Sooooo - seems things are moving along, not as fast as I’d like, the old systems have a lot going on, and the line is a little taxed at the moment with the moves, some big accounts over 1GB are going at the same time, so larger download times at the same time, eats up bandwidth quick. All in all though, it’s moving good good - a few hours to go till I can do my first DNS checks and go from there.
In other news, job. Possibly be picking up a IT admin position here in town - a classic 9-5, which would be nice to pick up, it’d actually almost get me right on the time-table I wanted to be at, having an Apartment by my birthday. Good stuff. So prayers appreciated there as well, I am trying to remain positive about it all - as it’s been a while since I’ve had a traditional 9-5 job, but even then it’d be 9-5, then work when I got home (I’d still work on FH/TN during the day as needed) so pretty happy about the possibility,
Anywhoo - more later I am sure, took a break as things were moving and went to Denny’s with Scott and Jake, I snagged a simple meal of a milkshake, and some extremely random chat - but I am hoping after this all calms down with the moves, jobs, etc. that if I do get an apartment I’ll have enough room to have everyone over for some freshly cooked grubbage. Happy Saturday folks, more later, probably an update here or twitter over the next few hours as things progress.
So today I gathered $585 dollars in total, $580 in checks, and $5 for installing MacBook ram for a guy, so quite a complete day, but it’s nice to have funds fixing up nicely, and getting back on track, and not only that, being blessed to get a buffer back, which I figured would take some time, some php, and strange side jobs.
I also got the last of the smaller servers setup, while smaller, still 8cores, less ram, less storage, but mainly for some side projects and smaller customers, so pretty happy that in servers alone I am saving some decent coinage, but still getting great hardware, performance on my blog alone has been wonderful, tonight after Denny’s (yes 3rd night in a row) I plan to migrate friend websites over, so friends, be-ware!
Okay - so Apple, while I may use a iMac day in / day out - and have a MacBook Pro, at heart I am a PC user, not a “WINDOWS” user, but a Personal Computer user, so anything that runs on a PC, be it Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, whateva! I am there, in the house alone I have XP, Vista, 10.4, 10.5, Ubuntu, and a small appliance running Gentoo - but that’s a secret - so when MacWorld comes around, the Stevenote while cool sometimes comes off a little “high and mighty”, and this year really was a bit much for my tastes.
The new stuff “eh” - while I will admit out of EVERYTHING shown today, the only thing which really makes half my eyebrow perk up is the 2nd Gen AppleTV - while it’s not the first time it’s been done, and nor is it something I couldn’t do with a off the shelf unit with some Linux magic, the idea I no longer need a system tied to it, a nice thought, but the price still keeps me away for now, maybe when I am rich and famous.
I kept hoping Air would have more redeeming qualities than a multi-touch trackpad, for me that was it, that was the only feature I found cool, the form factor to me seemed more like someone who needed a ultra portable word processor / email rig - something like Palm tried to make with the Foleo but in the end even it ultimately died before it began - but the unit didn’t preach to me and say “Covert unbeliever!!!” it screamed “I AM OVERPRICED, BUT THIN!” I could see it coming in at around $1,000, but knowing Apple’s pricing structure the idea of $1,200 was what came to mind, but nearly 2k, no thanks, I’ll just share my CD-ROM to my MBP and feel like I’m getting the same thing, but play WOW.
Watch the keynote, and once Steve starts talking about the iPhone, note the level of applause, then lead into the iPod Touch, did you hear the crickets? $20 for early adopters? Did we learn nothing after changing the price on the iPhone? Come on Steve, launch it if anything as a $0.99-$2 fee, something small, simple, get your customer base on board, because lord knows at the end of the day these new “adjustments” are going to lead to more Apple buying options for add-on software, iWork for Touch etc. so give the loyal subjects a break.
Other than Rentals which might be nice (but rumor is HD only on the AppleTV) - nothing that said “Chuck Save the Money!” so I doubt other than my hopeful Mac Pro to replace the iMac, nothing jumped out and grabbed me - nothing was “NEW and EXCITING”, a iPhone for non-ATT without jailbreak and such would of been nice, but nope, apparently AT&T still has a while longer.
Anywhoo - there it is, my day goes forward, coming up at 9pm for my evening hang-out with the guys, we are going to brave Denny’s another time, and I pray we walk away alive. Till next time, have a Good Tuesday, a Great Wednesday! Take Care!
Well just needed a quick break from work, got some calls in, talked with various things on the Bank issues, getting ahead on that, also working on the migration plan, so far most servers will migrate over quick, painless - some will be a good chunk of the night for me I’d imagine as there are some big sites, and even compressed things like MP3 don’t compress (they are compressed) - so planning is going well, invoicing happened last night, so that was a nice thing, plus the final big check comes in today it seems, so hopefully I can get that in and have all accounts happy happy.
Now of course what day wouldn’t be complete with out news that tries to bring down all the good stuff happening, a long time customer is leaving FH, I always hate it when folks leave, but a local guy took over, and I got the nicest response to my email thanking her for service, and wishing her well:
You are a great person and do take care of your customers.
Wow - what started as a sad thing, turned into a happy thing, just such kind words which really did help soften the blow of loosing a customer to know that my job had been done well, and what I set out to do in taking care of a customer is exactly what was received.
So it’s 2pm, lots to do, later tonight I’ll post my Stevenote reactions, honestly just not that impressed by some things (MacBook Air) mainly because it’s not something I “need” to work, but more on that later! Have a Great Tuesday, and keep on keepin on! (One Last Thing: New Servers average a 29ms ping time from monitoring in the US! Woot!)
It begins. I have placed the order for the remaining 3 servers to get the core up and running, merging a few smaller systems into larger, and of course a few specialty servers which will host core service sites (aka FH/TN/TSWS) - the plan is to really get things rolling here in the next 2 weeks, Monday I am going to get the big bits done in software projects, finish the final plan for migration, and get things rolling with a full audit.
Lots to do, and I must do it all in 2 weeks, then it’s smooth sailing, budget survives easier, opens up to some other upgrades I have planned for all customers, now the big test, doing some searches to see if there are any apps NOT compatible with MySQL5, so far I see no reasons as to why any would NOT, but I want to check, and if things look good, I think I may just install MySQL5 by default and let sites import in and be upgrade to MySQL5 from 4, worked well on all other projects, heck this site is running on MySQL5 now too so it looks good.
Anywhoo - going to try to rest up the remainder of the evening, may try to rally up some folks for dinner, as once Monday starts, I may be MIA for a while. Prayers as always are appreciated greatly! And all support given is welcome! Here’s to a great migration, a great happy budget, and the occasional nap
Sooo… it’s Sunday, and been in prayer this morning a lot, basically tonight is the deadline for getting in on my servers deal, and as it stands - I am going with it. I have been looking at the facts, and so far nothing seems bad. Staff has been friendly, nerdy, and willing to help/look into things to be a help, and that seems to be the common response in reviews - the hardware itself is performing nicely, no slowdowns, memory is stable, and even some of the upcoming “bonuses” I am throwing at customers here soon are working very nicely.
3 more servers will be ordered to handle the bulk of the big servers, Trogdor will devour friends and 2 other servers I do for folks on the cheap, as well as eat up all the friend sites from each server, into this next week I’ll snag probably 2-3 more smaller boxes to finish up the remainder of the servers out there, so it’s looking good.
Lots to do though, and not just with the business, lot on my plate that I want to fix up in the personal life as well, and who knows this week may bring me some more direction as to a job - so I am hopeful, and prayerful going into this as it’s a big leap with the servers, but it ties into the personal side trusting other’s with my business, not to say I will be relaxing my grip a ton, but this company has been great thus far and reviews show (as does the interaction I’ve had this far) they care about their customers, hardware, and aren’t afraid to help - which is how I like to run my business as well.
Good stuff ahead, I can feel it. Now the big choice before deployment, do I keep MySQL4… or move everyone to MySQL5 when I migrate them over… so many choices… so little time Keep me in your prayers, and keep posted here for more updates coming down the line!
So… here I am on a Saturday, I’d love to be sleeping right now, but I am wanting to migrate things and have a good plan in place, not to mention I am getting some great support from this new provider with the initial server roll-out. Code named “Trogdor” the server is looking amazing, they have worked with me to fine tune many little details, fix some small glitches, but so far, the server is online, 8 cores and all and looking good. Doing some dry-runs right now with the blog and such.
So I am truly thinking of making the move 100%, means dropping some cash, I just got it in the bank, and now it’ll all go away! LoL - but the nice thing is since it’ll all be paid up for a month, and no other company’s bill, it shouldn’t be so bad - but I am really looking at this move as a good thing, some more money in the monthly budget, some additional resources to give to customers, I can re-vamp some packages, all in all, everyone wins it seems.
The plan for the next lil bit here is to actually migrate this blog (should be moved) and a few other choice sites of mine, and friends over - a bit of a leap, but I need some real world testing ASAP so I can make the final call before moving galore. Prayers appreciated, who knows, I may move things, and take a nap More later!
Today ended up being a great day, got a great gift from BdG (big thanks sir!) which really set the day in motion, some more research through out the day, also got some reading material on a project website for my Uncle’s tent stakes, follow that up with a check coming in (PTL!) which led to a few other things, like dinner with dad (LJS Chicken Planks + Hush Puppies!), it was a good evening.
Then it was back to work. I started basic prep on Faith for it’s upgrade to PHP5/Apache2 (compiling now) and placed an order for a server to test out over the next 24 hours to see if I want to make the plunge for sure - the project server is lovingly called Trogdor, he’s a dragon-man of a machine, 8 cores, RAID10, *tear* a nice upgrade, got the call confirming my order, had a nice chat with “Jake” the guy on the other end, he loved the server name of Trogdor, suggested Burninator as another option for other projects down the line (It is officially on the list) - but he said he’d have me up in about an hour, and he had me running in 45 minutes.
So far so good though on both fronts, Faith is at 15 minutes now compiling, and Trogdor has gotten some of the royal lock down treatment, while their initial locks were nice, and some of the mods they have in place I am definitely leaving, I run a tight ship, so have to have them help with a few network tweaks and such on their end to make my life happy, but all in all, it’s looking good, speed is amazing, seeing 8 cores in top is a lovely sight but I think it’s going to work. Sure sure, it’ll mean some changes from the current way I monitor, and such, but really, the savings is a motivator, the growth potential is amazing, and of course, it gives me another set of eyes monitoring, keeping up the server etc. which in itself is like hiring a crew to stand watch as I do things like Sleep.
Also today I talked possiblity of a local job, it’s one I am really going to pray about, but it was one of those things that just leapt from my mouth, and just felt right, but then I found myself saying “Why did I say that?” so I am putting it to a God thing, and see where it goes, who knows, may all work out just right, may not, none the less, if it does, possibly means no moving, and maybe, just maybe I’ll be in my own place by my birthday!
But that was my day, as I go into Saturday, I lead into things by having picked up my mom from my sister’s house as they returned from a Lakers game with my Aunt, then its onto a site-by-site check on Faith to see if anything has post PHP5 upgrade blues that I can easily fix, or at the very least point the site owners to upgrade options to get themselves back on track, but after a few month or two that this upgrade was coming - I hope everyone is up to date, or at least one hot-fix shy. So now I am going to find my shoes, and pack up to head towards my sister’s house - one step at a time.
so it looks good.
Keep me in your prayers, and keep posted here for more updates coming down the line!
