I've been thinking about this for awhile now and I might actually open my own email service. Don't get me wrong. Gmail is great. It's just....well to be honest I don't know why I want to open a new email service. I guess I'm just sick of the past. It's time for something new and afresh. Of course opening an entire email service just for myself would be stupid. It takes a lot of work to run an email service. But there are some things I have to consider.
First off, bandwidth would be a big issue. I would probably have to open yet another Comcast account (50mbps wouldn't be a bad idea either) so that's another $300/month expense. Secondly the time and computer I would have to sacrifice to get the job done. Email servers are notorious for their crashes. I would have a difficult time keeping less than 2% downtime. Thirdly, unlike my server where members can back up anything they want...when I move the email service will totally go offline rendering people's ability to get their email impossible.
The only way I can see around this is charging for email.....but with Gmail offering all those features and 7gb of storage, it would be almost impossible for me to compete unless I appealed to schools and corporations (and geeze, that's the last thing I would want to do). Because of this, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
I'm just 1 person people. I can only do so much. I hate to say it but I'm afraid I'm reaching my limit. Once I can get out of that horrible school and spend my time working on my projects I can take on more. But as of now, the only way I can take on more is to simplify my existing systems. I'm just praying to God that Windows 7 will help me do that. As of now I spend at least 1.5 hours per day just making sure the servers and all my computers are working properly. Repairing, selling, and upgrading computers takes up another 2-3 hours per day. Regular essential activities (i.e. eating) takes up another hour at least. Right there that's almost 6 hours. I get home from school at 3:00 so by 9:00 all I've done is work on a few computers and make sure everything's working properly.
Want to know why the server got all those upgrades all of a sudden? Because I was out of school for almost 3 full weeks. I had been testing the new server system a little before we moved, and I finished programming the base architecture within the first week after we moved. Since then I've been working on things you can't see such as security and stability issues as well as a few new features (see the
server thread).
I get up at 5am and get home at 3pm at which time I'm basically cooked. That's 10 hours I could have spent doing something useful with my life! Do you have any idea how much I can do in 10 hours if left to my own devices? It's worse than that because after I get home, I don't want to do anything but watch a little bit of LBT and go to bed. I might as well not even be alive on school days (this isn't meant to sound suicidal. What I mean is there isn't any sign of my existence in my projects on school days).
The main problem is that both school and computers is almost 100% brain work and stress. I can't use my brain like that and be stressed for 18 hours straight every single day. But let me tell you.....as soon as I get out of that hell hole I'm going to make sure my time is spent doing useful things such as making money and creating cool online services. My time and my life is just being wasted right now and I know there are much bigger and better things out there for me to explore. But the summer is coming up and you'll all soon see the affect of having NO SCHOOL has on my projects and my life.
