The following items are being added to my Christmas Wishlist:
At least, that’s what they tell me. I haven’t posted for a while, and I don’t really have a whole lot to say.
I’ve been whining recently about trying to find work, I’m still looking for a full-time IT job while I continue to apply for anything I see in a two-hour radius from where I live.
I applied recently for an IT position via fax, because the organization’s mail server wasn’t accepting emails. This amused me. I also forwarded messages I’d printed with the error messages so they could look into fixing it.
Yesterday and today I worked high ropes, yesterday with a church retreat from in/near DC, and today with a bunch of kids from DC’s Public Schools. A few funny things were said, but the one that stood out was a girl yesterday who said the 3 places she wanted to visit before she died were Argentina, Australia and Alabama. On querying her wish to visit Alabama, she explained her desire to visit “The South” and drink “Real” sweet tea. I tried (in vain) to suggest she could get real sweet tea just by visiting this far south in Virginia, but she wouldn’t have any of it. The only place, in her mind, where she could get such a delicacy was if she went to a “Real” southern state like Alabama.
I had a great time, today I got to try out the new gloves I got for doing ropes work with (and they were amazing!), and had a good laugh or two with some really cool people.
The other day I set up a new website on a domain that has been empty for a few weeks, www.awesomechristians.net is now a quote board for amusing or moving quotes from Christian chat rooms all over. Not necessarily UCCN, or even IRC. They can be from Yahoo! or anywhere else for all it matters!
Tonight is a thanksgiving dinner at church, and tomorrow morning Kelly and I leave to house-sit for two weeks! I’m sure many photos will abound.
Yeah, it was a fairly boring day today. I sat around and looked at Craigslist and eBay both for jobs and computer stuff. I’m partly pricing rackmount servers and/or equipment with hopes of starting towards the wish-list, partly getting ideas and otherwise just looking to see what is out there.
After “Lunch” Kelly and I went to the two local thrift stores to just look. Kelly bought a tree thing that had photos hanging from it (I think she’ll be using it for earrings and such) and some pants, and I bought a balancing-Kiwis puzzle.
Tomorrow I need to watch a training video for work that I’ve had for a while and haven’t gotten around to watching, and we’re also supposed to go and watch “Where the Wild Things Are.”
I’d like to visit Target and the Halloween store tomorrow if we can, and see if we can’t get Crash either a Bee or a Dinosaur costume. It would be hilarious if we can..
Speaking of Crash, we need to walk him shortly as it’s getting rainy and we’re going out this evening..
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.
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 woke up this morning, discovered I don’t like Fruit Loops, and set to work on my new website project (for which I am yet to purchase a domain, so I’m not talking about it at all!). I didn’t get very far, though I decided it is probably going to need to be a custom CMS rather than using something existing. I have a basic layout ready, I do need to work on it’s compatibility with Internet Explorer as it doesn’t show very well.
But that’s not what this posting is about. This posting is about my awesome puppy (who I need to take new photos of, probably tomorrow) who has proven over the last few days how much he can be trusted without a tether. On Monday I grilled my lunch and had him hanging out outside with me without a leash or tether, and he behaved well. The last few nights I’ve put his leash in my pocket and just untethered him to bring him indoors for the evening, and tonight he won the game (gah, I just lost The Game) by proving he can go outside, pee, and come back in without a chaperon. Of course, for the next few weeks I’ll have his leash in my pocket and be standing outside ready to run if I need to, but he has shown he can behave with less strict supervision. I’m looking forward to letting him roam free in a house at night when we finally move out!
I’m trying to make the best use of my morning time before I go to work rather than sleeping all day, in theory it will help me when it is time to leave my 2:30-5:30 job for full time work.
This morning I took Crash with me and went to Food Lion and bought breakfast stuff, lunch stuff, and some drinks. Breakfast will last most of the week, lunch stuff all week (with some to spare) and the drinks should last until next pay day. I filled up the truck, which should last two weeks unless I have to go somewhere much other than work, and after breakfast and lunch I took Crash on a walk.
Tonight I applied for another job, this time in Christiansburg, as an entry level help desk analyst. The pay is crap (for an IT job), but it’s better than what Kelly makes full time, and we always said that another job with similar pay would be enough to get ourselves off the ground.
We’re working on getting Crash to behave without needing a leash on, and today he hung out with me for about half an hour without a tether while I was grilling, and tonight stayed within hearing distance on the walk inside. He is still tethered and crated while we’re not around to watch him, naturally ;-).
Hopefully tomorrow I will get up and have breakfast, followed by an hour or two of programming on my current web-project, I also need to make a bunch of sandwiches to go in the fridge for the rest of the week. I’ll also continue to keep my eyes open on the various Craigslist pages and maybe checking out CareerBuilder and the other job site rounds, JMU, EMU, RMH, JenzaBar, DNR, etc.
But that is tomorrow, and tonight it is getting late, thus I shall sleep. Goodnight, world.
…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.
I’m intrigued, when I look at my statistics, as to how people come to my blog, what they see, etc.
There are 3 groups. Naturally there is a miscellaneous group, they tend to just fall in here either by the next-blog function in the wordpress toolbar, or by an automated link being clicked. There are my friends on facebook and twitter who click my links, and I also get a small amount of traffic from a few friends blogs.
But the biggest group, and this actually surprises me, is the group searching for information on USCIS Form I-797C, Notice of Action. In fact, on a test-search for “i 797c notice of action” my post about receiving it is on the first page (about #6). I intended to write a summary of when things happened, and how my immigration to the United States worked out in reality, but obviously that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe next week.. (though I doubt it!)
…all you can come up with for gift ideas are toys. I figure people would start asking me what I want for Christmas soon, and it seems a good idea to sum up for myself what I’d like to acquire in the next few months. That being the case, a few of these things are specifically for me to buy, and I lay absolutely no obligation on anyone to spend $5000 on me (I feel bad when people spend $20 on me). In fact, if you did, I’d be worried and would probably have to refuse your gift. Owing to lack of ideas, and some things I still don’t have (and/or want more of) since last year, I’ve copied some across from last years list.
I’ll update more over the next few days. That’s probably the majority though. Hopefully this gives those of you who will be asking me what I want some ideas! Because I really don’t want to know what I’m getting until I get it.
Money isn’t really my friend. I have a bad habit of getting money and immediately spending money. I guess it’s a reflex left over from the idea of “Well, there’s money, let’s spend it before someone else does, or we find something else that it has to go towards.”
In fact, that $1000 isn’t hanging around very long anyway, there are a couple of credit card bills to be paid, and we’re going shopping tonight, so who knows how much we’ll have in the morning. But we’ve also filled up both vehicles with gas, and set aside our outgoing payments, we just need to keep doing what we’re doing and our standing balance should slowly rise!
I’m still looking for a job, so if anyone in Virginia (or DC) is looking for a Level 1 Helpdesk Analyst or DC Ops Tech (will work any shift if required), hit me up and I’ll send a resume. I don’t mind driving to work, I was quite happy to drive 2 hours each way to Rackspace, and I’ll be happy to do the same for you.