Commanding Chaos for Coworking, Open Source and Creative Communities

Most Important Report Ever - New Server?

Mon, 09/26/2005 - 18:30 -- rprice

What is the pinnacle of your carreer? What defines the greatest achievement for a young entrepeneur like myself? How about writing a report for guys down at Wizards of the Coast? I think so.

I got a wierd random email from Erik of Unity Entertainment asking me how to access the web stats... I thought this was a little out of the ordinary, so I informed Erik that he would have to ask me at the exact time he wanted to see the stats, since I don't have instant control over stats.

In talking to Jeff one time, I was trying to explain that I have to query support every time I need new stats, and he said "Well, why not just buy a server?" I reply "Well, that costs $170!" He says, "As long as we could make money, then whatever!"

I think it would be a bad idea to go into business wiht a client to resell hosting and have to play sysadmin to bunches of users just because I was sharing profits with Mr. Jeff. No offense to him, but... no thanks, Jeff. The end of that is I will most likely be hooking up a Virtual Private Server pretty soon, and I will be getting a small chunk of a server that lets me control it like it'y my own dedicated server, meaning I get root access and i can run scripts whenever.

But back to the topic at hand. My special special report. It turns out the reason why Erik wanted to see the stats is because Wizards of the Coast was running a number of TV ads on Adult Swim with location-specific endings, like the Florida ones apparently advertised my client Unity Entertainment and MY website. SWEET! The goal was to prove that the advertising was driving traffic to the site, and that it would be profitable to run the ads again for future events.

WELL, I knew it would be pointless to start the report until Sunday, since the event was a Friday to Sunday thing. I emailed the dudes Sunday afternoon and asked them to run my stats. Then I got lazy and didn't check very often, so I went to hang with my friends for a little while. By the time I got back, it was after 1 AM, and I still had barely written any of the report. I spent the next three and a half hours cranking away at it, and then emailed it to Jeff, with instructions to wake me up at his earliest convenience. Around 10 AM, I get the call and the instructions to actually write something based on the data. I said "The advertising worked", and I got a pat on the back. Hooray. Now I get to charge Jeff for time well spent.

My report is going to be reviewed by the largest gaming company in the world. I mean, they are owned by Hasbro, and they own almost every major gaming license they could get their hands on, including Dungeons & Dragons. That is major.

I doubt you'll be seeing my name in lights anytime soon, but I feel special today.

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.