Back online

It’s been awhile. I used to have a managed host package from Dreamhost. When the time came to renew in April, they doubled their price. That just happened to coincide with a six month period of unemployment, while I was in school. So, I let my host and the many domains that I administered slide.

My sister, who had suffered a life long illness, passed away in April. Since then, I’ve been living close to my family in Tampa. Tampa was not the place I saw myself living ten years ago. Having grown up here, I always took it for granted. The grass is always greener, etc. Now, having lived and worked for long periods in both Boston and Tallahassee, I have to say that Tampa is growing on me. It’s not just my family. My best friend Matt lives here too. We’ve known each other since high school but lived apart for most of the second half of our lives. It’s nice to be able to hang out with him every week.

Besides friends and family. The bay area seems to be rife with opportunity for a guy like me. I’ve previously made my money in nonprofit, social services and database administration. There is plenty of that to go around. I’ve also dabbled in politics and since being back I’ve taken a keen interest in what’s been going on with homeless services, affordable housing and public transportation.

In July, I took a job with Island Media Advertising, Inc. They specialize in marketing small business oriented web pages, directories and hosting to businesses in the Caribbean and Bahamas, their signature service being the Island Yellow Pages; not affiliated with Island Cable and Wireless. Take one look and I’m sure you’ll be thinking, “Scott, isn’t that just some yellow page replacement scam?” The short answer is no. Needless to say, in the short time I worked there, I gained years worth of stories to tell and I intend to tell them here, in due time.

Quickly thereafter, I was placed by a staffing agency to a company in South Tampa that specializes in purchasing database mapping for hospitals and group purchasing organizations (GPOs). My temporary job as a researcher is to basically, “cleanse” thousands of items from one purchasing database to another. It’s slow tedious and unforgiving work but the people I work for and with are very nice. The environment is very casual and permissive. More on them later.

So, I’m in Tampa for good and I’m looking for a prime gig. In the meantime, I’ve been putting in some hours with my favorite time suck, Xbox Live, cooking and riding my bike; though not as often as I’d like. The streets around here are not as forgiving as Tallahassee or even Boston.

Finally, the crux of the matter. We’re coming to you live from my very own LAMP server. This has been several months in the making, not that it should take that long. I kept hitting the same road block, every time I tried to set this up. Apparently, Apache configuration files can have an effect not unlike muscle relaxers. I’ll have to remember that, the next time I have insomnia. More on LAMP configuration and other cool tech stuff later. For now, I’ll leave you to it. The best has yet to come.