One Final Weekend

So today wasn’t exactly the way I planned it - anymore days rarely are, but I got some more rest, still not 100% yet, but come Friday the whole ordeal starts again, with one final weekend to get things rolled over to the new hardware, and so far over 10 days online, the hardware has performed wonderfully! Some small blips with the new anti-spam, for instance one customer’s IP was listed in a blacklist, thus the server rejected them sending email! Got that fixed up quickly.

Overall I am pretty happy with the move, things are looking good, and I have actually had a steady flow of small packages sign-up since the start of 2008, granted it’s not enough thus far to really push towards avoiding a job, but the job front looks good, and I may be able to get myself setup with this new job within the next 2 weeks, which if it works out, would mean a good infusion of funds into the monthly budget, get some bills paid off, get ahead on my car payments, and of course the big jump — the apartment. Soon I’ll be all grow’d up.

I want to get out though before I take this job and get one big photo day in, as I know in the course of many days that won’t be a random option I can simply pick up and do anymore once I get the day-to-day job, but I am hoping for fun Saturdays, evenings, etc. so I really want to pick up a nice point and shoot camera soon, as lugging the E-500 around isn’t very compact, but all in all things look like they are all coming along, now granted there’s that chance this job won’t stick, but then that just means I must keep pushing forward.

Anywhoo - still have a code to work on, then I need to migrate it from here to the server for review, all in all it should be pretty straight forward move, none the less I am keeping a active copy of MySQL4 running just in case I have issues in MySQL5 that arise - so a busy weekend to come, but one of which that will eliminate a server bill coming in on the 2nd, so pretty jazzed about that! So if your on Thrust Networks servers, check your email, a move is coming Friday!

What a day! Time to Breathe

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.

Pudding is in the Proof

So tonight has been a night of testing, I ate some food, watched Earl, then about 20 minutes ago sat down and begin to really weigh out things in this server plan, speed was one of my main concerns, finding the quickest download out there, and here’s what I came up with downloading a 100MB file from each provider I have been considering (2 Current in the Running) and my current provider, I have a 8Mb/s connection here, and each server is connected via a 100Mb/s connection so in theory I should be able to get around 8Mb/s in a perfect situation - but since that perfect world doesn’t exsist and folks are actively using connections, etc. etc. - I knew some tests would not be as slow, but the results are as such:

• Current Provider: 3m 03s - Average Speed: 5.6Mb/s
• Option #2: 2m 38s - Average Speed: 6.5Mb/s
• Option #3 (My Fav Currently): 2m 05s - Average Speed: 8.2Mb/s

Needless to say - #3 is by far my favorite option, nearly a complete minute faster to download via their backbone, than that of my current provider, impressive indeed. So I have been running the numbers, and figuring the servers, I think I may be de-comissioning one of the servers, since hosting numbers are down, I could really almost host 2 servers on one of this configuration vs. 2, but even if not, still - savings are big, and there’s always options to grow and grab another server if needs be in the near future if growth takes off.

So things are panning out to be good, going to rough out a migration schedule, and see if I can get in on this promotion they have for me since it is time sensitive, as it’d be nice to save some cash, lower costs, and increase revenues again, so even if this job doesn’t happen or at least not right away, I’ll have some more float in the budget.

Anywhoo - I think that’s it for me tonight, going to wrap up here, and probably hit the hay and hope the morning greetings me with a better day, Happy Pre-Friday folks, enjoy the weekend - and to Mr. Poon - Happy Pre-Birthday! Hope your birthday is a good one, eat some cake for me (or save me a piece, I’m always down for cake) - Night!

Tomorrow? Maybe? Please…

Soooo…. another day, no checks. Not even a call back from the kMan, and the other ones I figure at the latest would be Saturday/Monday as they went out in the mail (the ol “Checks in the mail” bit) on Monday - so hopefully, tomorrow I’ll have some $1200+ in my pocket, and my budget will return to the land of happy.

Server world, things are looking good, company I am looking at to handle my servers looks really amazing, and the public seems to agree, still reading thru some reviews, and praying about it some more, but if I made the move, I’d be looking at nearly $400 in savings a month, and all the goodies I mentioned before - amazing emailing a sales got me a quick response and a great deal, so in then ext 3 days I may be making a big order, and making plans for migrations thru the end of the month.

But there it is, another day, still alive, fighting to stay positive at this point, but even though I am not actively thinking about budget, I know it’s on my brain, so here’s to cash flow returning to it’s proper levels tomorrow… have a good evening folks, going to go try to convince folks to go for food, or simply make myself something tasty.

Fridays off? Nevah.

So for a while I actually took Friday’s off, not anymore lol. So much to do as this year wraps up, and I want to make sure it goes smoothly, so Christmas day I don’t wake up to a pile of coal waiting in my email from customers - so today was some more dry runs of PHP5/APACHE2 configurations, also tested out the new feature for SPF/DomainKeys in the cPanel interface, the latest build offers the functionality, but it seems to have some glitches when it comes to domains with more than a single domain in the account (ie: accounts with Parked/Add-on Domains) - however it is workable.

Testing seemed fine on SPF/DomainKeys until the dreaded multi-domain account hit it, and the wrench was thrown into the gears, but another side effect is external DNS, there is no mechanism within cPanel to simply display the new DNS entires involved with SPF and DomainKeys, thus someone who is doing their own DNS, will have issues with true deployment, so a bug report was opened on cPanel’s bugzilla requesting the enhancement to display the records which need to be added.

All in all a semi-productive day, wish I had gotten some code time in, but the night is still young, though I may crash out soon and wake back up for the PHP5 run on Shepherd tonight, going to start it around 1am - but since I am going to archive the old build, that means while it builds that things like PHP and such will be broken for a bit, but never had a build take over 30m, and since mail, spam filtering, etc. on Shepherd will continue there is that chance, but I am hoping that with the early hour, (thus in most cases decreased load) I’ll see a quick build, some quick testing, then hit the sack.

Anywhoo - off to break and watch a flick, not sure what, saw Chuck & Larry last night, not horrible, tad too much swearing, but Ving Rhames - hilarious. Well played indeed. So enjoy your weekend, and if I don’t get a chance to post before Christmas, have a safe and happy Christmas folks!

– AT: New anti-fraud checks in WHMCS from MaxMind were officially tested with a new order this evening, did great! Very very happy, glad to see it work so smoothly. Okay going for real this time.

Dang it!

I have been trying for over a week now to find something bad about this new company I am looking to house servers, I want to make sure that I am not jumping into bed with some random company which in the end lets my customers down and provides them bad service and in turn makes me look bad, but so far all customers who utilize them review them as top notch, I did find some negative comments but over a year ago, but some comments today really give it large amounts of praise.

So the plan is to look seriously about a migration, while its a “big” thing, it’s not really, it’d probably be pretty smooth - just still need to do some testing, but I think my plan to move should start to form, and I am really excited to offer customers greater stability, new hardware and software, plus a 1 Gigabit connection to both the internal network, and external network, it’d really speed up services overall - plus it’s actually a slight savings compared to now - so it’d be a great roll-over to add in PHP5 and Apache2.

Some more serious budget looking to do, I mean it’s not that bad, but I want to look at things and know exactly what I am looking at, plus I do want to add in some new storage, bandwidth options for folks, so off to it!

Leopard… slowly going.

So promptly (okay it was 6:02pm) CompUSA staff got us all our copies of Leopard, I was out the door by 6:07pm, and of course then traffic was horrible, etc. etc. but I got home before 7pm, and now I am backing up the MBP which really doesn’t have a LOT to work with, as the iTunes library is backed up on the linux box into a mt-dappd server, and most movie work is done via the desktop, photos are a few, but nothing major - so I am using my external USB drive to back up the few GB of info.

I did have a good laugh with a few Mac nerds loafing around waiting for 6pm, but no major crowd and no one fighting one another, but there was a Mac Prophet spouting Mac propaganda, mac this, mac that - dude was all over the place, he even whipped out his MacBook and showed people things - and the people were all trying to find a way to escape - were Mac users, not Mac Fanatics.

The plan is a backup of this rig, then a clean install of leopard. More later - if it goes smoothly, then the iMac gets a upgrade later once I get the MBP stable with all the apps I need