nothing to say

So I had a free time bonanza last night and squandered it. I made a teeny bit of progress – installed MySQL, php, and Komodo, but then got sucked down the black hole of researching unimportant technical details for my application idea.

No code. No content. No progress.

I recently had a windfall and sold a domain name I wasn’t using. I buy domain names with the best of intentions, but most typically they just sit there unloved. In researching for the sale, I stumbled across sedo and parked the rest of my domain orphanage.

Parking is that annoying activity where you fill a domain with ads so if someone accidentally types your site name, you interest them in something you are advertising. It’s like taking a wrong turn reading a book and ending up in the yellow pages. Sedo does all the work so you can aggravate people with little or no effort (oh yeah, and maybe make some money).

One of my random domains “hughesmail.com” gets some activity and I am now obsessed with the income it is producing. So far it is on track to four times the annual cost of owning it – roughly $3.50/month. Next step – find 5000 more that are as “lucrative”. I check it daily to see if I have earned a few more cents, intelligently trimming my progress window down to 17 minutes a day.

I am sure what the world needs is one more online journal of the sorry attempts of yet another internet wannabe.

Turns out, I have roughly 18 minutes a day free before bed after my time working way too many hours as a enterprise architect + engagement manager + principal trying to help lead my company to the promised land and my family time spent with my wife and kids, so I figured I’d launch some internet sites and see what happens.

Why?

Don’t really know. Seems exciting? I have traditionally been a serial idea guy – it’s pretty cool because you get to think up cool things and never follow through. Not terribly profitable, though.

A combination of thing have recently ignited my creative juices, plus one of my colleagues keeps heckling that “ideas are cheap”. Some other catalysts:

• I read The 4-Hour Work Week. Sounds good to me.
• Multiple colleagues have been discussing similar inclinations. Must be something in the air.
• I started reading blogs and am most fascinated by the ones regarding making money online.
• I just turned 40. If not now then when.
• I think this internet thing may be more than a fad – there may be money to be made by taking advantage of it. (How excellent that I chose “teva sandals” to be the time I was ahead of the crowd.)

So here is what I am doing now with those 18 spare minutes:

• Writing here. I added Adsense as well. Time well spent since I am the only one who reads this and I am not allowed to click them.
• Adding content to my professional blog. No profit here, I just enjoy it. Plus wouldn’t cry if I were to create some buzz for Systems Flow and I.
• Setting up a site to showcase all the technical tinkering I do. Hoping people think I am a genius and flood it by the thousands.
• Configuring google analytics so I can be obsessed about the 8 people who visit my sites (and I think I may be 6 of them.)
• Futzing around with php for a simple web application idea I have. I am going to keep it on the down low (that’s street lingo for “secret”) for now in case somebody stumbles across this.

My biggest challenge is going to be fighting the evil couch. At about the time the 18 minutes frees up, I would rather snuggle with my wife and watch sitcoms.

The goal, of course is that by using the 18 minutes wisely now, I can have more than 18 minutes on the couch later.

Inspirational, huh.

Warning – as I stumble across older I musings that I have previously “published” under a pre-blog venue, I may, as energy permits, travel back in time and post them here. I happened to stumble across a 1998 Christmas Letter tonight and did just that.

To continue the theme of “racks”, I have added a page regarding my basement data center. I intend to pimp the page at some later point, but it is at least a start.

At one point in my illustrious career, I was doing significant IT work for small businesses – configuring PC’s, networks, and servers. In this role, I collected, as I am a pack rat, scads of aging PC parts. During a “sabbatical” between contracts, this resulted in a flurry of eBay activity, followed by a MacGyver-esque build out of a basement data center.

The biggest purchase of the eBay shopping spree was two full-size racks. I purchased two because who gets by with only one rack? Actually, the shipping surpassed the cost of the a single rack and the cost to ship two was incrementally higher. In a related story, I paid $150 to have the rack shipped to my fathers bookstore – FYI, I did not do his web site – when I originally purchased the racks. My father recently received a bill for the shipping as the company never paid and had gone out of business. The intriguing thing was that the unpaid shipping bill was $67!!

One of the racks is in my garage and has been provisioned as an outdoor projection booth for showing drive-in style movies in the backyard. The other supports my data center (click on image at left for bigger picture). Lets take a quick tour -

A. 802.11g Wireless Router. It is wired to a full size antenna bolted to the basement ceiling, so that I can get a strong signal throughout the house. It actually gives me a pretty strong signal outside as well. I suspect my neighbor likewise gets a strong signal. B. Cable Model. Standard issue. Hooked to the wireless so I can use my laptop “al fresco” (I hope that doesn’t mean “in the nude”). Although I have a home network, I run this on a separate segment, because my agreement with my service provider is that I not run multiple PC’s over the connection. C. CAL. “CAL” is named after the used “California PC” rack mount box I picked up on eBay. It is a Windows Server 2003 and its current key roles are that of Tivo, Print, and File Server. I had actually used it as a PVR and wireless media server for a while but dumped that for the Tivo and a standard UHF transmitter. A CD burner and second hard drive are providing great value as they sit on top of it awaiting installation. D. Elmer. “Elmer” housed in a used “Sniffer” rack mount box I picked up on eBay – hence the glue reference. It is a Windows 2000 Server and its current key role is that of development playground. It is running an assorted set of database and application server software. I used to rely on it more before I discovered VMWare, the ultimate development sidekick. E. Old Crappy 17″ Monitor. However, I did get that nice matching (also old and crappy) rack mount monitor shelf for it. My goodness rack mount LCD screens are expensive – even on eBay. F. Compaq Rack mount Keyboard with integrated Trackball. Okay, I was surprisingly excited about this eBay find. I purchased the pop-out drawer complete with the keyboard for about $50. I have it mounted low like that because with only one rack and plenty of space, it is easier to sit while working on it. Of course, when the data center grows…

G. IBM RS/6000. This is my AIX 5.1 server. I picked this baby up to fiddle around with IBM Websphere MQ and ramp up my AIX skills. My Unix skills are mostly Linux and I had never used AIX. I was into it for a while, but in my current role at Systems Flow it has fallen out of use. It has been so long since I booted it, that I don’t recall it’s name. One exciting possibility is the R/390 – I could add a Mainframe to the data center!!. Unfortunately, I believe this no longer manfactured card is in demand as I rarely see them on eBay. H. Dual PC TV Thingie. This is currently disconnected and being “monkeyed with”. It is an old system with dual independent motherboards, memory, and hard drives in it, but a shared power supply and no floppy or CD. I suspect it was part of an old hotel video streaming system as it has video outputs and some dedicated chips and was manufactured by Mitsubishi. It is pretty weak but I pumped up the memory and CPU as far as I could and run it as two Red Hat servers – Left and Right. I. Compaq Rack mount UPS. My wife demands high availability.

I also have an image of the back of the rack as there are a few components hidden there.

B1. Switching Hub – 100MB. I know, I know – 100MB? B2. Compaq 8 port KVM. I love this – it was a long wait to get a slick one at a good price on eBay – but here it is! B3. Power Strip. A must have!

Pros to running a personal data center

1. Geek street cred
2. Plenty of geek playground
3. Helps me keep my skills marketable (aka. “the rationalization”)

Cons to running a personal data center

1. Noisy as hell
2. Sucks power like you would not believe
3. It is another thing I don’t have any time for
4. Geek street cred