I’m not even gonna lie, things have been busy lately and this is kind of a back burner project just sticking around until danielbennett.com becomes available =)

My daughter, Emery, was born mid-April 2011 and since then she’s taken a lot of my free time, which is ok with me. She has such a fun personality sometimes me and Melinda just look at each other and shake our heads. We always wonder what in the world she is thinking. Well enough about that.

Since the last post I’ve worked on some more websites for local businesses, trying to figure out arduino programming (and electronics in general), read some books from sitepoint and a lot more that I’m forgetting. If anyone out there wants some great material on internet subjects, I highly suggest buying some sitepoint books. I am currently reading the beautiful web design book and am learning a ton. I can’t wait to try out my new found design skills.

-db

What is Dompr?

You may be wondering what the hell is dompr? Well it’s a tool/script to check a bunch of stats for a domain. It will get pagerank (even check if it’s faked), indexing (google, yahoo & bing), number of link (yahoo), estimated traffic stats and value. It’s one awesome tool and can get you some nice domains for cheap through godaddy auctions

It should be ready in about a week. I’m just finishing up a few snags but it’s coming a long nicely.

Programming

The past year I really honed my php skills. I think I’ve grown into more of a coder and not just a hacker. I’ve really done a lot in a year. Not only did I code my own website builder, but I also helped Ben Johnson with beta testing and helping fix some issues on his awesome Niche Site Platform software and made a ton of miscellaneous scripts to help me with my Amazon sales, SEO info (such as indexing, links, etc).

2010 gave birth to some awesome ideas that are still in planning and development. I started NameMorgue which was/is going to be a site to find great expiring domains from GoDaddy auctions. I also teamed up with long-time friend Rich Syndram to finally start a project that has been in our heads since we started building BANS sites together, called SimpleNicheBuilder. This project is still being coded but will make 2011 a great year for us.

Web Design

Last year was a big success for me and my web designing. The owner of my 9-5 job has a side business of his own, providing IT services to mid-size businesses. His workload for this side business has gotten pretty big so he has offered me and some co-workers opportunities to help out and earn some extra cash. Some of the businesses he does work for ask him about websites. He used to turn them to some other local web design company but since he found out I did internet stuff he asked if I would be interested in taking some web design work from him. And from there the ball started rolling.

I have done work for him on a few sites. One is Regier Carr & Monroe, a local (and not so local) accounting firm. RCM has offices in Oklahoma, Kansas and Arizona. This project has not just been the site design  but also keeping up with all the little changes that occur throughout the year such as tax codes, employee directory updates, etc.

Another site that I did last year was Oil Capital Electric. They liked the design and so this year I ported it over to their other company OCE Mechanical.

I was also retained to make updates to FoundersTower.com, which is a high-rise condo building in Oklahoma City.

Wiring

2010 was also the year of wiring. It seemed like the work was never ending. Running a ton of Cat5, CCTV and Coax for a local church. I learned a lot about the physical parts of networks, phones and security camera installations. Installing and setting up PTZ cameras were pretty exciting and can’t wait to install some at my house.

Networking

I didn’t do that much networking in 2010, but I think the little that I did will pay off in the near future. I hope to have more time for networking after SNB gets released.

Personal Things

Let’s see…where to start, lol. After me and Melinda’s plans to get married around xmas of 2009 were wiped out from the Tulsa Blizzard we finally got hitched in Vegas in December of 2010. Vegas was a blast, we can’t wait to go back. We also are expecting a little girl towards the end of April. We are pretty excited about that.

Enough rambling, I need to get back to working on SimpleNicheBuilder!

One of the best things is outsourcing the tedious items. Outsourcing is kind of tough too because it’s very hit and miss with the quality of work people do. If you find a good worker then do everything in your power to keep them around and happy. If treated right they will put your stuff in front of others =)

Some of the things I outsource is directory submissions, article writing, and article submissions. I enjoy the hunt for keywords and phrases to target and spying out and on the competition. I feel those are my strong points, oh and also being pretty good at php.

Wireless had WEP enabled which is usually simple but this router (Sonicwall) had the WEP key *’d out in the router’s admin panel argh! I was about to reset the key and update the other computers settings but I went ahead and setup the desktop and do the trickle down upgrade (where the person at the top gets the new computer then 2nd in line gets their hand me down and so on).

After moving all the computers from the lowest to the highest (new computer) I noticed that the new desktop doesn’t have a wireless card!!!! So I grab the wireless card (D-Link DWL-G520) out of the last computer that is going to the salvage pile and pop it into the new desktop. Plug everything back in and cross my fingers. Windows XP SP3 boots up and doesn’t have the drivers for the card, argh!! So I go to another computer and locate the drivers from D-Link’s web site. The download fails at 91% each time! My partner at Nexus has an extra USB wireless adapter at his house so he leaves to go get it. So now I get back on the WEP issue.

Dell’s have a proprietary wireless configuration utility so that is what I had been working through, I browse and compare all the settings with a computer that’s connected with the network and they are all the same except that WEP key. I had tried all versions of what they told me it MIGHT be. So I start clicking around the Dell Wireless Config and notice and Import and Export. I thought this might be worth a shot and so I exported the good computer’s config and imported it to the laptop and voila! it worked! Awesome.

So my partner gets back from getting the USB wireless adapter (D-Link as well) and windows doesn’t have drivers for that one either! So I look em up and download them but no luck. I imagine it’s something to do with old peripherals that are no longer updated by their manufacturer (D-Link) and windows XP SP3. The people that ordered the computer must not have thought about the wireless adapter, at least it wasn’t my or Nexus’s fault. =)

I don’t know what the other half of the table talked about but our half (Mandy,Cindy, David, Jessica, Brandon, and me) chatted about using twitter for PR purposes but mainly we just got to know each other, more of a offline social networking =) which was awesome.

It was nice meeting everyone that I met and next time I will chat with the others at the other end of the table. Ron dm’d me on Twitter announcing the next meeting, April 29th @ 11:30am at Ale-haus at RiverWalk in Jenks. I can’t wait!