Merry Christmas!

So tonight we had Christmas Eve at Michael’s parents house, it was good fun - good food, good pie, good dogs so a fun evening, I’d post more, but it’s been a long two days, and I am going to go mindlessly go and finish my mom’s gifts up, for whatever reason I am still not 100% sleepy, so I am going to finish my last 9 then try sleep again.

Have a Very Merry Christmas Folks.

Mid-Week… Already?

Wow, this week has flown by things have started to shape up around, might have a big client add here in the next month or so, working to get some details together for a package, so excited there - still slow on the hosting side, but no cancelations, so I am hopeful that things will slowly pick up, I do need to work on TN’s website, but I am trying to make my coding projects a major priority at the moment, which are going well.

Having a TV in my room again has been nice, between watching recorded shows, but also a Windows rig to take advantage of Amazon’s Unbox service, it’s lovely - plays great over Media Center allowing quick easy access from the couch as I code on the laptop, pretty clear on the TV too, at first I worried it’d be bad, but so far I’ve rented 2 flicks Evan Almighty (good flick) and Reign Over Me (twas okay) - but it was nice to have quick easy access to download, and on top of it, with Amazon’s Unbox client on Windows it leaves itself running so I can start it downloading while away from the house and it’s waiting for me, pretty snazzy.

I do laugh though talking about movies everyone said Evan Almighty was “blah” - however I enjoyed it, I think it wasn’t the same as Bruce, but it worked for me, that and I think you have to be used to Steve Carell humor, and watch for subtile things blended in, and I always like how they take a common misconception about Christianity/God and make it clearer to understand, like Lauren Graham’s chat with God in the restaurant - good stuff.

Anywhoo - time to get back to it, a long morning ahead of coding, and hopefully a moment or two of getting a pile or two of cash from outstanding bills in town and online, so busy busy - sooner or later I’ll get a nap in I’m sure so have a good fake friday!

Thanks Bill!

So the day started like any other day for me. Going to bed at around 9am. sure sure one day it’s going to be rough working a standard 9-5 but my thought is how many folks jump for the option to work the hours of 11pm -> 8am! But the early morning turned out very nice, found out a few things, like Jack in the Box’s grilled chicken sourdough club, delightful. Also that Bill from Jabra was kind enough to send me this note:

Thank you for providing your mailing address. I am having two complimentary BT5010 ear hooks sent to you. Please allow about a week for delivery.

So looks like my BT5010 will be with me a while longer, and with two hooks, it’ll probably die with me (unless it stops working in the next 40 years, in which case, it’ll be missed.) - then the other thing, code went wonderfully well, got the last bits nearly done, just making some data input areas for the customer to input things for his project that way it’s in his hands, and I can continue to code the bits around it as he continues to add-data.

This week looks crazy as always, had a glitch between TN and FH’s billing systems, the credit card processing didn’t like the fact that two invoices had the same # so TN invoices bumped up to a range the two shouldn’t conflict in for a while #10000 range - and things are happy again, but TN is on the docket for this week too - going to get things finished up migrating old customers from dusty Quickbooks -> WHMCS which will mean no more silly mailed out invoices, all emailed out, with the exception of one customer who uses a “billing center” and I have no way to email in invoices, that I know of, so I am going to check on that too and see if I can’t get everyone.

All in all this should be a wild week, I hope to finish EE entirely code wise and get it ready to go, which is a little delayed all around some on my part, some on the customer’s part, but I think I can even have the new ideas in as well, so a few coding days ahead, going to try and lay off it in the evenings so my mind can amp down, but that is also on the idea that I’ll get normal sleep so time will tell.

Lots more I could say, but I’ll probably say it later tonight, for now though, that’s all folks!

I am dead tired.

So last night was a long one. Then it was followed up with a far too early start to more or less tell me what the emails I sent out said were possible glitches, but since no one was warned about the migration (not my servers/clients mind you) - I was woke up to deal with PHP5 issues… yay! It was all tiny stuff, but it required some research on why each app broke under PHP5, granted I could of stayed PHP4, but the core goal of this migration was to ensure a “Rock Star”’s website was functional in the morning and fully migrated without a hitch - that meant the migration of 3GB of data, email, etc. but in the end, I had to go PHP5 as it was coded in PHP5, and the new server is now upgraded to PHP5 + Apache 2.2 - and somehow I imagine there are still bugs to be told.

The rest of my day was more or less shot from that point out, I still need to do some things, but I think I am going to try and just pass out here soon, as tomorrow I have a bank run, mail run, and CompUSA run (checking to see if they’ll have leopard next friday) - but it seems like it’ll all go smoothly I think, just sleep being the key thing I need to take care of, but this is one thing for sure - no more mid-week migrations unless I am getting paid a MASSIVE amount of money, as it washes me out for a few days.

Well that’s really about it - a mini-vent, hopefully tomorrow’s various runs around town will result in some additional funds in the bank, a few check customers have been slow as of late - I also need to see about getting a PO Box for real - something closer to me that’s easy to check any and all hours of the day vs. driving across town to go check mail for nothing - but thats another blog for another day another time etc. I am going to go now, lay my head on my pillow, and fade away into a restful night’s slumber. Night folks.

What do you actually Need?

So the question floated around in my head the majority of the day, aside from being excited about the new season of Heroes, it came down to a bit in my brain going on and on about a new hosting promotion, package, offering, special, etc. trying to build up the finances, and in some regard I want to do it quickly, it’d be nice to have a infusion of a few thousand dollars, but growth one day at a time.

So it leads me to my question, what do YOU web visitor want to see in a hosting package? I already have had folks say “Windows Hosting!” well that’s all fine and dandy, but even then - what functionality do you need to make it a sale, and have you sign-up today? That’s the question I am trying to get answered, so if you get a minute, please take a second and post a comment about what you feel would be the best bet for hosting in your mind, it can be SSH access, it can be a full-on server, but please take 2 seconds out of your busy day, and post what you need in the realm of hosting, and what you’d be willing to pay.

In other quick news, Wordpress 2.3 is pretty slick - so far so good, even has Tags support via Textmate (use Keywords) - pretty slick indeed! More later.

Hi, My Name is Chuck

So for the record, I didn’t die. It may of seemed like it, but the truth of the matter is - I got fed up with SPAM, so of course, I do what any good server nerd would do…. start testing everything I can get my hands on - and I came across some great tutorials, some great software, and sort of did a mix of them all to see what I could come up with, and I think I made myself a pretty nice proxy for mail, basically the way mail flows now is as such:

Outside World -> Filter -> (if clean) -> Server

So it’s pretty nice, reduces the load of servers a bit, but the catch to the system as-is, there was no front-end to manage users in the system, so in other words, I unlike my other option (which wasn’t supported by most Datacenters) which was easy simply add the domain, it did the rest, this one requires each… user… for…. each…. domain….. to… be… added. So the original method was using phpMyAdmin to manage a database layer which managed users, which while was handy, for adding say, oh I don’t know 350 users, would be a pain in the but to do at some level, so what did I do? Spent the last two days developing and deploying a very ugly, but functional PHP application which while not GREAT code, it works and allows me to make as many users at one time as needed, so if I want to add all the users on a single domain all I do is make it as such “user:password” - the system does the rest, whatever domain it is managing it appends that domain to the user so say I was using this domain, it’d append @charlesabrown.com to the name for me automatically.

Needless to say I was pretty happy, and the system has some great tools for the end users which I didn’t code, but I am going to spruce up and customize a wee bit to make pretty for my customers, but so far the testing has gone really well - my parents both have accounts on a domain I own, and they were test subjects, so far it’s tagged about 4 good as spam, but that is because I have things turned up to the highest filtering on their two accounts, simply because they get a decent amount of spam, so currently as their MX records update, they are getting a slow steady stream of things going into their Quarantine - it’s lovely.

So that’s where I have been - My goal is to spruce up the code over the next week or so and make a interface for end users, thus it’s hard wired to a customer domain, so if a customer wants the filtering - they have full access to add users, and create new logins for the training interface for their users, needless to say, very nifty!

Tomorrow I am getting my car washed, my friends are working a car wash for my old Jr. High’s music dept. and quite frankly I am a sucker for music programs and I want to do my part, told them if they sold candy too I’d buy it all up but with some light rain, a little car wash will do nicely I hope! But other than that, no major plans for the weekend, I know I have some things to do around here (read: clean room more), and I am still trying to get the budget happy so I can get on my way to an apartment, so if anyone wants to give me money on a constant basis, please do! Heck I’d even work for it if needs be… well work within reason.

Anywhoo - thats really the catch-up of things, a pretty nice week, some good things taken care of, have some sites to clear from servers tonight, and some final bits of billing to adjust for customers, but all in all, tonight should be mellow, I think since no one has responded to going to Denny’s later, I am going to go put in a pizza, and then watch last night’s Burn Notice finale, next week all the good TV starts, how will I get any work done?

Parting Video:

Free Earl!

Tonight as I goto sleep, I leave you with this video:

Hope you enjoy! Night all