(no subject)
Recovering from an ear infection, the day after I'm done with the amoxicillin I come down with a pretty heavy cold. It was there in the background, waiting to pounce apparently. Feeling a little better today, just snotty. Life, as it stands, hinges around whether the kids are good at school or not - that will determine overall if I'm to have a peaceful evening or a tense one. Due to this cold, I haven't been engaged or as involved as I'd like.
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On the technology facade, I'm playing more with CentOS and Railo at the moment. One of the reasons why is because I've decided that personally (at home), I'm going to start looking around at cutting costs and support open source. I have been upgrading my Adobe ColdFusion server for years now and quite frankly, it's not worth it because I'm not getting my moneys worth out of it (which is my fault really). Railo is probably the most promising open source CFML engine out there (and, also willing to work with Adobe), so I've decided to dig my teeth into it and suck up the differences between the two engines and work with it. Honestly, it's not bad at all. There are aspects of it that I wish were inside Adobe's server (and, I've been vocal with Adobe about it since I'm on the alpha/beta team). Now that Railo has joined JBoss, I have a feeling that we'll be seeing big news coming soon within the next 2 years.
I've moved my website off of my CentOS box at home and rented a slice. I prefer to have control over my own server, so a slicehost VPS has been great so far.
My mail server went to Google Apps as it's free (ad supported). I reclaimed an old email address of mine since I had to abandon it several years ago due to the amount of spam that I was getting. Honestly, best thing I've done so far. I *hate* mail servers. I hate managing them. I hate always being paranoid about the volume of spam wearing down the box (and, yes, this has happened to me). Am I scared of Google being in charge of my mail server? Well, I've been using gmail as my primary account anyway - so, do they know anymore about me by gaining my domain email? No. They can have all my spam tho. Take it. I give it to Google freely as they'll put it to better use than I will.
Last, but certainly not least, DNS server went to dnsmadeeasy.com. I could have just done this at my slicehost as they have a dns panel, but I opted for a 3rd party because if slicehost didn't work out for me, I can cut my losses and point my domains elsewhere within seconds.
So, why am I doing all this work? Because, in times like these, I'm looking to get more for my money. I pay Speakeasy.net about $150 a month (VoIP + 4 IPs + 6 megs down / 786 up). That's way too much. Why? Because I can get 'Consumer' Verizon FiOS package for $60 a month (20 down / 5 up). So, I went for it and opted for the 20/20 package ($78 a month) and with taxes and such, it roughly comes out to $92 a month. I'm locked in that rate for 2 years. I love Speakeasy - they have been great for me for years. However, in these times, they're not keeping up with my needs - nor are they adjusting their prices. Time for me to make a smart decision and move on.
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Work-wise, everything is fine. They're keeping me busy. I'm not getting the same scary vibes around here as I did 4 years ago after the dot com bubble pop. I think the company having managed 3-4 major conventions within the span of 4 months for a regional biomedical company has something to do with it.
I'm annoyed with a particular client, but nothing I can do about that.
---
On the technology facade, I'm playing more with CentOS and Railo at the moment. One of the reasons why is because I've decided that personally (at home), I'm going to start looking around at cutting costs and support open source. I have been upgrading my Adobe ColdFusion server for years now and quite frankly, it's not worth it because I'm not getting my moneys worth out of it (which is my fault really). Railo is probably the most promising open source CFML engine out there (and, also willing to work with Adobe), so I've decided to dig my teeth into it and suck up the differences between the two engines and work with it. Honestly, it's not bad at all. There are aspects of it that I wish were inside Adobe's server (and, I've been vocal with Adobe about it since I'm on the alpha/beta team). Now that Railo has joined JBoss, I have a feeling that we'll be seeing big news coming soon within the next 2 years.
I've moved my website off of my CentOS box at home and rented a slice. I prefer to have control over my own server, so a slicehost VPS has been great so far.
My mail server went to Google Apps as it's free (ad supported). I reclaimed an old email address of mine since I had to abandon it several years ago due to the amount of spam that I was getting. Honestly, best thing I've done so far. I *hate* mail servers. I hate managing them. I hate always being paranoid about the volume of spam wearing down the box (and, yes, this has happened to me). Am I scared of Google being in charge of my mail server? Well, I've been using gmail as my primary account anyway - so, do they know anymore about me by gaining my domain email? No. They can have all my spam tho. Take it. I give it to Google freely as they'll put it to better use than I will.
Last, but certainly not least, DNS server went to dnsmadeeasy.com. I could have just done this at my slicehost as they have a dns panel, but I opted for a 3rd party because if slicehost didn't work out for me, I can cut my losses and point my domains elsewhere within seconds.
So, why am I doing all this work? Because, in times like these, I'm looking to get more for my money. I pay Speakeasy.net about $150 a month (VoIP + 4 IPs + 6 megs down / 786 up). That's way too much. Why? Because I can get 'Consumer' Verizon FiOS package for $60 a month (20 down / 5 up). So, I went for it and opted for the 20/20 package ($78 a month) and with taxes and such, it roughly comes out to $92 a month. I'm locked in that rate for 2 years. I love Speakeasy - they have been great for me for years. However, in these times, they're not keeping up with my needs - nor are they adjusting their prices. Time for me to make a smart decision and move on.
---
Work-wise, everything is fine. They're keeping me busy. I'm not getting the same scary vibes around here as I did 4 years ago after the dot com bubble pop. I think the company having managed 3-4 major conventions within the span of 4 months for a regional biomedical company has something to do with it.
I'm annoyed with a particular client, but nothing I can do about that.