Well instead of running out a buying an iPod, or a headset, what did I do? You guessed it, I ran out and got a server. There was a promotion on bandwidth that came across my desk, and I couldn’t pass it up, so I put in an order, and now I am just waiting to get the thing online, which means some folks who are on “friend” style accounts will be moved to a new server, also has room for backups, which is nice, and will actually make backups quicker and easier to get to - so very excited, in offering backups to other clients I cover a good chunk of the monthly bill, but there is more to cover, about $150 a month, which ain’t bad for server and connection.
Going to go pickup a headset tomorrow, as much as I’d like to get the Plantronics 665, the issue is not only cost, but sadly I can’t find a steady flow of positive reviews, granted some I read reference they are using the headset with a Bluetooth 1.2 phone which could accommodate for the static/drops they were having, and the Dash is a Bluetooth 2.0 - but I want to get something sooner than later, and as much as I’d love to wait for Newegg, I think I am going to go snag the same headset again, it is comfy, and about the same price range as the on sale ones around town.
I finished up the Photography client, she’s busy uploading photos to her gallery, going to experiment and make her some drafts of a logo, this way she’ll have something hi-res for print/clothing should she need it, and it’ll make her site look even better (already looks good as is) - but I may have another job doing some design, which is nice, granted not my usual type of work, but it’ll be cool to do, really customizing a template, but some other things as we roll into August will help bring in some more money monthly, plus I want to focus on getting the TN page revived, and possibly another hosting venue, making Thrust Network the mama homepage with core service offerings and such, and a Hosting Front to offer basic hosting for things not just “A website” so offer “Blog Hosting” or “Gallery Hosting” type of setups.
Sysadmin day is coming up on the 27th, and while some know about it, they have asked me what I want lol - and I feel like a kid at Christmas, never really thought about it, and I appreciate the thought - at this point really, donations for an iPod, WoW Gift Card, A Book, or a DVD, I suppose I could freshen up the Amazon/ThinkGeek wishlists, but honestly - I am just happy that folks thought of me, some I of course hinted at it (aka the chatroom) and others knew about it, and asked me beforehand so very cool - but if ya want to send some love, PayPal tips are welcome, gift cards to food, whatever really - but the ultimate would be a iPod 80gb (no pressure)
Anywhoo - thats things in a nutshell, a few other things I may get to discuss in the coming weeks, some deals I am trying to work out, also need to snag a post office box too, as the office building I use as a maildrop is getting completely re-modeled, which means 3 months without it, but the plans look good for afterwards and the owner made me an office - very fancy indeed… wonder if I get wood floors, always wanted wood floors…. ah good times. Thanks for stopping by folks, more later this week I’m sure.
Who knows what the heck is going on in my life anymore lol - not even I do! One day it’s major up up up - then the next it’s mellow, then it’s low - for a while there it was a nice middle of the road patch ah how I miss those days
I have started to re-think my AUP/TOS when it comes to sites getting hacked, some clients are awesome, they understand that their site is offline, they didn’t keep the software up, so it’s their fault - I love those clients. Then you have the other batch, who feel their hacked version of phpBB 0.1alpha was my bad, I should of somehow provided protection for that - I had one customer recently get on me a little upset because their software was broke after a hack, and they wanted the database, well for me to re-install the DB meant I needed to go over it a bit, search for rouge usernames in their forum, check access - basically security test a database. Not my job - I have been hired to do it, but this is just general support I have done it on, for some customers I am happy to do it, heck one even said thank you and kicked me down $25 via PayPal - now that client is my buddy
I dunno, just one of those days today I guess, things started out good, then just some of the same ol bunk waiting on my doorstep, but, here it is coming up on a new day, a fresh start, and hopefully a nice warm shower here shortly to take the layer of the day and wash it down the drain - of course since its still a little warm/humid, I’ll finish off the shower in freezing cold water to drop my core temp a bit
Lot’s to do, but I can’t seem to get ahead on it at all, design job looks like it fell thru, trying to salvage the hosting bit, few projects are wrapped up now, and working on a project off and on, just deployed it’s flash highlight widget which will scroll thru highlighted articles, pretty nice, some more CSS/Image work needed to spruce up the look and make a stand-alone article page so things can start rolling soon - and the usual billing backlog, server upgrades, and new server hardware, anyone want to come work for a hosting company for free?
Anywhoo - that’s my bit, 2m till Thursday - have a good one folks. Take Care.
Now and again I help out a friend or two with PHP code, today I was given a good little challenge to help on, the issue was a event calendar, one side displayed the text title/date/time of the event, the other side showed a thumbnail of the event’s flyer, the task was simple:
When you click the TEXT link it would change the side picture template (already working)
Data for Events/Info pulled from database (already working)
When you click thumbnail, have it popup the full-sized image (not working)
So #3 is where I came in, to find a solution for the code bit to make it dynamically load the pop-up code instead of the one static image it was doing, so I got to thinking, and what I came up with was tweaking the existing javascript in the PHP end of things - I made a function that set one of the variables needed in the javascript popup code “imageURL” so when you clicked the link and it went to change the image thumbnail, it set a variable that was the image location the popup needed.
Was pretty cool, I realize that seems maybe trivial at some level, but it was a fun challenge to tackle with a hybrid of php & javascript,it was a nice stretch of the ol brain as javascript is not one of my languages of choice, but in this case my knowledge cut it and I made a few other tweaks to the code - came out really nice.
Well busy night tonight, Denny’s, Server Migration, Sleep - I personally after the in-and-out heat today could go for “sleep” but the migration should go pretty smooth - so on with the evening - have a good weekend folks!
For the last 2 years I have been trying to find a way to unhook myself from servers a bit, really wanting to focus on other things in life, and have someone worry about the day-in-day out a bit, but the catch is server admin work usually pays well so it has it’s perks, however sadly it can be very high-stress, low rewards, and very demanding - sounds like a job right? Well after a few years, I have begun to get tired - granted some processes are automated now in normal maintenance I would do, but at the same time, just seems like more and more folks are stepping away from hosting with me for the bargain hosts.
I know this isn’t the first time I have wrote about this, and I imagine it will probably not be the last, just a little vent session - I have been testing out managed hosting solutions, to take some of the load off me, and have another company manage server updates, security, firewalls, etc. - why? ease of operation, I’d still run my own servers - probably 2 at most, but mainly for the special cases I have, which don’t fit into the mold of standard “hosting” so to speak - but that would lower the load quite a bit.
My dream solution? Entire infrastructure rebuilt from the ground up, new batch of servers all Dual Dual Core, at least 4GB of ram per, nice raid or sans solution for storage - a better backup solution than the current setup (hate the way cPanel packages accounts, takes too long, but works great if a restore is needed.) - I’d also like 2-3 employees to help balance the load of server work, but then a 4th person to do book-keeping and billing, to take the iron out of my fire, and get the budget leveled out and dead-beats gone.
Who knows, I would love to make some changes this year, pick up some programming and design gigs again, but who knows, lots to ponder, been a busy morning thus far, already 5 hours in, and lots done, but more to do.
I am slowly starting to grab hold of CSS … I think, thus why as the subject notes - I have lowered the CSS Hate Level. I have been working on a project, and while I don’t know the level of “proper” CSS coding I am making on my HTML end, the bottom line, I have a working site layout for a project I am doing, and it looks “okay” still some fine tuning to do, but all in all, looks quite well.
In other news, I am sleepy - not sure it’ll ever go away, but with explosions last night (fireworks started selling yesterday) I thought I’d have a problem getting to sleep, instead I passed out quickly, and woke up around 6am this morning, yay? lol - but I am already into my day - going to order a server at 8am or so, see if I can’t get it online and ready to go within the next 3 days, do some dry runs with migration between cPanel 11 boxes shouldn’t be a major deal, but if so, that’ll give me 2 days to get it ironed out.
Anywhoo - onto Monday, Transformers tomorrow, lots to do lots to do. Have a Good week Folks!
Well yesterday was funny, had a list of things to do, was sort of well rested, then suddenly I felt the need to goto sleep, was just really tired around 2, and I went for a “nap” and woke up to pain, which proceeded to a need to goto the bathroom, after that I moved around a bit, only to return to bed, and sleep another 8 hours, and thus I woke up an hour or so ago, still a tad achy and shooting pain in my head, but thoughts clearer than they have been in 2 days.
So I got my todo pile done in record time, got things tuned up for a few customers, cleared a site which had been hacked and was doing a spoof bank site, customer is going to start from scratch, was very sorry for the trouble he felt he caused, while I could complain that he should of kept his programs up to date, he gave me no rude comments, was very happy to work with my suggestions, was ready to go when I was, every step of the way asked if he could help in any way - just awesome.
Anywhoo - I could write a bit more, but I think I am either going to go find something easy for breakfast, take a hot bath, or try to go back to sleep - CS3 get’s here Friday, so pretty pumped about that, need to check in with the client about the proof I sent to her on Monday, and need to get a migration price/plan sent to a server customer. So a busy day ahead, have a good one folks!
Well tonight sadly marked the end of the “Sleep Fest 2007″ for the last week or so, I got to bed early, woke up for maybe 5 minutes in the middle of the night, then passed out again to awaken early - tonight however, I laid down for a bit to try and stretch out after a day in the chair, and bam, out like a light, which leads me to 1:15am when I woke up and wasn’t just “awake” I was “UP! AND READY FOR DUTY SIR!” no idea why/what - just up.
So I am here working on some misc. things, one of which was upgrading Wordpress, sadly I had to ditch the k2 theme, just too many of the plugins I enjoy and hacked up to work all fancy, no longer work in this version for whatever reason, and I have no desire to poke around and find the old version that worked, so back to Wordpress basic templates again, this one isn’t my favorite, but it’ll work till I can get some time in to code some similar functionality as the last one, hopefully with the new tools ordered, I’ll get some time to give CSS another whirl and see if I can leave the world of tables and font tags behind
A good day for bringing in the bacon so to speak, cleared $900 in incoming today, should of been $1020, but none the less, $900 is better than $000! But things are picking up around here it seems, taking on this project has me jazzed, not the most money I’ve made on a design in my time, but not the least either, really at some level above and beyond as a way to thank the photographer for the deal and fun photos she took @ my friend’s wedding, its also a way for me to get my feet wet in design again, and while some tasks today took me much longer than they would of in the past, it felt good to be working on it again.
Plans for the early AM include, checking into an expired SSL cert., flushing a site that was compromised, putting in a manual apache hack for a client to help out, refreshing the CS3 order page for a tracking # constantly, and working on the sketches for secret project #20391, may even get some work done on the FH end of things, some updates I need to do, also hacking up the old TN layout I had done about 3 yrs ago, still looks good, just want to clean it up, make it little faster on the load time, and get it ready for production.
Anywhoo - keep me in your prayers, busy busy around here - things always seem to amp up, hoping to get some spare cash in the bank, and then open up a savings account for the first time in a few years, really want to build up my savings, and get some bills paid off, so hopefully I can keep up with the load, and get things rolling up and up. Thanks for stopping by! Have a Good Tuesday!
