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What keeps you from being present?

Posted on Jun 19th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for June 19, 2009:

Potential.

The exercise is to embrace on the positive of both poles, and not to let one of them turn the other negative.
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Tagged with: QaR, peace, calm, presence, potential

We're all about Blue Box Group

Posted on Jun 18th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris

BBG


You've likely seen updates in the past week about the transition of gaia.com to a new cluster/server host.  Well every single piece and every moving part had to somehow be moved by human hands, and I'll tell you... they were the best hands this site could be in.

This entry is a paean to Jesse and Stephen, and all of Blue Box Group -- the new home for gaia.com.

I've probably had now 200 conversations with Jesse, over 50 with Stephen, and not once has either of them fallen short of absolute perfect communication, in terms of professionalism, accuracy, and thoroughness.

We needed handholding in many places, and never once did they let us trip.  And with all of our moving parts, not once were they stumped or did they stumble.  It was awesome to watch and be a part of, really was.

Every time they could answer the call and move above-and-beyond expectations, they did.

The night that Gaia moved over to its new servers, I was so confident that it would be done in 2 hours, I said so publicly on our team blog -- when with a job this size, I should have estimated at least 6 hours. 

The actual time to transition everything and open the doors back up?  One hour, 45 minutes.

Our site is now 3-6x faster, for 1/4 the price of service at EngineYard.  Our site satisfaction level is 97%.  You can see all the results for yourself -- just click around and see how great it runs.

Blue Box Group is also carbon neutral, having partnered with The Climate Trust.  Can these guys do no wrong?

It's been simply the best experience I've had with a company.  Any company.  In any sector.  Ever.

The 270,000 of Gaia.com send a wave of thanks :)
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More performance yays

Posted on Jun 18th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris

Gaia.com now gets a 97% (excellent) mark on the Apdex index (a measure of user satisfaction):
Picture 2.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apdex

That was in the 60-70s previously with EY (meaning the site response was poor to occasionally frustrating).

And just wait till we get longer queries running on a 2nd database, and on rails 2.x, and eventually ruby 1.9 (which is twice as fast as ruby 1.8).  Links will render before the mouse button finishes raising  :D
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How much faster is Gaia now?

Posted on Jun 16th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
6 times faster:
Gaia Speed Win


See the Response Time column.  Monday and Tuesday were before our move, Wednesday-Sunday were after.

For the geeks: Our rails solution was migrated from EngineYard to Blue Box Group. We left EY's nginx/mongrel solution for nginx/passenger.
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We did it

Posted on Jun 11th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
The site is now running live on BlueBoxGroup servers, as of yesterday morning.  Mega kudos to Jesse and Stephen, and Ry and Franc from our team.  It could not have gone more perfectly.

We've always had the ambition of being a "google-fast" site.  From what I've seen today, we may have actually done it.  Time will tell.

And we still have more improvements to make -- so we have no more of those occasional slowdowns that bum everyone out.  And still a long list of little fixes, to keep this place feeling great.  Very soon to come.

So for now, all I can say is:  enjoy...  and tell your friends, especially those that hated the slow site in the past, see if they'll give us another try.  And did I say enjoy?  Hopefully that happens  :)
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Tagged with: gaia, upgrade, blueboxgroup

What have you been procrastinating about?

Posted on May 27th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for May 27, 2009:

Answering this question... brb
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What in your life gives you the most satisfaction?

Posted on Apr 30th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for April 30, 2009:

Satisfaction is something you go after.  It's not something you actually want to experience (for very long, at least). 
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Tagged with: QaR, genius, love, life, passions, calling

What is your unique ability?

Posted on Apr 29th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for April 29, 2009:

To hear almost any vision, and translate that to a working software system.

To build a philosophy around the idea of resonance, golden moments, and magic.

To unify those.
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Tagged with: QaR, passion, gift, love, work, joy, genius

What work do you do that doesn't seem like work?

Posted on Apr 29th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for April 28, 2009:

Reading tough philosophical or intellectual tracts, then writing on them.

Building software from my ideas.

The union: philengineering.
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Tagged with: QaR, work, joy, love, passion

What do people really want?

Posted on Mar 26th, 2009 by Chris : Dreamer of the new Chris
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for March 25, 2009:

To use the little genius we have been allotted
in the little time we have been granted
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