Crazyguyonabike succeeds at raising the money needed for a server upgrade!

About a month ago Neil Gunton, webmaster of Crazyguyonabike.com made an appeal to the crazyguyonabike.com user community to help him raise $2000 USD so that he could upgrade the server that so many people around the world use to create and maintain their bicycle touring journals. I actually hoped the he would raise $3000 so that his ongoing expenses could be offset somewhat.

In under a day the amount he asked for was raised and in fact the money continued to pour in as the user community answered his call. Neil had the following additional comments to make about this wonderful experience.

Crazyguyonabike's new server!
Click to enlarge.

"I was amazed when we raised the original goal of $2000 in the first day, and even more surprised when people just kept on giving, until the total reached the current $5051.

Wow!

What an achievement! Everybody who donated should be very proud of themselves that they were able to get together to do something like this!

As a result of the additional funds I was able to upgrade the specification for the server, effectively doubling the CPU capacity (for the technically minded, I upgraded from the single-core Opteron to dual-core 265). Combined with the large memory (4 GB) and fast hard drives (4 x 10k Ultra320 SCSI in RAID 10 configuration), this will be an extremely fast machine once it is up and working. It's been delivered (see picture at right) and I am in the process of working out some issues with getting Linux working - apparently some of the hardware is just so new that Linux hasn't had a chance to catch up yet in terms of drivers. So as soon as that's worked out, I'll be getting on with setting up 64-bit linux and building all the software that comprises the crazyguyonabike website. Should be good!

The final total cost for the server was $4805. The extra funds over that will help to pay for the website stickers, which are still in process - we are near to getting the designs finalized with the printer, and once they are finished I will be able to send stickers out to everybody who contributed and sent me their postal address. Stay tuned!"

I think this is a fantastic example of the bicycle touring community giving back to someone who has given a lot of their time, energy and personal resources for all of us to enjoy something special. Of course it's never too late to help out Crazyguyonabike.com so if you haven't done so yet please consider visiting the Crazyguyonabike.com Donation page.

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