Category: Life: Personal

Well, it seems I’ve managed to sort out that data parser I was working on – it finished its first successful run at 2.34am this morning. However, I was just falling asleep before it completed as I’ve just been too tired to do much (amount of code added to the parser since last week: 6 lines of regexp’s – number of runs to attempt to parse the data – I’ve lost count!).

So now I’ve got 1Gb of SQL statements that I’ve got to load into a database whilst combining at least another 85Mb of unstructured data to it. Then I’ve got to parse out HTML/PHP pages which has dynamic remote XML/SOAP parsing systems with cachability whilst ensuring the whole database can be searched – and then I’ve got to work on stage two which is “data expansion” as then I’ll have enough data to seed the new system which will use the dynamic SOAP system to capture even more data whilst another system spiders a few items. It’s hard work (even the theoretical planning and timeframes a beast), but hopefully I’ve have a helluva good system by the month end if I can actually get time to work on it.

Why don’t I devote more time to it? Well, let’s just say this – I’ve been at work 3 days so far this week and yet I’ve spent so long in the office I’ve already done 4 days work if you count the hours (Monday was systems upgrades and hardware modifications to the sales machines, Tuesday was finishing off the coding for a dynamic employment site along with finalising some bits with two new billing systems/CRM systems I’ve written, today was “manual labour” – move lots of stuff half way across the building and up a floor and then totally rearrange and rewire the office). And tonight I need an early night as I’m going “preliminary job hunting” tomorrow.

Crap! (actually, I was going to saw something much worse but…). I’ve had the s—tist day for ages today: it all started last night: I couldn’t get comfortable in bed and when I did manage to sleep I had really bad nightmares (such as my own death: but with kinda “camera zoom in” style close ups – something I didn’t really need after seeing myself die!).

The cat then woke me up at 4am by Meowing (something she’s been really p–ing me off with recently: she just meows for no reason), so I let her outside eventually – well, I got out of bed, went downstairs (she ran past me and sat at the front door), I opened the door (note: just out of bed and naked!) she just looked at me. I close door, follow her in to the lounge and she just flops down. I walk back towards the stairs and she runs and tries to climb up the front door (indicating she wants it open), I open it and she eventually went out. Couldn’t get back to sleep.

Alarm went off at 7.30am (as per normal) but because I was so tired I didn’t hear it until around 8.20am then realised that what I thought was the 7.30am news was, in fact, the 8.30! So have to rush to get ready for work – and discover that I’ve got no hot water for a wash PLUS I’ve got quite a growth of stubble that needs shaving. Have my shave and have very very very quick hair wash (hair still unruly several hours later).

aka: Good tips for newbie website owners

Ok, this is more of a “Work/Techy” entry than a personal entry, but it’s more of a rant/”get off my nerves” sort of post and I try and keep my “letting off steam” style posts in the Personal section.

Recently at work, we’ve launched a new web hosting solution for our customers that offers them the minimal acceptable technical support possible (if the server is down, we’ll kick it: that’s about it(!)), but with oodles and oodles of bandwidth available for an extremely low price (gambling on our calculations of bandwidth vs techie time). So far, it’s been quite successful and reasonably popular, with no major difficulties so far, but the low bandwidth cost/price ratio has attracted a certain “type” of customer (i.e. we’ve had more than 2 enquiries about it).

The type of customer who sees “Hmm, unlimited email addresses and bandwidth at dirt cheap prices: I’ll buy it and set up a Hotmail clone”. Is it wrong not to have the heart to tell them that setting up a proper web mail client is a lot harder than they think? First, find an appropriate script – yeah, there’s plenty of free ones out there which will let you read your email online, fewer that support “on the fly creation” and fewer still that support all the “whizz bang features” you don’t realise Hotmail has (such as the continual “Mailbox space” updating, Messenger integration, quite good spell checker, multi folder support, reasonable interface etc etc).

Blarg. I really thought I had things under control at work, but it seems I’ve been proved wrong. For the last fortnight, I’ve been working around half-an-hour to 2hours extra every night before leaving the building and doing work at home to try and clear the back log (I’ve got now 6 data centres to look after: comprising over nearly 100 servers PLUS around 40 search engine placement clients: some of which are paying a few £100s every month and are therefore entitled to quite good service 😉 PLUS I’ve had a couple of new clients in the last week PLUS writing a self-promotion search engine optimisation site which is already gathering customers even though we’ve hardly lunched it PLUS keeping up to date with what Google et al have been doing).

Yep, in short I’ve been extremely busy and sometimes, when I’ve got home, just fallen straight to sleep. Combine that with the fact that I’ve got all my “own business” stuff to do (I’ve noticed a downturn in the amount of revenue coming in from the sites so I’ve got to do something: I’ve spent today trying to slash costs and by the end of the month should have saved myself $2,000 a year).

I’ve got “task lists” at work to try and keep me on top of work related stuff, but when you get stuff that’s more important then others and then others that are even more important than that it can get very confusing and some minor things do get left behind…

Anyway – that’s my excuse of not blogging much recently: I’ve hardly had time to eat (and I’m not kidding: the cat’s been fed more often than I have – a couple of time’s I’ve had to survive on half a sandwich all day lone), but there’s some light on the horizon and it’s concerning on GESF (green eyed southern friend)…