I appear to have moved to Seattle. Suddenly, my surroundings are different, and my bed 99% closer to the datacenter.

The house is old, but still standing (actually, it’s quite nice) at it’s centenial year. It’s big, red, and has a commanding view, not to mention $4 cheaper than my 20% smaller apartment in San Jose. Big apartment versus bigger house for a frapaccino less in cash. You do the math.

The story is this: Michael flew me up here to Seattle to do some work for him. Then he moved up here, moved the datacenter up here, and flew me up here to do work for him a few more times. It went on like this for months, when suddenly, I’m unloading a truck into the new house.

It’s nice up here, and it’s good to be able to get to the datacenter in under 4 hours. The food in SJ is better, but the people up here seem nicer, in general. Nice people are often unsuspecting.

In the meantime, I’ll post again in a week, after I get all those machines I lugged with me installed and ready for new or expanding customers.

TTFN-

Dirk R

As of 9:00 PM on May 17th, BitPusher has finally moved 100% of it’s infrastructure out of 365 Main in San Francisco. It’s funny, we still have access to 1/2 of the colocation rooms in 365, since we still manage a handful of customers there, but we no longer maintain any of our own equipment there.

It’s good to be completed with this project. Our new environment is a well-oiled machine. Essentially, we started with a green-field environment, and put together a long list of gripes about our old infrastructure in San Francisco. Everything from cabling standards to setting up BGP, and building better systems management tools was addressed.

More to come in the next week, but after such a lull in blogging activity, I thought I’d make this exclamation. We’re open, and doing business in Seattle!

Our blog has been quiet lately, but things at BitPusher certainly haven’t been. The cats have mostly been herded and our new Seattle data center is within a few days of coming on line. Now we’ve got a backlog of customer setups to do in Seattle as well a bunch of other loose ends to finish up — and then, of course, come the customer moves.

I’m also about to head to London for Carson Systems’ Future of Web Apps conference. I’m looking forward to the change of scene and getting back out into the community after a few weeks of being heads-down in front of the computer. If you’re going to the conference, or will otherwise be in London next week, let me know so we can touch base while I’m there.  (Use the contact form if you don’t already have my e-mail address.)

Kaylee Jayne Halligan became BitPusher’s latest staff member at  4:03 AM on February 1st, 2007. She’s 20″ tall, and weighs 7 lbs, 9 oz. Kaylee will be heading up our  new Logistics & World Domination division.

We got our AS number assigned from ARIN and it will be in whois tomorrow.  As a part of the infrastructure of the Internet, we now officially exist.

Actually, I’m only posting this because I know Michael will want to post it, and it will probably annoy him that I got to it first.

Jr. Admin CONTRACT (Seattle, WA) January 9th through January 12th

BitPusher, LLC is seeking a contractor to assist in the build-out of our new datacenter in Tukwila.

This is a short-term contract from January 9th, 2007 through January 12th, 2007 (around 25 hours), which may lead into an ongoing part-time NOC technician position.

Responsibilities will include:

* Installing rack-mount equipment including servers, switches, routers
* Installing ethernet cables
* Documenting cabling infrastructure
* Upgrading BIOS & Firmware on servers
Qualifications:

Requirements:

* 1-2 years Linux Administration Experience
* Able to work up to 4x 10 hour shiftts from 8am - 6pm
* Ability to lift 60lbs overhead; may require awkward or straining position to be assumed for short periods of time in lifting or han
dling objects
* Experience running ethernet cable
* Familiarty with Linux
* Strong work ethic
* Reliable transportation
* Experience working in datacenters

Compensation: DOE, 1099

BitPusher, LLC is a rapidly growing IT managed services startup. Please contact us by e-mail only. Please send a resume and cover letter to hr@bitpusher.com.

Said the shouting voices. 

  It has, and today is the 1st of Two Double-Aught Seven. I’m getting more up to speed as time goes on on every project I can, and have got my motor runnin for the 1st phase of the Seattle buildout.

  I arrive at work today, and there’s Michael in the fedora, lookin’ all chipper and awake. I’m not certain that that’s a polite state of being, even halfway through this 1st day of the year. Didn’t he have any fun on New Year’s Eve?  There’s no telling, but even on this one day when a disheveled appearance is acceptable at all status of the social sphere, he’s clean-shaven, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

   Okay, I’m really any the worse for wear than normal, so I guess I can let that pass.

   As this is the new year, my workload and responsibilities are increasing at a fullfilling) yet not overwhealming) rate.

   Happy New Year, and  1st Post!

-Dirk R.

Our hardware order has finally been placed! It’s been a good solid month of price competition, quote modification, and lease arrangements. As of about an hour ago the purchase orders have been issued from our leasing companies to our hardware vendors. The bulk of our hardware order is being placed through CDW thanks to their cut-rate pricing. The rest of our hardware is a couple of Cisco 6506s from Recurrent, a Cisco reseller based out of Santa Clara.

Dirk & I are heading out to Seattle from January 8th -> January 15th, so if anybody would like to get together during that period, let us know. We’ll be working furiously racking hardware, running cables, and building our new network, but we’re trying to set our evenings aside for dinners with friends, colleagues & customers, plus we’re going to spend Saturday & Sunday exploring if we make enough progress.

  Yup, that’s me.  I’m the New Guy here at BitPusher.  It’s been a good ride so far, what with there being plenty to keep me busy. I’m rather excited about the buildout up in Seattle, and am looking forward to seeing it completed. Planning is going well, and I feel good about the project.

  BitPusher’s been treating me quite well, and I’m glad to be onboard, especially as it looks like things are goin’ up. The hat’s great, though it’s sittin’ kinda high on my head in the picture. Like I’m trying to hide a cone or something. That’s not the case, I assure you.

  It’s very pretty (and somewhat wet) up in Seattle. I hear that the Thai and Korean food is great, but to stay away from Mexican restaurants. We’ll see. It’s hard to screw up Mexican without putting lettuce into a quesadilla. Who does that, anyway? Why would they?

We began our datacenter deployment “officially” three weeks ago by signing with Fortress in Seattle. A week later, Dirk & I flew to Seattle to survey our new space and meetup with a sales lead. For posterity’s sake, I photoblogged our journey.

Our day began with taking off from Oakland Airport at 7:20 AM, arriving into SEATAC at around 9:30 AM. We picked up our Cadillac DTS at about 10:15 (we figured if we’d be driving around a wet, cold, rainy, unfamiliar city all day we might as well be in something huge, unwieldy, and comfortable) and headed to the datacenter.

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