Fantastic Four?!?!

Per whats-his-face’s request.

Four jobs that I’ve had

• Radio Announcer
• Webmaster for a College
• Teacher
• Racquet Center Manager

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan
• Airplane!
• Sgt. Bilko
• Spaceballs

Four places I have lived

• Sioux City, IA
• Grand Island, NE
• Sloan, IA
• Moville, IA

From longest to shortest. I lived in Sioux City most of my life.
Four TV shows I like to watch

• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Good Eats
• Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Both the old and new versions)
• Charmed

Funny thing? My TiVo only records ONE of those shows.
Four foods that I like

• Steak
• Pizza
• Rice Stick Noodles
• Tastees (A very rare treat that can be found in my hometown, or in Lincoln, NE)

Freakin Pansies – I can actually come up with four foods and not have to resort to beverages.

Four websites I visit daily

• Google
• Fark
• Justin’s Blog
• Eric’s Blog

The Latter two? I consider them two of my best online friends (probably IRL if I lived closer to them, but cest le vie)

Four things I want to do before I die

• Get COMPLETELY out of debt
• Travel Abroad
• Live in a large city
• Work in radio again

Still kicking

I know, I promised I would blog more, and it looks like I’ve given up already. Not so. Just been REALLY busy, but a good busy.

Need to grab a bite and then off to work. Then work. Oh, and more work after that.

Whoo!

Never disagree with dials that measure in generalities.

When this dial says that you have no gas, you have no gas. Seriously. It will not turn over. I promise.

For the second time in my driving career, I ran the tank dry. Man I feel dumb. And it was cold too. You may point and laugh.

Ok, you can stop now. Seriously. Stop.

Web Hosting, southern accents and rising from the ashes.

So for those of you who don’t know, I have a hosting business. It’s not doing too well.

See, I used to write for Lockergnome, and from there would get tons of links to a special that was run for them. Well, things went through quite a bit of changes over there, and I think I got lost in the shuffle. It was nice getting the 2 hours back that I used combing through the Lockergnome Forums, of which suprisingly I’m still an administrator! Well, writing for Lockergnome drove a TON of traffic my way, and therefore the business was doing well. Then I stopped writing. Almost completely. No blogging, no Lockergnome. Therefore the traffic disappeared. No traffic, no new business. No new business, no new tech toys for yours truely.

Now, 4 years into hosting (including a short stint as a reseller for a company that disappeared into thin air) and my client base is shrinking – the expenses are climbing, and I know I need to kick it into gear or else I’ll be hosed. And I *will not* be another ‘That Hosting Company‘.

So the great journey is on – trying to bring the hosting business back into the black (where it sat for a long time). One of the resources I am looking at is Mitch Keeler and his Web Hosting Show. He is pretty much the Web Developers channel over at LG, and while I do enjoy what he writes, I can’t stand to hear him speak for more than say…30 seconds. He’s extremely intelligent, but his very slow reading of his script and this souther accent make me think of the vulture from the Looney Tunes cartoons. I know that sounds bad, and I don’t mean to be insulting to the guy, but thats just what I think. So right now, I’m religated to reading his blogs and thats about it. I might try downloading a more recent show and see if it has improved any. Who knows?

The next thing on the list is to eliminate some expenses. For example, 6 months ago we got our own dedicated server. But I’m still lugging people around on the reseller account I opened when I first started this gig. I need to kill that account relatively soon. As a matter of fact it comes due again late next month.

Then its time to clean up the backend. It is a mess. We tried a new billing system, and while it looked slick. I didn’t do diddly squat. What’s that sound? Oh, us flushing $150 down the crapper because the new billing system crapped out on us. What? You don’t notify us if there is a new signup unless they do a 100% completion? Gee, thanks. And you won’t write modules to work with processors other than the ones you are in bed with unless I pay for it? You mean I get to pay for something that everyone else would get to use? Gee, no thanks. The decision was made to go in, clean up the old billing system, and get it back up to 100%.

I also want to be able to go to HostingCon06. But it moved from Chicago to Las Vegas. So it went from learning opportunities to bad buffets and craps tables. Thats a tough one. (Not really. Vegas!!! I love that town, but thats another post.)

I have a long road ahead of me – but hey, I think I can do it. Who knows, perhaps I’ll do even better. All a matter of perspective.