The day started out with a developer meeting like normal, then off to the warehouse to work on that damn last server, meeting with Scott for SEO, bought a server and now doing the nursing job. It was a good day….ish.
Developer meeting went well. Things are on track and hoping to have the code (enough code to operate) by Thursday. My awesome developers have already volunteered to work the weekend if needed. The work ethic is amazing and I really appreciate them. Should I tell them we may need to push our start back a week due to the holiday? Nah… We may get going Sept 1 (Sunday…followed up by Labor day).
Got to the warehouse to work on the last server to get it ready to be our backup at a different datacenter. It was hot when I got to the warehouse. One of the A/C units is dead. Fans blowing but its not blowing cold. Fix it Today sure would come in handy right about now. I first tried to contact the company thats been out there a couple times. They are the landlords go to people and have done reasonable work for us in the past. Well, no answer (again…common thing). This is really where Fix it Today would have saved me but I dont have it running yet! I needed someone out there TODAY. People cant work in a 85*F office. Love my sister, she stuck it out for most of the day. Cant wait until our software is running. Would have been a great test and a first legit appointment for the software. Why couldnt this have happened next week?
Had a meeting with Scott. Hes a great guy out of Canada that is a master of SEO. Hes part of the SEO mastermind Im in, but he does it professionally. I’m more there these days to not think about business. Kick back, relax, chat with some cool dudes for a couple hours. Its cathartic. So I know SEO is a long game and its an investment. If we want to rank against people like Thumbtack, we better start working. Scott has some cool connections and asked if I’d be open to be interviewed by Forbes or Entrepreneur…heck yeah. That would be awesome exposure for the business. Anyways, I think Scott will be an awesome asset to the business, but like everything, we will see how much that asset cost.
I gave up on that server today. The Drac seems to be dead, got a critical error. Unlike the previous generation, this one is built into the motherboard. Luckily I have been looking at servers on Ebay (my wife says I need to stay off Ebay) and have been watching a few servers. These few interest me because they are old school auctions, not set price. I have bid and lost a few in the past but today I won one. $410 for a Dell R640. My first couple I bought were $1100! If you’re just getting into servers, these Dell Poweredge servers are stereotypically tanks. I have had a Dell R620 running for 4-5 years myself and it was 4-5 years old when I bought it. Big enterprise loves to upgrade servers when their warranty runs out and they get sold for a fraction of the price. These servers new were probably over $10k. I cant afford a bunch of $10k servers so we just run a few cheap servers as backups. Knock on wood, out of the 20 or so servers we have/had between Jesse and I, this is the first hardware failure….Im kinda shocked.
