Why pay the difference if you can’t tell the difference?

I’m fortunate to have a hosting service that provides bandwidth on the cheap. For $20 per month, I get 100 Gigabytes of bandwidth. In one sense, it is good that I’ve never come anywhere near that limit. On the other hand, why put the effort into a website if no one is looking at it? As your site gets bigger (or gets the love from Fark, Digg, Reddit, etc) you face a choice: pay for more bandwidth or reduce the bandwidth usage of your site?

At first, reducing your bandwidth might be as easy as resizing a few images, but that only gets you so far. So what then? Make use of free bandwidth, of course! Have a few charts on your website? Use the Google Chart service. Have a large number of pictures? Host them on places like Picasa, Flickr, or Photobucket. All of a sudden, you’ve got a much bigger cushion, for not a penny more. As your site gets more popular (and hopefully starts bringing in some revenue), you can pony up the cash for more bandwidth, but why not save it while you can?

Welcome to Blog Fiasco

Greetings, friends! Welcome to Blog Fiasco. I’ve started this blog as a platform to discuss the more technical side of my life. Let’s face it: the people who read my Live Journal aren’t very likely to care about Linux discoveries and web design. People who care about Linux and web design aren’t very likely to care about my personal life. Now I have an outlet for both…if only I had readers.

So what will this blog contain? Well, as a young sysadmin, I’m constantly learning new tricks in Linux and Unix, so you’ll see that. I’ve been learning a lot about HTML and CSS these days, so that will be here, too. Of course, since this blog is on Funnel Fiasco, it will also contain posts about my burning passion for severe weather. I make no promises about the frequency or quality of updates. They’ll happen when they happen. I think I could enjoy working from home as a full-time blogger and owner of a kick-ass website. However, my wife likes to have food and shelter, so my paycheck is still necessary. Work will have to come first, so the blog will get love when time allows.

Speaking of work, I need to make one thing clear. I work for a pre-eminent midwestern university (if you know who I am, you know which one it is), and anything that appears anywhere on this website does not represent the views of said employer. When I discuss things I’ve learned at work, I will make every attempt to not identify any persons, groups, or institutions associated with the university. It just works out better for everyone that way.

I think this is a fair enough introduction. I look forward to making updates and gaining readers.