Only a day left in this week - it seems to of flown by looking back at it now, but honestly it felt long - but I wanted to take some time tonight to unwind a bit, work on some projects - one of which was that of my blog, I wanted to get some time under the hood to update some plugins, scripts, etc. I have a Netflix tool I wrote, but it’s not ready for prime time.
All in all things have been busy in general, closed some deals today - did quite well thankfully, and finally got some payments handled, but all in all definately a few things moving forward that I had hoped would - even though I know that “studies” show things like people who say “I’ll read up on it” never sign-up, but also sometimes folks just need to review the facts, and make an informed choice.
Anywhoo, going to unwind, play with a few new features in Wordpress 2.6, seems pretty smooth and functional, I am enjoy Google Gears, much much quicker interface that’s not streaming AJAX goodies, and it tells me how many words I have typed Off to fun!
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!
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!
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 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:
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!
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.
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.
Off to fun!
Night!
