As my regular readers know, my translation business has really been on the rocks lately. This isn’t all bad. Being dead broke serves as a lot of motivation to look around for other things to do.

Way back in 1994 I registered the domain cat.net, when such things cost around US$50 per year. For the next six years, cat.net served as my own personal domain, with a Linux server at home and as many as 8 smaller machines in the house at different times. In 2001, I handed the cat.net domain over to my ex-wife as part of our divorce settlement and started using gogulski.com instead. She later sold the cat.net domain for a rather handsome sum, and the domain has been “parked” with various “coming soon” and parked-domain monetization schemes since then. In 2000, the main host, squeaker.cat.net squeaker.gogulski.com (“Squeaker” is one of Henry’s nicknames), moved into collocation with my ISP employer, carrying all of its email accounts, mailing lists and websites with it. The company collapsed, along with my interest in running my own Linux box, and I started migrating people off before everything at the office got shut down. I haven’t been involved in maintaining my own servers since.

Since June of this year, though, I’ve become very involved in building and supporting web infrastructure for various liberty causes, including operating websites for the Free Agents Network, the Motorhome Diaries, and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance. I’ve also started a blog hosting service, Freedom Blogs, which has now grown to a whopping ten users with no promotion, and am working on a few other new web projects besides.

And I’ve started running into limitations with DreamHost, the web hosting provider where all this stuff lives. I love the reliability and security of having the infrastructure taken care of in a secure data center, but, ARGH I want more control over my hosting environment.

So, I’ve been off at Amazon for a little while putting together a short shopping list for a web hosting cluster.

First, some cheapish web servers:

• 3x HP ProLiant DL320 G5p Quad-Core Xeon X3210/2.13 GHz @ $1060 each
• 12x 2 GB – DIMM DDR2 – 800 MHz / PC2-6400 @ $76 each

This could be okay for a just-starting-out database server:

• 1x HP ProLiant DL380 G5 2 x Quad-Core Xeon X5460 / 3.16 GHz @ $5520
• 8x 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) – FB-DIMM DDR2 – 667 MHz / PC2-5300 @ $291 each
• 8x HP Hard drive – 500 GB – 2.5″ SFF – SAS-2 – 7200 rpm @ $583 each

But, oh, I need two of those. One for the database server and one for the storage server. Maybe they can back each other up.

And then a switch, of course:

• Cisco Catalyst Express 520G-24TC 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch @ $1720

All this for a mere $30,836 plus tax, shipping, insurance, etc. Oh, and then I need some UPS units, some cables, a rack, a KVM switch. I guess I’ll put this on my Christmas list.

Meanwhile, something like just two of those DL320 machines would work. $2576, plus extras… tra la la. Daydreams sure are nice.

Big thanks this week to all who responded to my shameless blegging post last week:

Aaron Kinney sent US$20.

James Tuttle sent US$100.

An anonymous donor sent US$50.

Nick and Thalia Puglia signed up for web hosting with BlueHost, which brought me a US$65 referral fee.

I thank you, Henry thanks you, and Henry's reflection thanks you!

NOTE: I’m not a registered charity, non-profit, or anything like that. It’s just me!

Gifts

Bitcoin: 1pA14Ga5dtzA1fbeFRS74Ri32dQjkdKe5

Gifts via PayPal are most welcome.

Moneybookers takes credit cards, some checks and debit cards plus electronic bank transfers in many countries. New users please register here.

After you’re registered, just send a payment to my email address: mike /at/ gogulski /dot/ com.

I also accept gifts of Pecunix, a secure digital gold online currency.

The system is rather amazing, check it out!

Gifts of cash, cashier’s checks, money orders, stock certificates, bonds, gold, silver, platinum, palladium or any other valuable item are welcome via post or courier. Insured delivery recommended. Contact me for delivery address.

Affiliates

If you’re thinking of buying something at Amazon.com, starting your shopping session by clicking any of the occasional Amazon links in my articles will result in me earning a small commission from your purchases.

Signing up for web hosting with BlueHost for at least 3 months will send a US$65 referral fee my way:

Signing up for DreamHost web hosting send 10% of your (very low!) bill my way.

Signing up with LinkWorth will earn me $50 plus 10% of revenues.

Signing up for by clicking here will net me US$25.

I am also open to independent advertising proposals.

Products

Mock teh Vote products are available at the Zazzle e-shop, accessible by clicking here. The (minuscule) profits are split between me and Darian Worden.

If you send a contribution, please indicate whether you want it publicized here. By default, I will publish contributor’s initials and the contribution amount in periodic postings under my “reader contributions” tag. If you would like your full name and/or website included, please provide that information. Thank you!