Posted on: September 8, 2025, 3:23 am

My daughter Emma is in her first year of AAU girls basketball in Killeen. She is having a great experience and I am proud to see how much she is growing.

Emma trains at a place called Skyline Gym. The gym is part of a church complex, but it is in its own separate building and is treated completely separate from the church itself. This is not a religious program and anyone can join, no matter what. Her coach, Coach Bobby, works hard to help the kids get better at basketball and believe in themselves.

Before training at Skyline, Emma also worked with coaches from Killeen Parks and Recreation and played on an AAU team called Centx Next Level. That program was great, but they only train during the active AAU season, which lasts about 2 to 3 months. At Skyline, training continues year-round, and that has made a big difference in her development.

One thing I have noticed is that middle school girls basketball does not get much attention. A lot of girls do not show up to play, and so not many people come to watch. That is sad, because these girls are strong and talented. I hope more girls join and more people come support them.

Basketball is not just about playing a sport. It helps kids break through mental walls, gain confidence, and stay balanced. Emma has become stronger, not just on the court, but in her mind too.

If you are in the Killeen area and want to try AAU basketball, Skyline Gym offers training for boys and girls in elementary, middle school, and high school. You do not have to be on a team already. You can come learn, practice, and improve.

Let’s help grow middle school girls basketball in Killeen. These kids are working hard, and they deserve our support.

Posted on: April 22, 2025, 7:25 pm

Fynd turns 1 year old tomorrow! It has been a fun and rewarding experience developing the code and watching the search engine come to life. I think it is pretty cool that it has become a sort of living, growing entity that does not require constant human input to keep running.

The core code is now complete, so over the last few months, and moving forward, development has shifted more toward improving the user interface, along with occasional tweaks to the crawlers and other backend components as needed.

Eventually, I would like to add image and news search features, which honestly seem pretty straightforward at this point. But before that, I will be focusing more on refining the Fynd UI.

Fynd has about 65 million pages indexed, and it continues to grow every second. I am very happy with the search results for most queries. While the index sounds large, it is still relatively small, and as it grows, the quality of the results keeps improving.

Looking ahead, my hope is that others will find Fynd as useful as I do for general internet searching and research, and appreciate having an alternative to mainstream search engines.

Posted on: March 15, 2025, 4:57 am

Fynd has hit 50 million pages indexed, and the results are really shaping up nicely. The more pages indexed, the better the matches get. I foresee the sweet spot being around 200-250 million pages for optimal search quality.

Beyond that, I’m continuing to refine the UI, fine-tune the crawlers, and tackle spam pages to keep everything clean and relevant. Progress is steady, and things are going nicely.

Give it a try - Fynd

Posted on: December 7, 2024, 5:10 am

I put in a lot of work today to establish the foundation of Hive. My goal is to make it super easy for anyone to use, with features like detecting and installing necessary server software. The aim is for almost anyone to install it on a VPS or dedicated server and have a fully functional server for hosting websites, email, and databases. I believe I successfully laid that foundation today and also created the basic visual layout for Hive.



Update (12/17/2024): Hive now has its own domain name, and the website is currently under development. You can check it out at: hivepanel.com.

Posted on: November 28, 2024, 12:16 am

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how hosting control panels have become such a pain point rather than a solution. If you’ve been in the hosting world for as long as I have, you’ve probably noticed how some of the mainstream control panels have not only gotten bloated but also ridiculously expensive. It’s frustrating for users who just want something that works and is affordable, a no-brainer.

I decided to start building something better, a hosting control panel I’m calling Hive. It’s designed to work on both Windows and Linux servers. My aim isn’t just to make it feature-rich but also to keep it affordable. I want to make sure anyone can manage their servers without feeling like they’re paying a premium for basic functionality. Right now you're dealing with steep subscription fees, upsells, and features you may never use. I'm thinking of something like a flat $5/month per server, no matter who you are or what you’re hosting and providing free licenses to DataPacket customers.

For now, I’m focusing on getting Hive running on Linux, starting with Debian 12, since it’s reliable and familiar territory for me. Eventually, I want Hive to support other distributions like Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux, along with Windows. I’ve already started building the core app, which can work as a standalone tool for managing a single server or as a central hub to control multiple servers remotely.

On the development side, I’m building Hive with .NET for its cross-platform capabilities, which makes it good for both Linux and Windows environments. For the database, I’m starting with SQLite because it’s lightweight, reliable, and easy to set up. It's ideal for a server control panel that should be simple to deploy. It’s all about keeping things efficient without overcomplicating the foundation.

There’s still a lot to do and I'm going to take it slow and enjoy the process. Right now, it’s about building the foundation and ensuring Hive becomes a tool I’d want to use myself.