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Find me elsewhere

Colin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:37:29 +0000

This blog has been mothballed and archived for future generations. You can find me online elsewhere these days.

My primary location

Other Places to find me

good2gether wins Audience Choice award at Web Inno

Colin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:40:25 +0000

Last night I attended the Web Innovators Group, Boston. Our client, good2gether presented as one of three “main dish” presenters. Im thrilled for good2gether and thrilled for Virosity. We won the Audience Choice award!

After months of working on good2gether, it’s exciting to have several hundred industry peers voting (by cell phone) for the product we (Virosity and good2gether) built!

Yet another good reason not to use stock images

Colin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:55:51 +0000

Thanks ben for this one!

Happy Holidays – Im throwing this at you!

Colin — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:02:49 +0000

Hope you have a good one! Be safe, and if you’re with family, enjoy it!

First day with no post.

Colin — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:45:03 +0000

Ok, so there is some irony in that statement. It has however been a while since I missed posting on a weekday. My reasons: I started a new job. Dan and I have also been working hard on gossipr, a new (and amazing!) facebook application that I love, and I hope you’ll love too. More on both of those topics soon.

My kneecaps would be broken…

Colin — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:10:26 +0000

It’s a good thing I’m not in the mafia. If I was, I would be breaking my knee caps right now. I’d ring the buzzer downstairs and let myself in. I’d walk up to my door with the baseball bat behind my back. As soon as I hear the lock click, I’d kick the door in. “Where’s my f***ing money?” I’d say to myself.

I’ve been borrowing from different accounts – peter to pay paul as they say. That’s the problem with living in the moment and buying flights, iphones and moving house. I’ve overspent to the tune of $4,068.26. Ouch! I’d better develop a plan to pay myself back.

It’s confessionals like these that may make me lose my standing as the most “fiscally responsible person I know” according to one friend of mine. But luckily they wont read this – it’s only on the internet.

Some server issues – and progress fixing them

Colin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 02:02:28 +0000

I have this site running on a Slicehost VPS. I have previously raved about Slicehost. About a week ago I started to notice the site going down. To know when that happens, I use a free service called Montastic. Montastic will alert me by email if my site (or up to 9 others) go down. This is great when you have to maintain multiple sites across multiple servers (or if you want to know if someone else dropped the ball!).

In order to secure my box and try to avoid my site going down, Im following the recommendations of a tutorial on the site Usefuljaja about how to configure an Ubuntu 6.06 install on Slicehost. They even have a great tip on reducing the memory footprint of MySQL. I’ve also got Shorewall and Fail2Ban running in order to stop automated scripts from bothering my server too much.

The server went down for a couple of hours today. Tonight I removed my custom iptables script which seemed to be bothering Shorewall. Hopefully, now the server will stay up and can continue to deliver this quality content to you, the wonderful reader!

Observance of a flattening world

Colin — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:31:39 +0000

While traveling, I experienced something interesting. I won’t try to stretch this example out too far to talk about the German and French airbus airplane that brought me there or the Italian coffee I was drinking.

While in Doha airport, Qatar, I purchased a coffee from Costa Coffee (english) from two Filipino girls whom I noticed speaking Tagalog, the Filipino national language.

Thomas L. Friedman would be proud! This world is truly going global. I don’t recall him talking about the Philippines in his book, but in a country in which an estimated 88 million people live, there are 8 – 11 million Filipinos living around the world, sending an estimated $14 billion home this year (according to Wikipedia).

The homeless problem at the Boston Public Library

Colin — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:59:19 +0000

Last week I exclaimed how great the Boston Public Library is. There is one big problem though, that I didn’t experience the first time I went (probably because the weather was good): The homeless people take all the good seats! The Boston Public Library has an old section and a new section. The old section is a beautiful old building, with fantastic architecture and art. The new section is a 1970s monstrosity. I like to sit in a part of the old section where they have comfortable leather chairs.

Last week, I went one morning at around 9:30 am to do some reading. I first sat in the courtyard, but decided it was too cold to read outside. I went inside to the nice area with the leather chairs, but there was no spot without someone immediately adjacent. There are about 14 chairs in the library and 7 or so were occupied. On the left side, three people were reading. In the middle, there was one guy awake listening to music (homeless), then another guy with the chair turned around sleeping (homeless), then another guy sleeping (homeless), then another guy sleeping (homeless). There were two chairs between the last two guys. One guy looked dirtier than the other so I sat next to the least dirty looking homeless man. I started to read, but couldn’t ignore the foul stench surrounding me. Confused and frustrated, I decided to try to hold out for a few minutes. A security guard walked through and didn’t ask the homeless to move along. Since they outnumbered me 4:1, I decided to move on myself to a less comfortable area with desks.

What bothers me the most was not the smell, nor was it the fact that homeless people are in the library. It’s the fact that they are sleeping!?!? If you’re homeless and in a library… READ A BOOK! You’ve obviously got nothing better to do with your time, so why not get a little education? Are most homeless people homeless because they are lazy? To them is the public library a place to be lazy in comfort? If I were in their shoes (which I almost am), I would spend my time learning the skills to get myself out of them. Instead, they are busy wasting tax payer dollars sleeping. The library should initiate a $0.25 fine for people sleeping in the library. Then at least the homeless will have to get a little more creative about how they sleep!

For more of my thoughts on homeless, read my thoughts on the differences between being an entrepreneur and being homeless!

The first day

Colin — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 10:09:32 +0000

Im excited. Im newly unemployed (by choice), and Im starting a company with some fantastic, talented people.

Who I was yesterday:
My name is Colin. Im 24, I live in Houston, TX. I have a fantastic job in sales with great career prospects. I own my own house. I own a 2004 japanese sedan w/ low mileage.

Right now, Im closing the chapter on my old life, packing up my things and making the big move to Boston.

Who I will be in two weeks:
My name is Colin. Im 24. I live in Boston, MA. Im an entrepreneur starting a technology company. I lease out my house and rent an apartment. I own no car and take public transport. I don’t have steady income, but I will succeed.

This is my road to success.