This post is slightly overdue since most that know me have already heard the news, but several months ago I left investment banking and joined Hosting.com as Integration Project Manager. In my new role I’ll be focusing on the integration of acquired companies, as well as internal strategic projects as needed between acquisitions.

I went into finance after college because I recognized that while I had some hands-on entrepreneurial experience building a startup company, I still had a lot of learning to do when it came to the way larger established companies were run, financed, and sold. If I wanted to grow into a successful investor or to repeat my entrepreneurial success on a larger scale, I needed develop my financial skills and experience a variety of industries and companies. I got all of this experience and more during my time working with the many bright people at Edgeview Partners. Having a ringside seat next to our partners and clients gave me a great appreciation for all the considerations and work that go into corporate finance and dealmaking. In addition to intense hands on financial experience I got, the many late nights hardened and groomed a messy college senior into a stronger, more polished young adult.

However, in time, I realized that I really missed being around technology every day and working with a team to grow a business. Additionally, many of the most talented entrepreneurs and investors I’ve met and spoken with are also great operators, and I knew that I still had a lot to learn in that regard. I wanted to get back to growing a company. Last year’s turmoil and uncertainty in the financial industry provided the final push that I needed to break out of my routine, take some risks, and seek out something new. I connected with a long-time family friend who was able to point me to what would turn out to be the perfect combination of all the things I was looking for – Hosting.com in Denver, Colorado.

When I arrived in Denver to interview, I spent the entire cab ride from the airport to Hosting.com headquarters with my face pressed against the back window – the snow-capped Rockies, brown high plains, and expansive western sky were an arresting contrast to the rolling green hills of Charlotte. I met with several executives, and after a few hours discussing the job, my qualifications, and the quarterback woes of the Buffalo Bills, I knew Hosting.com was a place I could come to make a difference, gain some hands on experience in a growing company with great people, and (maybe most importantly) to get excited about work everyday.

Today, I’ve been here for just over three months, and each day has been interesting and educational. Hosting.com has been a great fit for me because it provides an opportunity to combine the financial and deal-related skills I learned in investment banking with my entrepreneurial drive and interest in technology. It’s also been extremely refreshing to “get on the bandwagon” after so much transactional work and actually focus on the long term success of the company. Everything I’m working on is directly focused on scaling our business, improving efficiency, or serving customers – it’s great to be able to get involved on an operational level. Being on the inside of a world-class datacenter/hosting company has given me a new appreciation for the massive network infrastructure that runs our modern internet. It’s also exciting to be on the cutting edge of much of the cloud computing architecture that will run the internet of tomorrow.

All in all, it’s been a great move for me, and I’m very glad to be back in the technology industry and back in a hands-on role. Wearing jeans to work isn’t too bad either.

PS – I’ve also made a commitment to update this blog more frequently in 2010 now that I’ve got a little bit more time available to write. You’ll still see plenty of posts in the “Finance and Economics” category, but also expect some more fleshed out content under “Technology” as I try to write more about cloud computing, applications, and internet infrastructure in general.

Let me start with an apology for my, how shall I put it … less than prolific blogging over the past month. Ironically, I released the Ready Fire Aim RSS Widget, and then didn’t follow it with any content in my feed! I’ve been extremely busy with mid term exams (thank you, WFU Calloway School of Business and Accountancy). After two weeks of 5AM bedtimes and 9AM alarm clocks, I took a week off and headed to the beach to relax and catch up on sleep.

Imagine my surprise when I came back today to find that this post had received over 2,500 hits in just a few days. This seemed strange to me because the Windows version of the walkthrough had always been more popular. After checking my referrer logs, I realized that almost all of the traffic was coming from StumbleUpon. I’d heard of StumbleUpon before, but had never actually tried it. Spurred by this influx of traffic to my blog, I installed the StumbleUpon toolbar. This thing is addictive. Every time I press the “stumble” button, I’m presented with a new site I’ve never seen before. I can even customize which types of sites I’m interested in. At first I had expected that the service would be vulnerable to spammers and commercial sites with no real content, however, I learned that there is an approval system for paid content, and user feedback is also considered when displaying sites (similar to Digg). What a great time waster!

Speaking of spam, in addition to the 2,500+ hits on the Verizon/OS X walkthrough, I also received just over 800 pieces of comment spam, all of it caught by Akismet (and with no false positives too!). This means that 30% of all the visits to that article during the past week were by spam bots (and that’s just the ones that figured out how to leave a comment). This seems a huge number to me, especially when it seems that the spike in spam was correlated to the spike in traffic from StumbleUpon. The reason I find it strange is that I cannot find a link to my site anywhere on StumbleUpon.com – it seems the only way to find my article is by pressing the “stumble” button on the toolbar. This means that typical web crawling spam bots wouldn’t find me, and that those bots that did must somehow be surfing through the StumbleUpon service.

Can anyone that uses StumbleUpon take a guess as to why this might be? Is there an HTML link somewhere on StumbleUpon’s site that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

I few days ago, there was a post on Digg highlighting a Digg-style WordPress Admin Dashboard theme. It was by aspiring designer Teddy Hwang. Curious after reading the Digg story, I found my way over to Teddy’s site, and was immediately impressed with his blog’s design. I noticed Teddy had just begun something called Project Widget. In an attempt to further hone his design skills, Teddy is creating OS X Dashboard widgets for free. The widget conveniently pulls in all the most recent articles from your blog (via RSS), and displays them on the OS X dashboard. Teddy will create a custom themed widget for any webmaster that asks him, so if you want a custom-designed widget of your own, use the Project Widget link above to request one. Here’s what the Ready Fire Aim widget looks like, you can download it here.

OK, so this is two weeks late, but here are my blogging highlights of 2006:

1.) Entrepreneurship Series – A series of posts detailing various facets of entrepreneurship – Finding and Taking Venture Capital Funding, Web Design Tips for Startup Companies, Exit Strategies, and a study on “What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur?”.

2.) Verizon Wireless Cell Phone Internet Walkthroughs – A very popular pair of posts detailing how to use your Verizon phone to get internet anywhere you have a cell signal. Windows or Mac OS X.

3.) Total Redesign – I completely redesigned the site (which obviously includes this blog) based on the Hemingway theme for WordPress.

4.) Featured on startupspark.com – Benjamin Yoskovitz listed Ready Fire Aim on startupspark.com as one of the best entrepreneurship blogs, and my post on Exit Strategies was mentioned in his article “You Need an Exit Strategy Before you Even Start”.

5.) I also dipped my toes into politics and government (thanks to my Comparative Government professor Dr. Siavelis for inspiring me) in my post on two round election systems, an American third party, and how both could improve our political climate for voters and politicians of both parties.

Those were pretty much the highlights of my first year of blogging (not bad for only starting in August!). I hope everyone enjoyed reading Ready Fire Aim, I enjoyed writing it. I hope 2007 is just as rewarding.

PS – You can see a preview of some things I’m planning to cover in 2007 in the Merry Christmas post and the post announcing the new design.

So I was anxious to get the new design up, and decided to launch it today, although there are a few rough edges still to be ironed out. Some key points:

• As I said before, the new layout is based on the Hemingway theme for WordPress. Hemingway is an extremely flexible theme designed for simplicity, maximum readibility, and easy customizability (is that a word?). Along with K2, Hemingway is one of the most widely used and modified WordPress themes out there.

• I’ve re-imagined the site’s purpose and presentation a little bit. Before it was mostly just the Ready Fire Aim blog, with a few personal tidbits (resume, portfolio, pictures) kind of tacked onto the side. The new design showcases the blog, however the site is laid out as more of a personal homepage, of which the blog is just one section.

  I’ve tried to accomplish this by not splashing the “Ready Fire Aim” name all over the site, you’ll only see it when you’re reading the blog. Otherwise, the header will display what you’re actually looking at, with a description. I’ve also put the static BillDA.com in script at the top right, which hopefully lends some continuity to the site, even though the header changes.

• I’m using a number of plugins to power the new design, which I’m going to feature in their own post in the next few days.

• I’ve disabled the photos section (it was empty anyway) for now, as I need to re-style it to match the new design.

• My Portfolio has been redesigned to be more readable.

That’s about it in terms of new features and design changes. There are still some things I want to add however:

• Colors – I’m not sure I’m completely sold on the black/white minimalism thing, I’d like to splash a little bit of color somewhere in the design, possibly just one color graphic (I’d love to get the “spark” integrated again) somewhere that “pops” among all the black and white.

• AJAX – I want to get back to the Ajax commenting I had in the previous design, as well as live Ajax searching. Fewer page loads definitely make the experience better, especially when commenting.

• Gallery – As I mentioned before, I am redesigning the photo gallery to match the new design. I’m also making it a priority to actually use it! Everyone’s been asking me what happened to them, but have patience, they’ll all be back soon. Well almost all, server space is expensive, some of those high school shots might become by request only…

• Polls – I’m building a simple polling plugin for WordPress, something I’ve noticed seems to be lacking in the world of WordPress plugins. Just type in the multiple choice options, and the poll appears in your sidebar. Definitely will be Ajax enabled.

That does it for the new design, hope everyone thinks it’s an improvement. As always, leave comments.