jharrison

I have been a Scout user for a while now. I primarily use it for its Rails monitoring. They also have a Passenger plugin that monitors a number of Passenger stats. My setup doesn't lend itself to Apache log monitoring (which is what the article refers to).

As a monitoring app, I have no complaints but also have little to compare it to. It's worth a look and hard to beat on price, in my opinion. I'm not someone who would roll his own monitoring system so it works well for me.

Nothing, indeed. I thought I was clever in 2000 when I had IIS "running on" Linux simply because I was using Linux as a reverse-proxy to my IIS box, just for fun (if learning Linux by starting with Slackware could have been considered fun).

That's a great question. I guess I just assumed they didn't want to be left out if the project became a product and made some money. They're a non-profit and any additional revenue would be a huge benefit.

I still have the 3-ring binder containing, among other early projects, my first BASIC program written for my Timex Sinclair 1000. I was also oblivious to some of the basic structures of BASIC so there's a ton of repetition. It's fun to go back and look at some of my notes and scribbles from over 20 years ago. Fun for me, boring as hell for anyone else.

Hey, I'm people. Sure, I'm a little round in the middle, I'm graying, and I could stand to workout once in a while. I'm starting a program to revitalize myself and fix those problems. Someone in your position as a person should think twice about offending us...people.

I sense strife intra-marital strife.

I've often thought the same thing. I've known people in the food business and it just seems like a lot of work.

I think I'd do something like BBQ probably through some kind of catering situation.

I chose none because there wasn't a "It's better" option. I've actually gained new contracts since things went south. So far the recession is working out fine for me. However, I know plenty of people who are struggling so it's not like I'm completely unaffected.

I'm with you. I get razzed by a copywriting friend of mine all the time. I learned 2 spaces in typing class and nobody ever told me the rule changed. It's such a habit now that I have to think about using just one space.

I only read 15/15 and as far as I'm concerned I don't need to read the rest of it.

There are plenty of examples of succeeding in a downturn by doing the opposite of what everyone else does. It might take a little creativity to find available resources but history shows that it can be well worth it.

If you can afford to do anything to get a step ahead of your competition while there's a lull in the action, you should.

If you're selling products that will help your customers get ahead of their competition then you might have to figure out creative ways for them to pay you. Not everyone has this flexibility but if you can make it happen you'll help your customer AND your own company move ahead while everyone else takes a time-out.

If Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't answer this question perfectly, and in video form, I don't know who does. Check it.

http://tinyurl.com/6lpckv

I'm also using both vendors with a couple VPSes at each.

I've had one outage with Slicehost when they needed to replace a drive in one of my servers. I wasn't even aware that there was a problem prior which shows how proactive they were. The outage was short and on schedule and everything came back up, as expected.

I've had excellent experiences with tech support in both organizations. Both are very responsive.

Both have pretty strong user communities with Slicehost having a bit of an edge on documentation, if you aren't already comfortable with your own admin. Both have active IRC channels.

Honestly, for me they're almost a coin flip. When I get ready to acquire a new VPS I see what each is offering at the time and go with the biggest bang for my buck. The article is helpful, even if unscientific, at determining the efficiency of the bang.

I think the "not available" page could have a lot of good uses.

A poll of "what are you going to do now?" would add to the experiment. Sure, not everyone will answer honestly but a good number probably will.

How about some kind of stats? Show a user list and "off-time" visit count next to each name, or let us enter a small string to say what we're going to do instead of HN. That might get abused but you get the idea. I think what we see while the site is unavailable is a great opportunity for quick-response community building.

It sounds like you haven't ever actually done what you propose to do. I think you'd be better off getting a job with one of the outfits you intend to mimic, first.

Like SwellJoe, I've also been contracting for a number of years.

Early on I went to the homes of computer users and fixed their problems. Let me just say, those were some of the worst experiences of my tech career. Don't get me wrong, if going into a stranger's home, often into their bedroom or other intimate space, and mingling with their pets, breathing their smoke or other noxious odor is your idea of a great way to make a buck (I use that term loosely), then this is EXACTLY what you should be doing. I personally can't stand it and will never do it again. I often get employees of my clients asking me if I make housecalls. The answer is always no.

If you ever intend to make money supporting businesses then you should be employed with a company that does that in order to learn the ropes and truly identify the needs of that market. It sounds like all you have right now is your anecdotal opinion of what Geek Squad is, or does. If you think you're going to make any useful amount of money visiting individual homes, you're likely in for a rude awakening.

The way I did it was to consume all things tech while I had another job and occasionally help friends, family, and referrals with their computer problems. That never did anything but give me occasional lunch money. I then took a couple of MCSE courses because I got them cheap. With those courses and some confidence that I knew wtf I was talking about, I got a job with a company that had a larger company as its client. I worked for that company for a year fixing 5-10 computers a day (I was one of several supporting 800 users). I left that job straight to contracting because I actually knew something then. I had actual experience in the corporate support world.

I was an employed contractor for 3 years after which I went completely solo. That was 7 years ago. Today I (me, solo) support about 80 computers across 4 clients and I do web development as it comes, by referral. My rate is $95/hr. and I've been told I could/should raise it many times.

Hope this helps.

Why would anyone make Joe Average use Textile anyway when there are plenty of rich text editors available? Many (most?) have button bars Joe would be familiar with if he's ever used MS Word (which most Joes have). And again, many are cheap, free, and/or Open Source.

A properly configured app that filters user input doesn't need to require users to know any markup languages at all. So why?

Stop thinking like geeks and think like users.

When I was at Bank of America I worked on an internal Project Management tool that used a ton of Excel spreadsheets. If you can start with some kind of template it becomes dead simple. Excel spreadsheets can be used as datasources without Excel being installed on the server (iirc). Our app just connected to the XLS and dumped the data into the existing columns. If you have charts based on those columns then you're good to go.

Of course if you can't start with a template or need to add columns on the fly...it might be a little more challenging.

Lack of sleep, especially in the face of the scientific evidence of the damage it does, is not a badge of honor. Go to bed.

Eye hacking, duh.

Web/Software development business owner for the last 6 years. Previously all Microsoft dev. Currently a company of one (me) doing RoR.

Trying to get past analyzing my startup ideas to just doing them.

Give me a break.

Ya, the site could be designed better. Is it a Basecamp copy simply because he intelligently uses "above the fold" and then answers a few question in a two-column format below the fold? How many other sites do that? Many! Certainly those that want a modicum of success, and are aware of the home page "design patterns" that are in use today, do.

I plan on using the exact same design pattern for my projects.

I can't even say that 37Signals pioneered the pattern but they might be responsible for popularizing it. It works.

If anything Peldi deserves a little credit for utilizing a well known pattern to get his site up and saving his time for developing his app.

Definitely not ready for prime time.

I did several searches that said there were multiple pages of results but clicking the link to the second page brought up "no results".

I'm also not sure how fresh their index is. I went to a page from the results that didn't have the content the search said it did. Normally there would be several reasons for this but I happen to have enough knowledge of the target site to know they just have a very old version of it indexed.

What EY does can't compare to your average VPS hosting and is absolutely not even close to shared hosting.

If you poke around their site (looking at more than the price), you'll find a lot of information about the depth of their offering. They have a couple great graphics that really fill in some of the blanks.

But, more than all of the great tech, you have a team of people that are passionate about what they do, which is to keep your app up and running while you're on the beach.

Alright so maybe you're not on the beach but the point is that if you have a complex, mission-critical app, you can outsource your hosting and support to them. If you compare how much EY charges to what you'd pay for your own employees to do the same, not to mention the hardware, you'll find the cost of EY is pretty darn cheap.

$.02 from a longtime EY watcher and future customer.

He may not be the smartest person they could find but he's a damn smart 12 year old. So, perhaps you're right. Either way, I wish my 12 year old had that much interest in anything at all. Very impressive.

You make a great point. I hadn't even considered B to C since that's really not where I operate.

Maybe I'm just old (and by old I mean almost 40) but this is the only business model that has ever made sense to me.

I'm obviously impressed with the Facebooks and the HotorNots and everyone else who manages to make a truckload of money without any actual product or service (that I can identify the value in anyway), but I can't ever seem to get interested in doing "business" that way.

For me, if you don't actually have a real customer, or what you're doing doesn't make them money, then what have you built? It doesn't sound like a business to me...but I might just be old.

I used Mechanize and Hpricot on a project recently to create a sort of poor-man's API. My client is a performing arts organization that wanted a new website but they already had a (dreadful) internally-hosted site for selling tickets.

In order to keep website users from having 2 accounts I created an interface that scrapes the sign in, sign up, lost password, change password, and couple other screens of the internal system. So when users come to the website and "login" they're actually logging in to the internal system and I just record their session from the internal system so I can masquerade as them as they go about their business.

It's not going to support 100s of connections per second but it gets the job done for their traffic levels (36,000 views the first day of launch).

The point about using 3x5 cards to keep track of stuff you actually get done and then to make a quick hit list for tomorrow seemed especially useful to me.

I just found out about http://gootodo.com/ which allows you to use email to manage your lists, too. Gootodo lets you send it emails using specially formatted recipients that determine where in your todo list the email item goes. Then you just have it mail your your list in the morning. It might not satisfy the "where did all my time go today" itch but it sure seems to do the trick for tomorrow's tasks.

There are plenty of stories of registrars going out of business, killing websites in the process when their lookups die.

I have never had a problem with GoDaddy and use them for all of my own domain names as well as my clients'. I've never had anything but good experiences with them and I'm not worried that they'll shutter the place tomorrow.

If you feel good about registering your names with "NameCheap" and confident they'll be around, go for it. I wish you the best of luck.

The title sounded intriguing but the colors and size of your text turned me off immediately. Hopefully it's just my old eyes.

Welcome to the club of those who are willing to do things that most are not. My company has gone from 2 people to 7 and now to 1 over the last 7 years and I will never work for anyone else.

4 months goes by VERY quickly. Believe that you only have 4 months (or maybe even 3) and do everything you can to make your project work in that time. "Work" doesn't mean it'll be perfect. Get it up and adjust on the fly. PG has said it. Others have said it. Launch and iterate. You can do it!

We're all rooting for you!