Wolf of Williamsburg / The endeavors

Reality Check Network

The fifteen-person hosting company / 2010

The hosting years. A fifteen-person hosting company, racks of servers, and all the client mail that comes with them.

The stories below cover most of what I remember.

From the archive

  1. Seven Months of StartupsIn a fast stretch, I moved from Peek to a hosting company, then joined Shutterstock and kept Ops Dojo going on the side.
  2. Goodbye by EmailMy last day at Reality Check passed inside a chaotic weekend, so the proper goodbye came later.
  3. Miserable WeekA new Amsterdam data center, school, and a side company all landed in the same seven days.
  4. CTO, Written DownReality Check put my CTO responsibilities into a simple roles document, and I immediately used it to help somebody else.
  5. Can Work Count as Credits?I went back to Baker College and asked whether years as an IT director and CTO could help finish the degree I had left open.
  6. One of You Needs to Take ItI made the same Reality Check offer to two former Beatport teammates and tried to get one to bring the other.
  7. Please Take This JobReality Check needed an infrastructure engineer. I wanted somebody I trusted and was already tired of interviewing.
  8. Sick of Gluster ConfigsThe storage proof of concept worked. I wanted four nodes, real performance data, and then a break from staring at it.
  9. Two Days, Cool GraphsReality Check tried two-week sprints, small tasks, daily updates, and a chart that became interesting almost immediately.
  10. Sure, Just Call MeI had left Peek for a new CTO job. The old team still needed help with the network, and I still answered.
  11. Passion Now. Safe Later.Facebook, Shutterstock, and Reality Check offered three different futures. I chose the fifteen-person hosting company.