October 2007 Archives

Boing Boing linked to a pic and how-to for a PacManGourd (what I like to call the PacO'Lantern). I sent it to my wife and she had to try it out.  We decided to use pumpkins but did get some small gourds to use as pellets.  She did a good job if you ask me:



She can be pretty original too:

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Wow, I mean just Wow!  

I'm just amazed at the StartupWeekend achievements.  In a weekend (well thats obvious huh?) they were able to go from concept to launch with promotional material like this video.  I'm looking forward to seeing how HolaNeighbor does for them.


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My dog Shelby

This was posted from my iPhone
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As an iPhone owner I got a kick out of this article on ZDNet:
Clueless fight attendant to passenger:  Turn off the iPhone movie NOW!

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Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch reported on Mozilla's effort to develop a mobile version of Firefox. 

Personally I'd love to see this but unfortunately I'm the proud owner of an iPhone.  I highly doubt Apple will open the door to allowing Firefox as an option to Safari.  Who knows though, miracles may happen.



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My wife sent me this one:

U.S. Senator Unhurt  In Air Crash

The Associated Press reports that New York junior Senator Hillary Clinton narrowly escaped injury in the aircraft she was piloting when she was forced to make an emergency landing in Southern New Jersey because of bad weather.

National Transportation Safety Board officials have issued a preliminary determination pilot error contributed to the accident, and the senator was flying a single engine aircraft in IFR [instrument flight rating] conditions while only having obtained a VFR (visual flight rating) rating.

The absence of a post-crash fire was likely due to insufficient fuel on board. No one on the ground was injured.

Photographs below were taken at the scene show the extent of damage to Senator Clinton's aircraft.

She was very lucky.

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After being with Speakeasy for many years I decided it was time to move on.  While they provided the service I needed over the years, recently I had increasing difficulties with email, MySQL and other items.  It looked like time to research a new provider.

Top-10-Web-Hosting.com listed HostMonster as #1 in reliability, price value, customer service, features, control panel, server uptime and ease of use.  Here's a quote from their assessment:

"We picked HostMonster as the # 1 rated web host after carefully reviewing them and testing their features and service. Their plan includes all you will need for your website. From an advanced control panel and a free website builder to website statistics, shopping carts, a free domain name for life, free setup, and  much more. We strongly believe you will be satisfied with them."

I've been with them now for about a week and have to strongly agree.  I'm now paying less than half what I previously did for more features, an additional domain and over twice as much bandwidth and storage.

I've never heard of HostMonster before last week.  As of today I would highly recommend them.

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Welcome to Challenges!

I'm Marc Benton and I'm currently an IT consultant specializing in software development management based in Reston, Virginia. 

I spent a great deal of time trying to find the perfect name for this blog before Challenges came to me.  Is it the "perfect" name?  Maybe not but it suits my purpose. 

Like anyone else, I've spent the majority of my life and career dealing with new challenges.  Some were a small bump in the road, others were more like a tidal wave that sometimes sank me or if I was lucky, I persevered.  The common theme from all of them was the experience gained.  Kinda like The Riddler said in Batman Forever: "If ya kill him, he won't learn nothin...".  Every challenge someone overcomes or succumbs to should be a learning experience for the next time.

Cheers for now!

Update:  On January 26, 2008 I combined my two blogs into this site and branded marcbenton.com as User 40.0.

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