Category: Business yammerings

Remember that Thinkpad I just bought? Well, the drive is… well, iffy on it. 20gig 9.5mm laptop drive. It’s whining something fierce. A little birdie reminded me that IBM warranties are totally transparent to who owns the laptop. So first checking in on IBM’s website, SCORE! It’s still under warranty! Off to IBM’s tech service, get a human being within 2-3 minutes, and he has me remove the drive, give him the part number, and a replacement drive should be here tomorrow, all free of charge.
Kewl. Once again, my opinion of IBM’s laptop division goes up a notch.

On Friday I got a verbal agreement from an angel investor who has agreed to finance Stonekeep‘s operations at least for 6 months. We’ve agreed on financial arrangements and other details necessary to make this work. This will allow me to focus completely on Stonekeep’s client base and systems and build the company up into a self-sufficient business.
I’m hyper-excited about this. I’ve got great expectations now that I have the opportunity to really build CONGO (and to some extent Keystone) back up into the high end systems I think they can be.
Exciting times ahead!

So it costs bux to host all these websites at Homeport. Our T1 is through Cambridge Bandwidth Consortium (great bunch of guys, lemme know if you’re in the Boston area and want Good Bandwidth [tm]).
So how do generate some revenue? First thought is of course advertising. The least noxious of all the adserver networks I’ve found is Google’s AdWords program. (A good example of what pages look like with AdWords ads in them is Google itself – a few snapshots are here.)
Has anyone had experience with these folks, good or bad?
Course, the second possibility is paid hosting, but that market is _so_ crowded now, and the costs are so cutthroat, we’d need tremendous volume just to break even, and we just don’t have the time or money (though we do have the physical resources in bandwidth, servers, and infrastructure 🙂
Curious about all the stuff we host on our line? I’ll throw that into the extended link… lotta neat stuff 🙂

Continue reading “Opinions on ‘adwords’?” →

Bright. Glowing thing. In the sky. AIEEEE!
Not enough sleep, but moving along. There were actually people waiting to register when Ben and I got downstairs, though the sun was barely up. Boy, these people need to get lives! Owait…
More post-coffee.

Holy shit there’s a lot of people here. Current reg counts are something like 950 registrations, about 780 attendees (which is about right 🙂 . The LAN room is stuffed, their setting up tables in the halls to take up the overflow.

Continue reading “Convention, day 2.” →

Ubercon III is under way! Ben and I got here on Thursday afternoon, and spent most of the day setting up the equipment, meeting hte rest of the crew, and generally testing stuff out. A good first day… however…

Continue reading “Convention days 0-1” →

There’s sort of a creed in the technoid world that folks have a tendency to just want faster and faster machinery, even when that is not really warranted. Many people spend zillions of dollars on machines that spend most of their time running screensavers or playing Solitaire.
I’m always keeping an eye on ‘am i just wanting new equipment just because it’s sexy? or do I really need it’? Well, I think I hit my limit on this laptop.

Continue reading “Pushing systems to the limit” →

This weekend I’ll be doing registration services for Ubercon down in the Meadowlands in NJ. Ben Cordes will be my second for this stint. If you’re in the area, or want to get into some seriously groovy gaming, stop by! The last 2 events have been a blast, and judging by registration numbers, this event should be the best yet.
BTW, just to be clear… Ubercon is a customer of mine, I’ve been working with them from the beginning. They’re great people, and I’ve met some wonderful folks through their events.

I’ve been invited to give a nice talk on LTSP at the Boston Linux Users group in April. Pretty spiffin. Folks should try and come to it, I love seeding an audience with friends and supporters 🙂
Here’s the actual entry for the talk.

One of the clients I’ve been trying to land for Stonekeep just called me and said “the backer is really hot on using your system, can we change a few things and come up with a way to do this?” – and what they’re asking for is reasonable.
One more client. And not a free one. Schwing.