Things that are interesting to me

Went well!  It was lively that was for sure.  http://www.twitter.com/louhonick

Since I blogged.  Hehe.  I am feeling very web 2.0ish today.  I have a twitter feed now!

www.twitter.com/louhonick

I am at Hostingcon for the next few days.  I will try to blog and tweet about it.  I sat in a marketing roundtable first with Derek Vaughan and it was pretty good, a little dry.  Now I’m in a fraud screening session that is pretty good.

I haven’t posted in a while, but here are some videos definitely worth checking out!

Skateboard Jousting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osgpa4CB7zE

Dunking Tank

http://youtube.com/watch?v=62ILaeI0oPI

This one is Stacy Griggs (our VP of Sales) getting dunked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVuo3_RsdLA

I just read an article stating that “Americans are now more likely to get sick from eating contaminated produce than from any other food item, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.”

I think current events are finally validating my strategy of a meat-intensive diet. Spinach? Tomatoes? Green onions? Who needs em? If I’m going to take a risk, why not eat a rare steak? Think about it.

Also, I noticed I have started to accumulate some inbound links to this blog. Most of them are from web hosting industry sites. I would like to formally state that this is just a blog for me to goof around with. I have two business blogs, that are just as poorly maintained as this one:

http://www.servicedefined.com

and also my new theWHIR blog at

http://www.thewhir.com/blogs/Lou-Honick/

p.s. I highly recommend you check out one of those blogs to read about me getting thrown out of our holiday party at Dave and Busters.   

http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/2006/11/yahoos_peanut_b.html

I too hate peanut butter.  Lessons to live by.  I know that I’m guilty of this myself.  I don’t want to be left out of any opportunity, but I think that we can be very successful by focusing on what we do best and adopting products and services that are a good compliment to what we already offer.  Looking at our facilities and our product offerings, they are a relatively complete platform to build on.  Offering simple and useful add-ons, while working to make the user experience better on our core offerings (Shared, VPS, and dedicated) should be a good recipe for success.  I think we have almost been doing this by accident recently.  Simple partnerships allowing us to add more value to our customers (Groupspark, etc..) will help us retain customers.  We need to focus harder on improving the user experience on what we already offer and we’ll be in great shape. 

I have a new favorite word. It is “crapulous.”

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/netdict?crapulous

Pronunciation: ‘kra-py&-l&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula intoxication, from Greek kraipalE
1 : marked by intemperance especially in eating or drinking

This word was brought to my attention by Dan from our Network Operations group. It is a real word that actually applies to me sometimes (ok, a lot), mostly in regards to my eating. I really need to tone down my eating. I recently ate a 48 oz steak at Shula’s Steakhouse after I had already eaten dinner elsewhere. Over the past 2 months I have had meals that included a 48 oz. porterhouse at Shula’s in Philly, a 40 oz. porterhouse at Stack in the Mirage in Vegas, and a 44 oz. porterhouse at Mark Joseph’s in New York. That seems unhealthy. I should also point out that the steaks at Stack and Mark Joseph’s were listed on the menu as “steak for two.”

Crapulous.

Josh and I are at a conference in Vegas.  It is relatively interesting and focuses on the higher end of the hosting market.  There are a lot of successful people in the industry attending.  I find the audience to be much different from HostingCon where there were a lot of small companies with 10-100 servers co-located somewhere.

 http://hsvsummit.com/

Currently I’m listening to a talk about Hosting 2.0.  Not sure how I feel about the term Hosting 2.0.  While he is trying to explain it, and doing a good job of talking about where the industry has been and where it is going, I’m not sure what really makes it 2.0.  I think the Hosting industry has been a slow evolution.  In 2003 I looked at our strategic plan for the business and thought there was a 5 year window of opportunity remaining for hosting.  While I think it is getting harder and harder to start a hosting company from scratch, I also think the hosting industry has a wide open 5-10 year window of opportunity today with some of the big players yet to emerge (we’re steadily emerging).  Evolution will continue, and probably accelerate, however I think hosting 2.0 is somewhat of a silly term.

In other news, the Eagles lost a heartbreaker to the Giants.  I am still deeply saddened by the events that transpired on Sunday.    Dan and I lost a bet and we now have to wear a Giants jersey to work for a day  Dan has already repaid his debt.

http://www.ihatecoldfusion.com/cf/wp-content/danisawesome.jpg

I ate at a restaurant called Vergina tonight. I find that hillarious. How would you pronounce Vergina?

Check out this article - http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/439046p-369834c.html

I generally don’t care about celebrity news, but I find this quite interesting.  Out of 400+ related stories on Google news, only a few actually post the comments Mel Gibson made.  Are they trying to defend or protect him?  What is going on?  I found an article talking about a public statement Gibson made apologizing for “despicable statements.”  Even that article doesn’t state explicitly what those statements were.

Here is my favorite quote from the few articles that actually printed what he said:

“F—–g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

The sad part is that people will probably continue to go see movies made by this asshole.  I guess the upside is that a lot of studio execs are Jewish, so this has to hurt him at least a little.  F’ him and if he makes another stupid Lethal Weapon movie, count me out.  The last 9 of them sucked anyway.

Greetings from Vegas! HostingCon 2006 just wrapped up yesterday and I’m spending a day of vacation here before we leave tomorrow. I had 3 speaking sessions at HostingCon and they all seemed to go very well! I had great attendance at my individual sessions and the keynote panel was a lot of fun. For more information about the conference check out www.HostingCon.com

Here is a link to an article someone just sent to me. It is a transcription of a senator talking about net neutrality and the workings of the Internet in general.

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499

As someone who depeneds on the Internet to make a living (along with the 140+ employees that work at HostMySite.com), this is really scary. The government doesn’t seem remotely prepared to deal with this issue. Perhaps they wouldn’t need to if they would do their job on antitrust matters and prevent telecom companies from combining into massive entities.

I found an excellent gallery online with some great pictures of boobies.  You have to check this out!

 http://www.oceanlight.com/html/boobies.html

I’m back! I haven’t blogged in a while.  In recent news, I was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30!  Vote for me to be #1 at www.inc.com/votes/

I’m currently at CFUnited (www.cfunited.com) hanging out with a number of HMS’ers.  I have to give credit to Brian Hamilton for eating a plate of 20 giant radishes at the party we sponsored last night.  We paid him $25 for the feat.

As if I don’t have enough trouble remembering to post in one blog, I now have two!  I started a new blog to talk about customer service at HostMySite.com. 

 http://www.servicedefined.com

Enjoy!

Management is difficult. I had a few profound thoughts that I’ll probably expand on later.

1. It is much easier to tell people how to be good managers than it is to actually be a good manager. That probably explains why there are thousands of management books, but relatively few good managers.

2. When you manage people, they inherit your flaws. Sure, people pick up good traits too, but the flaws are picked up much more easily and they are magnified. If I don’t set a good example, I can count on the fact that the problem will manifest itself in at least some of my direct reports, and many times it will be even worse.

3. This is sort of a corollary to the last thought. Management leads by example, whether they want to or not. Seems simple, right? Sure, except for the fact that managers are flawed people too. If we had solutions to our flaws, we wouldn’t have them.  How do we minimize the effect of our flaws while encouraging the behaviors that develop our corporate culture the way we intend?

It has been an interesting day to say the least. I realize that even though I have been a bit of a slacker about posting on my blog, quite a few people tell me they read it. So what have I been up to lately? I just got caught up on the first season of Lost. That is a really cool show. I’m not a big TV watcher, but I have 5 shows that I really like. Five shows is probably the most TV I have ever watched since I was in high school.  Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Lost, and 24. Calista is growing up fast! I have some relatively new pictures on my website http://pictures.honick.com. She talks continuously, knows all of her letters, and is learning numbers.  It is really a joy to watch her grow, and it is hard to believe she will be 2 years old soon!  I’m blogging while she is in her high chair coloring.  I need to go draw Mr. Noodle, Bert, and Ernie now. 

Congratulations to the Dallas Cowboys on their acquisition of Terrell Owens.  At first, I was concerned.  And sure, he’ll probably burn the Eagles for a few TD’s this season.  But ultimately I think he will be as destructive and hateful in Dallas as he was in Philly.  Think he has learned the error of his ways?  Check out this excerpt from a rap on his website:

“I got a brand new team, I am a Cowboy now, no more black and green, to the haters that said I’m not going to get my money, I’m laughing in your face, ha ha, that’s funny.”

I think that says it all.  Good luck to you Dallas.  If T.O. wasn’t happy with the last two Pro Bowl quarterbacks he played with, I’m sure he’ll have plenty of words of encouragement for the arthitic Drew Bledsoe.

I hate it.  It’s nasty and cold.  It disrupts work and costs people money.  I have a new snow blower.  It doesn’t work.  The belt that drives the auger was off.  I am not mechanically inclined enough to put it back on, especially in the freezing cold on my wet driveway.  I am soaked and cold from messing with this thing for most of the morning and I have nothing to show for it.  Luckily my real talent prevailed.  Delagating.  I hired three teenagers to shovel my driveway for $40.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/781/in2.htm

I saw this article linked from Google news, and I clicked on it not fully realizing what it was. It was shocking to say the least and really demonstrates the huge divide between the US and the Arab world.

This quote in particular stood out:

“While the United States has recently distanced itself from the “free speech at all costs” position, this is a pragmatic move aimed at sustaining its military ambitions and must not obfuscate the decisive role that US media and policy have played in demonizing both Muslims and their faith.”

Wow! The US media and policy have demonized Muslims? What about Osama bin Laden? Hasn’t HE demonized Muslims? What about the 9/11 terror attacks? What about terrorism in general? I realize that most Muslims are peaceful and not terrorists however it seems downright laughable to blame the US media for their image problems. How can anyone expect Americans to be anything but bitter and fearful?

Right or wrong, the US military agenda is sincere in the desire to protect Americans from a very real threat.  Unfortunately it is the worst kind of war, that you can never really win, but are always one misstep away from losing.  You don’t always know who the enemy is until it is too late, and when you defeat one enemy there is another enemy you didn’t know about ready to take his place.  And there is no exit strategy.  Even if we pull out now, sit back and do nothing, inevitably innocent people will be punished in the future for our government’s “crimes” of the past (just like 9/11 was retaliation for the Gulf War).  Our enemies don’t just want us to physically leave, they want our total withdrawl from all policy and politics in the region.  It doesn’t seem like too bad of an idea, except that it includes abandoning our allies in Israel, ultimately paving the way for their destruction.  That doesn’t leave us with a lot of options.

I was really dissapointed that Monday Night Football is moving to ESPN.  It just doesn’t seem right.  I know everyone has cable or satellite, but MNF is an American tradition.  It just doesn’t belong on cable.  Now, dissapointingly they have announced a sub par broadcast team.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2323121

I don’t particularly like Madden, however he is a good announcer.  His voice is synonymous with football, and he is probably the second best broadcaster to ever call a football game.  IMHO Pat Summerall and Al Michaels are first and third.  Dennis Miller is the worst ever.

:-( MNF.