Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

HostingCon Sale Contract Signing

It has already been reported in a number of places that Interjuncture, the company that created and ran the premiere hosting event HostingCon, had agreed to sell the conference to iNET interactive at the end of the 2008 event.  The final event of HostingCon 2008 was a networking barbecue event on the rooftop of Navy Pier.  The event ran from 5:00 pm until 10:00 pm on Wednesday, July 30 and offered good food, great networking and a phenomenal view.  I considered myself lucky to be at the event and doubly so to get a picture or two of the actual signing of the HostingCon sale contracts.

Signing of the HostingCon Sale Contracts 

Pictured: Troy Augustine, iNET’s President and CEO, George Roberts, the CEO of Interjucture, and Frank Spaulding, Interjucture’s COO.

Continue reading →

HostingCon Trip

I headed out to Chicago’s Navy Pier for HostingCon a conference I had not attended before.  I went not as an attendee but a part of the 100+ exhibitors showing their wares and services on the expo hall floor. 

I love going to new technology/internet conferences and seeing what type of attendee they attract.  Not surprisingly HostingCon brings together a wide varielty of people involved in the hosting industry, people selling dedicated and shared hosting, reselling hosting, server manufacturers, spam control companies, etc…

HostingCon Expo Hall Continue reading →

My Near Death Experience or the STP (Seattle to Portalnd) Bike Ride

Three years ago my wife got intrigued with the idea of riding the STP (Seattle to Portland) bike ride.  For those not familiar with STP it’s a 200 mile bike ride that has 9,500 riders each year.  (The ride is limited to 9,500 or they would have more.) She began to train but didn’t have enough time to be fully ready to ride the 200 miles on her own.  I ended up riding along in the “support car” we had and ”shared” some of the miles  so she didn’t overdo it.  She rode the majority of the miles which I was very proud of (I only did about one third) and I walked away with an urge to do the ride on my own the next year.

Riding a bike can be fun! Continue reading →

Getting What I Don’t Deserve - Canon 40D

“We may not always get what we want, we may not get what we need, just so long as we don’t get what we deserve.”

That quote (from the movie True Colors starring John Cusack and James Spader) has always amused me. A friend of mine and I used to quote it to each other when one or the other was frustrated about not having something we felt we “had to have” and it usually brought a grin and bit of a reality check. Yesterday was my birthday and not only did I not get what I deserve I got something I truly don’t deserve - a Canon 40D.

Continue reading →

The David Caruso Picture Really Had My Wife In It

In response to a couple of commenters on my David Caruso post I am following up with a picture of my wife and I from the same conference.  This picture was taken at the GHOSTBAR at the top of the Palms hotel and casino.  This is later the same night we met Mr. Caruso, the conference was over and we were relaxing with people we had met earlier in the week.

So scottb and Sue here’s the picture I promised. 

Continue reading →

The Mighty Tigers Win Initial Indoor Soccer Outing!

You can say just about whatever you want to me but these days you have to follow it up with the title “coach”.  I’ve been wrangled into coaching my son’s 3rd and 4th grade co-ed indoor soccer team and while I’ve assisted with past teams this is my first time being “the man”.  Continue reading →

Austin to Vegas PubCon Run Day Three

Day 3

8:15 am

We started off the day getting a picture with Santa for the “wee keg tour - southern style”.  Many thanks to the desk worker at the hotel for taking the picture for us.

Austin to Vegas PubCon trip

Continue reading →

Austin to Las Vegas PubCon Run Day Two

Day Two - Junction, Texas 

9:00am

We survived the night and there is great rejoicing.  “Yea”.

Almost nothing compares with a beautiful West Texas morning!

PubCon cross country trip Continue reading →

Austin to Las Vegas PubCon Run

Austin to Vegas Day One

A few less than notable moments from driving the PubCon Conference materials to Las Vegas from the WebmasterWorld office located in Austin Texas.  Adam Young (jatar_k) and I spend 24 hours on the road over 2+ days.  I make no claim that this is anything but boring and is meant only to highlight how mind numbing the actual event was.

3:30 pm

It’s time to get on the road since we have a mission.  The eventual mission is to get to Vegas but the more immediate concern is the Dallas vs.Green Bay game that is scheduled for 7:15pm tonight.  This is the game that has caused a stir because of the fight between the NFL and cable companies over the inclusion of the NFL network amongst the general cable offerings.  The majority of the U.S. population with cable cannot see the game making any home or business with satellite an instantly popular location.  We tried to map out stopping place options that were large enough to have at least one sports bar where we could watch the game.  The trouble with West Texas is that “stopping places” are very limited and you usually have to take what you can get.  We decided Junction Texas was our best choice given the number of hotels that were in the area and the fact that a college was located there. Any place with a college must be large enough to offer several bars and at least one would must have the NFL Network.  We were off.

PubCon cross country trip

Continue reading →

Medical Information on the Internet Hit and Miss

I have been awol here for the last 6-8 weeks and there’s a pretty good reason for it.  Okay actually there are 3 good reasons.

  1. Kid’s soccer takes an amazing amount of time for parent’s who choose to help the coach during practice.
  2. My wife’s grandfather went into the hospital because of a brain tumor 6 weeks ago.  This was a very slow growing tumor that they knew about but it suddenly started growing quickly and created pressure on his brain.  He survived surgery (he was only given a 15% chance of making it) but until just recently has required a lot of help from family members even while he was in the hospital.
  3. My wife’s mother was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer within a week of her father going into the hospital (he with the brain tumor).  She was operated on immediately and has recovered fairly well from that but now comes chemo therapy.

Needless to say the above took a lot of time away from my normal day to day life.  I am just now coming out from under a siege of emails, etc… and finding time to relax just a bit.   Granted, our family won’t be too relaxed for some time as grandpa and mom are going to be longer term concerns.

 Speaking of health concerns.  Given the tough news we’ve had in the last couple of months I have spent some time trying to research what we’re up against and/or just what the heck those doctors were saying.  In general I found that medical information on the internet fell into one of two general categories.

  1. Useless superficial information - This is the most prevelant brand I found.  What made it particularly irritating was finding multiple high ranked sites with essentially the same information, sometimes verbatim.  Apparently Google has put it’s “trust” in a few of the wrong sites as there is a plethora of very basic copied information residing on medical pages/sites.
  2. Useless technical information - Not nearly as prevelant as #1 but no less useless to me.  I’m researching colon cancer because I didn’t fully understand what the doctor said when he tried to dumb down the explanation to an average joe (me).  That probably means I’m not prepared to read research papers on colon cancer written by doctors for doctors.

Yes, I’ve seen the commercials for WebMD and looked at a ton of other supposedly great health sites as well.  But in my experience they came up lacking, seriously.



Webmaster Resources