The whole thing with balance I am trying to find with the jump between the 8 to 5 grind and TN/FH is tough, not that it isn’t possible, it’s just a change in mindset, as well as making sure to take a break, relax, breathe, you know that sort of thing - and tonight a much needed break was had, a game of Catan, 2 Nephews, a Niece, 2 friends and 1 Solomon.
Such a beautiful baby, got to hold him for a little bit, he’s got some good muscles already pushing around as he laid across my chest more or less as I held him on the couch - just honored to get to meet him, hang out with the Poon’s - my buddy Lanie was there, as well as Blaine and Cameron, apparently Gavin had some sort of prior “thing” with a certain “lady” friend, geeze, what’s so special about a lady friend when you have cool people playing Catan? 
he was missed, but it was a fun evening, got to even give a piggy back ride, so I mean that alone sum’d up the evening.
It was a great break, and I have actually taken most of the night off, I do have some spot work here to do shortly with some domain renewals, cancelations, and I am also looking to move forward on some alternative email options for both FH/TN that are just standard POP3/IMAP (no fancy Exchange) but simple alternatives and see if I can’t package it with standard accounts over time and absorb the cost in and offer email managed off server, vs. on server, would let folks store more on box - but before I go into business mode, I want to find a snack, and relax a bit more, as tomorrow is Friday, which means every little project people forgot, will hit my desk!
Speaking of work though, the backup server is as such:
- ABIT IP35 Pro (Fancy)
- Intel Core 2 Duo (E6420) 2.13ghz (Conroe)
- 4 GB GeIL Ram (2 x 2GB sticks)
- 5 x Maxtor 500GB SATAII Drives (4 in RAID5 - other will be primary OS aka nothing critical for backups)
- 4 HotSwap Enclosures for the Drives
- Promise FastTrak PCI SATAII Controller (mixed feelings, but some positive reports)
- 750W Power Supply
- Other Assorted Goodies: ie. cdrom, floppy, Radeon X700
A nice little rig, but more I read about the promise card the more mixed I feel about it - but we’ll see how it goes probably Tuesday at this point since most stuff is shipping from CA, so it’ll be here probably Monday/Tuesday.
Anywhoo - sleep is nearing, so work must be done, I’ll write more tomorrow after bowling! Night folks!
Posted on 6 March '08 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
Hello from my first non-crazy weekend in nearly a month. Yowza - last month was a tad nutty, but this month may amp up to be just as cookoo - but hey I can’t complain too much, if I snag this job, a lot of things will be coming around, changing, adapting, etc. - so a relaxing weekend, that in the end turned into not too shabby time with the kMan (we had pizza & played with computers), but also getting partial payments and such - so nice there.
The way home the rain started, I love rain, I plan to go driving in it here shortly to get to the bank and ATM these checks, not the perfect way to get money in the bank, but as it’s that time of the month for bills, I’d rather get it rolling in now than fight later - hopefully Monday I’ll have other checks in and be able to get that going.
To finish up the night I just snagged a shirt from tonight’s Woot:
Pretty snazzy, my mom wanted one too, so I ordered 2 but 2 shirts for $20, not too shabby.
Anywhoo - Tomorrow brings Sunday, a day of rest, probably the one day I truly do take off, so I will bid you all a pleasant evening, have a Wonderful Sunday - for you Superbowler’s enjoy the big game, and here in Bako the new channel 46 on brighthouse for the game in HD. (yes I got the call 3 times too) - night folks!
Posted on 2 February '08 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
So far so good - I crashed out and woke up at 1pm, so fair sleep, got some minor issues out the way, and on a whim installed Installatron on Trogdor, hit a snag, but the guys at Installatron were awesome and quickly got me a work-around, and now all friends on Trogdor will enjoy the benefits of this great auto-instaler, frequently updated, some nice scripts to choose from - a major enjoyment indeed. If the budget levels out, and once I get all these assorted cPanel lic. cleared, as well as various tid-bit bills I have officially phased out cleared off the books, I plan to install it across all servers.
Tonight will be a night to relax, possibly going and hanging out with Dan and the nephews, I hope my scrabble skills have not gone down-hill, as I am indeed out of practice. But this will be one of the last nights I imagine for relaxing as I head into things moving forward this week with a spot job, a coding discussion, and a job interview - but none the less I am hoping things all work out and move forward, for now though, I am going to hit the shower - and get dressed for a relaxing evening, one way or another.
Thanks to everyone for their prayers over these migrations! Much appreciated - always glad to know I have folks watching out for me even on something that to some may seem trivial like a server move, but every little bit of prayer helps! So again thanks a million, and now I will go forth, and become clean! More later.
Posted on 27 January '08 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
So I think I have a plan. With one day left, I think I am going to sleep off Thursday, the last few days of fine-tuning things and getting them good to go, if I fiddle anymore, I’ll go crazy! So I think Thursday will be some simply running around town doing things like bits of banking, or even just loafing for the day - but lots of sleep as this move will be the biggest thing for a while.
Day-Job wise, a few various things, might be picking up another job from a friend if he get’s another job elsewhere, so I may have some work here in a few weeks, not sure. Time will tell though, a nice paycheck + current income = Apartment! Woot!
I think I am going to start my Thursday Loafing now with a nice shower. So I will say farewell for now, and I’ll be back sooner or later (probably sooner).
Posted on 16 January '08 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
Greetings blog readers, well another catch-up post so to speak, but going to give the quick catchup here… Friday the Beach Browns came into town, we changed the plans from BBQ -> Mauricio’s some tasty food, of course since we went a tad late, I had already eaten some, and thus got a small plate of rice and beans. Afterwards we proceeded home to have Christmas 2.0, aka Charity Gift-Fest, got some good pics on the flickr, Beth also added some to her and Michael’s new Flickr account, so fun stuff, then around 11:30pm Ron and Harm left, and Charity and I stayed awake watching cartoons, eating mac and cheese till 2am when she finally passed out. The following morning we had Breakfast here, twas tasty, then the Beach Browns headed back to the Beach.
But it’s been a fun week, took some time off (well as much as one can) and I am just looking toward this next year, did some mini-job hunting, looking to see if there was even anything full but more importantly part time stuff out there job wise to pick up, I found a listing on Craig’s List for a Photography gig, emailed them, but still nothing back as of yet - another position I found on there was for a IT job, but they really want someone 9-5 it seems, but I am not ruling that out either - but it is becoming more and more obvious a job will be in my future, granted I have had 5 sign-ups over the last 2 months, which is a big boost as compared to the 10 cancelations, but even then its just not enough even on my tightest budget to have an apartment and do things like have power and eat. So tiny details, but I am sticking to the 3 month deal I made myself, so come March if nothing has happened big, then it’s off to the job line, but in the mean time I am looking for part time work.
Servers, doing good in that dept. I have been watching the new datacenter I am wanting to move to pretty closely, thus far no major reports of outages, failures, finally found 1 negative review, and even that seemed more like someone new to the game of servers in a remote DC more than anything, but all in all this looks good, just working to get everyone on board with the game plan to make the move, but still praying about it, as part of me worries about moving everything over, but such is the game I suppose.
Website stuff, busy - minor progress here and there on a few projects, but the more I work on some I find myself looking at my own projects I’d like to finish, of course even there I am back and forth on the content - be it a Faith based or Tech based - but time will tell I suppose, I just want something good, something useful, and low on the drama (at least at first) - but my main project for tomorrow will be EE, lots of work on the backend code, and firming up the output templates, just need to pull it all together, finalize some bits for testing and get that ready to roll.
Anywhoo - there it is, so much to do, so little time 
Have a good weekend folks. I’m off to go and do something relaxing. Maybe a nap.
Posted on 30 December '07 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
So tomorrow the goods from Newegg (most of them) are set to show up, sadly 3 things are not coming in this batch, 2 are coming from PA and the 3rd is coming from AZ - so probably Monday/Tuesday for everything.
I am not going to say what all I picked up, it was my last hurrah for the year -it was on Newegg’s buyer credit, so I have payments, which is nice, I want to have it paid off ASAP, which is what all this work is leading up to - I spent a few hours on TN layout as I am going to pretty much finish everything Saturday and launch Monday the new goodies, and a newsletter for at least FH to go out on Friday night after I get back from Nacho Bar Night (woot!) but I am hoping Monday I’ll be able to start getting a higher volume of monthly sales, get things back to the hay-day of hosting, granted I know it’s going to be a tough sale in some cases, but I am hopeful that the positive word of mouth from site owners will encourage others to move over.
So tomorrow is a busy busy day, I am going to try and have beta 1 of EE’s listing system, search I am going to always been fine tuning, but a beta of it too, the Admin interface and sign-up is the last hurdle really, but all in all I am hoping to hear back on the final call on the add-on, which could mean some extra money, plus some slight adjustment to what I am working on now, plus I sorted a billing issue, so another $400 coming in, good stuff going down, but I know come Monday, I am going to be exhausted.
Just a lot of fun stuff, busy stuff, work stuff, sometimes I wonder how I stay sane… oh wait. I’m not. so busy busy I am excited about the break tomorrow for Nacho Bar, should be tasty, and cheaper than the past few weeks of weekly Denny’s - which was fun, but not cheap! So hopefully everyone can make it, some hanging out, maybe a cheap movie afterwards, who knows! Lots of options, then it’s a drive home, and back to the joy of work work work.
Anywhoo - that’s my check in, I’ll post pictures tomorrow of the project I have been working on with this Newegg purchase - it’s a two fold purchase, which I’ll explain after I get it setup and pictures taken. So have a good Thursday, and if your in Bakersfield, and are interested in Friday Night Dinners with the gang, lemme know! I keep expanding it slowly, added another face last week, this week a few more, so if your game drop a comment to this post or shoot me an email. Night all!
Posted on 29 November '07 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
So what do you do when it’s 2am, you can’t sleep, its a holiday, and the only think you can think to do is literally - stare at the wall? Well of course, pull out season 3 of house, put in a random disk (disk 5!) and start watching. But what a week thus far, got some projects done, some nearly rolling for testing nearing production, good stuff.
The PO Box is active and working, just switched out all of the billing systems to the new address for the few that utilize Check as a payment method, even then I am working to slowly phase it out and move to eCheck by default for “Check” payments, as I have outgrown most of the kiddos who pay via Money Order - but fun fun now that I have a PO Box + the box is closer than the old mail stop.
Anywhoo - it’s been 5 years since I started blogging as of last month, kinda crazy really - but for now I am going to go do my nightly rounds, stop the episode, and try for some sleep, bro will be here in the AM with Guitar Hero 3, I got Raving Rabbids 2, so tomorrow for the turkey fun we’ll have some games - I gotz 5 ciders and 2 nogs - tasty beverages = good. Now I have something to dream about now. Night. Happy Thanksgiving.
Posted on 22 November '07 by Chuck Brown, under General. No Comments.
