Our servers are nearly five, the drives have a lot of hours on them, we've weathered some various hardware difficulties along the way but they've treated us well.
The cost of colocating in Menlo Park with a bunch of Google and Facebook engineers (we all have a rack together) is going up because a few people have pulled out of the coop. As our own engineer has moved his family from that area to Arizona to join a custom car company that makes pretty amazing Road Warrior style off-road racers, he's no longer local to the facility.
Because of all of these facts, I'm disinclined to start thinking about new
machines, and we no longer have a warm body in CA to overhaul the old ones.
Instead, I think it may be time to move to the cloud, specifically Amazon. Nothing would change on the user side, really, and there'd be no hardware about which we would have to worry (or purchase).
It means a higher monthly operating expense, but the trade offs are numerous in the pro column.
Either way, this is an open call to anyone who hasn't donated to please consider doing so. Any little bit will help the upfront costs of this transition and make it go much more smoothly.
On that note, I want to talk about ads. I hate 'em, you hate 'em, I'd love to get rid of them. There are a couple ways to go about doing this:
The first notion is we set a monthly goal, and this goal wouldn't be on top of our drive income, it would simply be a goal that includes that. As a loose hypothetical, if our goal was 2.5k a month, that would be a 1.25k increase over the average of our best drive year -- so double what we've done before. We may not have a large enough base to pull that off, but it would allow us to be completely ad free.
The second notion is more complex and I've reached out to some lawdog types for advice. I intend to launch a 501(c)(3) to help the substantial and growing population of toxic water survivors. At least I'm in the very early stages of considering it. As BP has already been a bit of a platform for that, it could be that it could serve as an Ohio-based point of outreach for that cause, and be rolled into the charity. The plus would be that anything given to BP would be tax deductible upon proper realization of the charity status, the minus would be that BP would be owned by an organization with a board outside of my control (but for an organization I'll run) and there are a lot of question marks that go with that. I also don't know what the legal and ethical issues are that come with that, and those are areas of deep concern as too many charities aren't enough about actually helping those in need. Any even loose appearance of impropriety is something I'm keen to avoid. The issue, for obvious reasons, is important to me. I survived (figuratively and literally) the worst of the consequences of my injuries because of the support (emotional and economic) of this very community. Many others aren't so lucky, and I've never slept entirely well knowing that people are suffering not only the physical effects of the poisoning totally out of their knowledge and control, but also the economic devastation as they lose the ability to work, and the social isolation. All of that leads to dark places emotionally, and it becomes a brutal circle that ends in an untimely and avoidable death for many. I don't have lofty goals for this charity, but if gets one person to a doc appointment they couldn't have otherwise made, helps with a medical bill or collection agency for the same for those paying out of pocket for care (I went long stretches ignoring an abscessed tooth, cracked ribs, and other less dignified things because I couldn't afford the tests and appointments and was too sick to travel) -- then it's a wild success in my eyes. But is it related to BP? Maybe that's a stretch.
We can, of course, leave well enough alone. But the reality is that I limit us to static ads with no auto play, and that's a dead dead dead market. It's all about video, interactivity, full page takeovers, and dynamic creatives that force you to notice them. Because I won't "go there" we've seen our ad revs drop to 1/10th of what they were at their peak.
I don't need the peak back, just want to have an open idea session with the lot of you about it. Keep the ads, drop them entirely, something in between?
The upgrades are indeed coming but they've been on hold while I sort out the hosting issue. As the season is already casting a happy shadow over us, I can't imagine it's all too far off.
Let me know what you think.
The cost of colocating in Menlo Park with a bunch of Google and Facebook engineers (we all have a rack together) is going up because a few people have pulled out of the coop. As our own engineer has moved his family from that area to Arizona to join a custom car company that makes pretty amazing Road Warrior style off-road racers, he's no longer local to the facility.
Because of all of these facts, I'm disinclined to start thinking about new
machines, and we no longer have a warm body in CA to overhaul the old ones.
Instead, I think it may be time to move to the cloud, specifically Amazon. Nothing would change on the user side, really, and there'd be no hardware about which we would have to worry (or purchase).
It means a higher monthly operating expense, but the trade offs are numerous in the pro column.
Either way, this is an open call to anyone who hasn't donated to please consider doing so. Any little bit will help the upfront costs of this transition and make it go much more smoothly.
On that note, I want to talk about ads. I hate 'em, you hate 'em, I'd love to get rid of them. There are a couple ways to go about doing this:
The first notion is we set a monthly goal, and this goal wouldn't be on top of our drive income, it would simply be a goal that includes that. As a loose hypothetical, if our goal was 2.5k a month, that would be a 1.25k increase over the average of our best drive year -- so double what we've done before. We may not have a large enough base to pull that off, but it would allow us to be completely ad free.
The second notion is more complex and I've reached out to some lawdog types for advice. I intend to launch a 501(c)(3) to help the substantial and growing population of toxic water survivors. At least I'm in the very early stages of considering it. As BP has already been a bit of a platform for that, it could be that it could serve as an Ohio-based point of outreach for that cause, and be rolled into the charity. The plus would be that anything given to BP would be tax deductible upon proper realization of the charity status, the minus would be that BP would be owned by an organization with a board outside of my control (but for an organization I'll run) and there are a lot of question marks that go with that. I also don't know what the legal and ethical issues are that come with that, and those are areas of deep concern as too many charities aren't enough about actually helping those in need. Any even loose appearance of impropriety is something I'm keen to avoid. The issue, for obvious reasons, is important to me. I survived (figuratively and literally) the worst of the consequences of my injuries because of the support (emotional and economic) of this very community. Many others aren't so lucky, and I've never slept entirely well knowing that people are suffering not only the physical effects of the poisoning totally out of their knowledge and control, but also the economic devastation as they lose the ability to work, and the social isolation. All of that leads to dark places emotionally, and it becomes a brutal circle that ends in an untimely and avoidable death for many. I don't have lofty goals for this charity, but if gets one person to a doc appointment they couldn't have otherwise made, helps with a medical bill or collection agency for the same for those paying out of pocket for care (I went long stretches ignoring an abscessed tooth, cracked ribs, and other less dignified things because I couldn't afford the tests and appointments and was too sick to travel) -- then it's a wild success in my eyes. But is it related to BP? Maybe that's a stretch.
We can, of course, leave well enough alone. But the reality is that I limit us to static ads with no auto play, and that's a dead dead dead market. It's all about video, interactivity, full page takeovers, and dynamic creatives that force you to notice them. Because I won't "go there" we've seen our ad revs drop to 1/10th of what they were at their peak.
I don't need the peak back, just want to have an open idea session with the lot of you about it. Keep the ads, drop them entirely, something in between?
The upgrades are indeed coming but they've been on hold while I sort out the hosting issue. As the season is already casting a happy shadow over us, I can't imagine it's all too far off.
Let me know what you think.