Hey all, sorry about neglecting everyone lately. I was reminded today by more than one person that I haven’t posted in a while.

So let me bring you up to speed.

I’m currently on vacation, which isn’t a good excuse for not posting, but we will start with that. I’ve been at what you may call a BlogBlock. I still haven’t found any clear direction on where I want to go with my posts. I seem to be all over the board. I find myself reading alot of technical blogs, yet not really contributing. That gets me wondering if I have anything to contribute. I know I do, I guess I just have trouble gathering my thoughts. I’ve never been a strong writer as most of you can probably tell. That is probably one of the biggest reasons I started this blog, to see if I could improve in an area in which I have lacked. But I find myself facing the same problems I’ve always had, I’m never sure what to write about. I guess until I figure it out, I’ll just continue to ramble about anything that comes to mind. Maybe if I write about anything, something will come to me about the direction I should be going with this. Ah well….. ramble ramble ramble…….

Boy am I glad that is over….. I just spent the last 5 hours trying to figure out how I broke Perl on my server last night. I came to find out that I didn’t break it last night, I broke it on Thursday. I don’t know how many of you deal with Linux ever, but it isn’t the easiest thing to troubleshoot, especially if you aren’t very familiar with a lot of it.
I think Linux, or any *nix, is a good thing and I hope it holds on and gives Microsoft a run for their money, but somebody has got to come up with a better way to install and maintain software. Dependencies are a nightmare. I’ve been told many times these problems arise because I am using RedHat. But I wonder if any other distros have a better answer. Do any of you have much experience with Linux and if so, how do you make sure you don’t install software that is going to kill your other programs? Maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t “get” it. Maybe I’m not….

Sorry I haven’t been posting a heck of a lot lately. I’ve been extremely side-tracked trying to get things ready to launch SliverNet (that’s my companys name) before February 15th. I’ve been doing alot of web design and learning alot as I go. I think we’ve (we being everyone in the company) come up with pretty good layout. Unfortunately I went for the easy way out and laid it out in tables. I’m going to go back through and get it hammered out in pure CSS eventually. But I needed to get it done… and it still isn’t quite done yet. So I may be here or there on my posting for a bit yet. But when I get everything going I should be able to get stuff with some more meat up here. But until then, I’ll probably just through some links up every once in a while and comment on some news. Anyway…. back to my labor….

I know I’ve been slacking lately in my posting… I just noticed this morning that I haven’t put anything up since Friday. Needless to say, if you’ve been following along, I’ve been fairly busy with my new son and all. Plus, I’ve been doing alot of work on the Web Hosting Business that I will be launching here in February. I’m going to be dumping a bunch on here over the next couple of days to catch up. Probably nothing to dense or meaningful, but we’ll see…..

That’s all for now.

I haven’t written anything in a few days so I figured I better check in. Its two days till my wife’s due date so, needless to say, I’ve been getting pretty impatient. Our last two kids were both late so I totally expect the same here, but it would be nice if things were on time. I know my wife feels the same way.

Other stuff going on in my life……

I and a few others have decided to start our own Web Hosting company, so look forward to some shameless, self-promotion to be coming down the pipe. This blog will be moving to our servers eventually, but I will set up some redirects for those who may have linked to me. I’m in the process of designing our Company website and will post updates here to it for all to comment on. In fact, I have a (VERY) preliminary framework set up already. Feel free to let me know what you think. There aren’t any graphics yet and the color scheme is still negotiable. So, really, there isn’t much to see. It’s not even in it’s permanent home yet, since the servers have yet to be ordered. But I wanted to start putting it all together.

Anyway… enough babbling for now. When I come up with some more interesting stuff I’ll let you know.

Well, I’ve succumbed to the weather Gods and am staying home this morning. It really isn’t that bad outside, but it is expected to get worse before it gets better. Even the schools around here are closed and they never close.

Luckily, yesterday, I thought this may happen and brought some work home with me. Nothing to heavy duty, just a book I’ve been working through. I’m learning all about the Zope framework, because I’m going to be rebuilding my companies website with it. Actually I am going to be using Plone, which is a Content Management Framework (CMF) that is built on top of Zope. So don’t be surprised if I slip some comments in here about that every once in a while. I tend to think out loud and what better way to do that, then to spew on my own website.

Anyway… back to the books.

Just wanted to throw out a quick HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!!! Now I’m going to go back to dealing with the ton of snow that dumped on us last night.

… that is the question.

My Dad, Brothers, Friend and I are thinking about starting a Web Hosting company (well, more than thinking, researching really) and I have a lot of questions that need answered.

– First off, is it a good idea.
– Second, can we make money.
– Third, how do you do it.

I think we have the first two pretty much covered. Web Hosting can be a lucrative business, especially when packaged along with website design and consulting. But there is a bit of a learning curve that needs to be traversed in order to get up to speed. One of our major goals would be to provide reliable, friendly customer service. But to do this, we all need to know what the heck is going on.

There are many established web hosting companies around and we are going to have to set ourselves apart. I think we can do this with reliability and quality customer service. The biggest complaint I’ve seen about web hosting companies revolves around these two subjects.

The plan is to start out small. Rent one dedicated server and start advertising. The goal would be to, eventually, buy the servers and run them directly from our location. But in the interest of smaller up-front costs…. this will come later.

Anyway, if anybody out there has any advice on starting a business such as this, or any small business for that matter, drop me a note. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions. Also, if anyone is looking for someone to host their next site, (shameless plug) look me up. Hopefully we will be up and running sometime in Early 2004.

Hmmm…. gotta come up with a company name…….

Next time I tell you that I am going to go to a midnight showing of a movie, remind me that the movie is the same a week later during the day. I am so dang tired right now. For those of you who have no clue as to what I am talking about, I went to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King last night at midnight. Four hours later I was in bed. Two and half hours later I was getting up for work. So here I am, sitting like a zombie, barely able to get my fingers to move, let alone react well enough to type this with any speed. I am praying for the clock to move faster so I can go home and sleep, however, it seems to be slowing down as I watch it. I guess I’ll stop watching it.

I’m going to the Midnight showing tonight of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. It should be a good show. But I am going to be dead-ass tired tomorrow. The movie has a running time of 3 hours and 21 minutes. So I figure I’ll be home and in bed around 4am. Then I gotta drag my ass out of bed around 6:30am to get to work. So I warn everyone now, “Don’t mess with me tomorrow, cause I’m going to be one grumpy bastard.”