As I mentioned yesterday, I had the opportunity to appear on Thisweeklive’s “The Show” which is a weekly public access TV show that covers topics in the South Metro. I was invited to the show by host Jeff Achen who was questioned by many about why they would ever give me any time in the “spotlight”. While I have many of my own theories as to why this may be the case, I’m interested in knowing what other people think about that statement.

Being that I am usually analyzing, dissecting, and ultimately destroying the guests that have been (or will eventually be) on this show, I figured it would be high time for the same treatment to be given to me. So, please do watch the video posted above and then in the comment section below, pick apart the entire interview just like I did when Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland came on last week. Be honest, be brutal, and most of all be as fucking vulgar as possible. Even though I mention her in the interview several times, anything related to Kim is not fair game, cool?

For once, I’m giving everyone the opportunity to do my job for me and show me what it’s like to be on the other end of the South Metro’s best beat down. So do your worst, I cannot wait for this set of comments!

Couple of updates about the site:

1. I still haven’t moved everything over to the “new” webserver yet. I have a couple little things left to setup on the machine and once I do I can get it up and running. The website itself seems to run fine but I haven’t yet successfully migrated SMTP (mail) or DNS. I’m lazy, I know.

2. The new Internet connection has been pretty solid and it’s definitely faster. Once I move everything to the new machine the restarts of the database and webserver will be able to cease and problems with failed page loads should stop. Sorry for the issues there but growing pains are a bitch for everyone involved.

3. I have created, per a suggestion from a reader, a Twitter account just for the website. If you’re using Twitter, I suggest following SouthMetroNews for updates. If you’re not, and aren’t interested in a Twitter account, I suggest checking out the little widget on the sidebar for updates. I’ll be posting only stuff related to the website there so you can check for what’s going on, what’s coming up, and what’s already been posted.

4. I have added support for rating of comments. Mrs. Marcos was my guinea pig and she says it seems to be working ok. The rating is done with AJAXy goodness (think GMail) so if you’re loading from a mobile device it’s possible that it won’t be as smooth and may force a page reload (it seems to work just fine on the iPhone).

I have the ability to rate posts themselves as well. For now I’ve left that off as it clutters the front page with a bunch of shit that I really don’t want to see. If you’re really dying to let me know how much a post sucks or not, I’ll see what I can do to get it added in there.

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If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please post them below or feel free to e-mail me. I’m always looking for ways to improve what’s offered here and make it more informative, enjoyable, and fun for most everyone ;)

Back in November I moved the site over to an interim webserver while I amassed the funding necessary, through advertising that the vast majority of my regular readers rarely see, to upgrade to a machine which will be able to better handle the increase in load the site has experienced over the last year. It has been more or less hobbling along on this machine ever since but will soon move to a free P4 machine that was graciously provided by my buddy Josh.

After I receive my monthly check from Google I will be purchasing another 160GB Seagate Barracuda hard-drive to match up with the one I bought last month. Once I get the machine setup and RAID1 running and mirroring properly, I will begin the arduous process of moving the server off the interim machine and onto something that will hopefully last for at least a few more years. There will probably be some downtime while I do that but I hope to have it done in the middle of the night and happen nearly seamlessly, but as many times as I say that, it never happens quite as I hope.

In February, on Friday the 13th to be exact (ugh), I will be moving the entire setup to Charter Business class cable Internet. I have been hosting the website on 430k of upstream for over 4.5 years and it’s just become too much to handle both the website’s needs and our personal needs. While my line is provided by Frontier, my Internet is provided by Visi — who at one point was the premier Internet provider in the MSP metro. I contacted Frontier about upgrading to a business class line and they shuffled me off to Visi who, after a long wait, told me they were more interested in me switching to a competitor than meeting my specific needs. So, following their advice, I decided to look into Charter.

Charter will be offering a 7000/768k connection and telephone for less than $10 more/month than I pay for both now. Because it is a business class connection I am supposedly entitled to a bit better and more prompt technical service and I should see speeds in the 90% of the maximum at all times. We’ll see if that’s true. In the end, you will have a better experience all around with faster upstream available and a better computer running the website for you.

Please note that the changeover between Visi and Charter should be seamless but there is the possibility that due to DNS propagation time, you may not be able to view the website until your ISP’s DNS servers pickup my new IP address. I promise you that we’ll be ready and waiting for your reading pleasures once the IP does come across to your side of the world ;-)

Thanks again to all my readers, 2009 is already shaping up to be the best year for content and interaction ever. While I cannot make it to every single city council meeting, I do plan on attending many around the South Metro on a regular basis (especially Apple Valley and Burnsville) as well as ISD school board meetings as I can. I will do what I can to provide very biased, vile, and angry posts ahead of the local media in the best way I know how ;-) As always, I welcome your comments, for or against what I have to say, and look forward to another record setting year.