There are two major things that can totally destroy my work plans…
The weather. When you look at the forecast and see today is the only day without rain for a week you know you’d better mow the grass. Put that little job off and given that it’s spring… you’ll need a hay baler next time.
My boss traveling to a place with a different time zone. Work calls after you’ve already put in a 10-hour day can be annoying AND change your plans quickly and dramatically. It also doesn’t help when your number is the one that gets butt-dialed at all hours. Seriously… 2 calls on Saturday morning around 4:30 AM ET and another on Sunday morning before 6:00 AM ET.
As an aside, the photo above is what “work” looks like for my favorite brother this week. The photo below is what “work” looks like for me:
$110 in Kohl’s cash had to be spent yesterday and my kid wanted to make certain he took full advantage of it. In case you’re unaware, kids are still kids at 36 years-old. They just fill your cart with stuff for THEIR kid.
Lunch at Pho Shiki’s (a Vietnamese – Japanese restaurant favorite) was a planned stop before we ever left home. Upon being seated, we were told only 1/2 of the menu was available — the Japanese side. Ben had his heart set on a bowl of pho (Vietnamese soup sort of like ramen — the exception is that ramen is wheat flour noodles while pho is rice noodles). While it sounds like pho is an easy dish to make, it’s actually a long process.
Our waitress explained that she was running the place for a full month while her father — the owner — was “home” visiting his mother. She brought in her son to help run the family business and the two were obviously overwhelmed. Although many left when being told only 1/2 the menu was available for order, most stayed. The place was STILL packed. The service was slow but friendly, and the food was amazing.
So many businesses (and brands) try to be something to everyone. Focusing on what you’re good at that targets a smaller group of buyers ensures they receive your best stuff — as opposed to mediocre satisfaction across the board.
While only offering half of the menu’s options might seem like a bad idea, in actuality it was brilliant. Rather than serve bad pho that might disappoint and discourage future customer visits, they opted to provide only what they could manage while still serving their best stuff.
After a week of migrating websites to another server, good ole’ whatifitdid.com came out on the other side intact. The stress of downtimes and other challenges gave Gracie a headache… but Dharma kept her cool and retained her typical diva persona.
Two more sites to migrate — I left the most important ones for last. The official site of my money-maker and the anchor site for the old server. Editing zone files combined with the set-up process the new server uses for SSL certificate installation, the probability of email going down for a bit is right at 110%.
For the record, if you have a site whose main page will load but all others throw a 500 server error… edit the .htaccess file and review your server cache settings. And finally…
A recording of the electrical activity of the heart is called an electrocardiogram (EKG). I must admit I don’t know the fancy name (although there probably is one) for recording response times of a server, but the graph output sure reminds me of an EKG.
The server EKG above is of a site that was first on server A (on the left), when it went down as it was moving to a new server, (the break between the lines), and it’s “health” now on server B (the squiggle on the far right). The new server obviously has a much faster response time. What you don’t see is the latest version of PHP and other hidden gems that server A is lacking.
I’m moving all sites (and there’s a bunch) to a new server — including this one — and with SSL certificates there’s a little bit of a downtime for propagation. If you stop in over the next few days and things seem a bit wonky (not sure when I’ll move whatifitdid.com), the issues will be temporary. Probably. **crosses fingers**
I know there’s just a bunch of crap here that nobody really cares about, but it is memories upon memories over 12 or so years for me. I’m tipping the espresso and crossing all fingers as I move the last — and most important — 5 or so sites.
I love video games, you guys. I played Toe Jam and Earl in the early 90’s and have been through World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm and about a bajillion other games since then. Deep into World of Warcraft, I didn’t play Final Fantasy when it was released. Matter of fact, I hadn’t played at all until about a month ago.
This game is as amazing as its history!
The original Final Fantasy XIV was released in September 2010 and it flopped. The President (at the time) of Square Enix announced that a new team would take over and attempt to fix the issues. They shut it down. Rereleased in late 2013, the subscriber base is still strong — over 14 million players subscribing to date — and yet another expansion to be released soon.
Screw-ups can be fixed. Do-overs are real. Final Fantasy XIV is proof of that. See you in Eorzea!
