Jeremy woke me up in the middle of the night to say, "I did it." The Dell outlet has been running great deals on refurbished servers ($1,000 off everything until August 22), and we decided that was the best way to go -- a lot more server for what we could realistically afford. But the servers in our price range kept disappearing as soon as they came up for sale. The one we were tentatively looking at would have been really close to $4,000 with tax and shipping, though, so we kept hesitating. It was the cheapest one we were seeing that had everything Jeremy thought we needed.

But sometime around 3 a.m. one came up for sale that was basically the same as our Chosen One, but with a single processor instead of a dual processor. (We can upgrade that later if you guys think the board is too slow, but we think this will be fine.) Final price with tax and shipping: $2,668.98, which is maybe $100-$200 more than we had collected the last time I tallied up donations. (I don't know the exact tally because PayPal hasn't deducted fees yet.) So excellent job, you guys.

There may be some other incidental costs here -- I'm pretty fuzzy at 3 a.m., but I know one of the ones we were too slow to buy yesterday was going to need a $500 something or other -- but it looks to me like this one is pretty much ready to go. We have a three-year standard on-site parts and service warranty. For another $700 we can upgrade that to much quicker service; that means less board downtime but it's a pretty hefty chunk of money.

We are still trying to get the board reopened on West Host in the interim. Jeremy starts school on Monday, though, so if we can't get it done by Sunday I'm thinking we might be offline until the new server is up and running. (He's not saying that; I am. He would gladly use the board as an excuse to procrastinate on physics homework, I'm sure.)

Anyway, congratulations! It's a Dell!

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Answers

Yay! When the time comes to look for upgrade incidentals, post a list here (or the new forum!) so those of us who can scavenge things from work- all legal and above board, don't worry!--can see if we can help out (esp. since some of are us changing hardware vendors, and in a good position to go bargaining with our purchasing dept.) .

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

That's not a bad suggestion, Jayran. Very cool. Thanks.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

The most awesome of news! Maybe we really should hold an auction or two, to come up with the extra money and have fun, too (I was more than happy to donate, but I can't honestly say it was fun). Seriously, I think a lot of us would be happy to do whatever we can, by offering something to be auctioned off and/or bidding on stuff, to make sure the Homeland gets the best possible home.

So, you know, I've got a bunch of stirrup pants I've been looking to unload...

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Also, I don't know if anyone else is in this position, but I can make another donation from my next paycheck in a couple of weeks. This check is all tapped out. So maybe another call for donations in a couple of weeks would round up another chunk of change.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

That's great news Beth. Thanks so much for all the work you and Jeremy have been putting in. I sent my contribution, small tho it was, in the mail, so you may be getting others that way too.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Congrats!

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Woohoo! Happy birthday, Belinda! Or will it be Belinda's birthday when she's actually up and running?

Happy gestation then, I guess.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Very cool! Thanks, Beth and Jeremy! And yay Suspects, too!

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Yay! Being a geek, I'm always happpy to hear about new hardware, but this particular server I'm especially happy to hear about! This is awesome news.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Viv, you are definitely not the only one in that boat. I just checked and we're still a couple hundred bucks shy of the total so far. Jeremy says we'll also probably need a rack-mounting kit (or something like that) and possibly some cables and whatnot.

Since we have been completely unsuccessful at finding a local colocation service that can provide the bandwidth we need for less than a monthly car payment, we're going to have costs to ship it to wherever it will ultimately be hosted. If it's in the Bay Area we'll just drive it there, but so far the best options we've found have been in Southern California. (And Canada.) Am I little nervous about sending our baby off to live where there are earthquakes? Just a tiny bit. Now I know how my parents felt when I left for college in L.A.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Not speaking for anyone but myself, of course, but I know that I'll be more than happy to donate on a semi-regular basis to help offset the cost of colocation and all that jazz. I think you've figured out by now that none of us think that you and Jeremy should be stuck with all the costs.

But, like Viv, this check is tapped out. (Dropping $25k will do that to a check, I guess.) I'll have money again in a week or so, so keep us posted on the expenses.

Yay, Dell! (Dude, we're getting a Dell.)

(Sorry, had to say it!)

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Beth - where in Canada were you looking? There's a bunch of Suspects in the great white north who might be able to do some local legwork.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Atara, we're not actually looking in Canada -- we just keep finding places that turn out to be there. There are apparently a whole bunch of irritations involved in locating your server up north, primarily convincing the powers that be that it's still YOUR server and has not actually been exported. I don't know if our Dell service contract would cover tech support in Canada, either. Plus, shipping is a bitch specifically because of the export issue.

But if you happen to actually be in Canada and ever need to colocate a server, e-mail me and I can steer you to great deals. Heh.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Well, if I can help with the server schlepping and colocating (whatever that is) down here, let me know. Earthquakes schmearthquakes, we're not afraid of 'em. We can cushion it on marshmallows or something.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002