Would Someone Hire Me Already?

Posted on October 23, 2009 by kellyzdude

I’m really not liking living here. It sounds wrong, it mostly is, I love this area and the people that I’m close to, but I hate a series of specific circumstances. I can’t seem to get a job I want to (or can) have long term. Harrisonburg is fairly void of IT opportunities. That is, all the IT jobs are taken, and there didn’t seem to be all that many to begin with. No-one is expanding, so the chances of any opening any time soon are fairly flat. In DC there are hundreds of openings, but of the 10% that I might be qualified for, almost all of them require either a security clearance, a US Citizenship, or both. I have neither.

I’m keeping an open mind about it, so far I’m finding on average 1 job a day to apply for somewhere, and while I’m yet to be contacted by any possible employers, I’m continuing to look – mostly because I can’t stay working part time forever.

I have a small list of places I regularly check (usually every day, or every other day), starting locally and working my way out.

Eastern Mennonite Univerity
James Madison University
Rockingham Memorial Hospital
Rockingham County Public Schools
Harrisonburg City Schools
Rackspace (Locations in Blacksburg and in NoVa)
Craigslist (Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, Winchester, DC, Roanoke, Lynchburg, Blacksburg)
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech

I also check several school districts around the area every week or so, checking county and city school systems around as far as Charlottesville, Roanoke, Winchester/DC, etc, and I just added Carillion, the hospital in Roanoke to my list of places to regularly check (thanks Lauren).

If you’re a hiring manager, I can send a resume as required, but I have two years professional IT experience between basic and advanced experience working with PC’s, Servers, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Windows Server 2000 and 2003, Linux as a desktop and server, web technologies and networking, computer hardware, Active Directory, Novell Netware, have worked on a service desk, and can usually learn things quickly. I also have around 10 years experience in a non-professional environment just playing with stuff and learning things at home or while working on friends/family computers. I’d like to study, but I need to get my family to a point where we are self-sufficient with enough spare cash-flow to fund such an educational venture.

I Want…

Posted on October 17, 2009 by kellyzdude

…to change the image of cheap internet hosting. I can’t see it happening. What I would love to do would be to run a small business supplying cheap webhosting for websites and IRC and Shoutcast and Teamspeak and VPSs and Dedicated servers and so on and so forth, meanwhile providing quality 24 hour phone and email support for a low monthly fee. I’d like to do that. I think that is what the internet would like. But it isn’t going to happen any time soon. Why? Because I don’t have the upfront money to pay for the first server, which itself would probably only be able to supply websites for example. And even if I did, I would probably not be able to afford long-term payments if only one or two people bought accounts – not much motivation to have people calling me at 3 in the morning because their website is running slow.

The sad truth is that small internet businesses are not very profitable. In order to make any money, you need a minimum amount of resources and get a large number of customers using them in order to pay for a) the resources being used already, and b) more resources.

I was crunching numbers a few months ago with the prospect of starting a VPS company, but in order to get going, I was needing around $240 a month for the server just to get it up and running, and then I needed 24 people paying $10 a month before it would break even. With that kind of package, I’d only have another 6 packages available on that server before I’d need a second one, and then I’m back to finding $180 a month until that one reaches a break-even point. Once I had 6 servers running, there would be enough profit from 6 full servers to fund a 7th without anything coming out of my own pocket, by which point I would be serving around 180 customers. The seventh server is what would be the turning point in the business. And somewhere in all of this I’d need to have found 180 people that want VPSs with the crappy support that I’d be able to provide on my own, meaning I’d probably need to pay for advertising of some description, and possibly provide some web-designing services of some kind. Keeping in mind also, that none of those numbers were taking taxes or any other mandatory expenses into consideration, so it would probably be the 8th server that was making money. Around the 10th server (Read: 300 customers) I’d be able to afford to visit a mobile communications store and lease unto myself a cell phone and a wireless data-card to provide support anywhere. I’d also be able to lease a VoIP account for the business and accept incoming phone calls for support. I would have undoubtedly branched out by this point, and be providing other services using similar hardware such as website hosting, but hosting more people per-server at a lower cost per-customer. I’d be reselling dedicated servers, probably looking at the viability of buying my own hardware and co-locating it.

And that is where it gets depressing. Maybe I need to just do it? Maybe I need to save the money and put a real plan together, put the time into it and make it work. Maybe I need to find a business partner who I can trust. Maybe I need to give it up already. I know I need to study the business side of it to find out how much that would cost before going further with the viability of the pure technical numbers. I know I need to study further, and make decisions regarding placing multiple service types on the same servers, such as ShoutCast hosting alongside TeamSpeak hosting – probably not a good plan. The same idea applies to mixing VPS plans on the same hardware, as it isn’t entirely fair to cram whatever will fit on a server on whatever is available at the time, at the same time I can’t afford to run 3 servers with 3 plans until they’re paying for themselves.

So I shall return to my silent pondering of greatness that will likely not come. I will continue to come up with ideas that may never see fruition. And I will proceed to consider possibilities to make money as well as a name for myself in the internet community.

Toleration

Posted on May 28, 2009 by kellyzdude

This will be short, I’m on a computer where the s key, and the d key are both not working at all (cut and paste ftw..).

I’m at the beach this week, and so far I’m having a great time. I’m with cool people and doing cool things, but I have this overwhelming feeling that I’m tolerated a lot more than I’m liked.

It’s not a fun feeling at all. I have it far too much. With friends, with family, it’s like I’m in the third tier of friends people will hang out with. That is to say, if their tier 1 friends are there, they get all or most of the attention. Otherwise, it falls to the tier 2 friend, and failing that, well, there are those guys we spend the rest of our time tolerating. Guess they’re good for something after all, right?

I’m well aware that I’m somewhat paranoid, and that alot of the time this feeling is completely unwarranted. This time Kelly says she is feeling it too. Not cool.

It’s still an awesome week, hopefully it stays that way!

Dear Bebo Spammers…

Posted on May 20, 2009 by kellyzdude

I keep getting friend requests on Bebo that I could probably block with a simple Regex. Names that don’t have any similarity to the users username, and a username that invariably is a name, a capital letter, and several digits.

It’s about all I get emails about from bebo anymore, and I see no real reason to log in except to decline all these requests.

There are at least 2 a week, usually more. I get similar spam followings on Twitter too, but it’s not quite so bad.

So maybe this should be addressed to Bebo, to clean up your site. And to the spammers, give it up. I’m not going to befriend your profiles, nor am I going to click any links therein.

525,600 Minutes

Posted on April 18, 2009 by kellyzdude

Turns out Rent was right. There are 525,600 minutes in a year. I always thought it was too small a number, but I just did the calculation (I was going to use the right one) but 60 x 24 x 365 = 525,600.

Anyway, I’m going off topic before I’ve even started. Today is April 18th 2009. Today marks an important day in history, for me, for my family, for Kelly and her family, and a handful of others. On this day one year ago I stepped onto Qantas flight QF2714 and flew from Wellington to Auckland, waving goodbye to my family and friends at Wellington Airport. In Auckland I walked from the domestic to the international terminal, and boarded flight QF25 bound for LAX. I haven’t seen New Zealand with my own eyes since.

I remember that all three flights that day were late. The first one was late because of mechanical problems earlier in the day that had caused delays and they were trying to get back on schedule. The second was a fault that had apparently been fixed but they were still waiting on a problem with paperwork for it. The third we had to wait at the gate at LAX for mechanics to get to us after their list of other faults to fix.

I remember walking through customs at LAX having filled out my little I-94 card, and being unsure what to write for “Country of Residence.” The customs lady walking the line checking things before we reached the officers processing us was angry at me that I didn’t know, but I truly didn’t. At that moment I didn’t live anywhere. On April 17th I resided in New Zealand. As of April 19th I would be residing in the United States. April 18th? I was homeless, as it were.

Despite all the mechanical problems and delays, I arrived in one piece at Dulles, although I was about 45 minutes late as I recall, landing at 12:30am on the 19th, walking into the arms of Kelly (followed by everyone else that was there).

People keep asking me if I miss home, and to a degree I do. It’s not so much home though, as aspects of home. I miss walking to the end of the street and getting Fish and Chips for a snack because I was bored and hungry. I miss driving to McDonalds and getting a large coke and a large chocolate thick shake for the same reason. I miss catching the bus and train to work and back every day. I miss Sunday night drives to the beach or around the bays, or somewhere else random that we wanted to go, with Sue and Amber. I miss having a cell phone, and understanding how the billing for cell and landline phones worked (I still think it’s really messed up that you have to pay to receive calls/messages etc..).

I miss driving to Paraparaumu via Paekakariki Hill one way and SH1/SH2 back for the fun of it. I miss knowing where everything in the supermarket is, and what most things are even if I haven’t had them before.

I miss the surprise of seeing Dad’s face in the window when my train pulls in to take me to work, I miss the sound of my brothers mock screams when I play a trick on him, and I miss the sound of my mother trying in vain to make me stop when she finds out what I did/was doing.

I miss having the opportunity to drive almost anywhere if I had time or money to pay for gas (and for whatever I wanted to do when I got there), ranging anywhere from watching a movie to eating dinner to going to Parachute. I miss having the contacts to do sound and lighting gigs with semi-professional companies and organizations when they needed the help.

Most of all I think I miss seeing people I know and love that I haven’t seen for a year or more, it’s nice seeing the young kids grow up through photos on Facebook etc, but it really isn’t the same.

So, what have I accomplished in my year of USA-ness? Not a lot, I fear to say. Having arrived in April 08, I was married in May 08, and filed immigration paperwork before the cut off date in July 08. In February 09 I received my Employment Authorization Card, and started applying for jobs. Of all my applications (around 30-50) I’ve had one solid lead (Summer Camp Counselor), and one official rejection (“Position has been filled”). The biggest problems I run into are experience (or lack thereof), lack of College education, and lack of US Citizenship or security clearances. I have no problem relocating 2 hours away (or commuting that far until relocation can occur), since there are practically no IT jobs in this area at the moment.

I have a drivers license (Learners permit, will sit the full test some time soon). I have fixed several computers, some for money. I helped with the church’s VBS program last year, and probably will again if I don’t get the camp job. I traveled to North Carolina for gas money to visit a long time friend and work on his church’s network. I created several new websites, including DailySerene.com, and several personal sites. I also rebuilt the websites for UCCN and C-IRC (C-IRC with the help of Ed), and developed an IRC-based trouble management system in PHP.

We bought a puppy, rented an apartment, gave up an apartment, took out a $2000 loan, moved twice, started a modern worship music section in a traditional church service, bought a guitar, taught Sunday School to High Schoolers, took several thousand photos, and had a few bad times, with lot of good times.

All in all I’m having a great time. I’m glad I moved, and while if I had to live my life again I’d probably do that part differently, I’m not at all unhappy with the way things worked out. In fact, I look forward to what the next 525 thousand-odd minutes have in store.

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