The big news is that Port 80 Services has just doubled in size, in terms of the number of sites managed. We had a good meeting with Colleen, the previous owner, on Tuesday to iron out the details. She lives on the other side of Perigueux, an hour each way, so that was most of our afternoon. We discussed how she builds her sites, bills clients and other details. Since then, we’ve paid her, and she’s handed over control of the sites to us, so it’s officially ours now.
Colleen only offered basic brochure sites, with minimal CMS, so there won’t be much new work from the existing sites. It has already led to new business for Will, from two clients that she handed over to us. She charged a bit more than we do, so it’s a good excuse to raise our prices in the new year. Will already has two sites on the go, so he’s going to be very busy come January. I’ve got a few potential projects, but I’ll start touting for work if nothing comes through before then.
We socialised on Thursday and Friday again, like last week. The first night was dinner at Daniel and Odeille’s, which included Lucien and Mauricette, plus Martine and Joel who live over the road. She made a number of things for aperitifs, including a specialty from Nimes which was a hake and potato puree in a puff pastry. The main was a stew of wild boar, with black olives and carrots in a red wine sauce, with rice. Dessert was a fruity mousse with Speculos. It was a mostly pleasant evening, but the conversation eventually turned to the chemin, and the new neighbours. I think we reviewed every event in great detail over the course of an hour, before heading home.
Friday was curry night, chez nous, with Sophie, Dom and one of their ex-foster kids who was in town. We think Dom had a few before arriving since he was sloshed from early on. He’s a mostly pleasant drunk, so that didn’t pose a problem till just before they left, around 10:30. They are both a lot of fun, and they always teach us new slang. All of our dishes were less spicy than usual, but other than that, it was a pleasant meal.
We did very little for the rest of the weekend. The weather has been grey, but warm with temps around 10C. We’ve had one or two light frosts, but that’s it. The long term forecast so far looks ok for when we’re gone, for now anyway. I’ve been taking advantage by walking in the woods, and doing a bit of exploring too. I even made it to the pool for last week, for the second time. The first time I got water in my ear, but I used new ear plugs the second time, and they worked well. I’ll try again this week.
The new toy in the title of this post is our new NAS, which is basically a home server. I’ve been wanting to get one for a long time, but not been able to justify the spending. I talked to my dad who had a good year and is sharing the wealth with the kids (Thanks Dad!). So I decided that I’d waited long enough and it arrived this morning. It’s mainly a storage device for movies, music, files etc. but does loads of other fun stuff to. For example, you can access all your stuff over the web from anywhere, like your own personal cloud. I’ve spent the afternoon getting it set up, and copying our files from other devices onto it.
We’ve got a good idea of our playlist for the next gig, which includes a bunch of new songs, and some we’ve done before but not recently. We still don’t know when it will be, probably not until the spring. And that’s a wrap.