Why is it that if you study something that has “computer” somewhere in your job title then you automatically become a power point/word/picasa/save hard drives/excel and everything-else-computer-related expert?
Here is a funny graph I found that pretty much describes what I am saying
How to solve or troubleshoot computer problems
I’ve been feeling my internet connection kind of shaky lately so I decide to give it a shot and run a bandwidth test. You have no idea how much I hate the idea of doing this, given that I pay around $65 a month for a 2048/768 connection. God! for that much money other countries can get 12 mbps!
Well, here is what I am getting…
speedtest in costa rica
That means the down speed seems decent. But the up speed!!! It is close to dial up 
You know what the problem is? That even though we have multiple companies providing internet service, it all goes down to the government at the end of the day. My cable company is Amnet, although they depend on Racsa for the service. How can we expect a decent service if internet is a monopoly just like a lot of other services?
Come on Costa Rica, grow up!!!! Competition is sane. And ICE, I think it is time you start selling IPhones, and for a decent price!
Well, for now let’s keep living with this horrible service. I see my country evolving, but not as fast as I would like it to.
I was this close to paying Amnet (one of Costa Rica’s useless ISP) for a public IP to be able to use my nice server which is set up (or in the process of) with a lot of tools that I use for my next enterprise, setting up my own company. We already achieved our first little baby steps milestone. Will it be custom dev? SEO? marketing? a tool? a product? a service? I will tell soon 
Well, let’s go back to the story, I had to have access from anywhere to my files while I am developing (and also my Music – 70 GB don’t fit in an iphone).
So, what is the solution? Use Hamachi. Hamachi is a vpn emulator that’s free for non commercial use and as little as $4 for commercial use.
Hamachi
VPN Evolved
LogMeIn Hamachi: Instant, Zero Configuration VPN
Try it, it works wonderfully. I am listening to my itunes library from across town and logged into my Microsoft Windows 2008 server via terminal server.
Find Hamachi here
https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp
I recently opened an account in Mosso (www.mosso.com, part ofwww. rackspace.com) to host my sites. Indeed it is more expensive than other options. I pay $100 a month, and in similar services I could get something similar for $10 a month. (Similar services at least offer roughly same amount of space, unlimited sites, many GB of bandwidth)
So why I am paying 10x more. Well, for starters I am in the process of creating an app that I hope/dream will grow and I need the stability, scalability and performance of Mosso. That is one reason, the other is that they offer a customer service like I haven’t seen anywhere else. Email, knowledge base, forum you can get anywhere. But with Mosso I have a problem, I log in, click on live help and in snap I have someone helping me. Maybe not worth the full 10x difference, however it definitively pays.
They offer more services that no one else does, like billing your customers, and best of all you get 50 GB space (which is a lot for asp net sites) and 500GB of transfer. Quite a bit and enough for what I need now. And you pay more for what you need.
Of course you always look for a catch, and in this case I thought it is the compute cycle. They offer 10,000 compute cycles. Of course I have no idea of what that is, and was afraid of ending up paying a lot more for them. So here is what they say a compute cycle is.
Compute cycle: Compute cycles measure how much processing time your applications require on the Cloud Sites. Using 10,000 compute cycles in a month is roughly equivalent to running a server with a 2.8 GHz modern processor for the same period of time.
You can read it here http://help.mosso.com/article.php?id=268
And then, how much is that? They also have an estimate.
Mosso says the following:
http://help.mosso.com/article.php?id=269
Well, hope that helps
I decided today to give it a shot installing SQL Server 2008 Express. http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/default.aspx
One note, I am doing so in Windows Server 2003 R2. Why? It is a VM and I had the license for an Enterprise so I decided to use it.
For starters, I needed to install .Net Framework 3.5 SP1
Guess what…. reboot! (I really hope that the day comes when it is not required to reboot every single time I change something in Windows….
Another step more
“Setup requires Windows Installer 4.5 or higher”….
So http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=5A58B56F-60B6-4412-95B9-54D056D6F9F4&displaylang=en
Installed. Reboot…again….
Now what else?
Lot of tests passed, however Windows Power Shell missing
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10EE29AF-7C3A-4057-8367-C9C1DAB6E2BF&displaylang=en
Installed, re-run tests. Pass.
Select what to install. Personally selected Database Engine and Management Tools. Next, next, next….
Added myself as admin and use my user. I just need to install a test db. However, long process!
Finally, installing!
Wait quite a bit, and you are ready to roll. Looks pretty nice, however installing should be a bit easier. Especially since it is Express.
