Today Golfballs.com launched an exclusive special on Bridgestone Golf Balls. Buy 3 Dozen of any B or e series ball and get the 4th free. The promotion is also valid on Personalized Golf Balls.
Custom Logo Bridgestone Golf Balls are also available although the terms of the special are a bit different. Offer ends August 31st.
Jul 10
 |
A few weeks ago I ended up buying a Smith and Wesson Sigma 9MM Pistol. I had wanted a hand gun for some time for personal and property protection. There was a lot of unrest and rumors going around my area after hurricanes Rita and Katrina, and at the time I would have felt safer knowing that I had a firearm in my home.
I had done some research and wanted to get a Glock. When I went to Academy the showed me the S&W Sigma. The Sigma is a clone based off the Glock (so much so that Glock sued Smith and Wesson, and S&W Settled). I read reviews online and the main negative seemed to be the excessive trigger pull on the Sigma. Because of the few cons, and the Sigma being 1/2 the cost (I paid about $330 for it w/ 2 Magazines and 2 Extra via Rebate) I decided to buy the Sigma.
 |
| Left Handed, 10 Rounds at 7 Yards |
A few days after my purchase I went with some co-workers to a shooting range. I loved shooting the gun! It was my first time ever shooting a hand gun, I didn’t find it to hard to use / aim and I was happy with my shooting results. I did get to fire a few other guns while I was there. I quickly went through a 100 rounds of ammo.
I am happy with the Sigma. If I would have known how much fun I was going to have shooting, I probably would have purchased the Glock. The trigger pull causes a little hesitation when shooting, allowing the gun to wobble around a little while pulling the trigger. I found with the other weapons that had a lighter trigger pull, I was more accurate. If this is a home protection gun, it doesn’t matter that much. For something that you want to take to the range and target shoot with often, I would recommend the Glock.
Here is a quick and simple script to allow you to start and stop an IIS app pool. I’ve used it with Windows Server 2003 and 2008. I’ve named the file AppPool.vbs, and saved it in my Windows folder (any folder in your path would be fine).
Set ArgObj = WScript.Arguments
Set objIIS = GetObject("IIS://LocalHost/W3SVC/AppPools/" & ArgObj(1))
If ArgObj(0) = "start" then
objIIS.Start
Else
objIIS.Stop
End if
It is executed by using the following commands
AppCode start [application pool name]
AppCode stop [application pool name]
Recently I’ve been playing around with SQL Azure. One of the current limitations of Azure, is no support for replication. I’ve been looking into different solutions to try and sync Azure data with my local SQL Server. The BCP utility and bulk import seem to be promising. Here is a simple example to copy the contents of a table from one DB table / server to another.
To export data to a binary data file, use the following command,
bcp "[sql query]" queryout [filename].bin -S [serveraddress] -U [username] -P [password] -d [database] -n
To import the data via the BCP utility, you can use the following command line,
bcp [table] in [filename].bin -S [serveraddress] -U [username] -P [password] -d [database] -n
Alternatively, you can also import the data via a SQL Query by using BULK INSERT
BULK INSERT [tablename]
FROM '[path and filename]'
WITH (DATAFILETYPE='native')
To use these commands with Azure, you must be using version 10. bcp /v will tell you your version number.
Recently I’ve been listing to the “Managing the Grey” Podcast.
Two take-aways that I found really inspiring:
Only Accept a project that makes you say “hell yea.” This concept reminds me of the book Free by Chris Anderson where he explains that you have a finite amount of time and money. When you are low on money and have more time, then you will do a lot of things. When you are low on time and have more money you will start to hire people to do those tasks for you (Taxes, Washing your car ect). With time being finite, don’t waste your time on projects that you are not excited about. It will drain your time, and possibly keep you from a project you really want to work on.
“Make today a good day”: CC says that he tells his children each morning to “Make it a great day.” I think that is a perfect outlook on life. Don’t wait for things to happen, make them happen. You are in control.
Oct 8
I sat in on a webinar yesterday that outlined the increase in customers searching for free shipping. Most sites do not make their free shipping offers easy to find giving the customer what they are looking for.
After the webinar I purchased and setup Free Shipping Golf. My goal is to capture a large percentage of users looking for free shipping codes on golf products and drive them to Golfballs.com, especially golf gifts for the time being.
If someone searches for Free Shipping they will find a code. I rather give them the code on my own site, then have them land on a coupon site that gives them the code and also collects a commission.
Oct 8
I got a call this last week from a major hosting provider trying to get us to move all our servers into their cloud. I had not given it too much thought in the past, assuming that it would cost a lot of money. I started looking around and surprisingly it is not that expensive.
Something I find interesting about most of the cloud services are how they license Microsoft products. In the next few weeks I’ll be doing a good bit of research and possibly some trials with stress testing. It is a great concept but it is still hard to give up physically being able to touch your own server or hard disk.
Sep 28
It’s about that time of the year that we start to get ready for the holidays. As usual we are trying to gain more rank for the term Golf Gifts. Here is to a success full and well prepared Christmas golf season.
Sep 28
Hi all,
I’ve decided to re-create my blog from the ground up with a better, more focused category structure. I will be porting over some of my old blog post, but not all.