The Left Side of Normal Airplanes, The Internet, and Everything Else

I was just wrapping up some pretty important work this morning (moving a website from one server to another) when my laptop suddenly died on me.  A chat with Dell tech support indicates that the motherboard has gone bad, so it will be out of service for the next few days while replacement parts get shipped to the tech who will be repairing it for me.  What now?

First step, don't panic!  We have another laptop in the house which I'm using right now.  It's not as powerful and doesn't have any of my tools installed, but it'll get me through the weekend.  I'm in the process of installing all of my off-the-shelf software now to at least get some functionality back.  I'm also having to pull some installers from backups or other storage locations for tools which aren't readily available online.

One good thing about this experience is that it's showing me where some weaknesses are.  For one, I use Carbonite to back up important stuff in real time.  I'm quickly finding that the problem with Carbonite is that it tends to exclude a lot of files even in folders that you told it to back up.  For example, I have an "install" folder which contains installers for important programs.  I told Carbonite to back that up.  Unfortunately, it's excluded all executable files from the backup, so pretty much nothing in that folder is actually available to recover through their web interface on this laptop.  I could really use that folder right now.  When my main laptop is back in action that is one of the first things which is getting changed.  It will either back up ALL of my files in the folders I specify or I'll find another solution.  It did have copies of some Word documents that I need, so that came in handy.

Next, I do have a full system backup on an external disk that is less than a week old, so my data is safe locally anyway.  Unfortunately, our other laptop has Windows Vista Home edition which isn't playing well with the Windows 7 backup files on my external drive, so pulling data from there seems to be a non-starter as well.  Granted, that particular backup is designed to be restored on to the same computer and hardware that it came from, but it would be nice to pull a few files off there.

The star of the show today seems to be Dropbox.  I installed it on the other laptop, gave it my credentials, and it immediately set about downloading the dropbox contents to this computer.  Everything appears exactly as it did on the other laptop.  Kudos to the Dropbox team!

Apparently my blog was offline for a couple of months with some obscure error and nobody noticed, including me, lol.  I monitor the server where the blog is hosted, but not the blog itself, so I didn't get notified automatically.  Anyway, it's back now, hopefully to stay up for a while.  Cheers!

For the last decade (11 years, actually) I've operated a DNS service called DtDNS.  It's been a wonderful side business which contributes a not insignificant portion of my family's income.  Over the last few years I've been occupied with other projects, school, and everything else.  I felt that I was getting too many phone calls from people who, quite simply, had no clue what they were doing and I removed the phone number from most places on the site.  I haven't paid much attention to the merchant account statements and the fees I've been paying.  I've been a little more lax than I should about responding to sales and support requests (though I do make urgent support requests a priority).  There is a very loyal customer base that sticks with the service, some for many years (thank you!).  The service, however, has begun to show the level of attention I give it.  Sales have slowed down and the renewal rate has slipped somewhat.  The icing on the cake was the massive denial of service attack which came blowing in like a hurricane a couple of weeks ago.  It not only knocked out most of the DNS service but actually impacted two of the three locations where the servers are housed (yikes!).  Fortunately only a few customers were actually impacted by the attack.  Most would have never known if we didn't send out a notice about it.

The attack did serve as a sort of wake-up call for me though.  I've taken the system for granted the last few years, and I need to put a stop to that.  Even with everything else going on, my customers and the service as a whole deserves more regular attention.  I've put the phone number back on every page of the site and will once again welcome calls with questions as needed.  I've even ordered a toll-free number to have forwarded to my cell phone so nobody has to worry about long distance fees (that will be active within a few days).  I've re-activated my advertising campaigns with Google and Adbrite with full conversion tracking.  I'll have to spend some money on the advertising to bring in some new users and get revenues back up to where they were a few years ago.  I've asked my customers to refer their friends as well.

To top it all off, I'm planning to update the website design early next year (there is just too much else going on this year between classes, work, other projects, and getting married in November).  The design won't be revolutionary, but evolutionary.  I plan to take the existing layout and widen it to better support larger screens.  I'll be making use of JQuery in a number of places to enhance the user experience, but keep the site compatible with browsers that do not support JavaScript (one of the big features of the current site and a must for some users).  The navigation will be reworked to be easier to use and deprecated options (such as whois) will be removed entirely.  I'm also planning some new tools and monitoring features which will make management easier.  On the back-end, I'm planning to build out a fully functional administrative console for the first time (I've always managed DtDNS directly from the database).  This will make support easier and faster going forward and allow me to handle support from just about anywhere.

At the same time I do have other projects in the works as well as classes to study for, so it will be a challenge to juggle everything.  I feel that putting some time into DtDNS is the right thing to do for the long-term, however, so that it can continue to work well for my customers and my family.  If anyone has ideas or suggestions for the new website, or ways I can make DtDNS better, please let me know.  Thanks!