Free Earl!

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

Hope you enjoy! Night all

Billing, Support, Site Moves… Yay!

So today has been quite the Monday, but in a good way, just busy busy. I solved a Frontpage server issue, which was nice, well by solve I mean the customer hasn’t come back saying it didn’t work, but it’s only 2:30pm so the day is still young! But there have been some nice things evolving here for me, so far very nicely:

• New Billing System Reviewed - I enjoy it, I think Customers will too!
• New Credit Card Processor - Lots of good reviews around the web, applying tomorrow - hope it helps fix up processing issues.
• New Server Setup - Been wanting to do this for a while, not 100% up thus far, but by Friday hope to move support/main websites to a new server.
• New Affiliate Application - To help encourage sales around, I am going to give an affiliate program a whirl, should be fun!
• New TN Website - Layout is simple - not going for a lot of FLASH, just going for lots of clean, simple, concise information.

But all in all, quite a day, still a lot to do on all these projects, as well as on a few others, but it’s a start, hopefully this week I’ll get more info on the other client projects in the wings right now, as well as some side work for the kMan, would be nice, a good day thus far, though I am hoping to take a short cat-nap @ 5pm and then come back to it into the evening (unless I get a invite to dinner) - but the billing stuff looks awesome! Pretty excited overall, means a full billing audit & transfer, but well worth it!

Anywhoo - back to it, few more hours to put in before a good break… okay okay, maybe a short break to play a game really quick… lol. More later.

Ah a new week….

Weekends are always… well uneventful, mainly I use them for sleep, or getting into trouble (muwhahaha) but this weekend was nice, got to hang out with some friends and have some food (which they paid for, thank you Noah & Rosie) - heck they even bought me ice cream - total score but also got to have some good times hangin with the kMan at his new temporary office which is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from me down the freeway, which is pretty cool, even got a key!

But the new week is coming, and I am actually pretty excited about it, get some more money coming in - tomorrow I find out about some server services, which could infuse the business a bit more, which is nice, also helps me pay some bills, not to mention get one step closer to an apartment, so pretty jazzed indeed, already increased the monthly revenue about $350 a month, just need to keep it rolling and keep the side work flowing aside from hosting, I really want to try and wing it before years end for real this year, so some work this week as well on the hosting front’s finishing up a re-vamped/re-tooled TN and get a new special/touch-up the FH site which just had it’s back-end all updated to all the newer security patches, went very smoothly.

Keep me in your prayers, while I know not a TON of you read this daily (heck I don’t post daily) - I know some of you check in on this now and again, and I’d appreciate some prayers, really working hard to find a good balance in life between work / family / friends / and most importantly faith - so hopefully as things level out these next few weeks I can really make a good effort to get things taken care of in that respect, not to mention finding a nice apartment in a good area, already have 2 places picked out from online, I need to go out and see what they are like aside from what the monitor shows me already have had several friends in town offer help in moving, so very grateful for that.

Anywhoo - thanks for stopping by, thanks for taking a minute to read this ol fart’s blog of thoughts, hopefully this week will turn out as good as last week! Take care all, have a good week!

Give and Take - Much Better

Well quite a week, can’t actually believe it is Friday already! Just seems like this week has flown by and yet it is still going strong - lot of things went down this week, haven’t had a chance to really blog all that much - but it has been yowza - quite a week, to re-cap some of this week’s happenings:

• Expanded my prayer & bible time by getting on Ed Young PodCast & Daily Email (linkage)
• Picked up the 80GB iPod Classic (lovely)
• Tried to be Sick (not so good at it)
• Got a call from a old friend
• Getting INC’d - thank the lord
• Coded on Projects Some
• Got the last of my stuff from the old office #2 (kMan’s place)
• Watched and Enjoyed You Kill Me
• Assorted other things

It was a fun week though, had some blips, some hiccups, but it worked, almost entirely into a “normal” sleep schedule, it’s odd going to sleep at a semi normal hour and waking up before 7am… not sure if it’ll stick - but I sort of hope it does!

I am sure there are other things I could go into detail on, the topic for one was something I had planned to talk about, but the short version is this week has been some good give and take, constantly I feel like all I do is give sometimes, but this week I got to give and take, it was nice, I have some awesome friends - now I just need to take a nap so I can hang out some more this evening, and this weekend! More Later!

Projects, Mashed Potatoes, and Money

Well it’s life, budget has really bounced back some, granted wish it could be better, but it’s getting there - should level out over the next 2 months I’d imagine, and some more options coming up for money so pretty jazzed up, and I am going apartment hunting in the coming weeks as things really firm up and look at the option to get that rolling, while I have enjoyed the last few years here, rent free, really getting a chance to help my parents with their health issues, the last 2 years they have more or less gotten a lot better, and I am not as needed as I once was (or chose to make myself) - so back to a living on my own bit.

Which leads me to projects, projects galore, one I think is officially dead - took over 1 month for one of the folks involved to reply back on a staff board we had setup, I am not blaming anyone, if anyone is to blame I’d go for me as I am essentially the lead coder, designer, hosting guy - but at the same time each of these guys have other things going on as well (just like me) and thus I am not sure if it’ll happen - so I am going to take a lot of the code I have written and look at making a little tech blog sort of a Q&A bit for folks to ask me random questions on tech, and sort of do that, granted if the group gets together and says “Let’s go!” and we can make a REAL plan, I’ll definitely poke back at it for a while - just time lately I want to really hop into something fun, something that makes a little bit of revenue ($10 a month at least) and help others in the process.

Personal life - I dunno, I think I still have one sometimes lol - all the stuff lately with getting worked leveled out has taken a good chunk of my time up, which in itself isn’t a HUGE deal, but really it’s time consuming, nailing down a strong monthly budget with at least $150 above and beyond the set budget, which includes fun money already so $150 pad isn’t too shabby, but I am looking to do a REAL audit of all my hosting services, and I am feeling strongly about this new billing system, saves me some monthly money, as well as makes it easier to build an affiliate system - so going to peruse that for sure, but the apartment will help, having my own space, my own crazy habbits/hours/etc. and easier to have folks over to party like it’s 1999 so I am looking forward to that, and hoping that all the stuff that’s pending really pans out.

But there it is, things right now are mildly crazy, but I am enjoying some of the projects before me, some good fun, I am getting to really lay things out, learn new web functionality like AJAX and such at a more complete level vs. just recycling other scripts, which is making for more streamlined scripts, heck this last little bit deploying ajax and building a custom filter to scan the database for usernames already in-use, wonderful! So pretty excited, some fun things I can deploy using it, and really spice up some older apps I think, so we shall see.

Anywhoo - it’s 1am already, amazing how this evening has really gone by, only a few minutes it seems like it was 7pm - but such is my great grasp of time as of late but life goes forward, still looking to get an iPod, leaning towards the 80gb 6th gen, while the 160GB would be nice, all in all 80gb is MORE than I need, and I can use the difference to get the new iPod cable for the iPod to hook it up to my TV on occasion and watch flicks I have purchased on the TV - so we shall see what this week brings! Take care all, have a wonderful week.

Insert *sigh* of relief

Well so far a good day, well aside from the massive mess of streets near Oswell St. but hey - even that wasn’t THAT bad I had a good day, some good prayer time, and I am still fighting thru some things, but all in all, I am alive and breathing, so its all good.

Got the first payment from the kMan, just got off the phone with him in fact and really had a nice chat, got some very awesome compliments from him (nice to get a pat on the back now and again) - we discussed plans for next week sitting down and re-arranging his servers and getting things all fancy - possibly save him a couple hundred a month in hosting bills, letting him de-commission on of his servers and get him setup in a VPS, which for 2/3 of his smaller sites would work PERFECTLY - so pretty jazzed it’s all coming together, and the idea that I may have a good steady work flow from him is a promising bit, but still, I have to really get some things rolling with FH and TN here soon, probably more so with FH, but none the less, pretty excited!

Made it to the bank with 30m to spare, got money in, and processed a payment a day early just so it’s one thing off my mind, and have funds in there to cover my insurance payment now, like 4 things appeared overnight and drained the account, and the insurance had not show up yet! So this was a nice day to get that money in, and not have to worry too much, plus I have another $425 coming this next week it looks like from odd jobs, so it’ll be nice to have a bit of a pad again, granting I don’t go too wild and buy an iPod (donations welcome!) - but time will tell on the iPod.

Website projects are going good though, going to make a bite to eat, then basically hit the code for about 2 hours, going to launch a pre-registration page for a website tomorrow, and I just have a few tiny adjustments to make to ensure the database tracks, and the AJAX bit for checking the username availability works it is a very cool feature to have in it, so I am very excited.

Anywhoo - thanks to everyone who has been keeping me in their prayers, I really do appreciate it.

Headache Free - Yay!

Well headache is finally gone, and so far today things are going good - even got a call from family up in Washington State who invited our family up to Washington for Thanksgiving! Which could be fun, and I looked up rates for flying - $289 round trip! So something to set aside money for I think, of course going to see what the rest of the family is thinking, though if they aren’t, I might, be fun to spend a holiday with my dad’s family - I don’t get to see them that often.

Projects are going good - got the project me and Dan are working on setup on the server, no website just yet, but I am going to wrap up the loose ends of the database this afternoon/evening and get things online for tomorrow so they can offer pre-registration, so very excited, plus the owner of the site wants to give me more money next week, so thats a plus as well!

The kMan okay’d my price list, and I sent him a invoice of the work I’ve done thus far, no word back, but after lunch (which is beeping at me now), I am going to give him a buzz and see if I can get paid today or at the very least a good chunk of it as I need to get the ol bank account up and happy again (stupid budget!).

Anywhoo - lunch beeps, I must go and eat it!