Brad Derstine

So much work, so little time…

Brad — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:18:30 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot lately, it’s amazing. BizzarTech, LLC is officially rolling as I was able to get a table at the 1st anniversary celebration for the Perkasie Dog Park, a site I just recently started hosting. The day was beautiful, but I forgot how quickly I burn when I’m out in the sun. After a few hours, my head was burned and it still hurts even a few days later. Ugh, I’m too pale. I also put a lot of money and effort into my hosting platform and I’m now using cPanel which lets me offer a full hosting suite of tools and applications for my customers. I’ve always used cPanel in the past when I had sites and found it to be the best web hosting platform out there. I still need to move a couple hosted sites, but most of my sites are already running on the new platform.

BizzarTech is also partnering with another IT consulting group in NC and we’re working on a new remote server monitoring and management package that I started while working at MEDecision but in my spare time at home. The site isn’t online yet, but should be soon. I had to migrate my existing Linux client to Windows, but so far I love how this project is going. I’ll post more info as the project comes together. It’s still really early, but I like how things are shaping up, and the company I’m partnering with is going to help me take my idea and market and sell it to customers!

Unfortunately, while I love BizzarTech, it isn’t making money yet and I have no health benefits so I’m still looking for a job. I found a new recruiting company I’m working with and they found me a position in Malvern. It’s a bit of a hike, but the pay and commute still falls within my requirements. I really don’t want to commute to NJ or Philly, and the pay is decent so I’m going to go check it out Wednesday. I’ll keep everyone posted if it works out.

I have to get back to work, but thanks for stopping by!

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Jobs, Clouds, and Banana Candles

Brad — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:11:57 +0000

Sorry for the delay in posting, it’s been a crazy week. I was hoping I could stay with MEDecision until May 15th, but things didn’t go the way I was hoping for. We were able to part on good terms at least, and I’m enjoying the freedom right now to recharge the batteries. I had a lot of frustrations there, but I’m hoping to leave all of that behind me. I’m taking the chance at freedom right now to finish projects for family and friends that I’ve had on hold so I’m making the most of my time, and it’s been a great chance to spend time working on the types of projects and technologies that I wanted to. So far, I have a couple leads on jobs, had a phone interview that went really well, and I’m going to stay positive and keep my head up. There’s plenty of jobs out there for the right people, just need to find them!

So my cloud project had a disappointing setback. Apparently, Eucalyptus isn’t really fully supported quite yet on the RightScale platform. You can add the private cloud to the management console, but can’t really do anything with it unless you manually start converting… That’s where I stopped it. When you wander into the “manual conversion” processes, unless I think it’s really worth it, I won’t waste my time. So I switched gears, and decided to try the other private cloud option, CloudStack. I have to say, I’m impressed already. I LOVE the management console that came up after finishing the install, and I’m hoping the RightScale support is there to be able to deploy images. Another good thing about CS is that you can deploy using Xen or KVM, where Eucalyptus would only allow me to use Xen. So I’m trying the KVM option in CentOS with my CS install. Here’s a screenshot of the management console… Very cool!

I’ll post more screenshots as I make my way through the software.

The banana candle reference makes me laugh. It’s like one of those funny sounding phrases you hear that makes you chuckle, then forget. I bought some candles from my friend Diana’s ~~Tastefully Simple~~ ~~Dove Chocolate~~ Partylite store online. The one candle is a banana one, but it smells amazing and helps me relax. At least my house smells like something other than dog for a change.

Ok, that’s all for now. I’ll keep everyone posted on the job hunt! -Brad

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Another Weekend, Another Website

Brad — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:43:21 +0000

I think I’m going to try and make sure I do my blogging on Monday mornings. I like this timeframe. Weekly posts, summarizing all the cool stuff I work on and wonderful partners/people who have helped me grow my business and make life interesting… That sounds like a good use of this site. That’ll be what I prefer to write about.

On to status updates… I updated the about page on this site finally. Not a picture of me, but I did use my xbox avatar. Over the weekend though, I decided to finally take the plunge and order a BizzarTech LLC shirt so I can get some pictures and start posting them of myself. I ordered a long sleeve one and a short sleeve one. I’ll post pictures when they arrive. I got an email last night from cafepress that they shipped so hopefully I get them soon.

Here’s the link to my cafepress site for BizzarTech… http://www.cafepress.com/bizzar528

Other news… let’s see… I’m helping a new friend build a paranormal research network, complete with sites, articles, and spooky stuff. I don’t know how spooky it really is, but it seems like a lot of fun and they enjoy it, so I enjoy helping out. That’s what I wanted BizzarTech to be about. Help me, help others, so we can all make our dreams come true. I figure if I do it for others, then karma should help me out a bit. Heres to hoping!

I’m also looking for a new job too. I got an email from a recruiter about an incredible opportunity in Conshohocken, PA, but I can’t make any moves until May 15th, 2012. Long story. But the job is “Manager, Cloud Engineering” which I would LOVE to get. Not only would I like to put something “cloud” on my resume, but it’s been a new passion of mine to really start diving into the technologies and methodologies that goes along with it. For example, on Saturday, I was reading job opportunities online and found a few references to RightScale which I knew nothing about. Turns out, it is a cloud management platform that is supposed to work with public clouds (AWS) and private clouds (cloudstack, eucalyptus). The one thing I really liked about this app is it’s ability to manage public cloud services like Amazon or Rackspace, but it also has the same interface for managing private clouds like Cloudstack or Eucalyptus. I really wanted to setup a private cloud and see if it worked, so I configured a couple of servers at home and built one. I know it sounds nerdy, but 4-6 hours later, I had a cloud and integrated it with RightScale. I love it! Here’s a screenshot of the basic setup for the rightscale cloud stuff…

When I mentioned it on Facebook, a friend asked if I could teach her. This setup was relatively easy so I probably could! The next challenge for my cloud is to try and deploy a server using it. VMware makes managing and using a private cloud insanely easy, however they don’t have easy/similar integrations with the public cloud solutions and the rightscale stuff didn’t show any integrations with VMware, so I’ll learn this method for now. I went with Eucalyptus because it’s open source, free, and based on CentOS/Red Hat which is a Linux platform I’m really familiar with. Here’s a picture of my server rack at home…

I only have the rack and a couple of low-grade servers, but my ex-wife HATED this thing. Ever since I brought it home, to the time she left, she hated it. She told me all the time I’m not going to use it, to just throw it out. Looking back, I don’t think she ever really understood me and the things I like. I think it represented a passion of mine for technology and learning, and she disliked things that would distract me from her. I find it ironic, years later, that here the server rack is still around and may more than likely aid me in landing some sort of “cloud” type of job in the coming months and/or help me launch BizzarTech LLC to be something incredibly awesome. I don’t just love what I do, I live it! But I understand that not everyone is going to understand. I wish people had more open minds and be more supportive of other people’s good ideas, but maybe that will come in time…

Well, that’s all for now. I’m hoping to open up BizzarTech LLC signups in the next week or 2. I want to try and get a few sites up and running, then really start marketing/pushing the BizzarTech name and business. I need to make more money and soon, so hopefully everything works out. If it does, I’ll write about it here. If it doesn’t, I’ll make fun of it, and write about it here. Hope you guys have a great week!

-Brad

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Brad’s online again!

Brad — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:21:15 +0000

What an insanely productive weekend. I setup the new site for the Perkasie Dog Park and got them setup on my server. The site already looks great, and I even noticed something they learned about wordpress before I did. I didn’t realize the 2011 theme lets you upload and assign specific images to individual pages (as “featured’ images, it’s in the lower right of the screen if your editting a page). I thought the header had to be the same or else. Silly me. Learn something new every day. I usually end up making my own themes based on some static html template so I don’t really visit the 2011 theme unless I have to. But I use it as my base template for a lot of new hosted sites since I know how it works (mostly) and that it’s flexible for people to use and learn. When they are ready for more advanced features, we can turn those on with plugins. I like this model for hosting and quickly getting sites setup.

After the online dog park visit, I worked on my own site, and I love it! This has to be my favorite design for the site I’ve ever used. BizzarTech has always taken a back burner to other priorities and projects in my life. But this weekend, I gave it a good run, and I love the results. Worth it! Click here to see the new BizzarTech site!

It’s still a static site, but I added my own sutle touches to it. You won’t notice them unless your looking, but I love the site. What a great weekend. Tons of good results, good work! And I’m thrilled to host and support the Perkasie Dog Park. I’ve been following that project for a while now, and I’m so happy to see it’s really taken off.

I have lots of great things in the works. Things really seem to be clicking right now. I’m kinda surprised. OH, my other new favorite thing. I was talking to Sher at Sher Photography and asked her for a tip on starting business months ago. She mentioned this site, how well it worked for her, but at the time I was so busy I forgot what it was. Until one day I saw a commercial on tv or the internet, I don’t recall, and it was for the same service and clicked in my head. So I go online, check out the company, and found you can sign up for a great facebook promotion thing, for free! (no credit card), to get up to 100 Likes on facebook or whatever your social medium of choice. I tried it with BizzarTech and I’m super happy with the results! I can see where the system might be intimadating for non-tech users, but for me, it had a really smooth interface and I was able to adjust and make changes, view results, and then save and publish all in a matter of hours. I was hooked.

Click here to see the BizzarTech LLC social media campaign Facebook page in action!

Click here to check out the company Constant Contact!

If you have a business, and are interested in getting help with setting one of these up, hit me up on BizzarTech and we can discuss or send me an email at Brad@BizzarTech.com. I don’t mind open emails to discuss ideas. Maybe I can help give you additional ideas or applications that might help shape the idea into something bigger!

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