Things have been going full force lately with work. I have two major projects that I’m currently trying to wrap up. One of them is just about done. I’m doing the last bits and tweaks to it on Sundays and I have a shipping date at the end of the month. [...]

Things have been going full force lately with work. I have two major projects that I’m currently trying to wrap up. One of them is just about done. I’m doing the last bits and tweaks to it on Sundays and I have a shipping date at the end of the month. So that pretty much takes 10 hours out of my Sundays.

The other is my full time day job. I’m doing sort of a re-write to Rails 2.0 and that’s going very well. I’ve learned a ton about Rails and getting the code to be The Rails Way has been quite interesting. I’m finally seeing how Rails can make a project quicker to develop with Rails.

Anyway, I should get back to work before I run out of time.

So yesterday my DB server crashed when I was updating the portupgrade package. So I flip off the power switch, wait a few seconds and flip it back on. Well, I guess my 1500W inverter can’t handle the load of a dual Xeon starting up with 5 other servers in the rack. [...]

So yesterday my DB server crashed when I was updating the portupgrade package. So I flip off the power switch, wait a few seconds and flip it back on. Well, I guess my 1500W inverter can’t handle the load of a dual Xeon starting up with 5 other servers in the rack. It knocked out all my servers.

I knew my DB server was getting ready to go. It’s a very old system. Like about five years old. I also have two other old systems that don’t like to be power cycled. One being my development server and the other my email server. The email server just started acting up the last powercycle.

Anyway, I could not get my email server to power up at all. It just sat there with a blank screen. After about 45 minutes of no email server I just pulled the server out of the rack and installed it in a desktop system I have here. I was going to do that anyway so that I can get the email moved over to Speediwifi. It’s mostly their accounts anyway.

So late last night I ordered three new IBM eServers for a total of $1300. I sure hope they are good servers. They were really cheap. They are IBM, and nobody was fired for buying blue.

I hope to get them by next week. Then it’s going to be a install marathon. Three servers as fast as I can get them installed. At least I’ll have the latest and greatest installed on them.

This photo pretty much sums up the last three months of my life. I’m not saying it’s been all bad, I guess this is my work life. I’ve had good times wheeling and hanging out with family, but this definitely represents my work life for the past three months.
I’ll sure be glad when [...]

This photo pretty much sums up the last three months of my life. I’m not saying it’s been all bad, I guess this is my work life. I’ve had good times wheeling and hanging out with family, but this definitely represents my work life for the past three months.

I’ll sure be glad when things start coming together and working. One large stress maker has been sold off and I’m glad. The next one is just around the corner.

Anyway, the weekend is coming soon and I can’t wait.

Here is a small analogy of my job.
There is a group of guys… Say 50 of them. They want you to build them a car. Not just any car, but a real fancy show car.
You can’t just buy the parts for this car and assemble it. You will have to [...]

Here is a small analogy of my job.

There is a group of guys… Say 50 of them. They want you to build them a car. Not just any car, but a real fancy show car.

You can’t just buy the parts for this car and assemble it. You will have to make every part from scratch out of bare metal. Some parts will be easy, like the fenders and hood. Other parts will be hard like the engine and carburetor.

None of these guys will actually tell you want you want. They don’t have time to sit with you and explain in detail how it should look or drive. They just want you to build something and they will look at it when it’s done.

On top of this, each one of them has a different idea of how the car should run and look. They all pound on you every day to get their idea or part of the car finished so they can use it. Each day they call and complain about or have an idea about something on the car, but it’s still no help to actually getting the part and car running.

You will be doing all the work by yourself. You only have a month to build the car and you will only get $5 per hour for your time. You will have to work day and night to finish it in the time you have. The 50 guys will be changing their minds as to what the car will look like and drive like while your building it.

If you get anything finished, it’s not what they wanted and you will have to make changes to it, quickly, to make it look like what they want. Since you have no time to do a good job, you will have to hack something together just to get them to quit calling you.

On top of all this, there is problems with your tools that slow you down. Your air compressor is running very slow. Your garage door keeps closing on you. And your phone, email, IM are ringing off the hook.

That’s my job. It’s amazing that I get anything at all done.

Yes. I’ve been very busy lately. I’m talking 20 hours a day working busy. It has been crazy around here for the past two months. Things are just now starting to stabilize, and I will actually get to go outside this weekend. WhooHooo!
The new stuff I’ve been working on is [...]

Yes. I’ve been very busy lately. I’m talking 20 hours a day working busy. It has been crazy around here for the past two months. Things are just now starting to stabilize, and I will actually get to go outside this weekend. WhooHooo!

The new stuff I’ve been working on is really turning out great. I still have much to do on it, but not the crazy mad rush that I’ve been doing. I think that by next month things will be back to normal… err, better than normal!

Yep, I’m still at work.
I’ve been working 20 hours a day since about the 5th. Four hours of sleep each night. I’m starting to feel it.
Why am I killing myself for this?

Yep, I’m still at work.

I’ve been working 20 hours a day since about the 5th. Four hours of sleep each night. I’m starting to feel it.

Why am I killing myself for this?

I haven’t died. I’ve been at work. I’ve been at work 16 hours a day for at least two weeks now. Crunch time I guess you would call it. I call it, killing myself for nothing.
But, not nothing. I’m taking a chance that it will turn into something. I [...]

I haven’t died. I’ve been at work. I’ve been at work 16 hours a day for at least two weeks now. Crunch time I guess you would call it. I call it, killing myself for nothing.

But, not nothing. I’m taking a chance that it will turn into something. I hope. Right now our customers are pissed about the changes. One thing I’ve learned, don’t change too much at one time. I changed everything. It’s better now. It works better, faster, easier… But they hate it. They hate it because it’s different and that’s all. They haven’t even looked at it. They just hate it.

But they will love it in a few months. They won’t know how to live without it. Then they will thank me. Maybe. Probably not, but at least they will pay me or just quit.

The new stuff is great, it’s just rough on the edges right now. It will get there. Soon. I’m only allowing myself four-five hours a sleep, so it will get done soon.

Well, back to work…

I can’t wait to finish this PHP project that I’m working on. I want to try my hand at some Objective C programming in Mac OS. I’m thinking of writing some interface programs to Webentory that run on the Mac. I wouldn’t mind even writing a inventory and web site management tool [...]

I can’t wait to finish this PHP project that I’m working on. I want to try my hand at some Objective C programming in Mac OS. I’m thinking of writing some interface programs to Webentory that run on the Mac. I wouldn’t mind even writing a inventory and web site management tool for the Mac that interfaces with the systems on Webentory. That would rock. Maybe even move the admin systems off the web and into a desktop application.

But, anyway… I just need to finish things first.

Welp, I did another all nighter. I was trying to populate the new database with the old data, but it’s taking forever, and ever. There is a bit over 12,000 records plus a whole lot of photo’s to copy down from the server. I was hoping to finish the import before I [...]

Welp, I did another all nighter. I was trying to populate the new database with the old data, but it’s taking forever, and ever. There is a bit over 12,000 records plus a whole lot of photo’s to copy down from the server. I was hoping to finish the import before I had to ship the hard drives off today. But…

I guess I’ll just copy over what I have right now and do the rest when it’s online.

Rackspace charged us $8,840 for one year of managed hosting and 150GB a month. They want to charge us $480 a year for a 125MB hard drive upgrade. This is all on a white box server.
We can get the same service from Hurricane Electric for $5,400 a year and we get 300GB per [...]

Rackspace charged us $8,840 for one year of managed hosting and 150GB a month. They want to charge us $480 a year for a 125MB hard drive upgrade. This is all on a white box server.

We can get the same service from Hurricane Electric for $5,400 a year and we get 300GB per month, up to six servers, and one time charges for hardware upgrades.

Rackspace is just ripping people off big time. I just can’t see their justification for charging $480 for a $70 hard drive.

Here is what I think I should do. I should buy the colocation 7U rack from HE for $300 a month. That give me 300GB of 1Mb/s bandwidth and up to 6 servers. Then I should put my own equipment into the rack and manage it all myself.

Nobody supports FreeBSD and PostgreSQL anyway, so managed hosting is useless.

I’ll setup a DB server, two web servers, and a backup/archive server. I can probable build all the hardware for under $2000. Now where am I going to get $2000….