to work too (until I hit locked files, but that’s normal).
In other news non-job related, I upgraded the home office to Road Runner TURBO, which is 15Mb/s and roughly on a good connect 2Mb/s up:
All in all it’s a nice upgrade, now I just need to complain to RR tech support to flush their ARP cache, and let newer routes converge in as about a month or so ago when there were some major backbone issues in CA they re-routed, and since then I am stuck routing through some very lagged path’s across the board - but for $10 more a month, the speed is still amazing, and when I downloaded some demos from Xbox Live, it was super quick indeed. Very nice.
More news, the Church website contract has been approved, Dan, Adam, Jake and Myself will be crafting a new website, as well as hosting it including their PodCasts etc. so it’s very nice indeed - plus a good group of friends will be fun, Dan, Adam and MySelf all worked back in the olden days of the .com slump, but now throwing Jake into the mix should add some very well crafted code and push the project to a greater ease for the church to manage and keep up the website.
Anywhoo - must get back to it, busy busy busy just wanted to take a breath and write things on my brain that were sitting there poking me - but stay tuned for more, hope to get a lot done in the next 4 days as the weather is cooler… Happy Fake Friday Folks!
Kinda, sorta, not really - okay maybe. I got home earlier, and just crashed out. Dead to the world I needed sleep, I woke up about 2 hours ago, but I am about to crash out again - just wanted to do something for lil ol me, aka upgrade the Blog.
I had read mixed thoughts/feelings about the latest upgrade to Wordpress, some liked it, some thought it was too sparse, some thought it mucked up things - honestly? I like it. Light, simple, some options aren’t exactly where I would think to find them, but such is change.
At some level I think the trade off of features/fixes should of given folks more to try, but as usual plugin conflicts for some were their un-doing - but a nice feature of the new system is live updating, which I know many groups will complain about the security of the concept, but it’s no different than that of Windows / Mac Update systems, you use / trust that product enough to do updates, why not your blog?
Anywhoo - all in all I think it’s pretty slick, it was a simple upgrade, sent my DB backup to Gmail, and uploaded the files, easy peasy - but for now, I am going to wrap up, and goto sleep, meeting @10am tomorrow, last day of “freedom” so to speak, as the boss-man comes back on Thursday, and I am sure he’s gonna have a pile for me. So I’ll say goodnight, and Happy Fake Friday!
A good day thus far, barely 5pm and so far so good, a large lunch (Subway FEAST), got my final mailings done for TN - included a letter about the switch to making invoices digital - worked on the books a bit to look at the move on servers come 2008, worked on code for RNKDF, basically wrote a small mail form app with some nice little features.
It was a cool day, and now I think I have my bedroom all figured out - picked out a TV for the room, and going to convert the current Linux rig into the Vista rig as planned, picking up a TV tuner so I an use Vista’s media center features, but it should be fun, plus from my couch across the way I can relax, veg out, and use the laptop.
Tonight is working on graphics for the Affiliate programs, and getting things rolling for that on the 3rd, as well as getting the new features ready for each site and ready to go for the big push thru December and into 2008.
Good stuff, looking forward to things moving forward, put the Google Ads on a few sites I sponsor and here on the blog, making about $1 a day - not a TON, but hey, every little bit helps - and all part of playing with Google AdSense on pages to really get a feel for it, as I have been toying with a website again, and have some folks still interested in interacting with it - so time will tell.
Anywhoo - back to it, more EE code to do, may have a extra leg on it to work on, extra $300 will come in handy on the budget, really need to get it up and up more, so we shall see! Have a good on folks, I am off to it.
There was a hint of work this evening… of which should result in hopefully a large check no later than Friday… but more on that in a second.
