OK, so normally I try to keep the number of personal, non-tech, blog postings to a minimum on this site, since most of my readers are here for the technical content. Well, this time I am going to make an exception. For those of you that follow me on
Twitter you may have already heard bits-and-pieces of my travel fiasco from last night -> this morning. Well for the benefit of others, I thought I would share some details on my two major Expedia failures this year.
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Posted by Mitchel on Saturday, January 02, 2010
As some readers of this blog might have known about 2 weeks ago, I suffered from a critical hardware component failure on my primary development machine. Initially unsure of the exact issue I was seeing the hard drive as a potential failure point. It was at that point that I realized exactly how horrible it would be if the drive failed. Don't get me wrong, I have backups both locally, in my source control system remotely, as well as in the cloud using Jungle Disk. But the total time to recovery would be massive. I have a list of around 100 or so applications that would need to be installed to get me back to "full" working state. Not an easy task! Luckily for me, it was some bad RAM and the system was restored after my new RAM came in.
However, this was a very enlightening experience for me and prompted me to re-visit the concept of disk imaging. This is what prompted the review of Acronis Backup and Recovery, as it is my selected and implemented solution for the long term.
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, July 30, 2009
I know I typically blog here about .NET and DotNetNuke, but I have been fielding more and more questions via e-mail about how I manage my business. So it was with that, and a recent question that I had of my own that I might try making a few business related posts here. If there ends up being interest, I will continue with some general business items, otherwise, we will just go back to the regular scheduled programming!
Now, on to the issue at hand, when running a business such as mine, it is very common to have "recurring" invoices. Say for hosting or support items that may be monthly, quarterly or yearly. Up until now I have been using a crude system to remember, and honestly it hasn't been all that effective. Having Quickbooks I figured there would be a way of doing it, but for the life of me I couldn't remember. So I posted out to Twitter to see if anyone had recommendations, and in literally 5 minutes @BrandonHaynes responded with the perfect solution, and that is what I explain below.
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Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, February 25, 2009
As I am getting things in place for 2009 I wanted to post a quick update here on the blog about a few new exciting things that I am working on and to notify everyone of a new service offering that IowaComputerGurus is starting today.
Book Announcement
The biggest news of all is that I have another book writing deal with Wrox Press. I have hinted about this over the past few weeks, but it is now official that I will be writing another book for Wrox. I can't say alot about what is in the book, but it will be a book on Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. As I have more abilities to make comments and provide information, you will find it here.
New Service (MyWebKeepAlive.com)
For quite a while now I have been talking about creating a keepalive solution for users as alternatives to Host-Tracker or Pingdom. This is finally becoming a reality, and in the next few weeks will have a home on the internet via MyWebKeepAlive.com. The good news is that I can set clients up with the service now as the backend processing portion is fully functional.
Pricing for this service is as follows.
- 1 URL - $19.99 a year
- 5 URL's - $49.99 a year
- 10 URL's - $79.99 a year
This service is a simple keepalive service that will ping your site every 9-13 minutes to prevent ASP.NET unloading. The service will expand to include additional report elements to provide a better overall value.
For those interested in a keepalive solution, please e-mail me at msellers@iowacomputergurus.com and I can discuss getting you setup before the public launch of the website.
Future Blog Articles
I still have a big backlog of blog topics, so be expecting new posts here about things such as ASP.NET Charting Controls, Redgate Tools Reviews, Active Forums Reviews and more! As always, please let me know if you have any suggestions.
Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I am working with the new team on the DotNetNuke Documents module project to actually create end-user and administrator user guides for that project. This has lead me to think about the free modules and items that are provided by IowaComputerGurus. Each of these is lacking documentation, and to be honest I just don't have the time to keep the modules going and to keep the documentation up.
Therefore I thought I would reach out to the community to see if there was anyone willing to donate some time to write documentation for my free modules. Since these modules generate no money, and actually cost me money, at this time it would need to be a volunteer effort. However, in exchange for services we will ensure that full credit is given for the creation of the documentation.
If you are at all interested in volunteering to help improve the free modules that we offer, please feel free to e-mail me at msellers@iowacomputergurus.com
Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Over the past few weeks since I announced that my company, IowaComputerGurus Inc. was going to be an exhibitor at OpenForce ’08 this November I have been asked a few questions by the community. I feel that the answers to these questions are items that should be aired publicly; therefore I am posting this information here for all to see. The two questions that have been coming up quite a bit recently are; Why are you sharing a booth with Seablick Consulting, and How do you choose your business partners. I will start by addressing the second question, and returning to answer the first.
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Posted by Mitchel on Sunday, September 07, 2008
I am very proud to announce that this evening my business IowaComputerGurus inc. has achieved the designation of Microsoft Certified Partner. Although not necessarily a major thing to the regular readers of this blog, this is a very important milestone for myself as I continue to build the business. The support of past customers providing references has been greatly appreciated, and key to allowing me to reach this milestone.
Posted by Mitchel on Monday, August 25, 2008
In the past I have completed reviews of various DotNetNuke modules, components, and skins, however, recently I have been receiving a number of e-mails with questions about how I manage my business. Typically these questions have been from individuals that are just starting out with consulting business, or those looking for better ways to manage their pending products. Once item that I always recommend to people is BaseCamp, a hosted project management solution provided by 37Signals. This article will go through the features/services offered, and why I use it to manage all projects.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, August 01, 2008
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