I have to admit, being back in the IT world has been better than I’d feared. Working for a big company (>100 employees) for the first time has also been good. Am I finally seeing the light? Who knows. But for now, this gig is good.

Recently I built a FreeNAS box to refresh my knowledge on BSD, and for a place to store all those legally obtained “large multimedia files” which have been clogging up my POS HP desktop. After figuring out how many more of these files I could store before I would need to expand the box, I started dreaming. I remembered a company called Equallogic that one of my former employers was big on.

Who are Equallogic and what do they do? Well, unfortunately they got swallowed up by Dell a few years ago, so effectively they are Dell. As for what they do, they make SAN appliances – Storage Area Network boxes. Basically, really smart, really fast special-purpose computers with a whole bunch of hard drives to store lots of stuff, keep it safe, and serve it out as fast as possible.

I had a look at the current offerings from Equallogic, and one box in particular stopped me dead in my (virtual) tracks. It’s got the catchy name of PS6500E. Luckily what’s inside is more interesting. How about 48 1 terabyte hard drives? Mmmmm… the possibilities….

Dell Equallogic PS6500E 48TB

Is this something you could possibly justify as a “step up” from a FreeNAS server at home? No. But it’s fun to dream. What’s the damage on one of these bad boys? Oh, about $100k. Just imagine this box with 2TB drives!!

Thanks to Tony Gonzales at Federal Appliance for giving me the lowdown on this bad boy.

Well that went quickly – I’m back in Canada. Two weeks in the Philippines – and barely a wasted day.

Some highlights – taking Rose ice skating at Mall of Asia (a happy disaster), spending the night at Rose’s family’s home (it DOES get cold at night in the Philippines – who knew?), a day trip to Pundakit, and watching Rose win an impromptu drinking competition (Rose is so petite that she gets goofy after 1 drink, so luckily for both her and I it was a single glass challenge).

After taking the plunge and marrying someone with so many differences, I thought by now I would have found something to make me question my sanity, or at least something that was mildly irritating. I’m happy to report that no such irritation exists, and my sanity, at least in this respect, is not in doubt. Rose, you’re the girl for me!

Only one lowlight – the journey there. Thanks to the ultra tight security at YYZ on December 27th, my barely bearable 24 hour trip was turned into a hellish 49 hour ordeal. More on this later. At least I got a business class upgrade for the first of my 3 legs back, and got to fly 2 hours earlier on the last leg. That my suitcase didn’t come along for the enhanced ride was barely noticed.

Lucky me, I will be travelling to the Philippines again over New Years. There’s plenty to look forward to – I’ll be investigating a(nother) business opportunity, but to be honest, the main reason I’m going is to be with my new wife, Rose.

For those who missed the news, we were married on 9/9/2009. The requirements for Canadian Immigration have now been completed, so we’ll be filling out a whole bunch of forms which will be submitted upon my return. Then the clock starts. People have joked that we should have a pool for when Rose will get her permanent residency here in Canada. Stay tuned for an announcement

Of course, there will be some time for San Miguel and his friends during my trip. I’m lucky to have made some great expat friends in the Subic area, which is where Rose and I will be staying.

Inum tayo!

Sorry Cogeco, your attempts to get me to buy cable twice for my house have failed. I was going to have to move to Bell TV eventually (gotta get GMA when Rose gets here), but you forced my hand. Instead of have one cable subscription, you now have zero from my home.

Stop being greedy!

It’s been gone for 9 months, thanks to an ill-fated career move that severely limited my freedom of speech. It sounded like a great idea, but turned out to be a nice waste of a year. I’m going on holidays just after Christmas, so I’ll have lots of time to update this blog with all sorts of things I’ve been thinking about. See you soon!

We’ve all heard of subscription creep, or at least experienced it. $50 a month for internet, $35 for the phone, way too much for cable, a few magazine subscriptions, the list goes on and on. But what really got me the other day was IM creep. I was talking to a friend in Iraq via a message board, and he asked me what my AIM was. AIM. What’s that, ICQ? No? It’s yet another Instant Messenger.

I’m already using Yahoo IM, Skype, and two different M$ IM accounts (one for the laptop, one for the desktop). And when I sign into my Gmail, people nab me on Google Chat. And then I log into Facebook, and yes, another @#(%&^# IM application. You would think that would be enough, but no, now I need AIM. Enough!

Today, I ran into a new program called Digsby. which promises to unite practically every IM known to man, plus email accounts and social networks. For Free. Amazing – but what’s the catch?

Download Digsby

Here’s how to Install Digby step-by-step, and avoid all the bundleware.

First, you click Accept to begin the installation.

Next, it presents the opportunity to install Yahoo toolbar for Internet Explorer. Decline.

Then, Smartshopper. I’ve never heard about it before, but anyway, Decline.

Another one – Seekeen. Decline!

And next we see Desktop Weather from The Weather Channel – this one might actually be useful. I think I’ll install this one. Accept!

On and on we go, this time they want us to try Registry Power Cleaner. Whatever. Decline. Will this ever end?

Yes, it looks like it will. One last attempt to hijack your Internet Explorer homepage, and to make Yahoo the default search engine. Up to you, Yahoo isn’t a bad search engine – personally, I’m happy with my current choice of search engine and homepage.

Whew! That was a lot of effort, but I think it will be worth it. I love free software, but I hate bundleware. So there you have it – how to install Digsby and unite all your IM applications. I’m installing it now, and I’ll let you know how it goes for me in an upcoming blog post.

Oh yeah, Merry Christmas

Although I left the ISP world about six months ago, I’ve kept a casual eye on the industry. Especially interesting to me has been the continued threat of the RIAA against file sharers in the USA.

When working for Transact in Bermuda, I had the dubious honour of receiving “this user has been nasty, go slap them for us” notices on a very regular basis – sometimes two or three a day. As Bermuda is NOT a part of the USA, it is not subject to the DMCA or any other American copyright laws, so the notices were quickly filed under G. The notices were sent automatically – I should have set up an automatic filter in Outlook to do the filing for me. Oh well, there goes my hindsight again.

Today I ran into an excellent article at News.com about a small ISP owner who wants the RIAA to pay him to do the copyright policing for him. What a great idea. Good for you, Bayou Internet! This makes a lot of sense to me. Just another reason I’m glad I’m not in business in the States.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted – sounds about par for the course. There are few things (online) as sad as a neglected blog. Don’t worry, kiddos, I won’t go getting all emo on y’all now. Did I use that term correctly? I’m still trying to figure out what Emo means.

Is Nine Inch Nails emo? Pre-emo? Or just f’n industrial, like us old folks called it “back in the day”? You can change the term, but the music speaks for itself. I recently had the pleasure of seeing NIN for either the 3rd or 4th time. There were startlingly few “emo” kids in the audience. Low on the black leather, low on the face paint. Maybe Trent just doesn’t speak to their generation. Maybe NIN ain’t Emo. Poor Trent. Maybe he should push a button and drop the bomb.

The NIN show was an overall success in my opinion. Funny though, the songs from the Broken and Downward Spiral era seemed to work best live. The new stuff wasn’t bad either, especially Survivalism.

By far, the best non-musical aspect of the show was the transparent LED walls. Sure, you can have a video wall behind you when you play – everyone does that (OK, The Who didn’t – but they’re old and they don’t count). But how about a solid video wall behind you, a transparent one at the front of the stage, and a another one halfway back. Of course, put all of them on lifts – wouldn’t want the stage to look the same all the time.

Quite simply, this was the best show of the year for me. What about you? See anything worth talking about?

Well, gentle readers, at the end of August, we packed it in for Virtual IT. Long story, and I’m sure I’ll blog about it some year soon, but for now, it’s raw and fresh. Then I spent 2 1/2 weeks in Asia. Another story, and it’s worthy of a new Category, not just a blog post or two. Lots of potential there, and lots of fun, too.

But for now, I’m going to talk about the latest of my online adventures – affiliate marketing, also known as PPC marketing. After seeing how well a few people were doing, I decided to take the plunge

Here’s the REALLY SHORT VERSION of how it works.

1. find an offer that you think you can promote
2. build a “landing page” – a page which promotes the offer, which entices people to do whatever it is the offer requires – submit their email, touch their toes and scream “there’s no place like home” – whatever is required.
3. Buy banners or text ads on Google, Facebook or any other site, which sends people to your landing page when they click.
4. Make more from completed offers than you spend advertising it.

People are making lots of money doing this. But people are going broke doing this, too. It can go either way, and it can change quickly. Not a set-and-forget strategy – something which I generally shoot for – but it’s something that can be mostly delegated. Daily monitoring is required!

Imagine spending $1000 a day on ads – not an unrealistic budget – and you get $2 back from every dollar you spend. They say it’s doable. It’s also possible to spend $1000 a day and make $250. Ouch!

I’ve managed to find a mentoring program, so I’m not going in blind. I’m also not starting with a $1000 a day budget! More like $10 a day, until I get the hang of things. First goal is to get a positive net income – no matter how small. I’ll be making regular updates here, and will let you know how things are going. Wish me luck!

Quick word – never upgrade Wordpress while you’re writing a post. You’ll lose it. Guaranteed.

Rob = Dumbass today.