So I thought I would share a few tricks of the trade as a long time vegetarian and two year calorie counter that help get me by. If you are annoyed with entering intake into a journal or app such as I do, try reaching for some zero calorie foods when the munchie monster hits. There are tons of beverages that are calorie free, I don’t like diet sodas, but tea and coffee are a great mid morning treat. I also find flavored sparkling water to be pretty good in the afternoon with my snack. And even though Vitamin Water 10 isn’t quite calorie free, it’s a solid choice. As far as foods go you can get away with butter spray, rice vinegar, mustard, chili paste, when cooking a meal. Ooh, and fresh herbs can really factor in some remarkable smells and tastes in the kitchen to turbo charge most meals. Of course any vegetable is next to nothing too, some are, pickles for example.

In fact I have read recently that some foods are actually negative calories. Why? Because your body expends more energy breaking them down than they actual hold. For instance radishes are only a single calorie each, but by the time your body digests them more calories have been burned than eaten. The same goes for broccoli, asparagus, cucumbers, beets, carrots, zucchinis, papayas, strawberry, raspberry, oranges, etc. If you can put these things together in a recipe, maybe a salad or stir-fry, you enjoy, than you just ate healthy which is much easier to do than diet.

That’s my two cents. It works for me, maybe it’ll work for you.

Before I would aggressively exercise, but blindly, never considering the other half of healthy living – what food I was putting into my body. I quickly learned what calories were and how many I should be eating. I’ve now boiled this down to an easy mantra, “do the math, lose the weight.” Knowing really is half the battle.

To get geared up for this premiere event I’m heading to the gym to burn around 450 calories. Then it’s off to the grocery store, where I will actually be reading the product labels. I think I’ll prep my classic low calorie eggplant parmesan for supper this evening. Wow, food that’s healthy and delicious. Yes people, it does exist.

1. Taco Salad
2. Chicken Fajitas
3. Veggie Sandwich
4. Tofu Ginger
5. Spring Rolls
6. Sushi
7. Thai Pho
5. Asian Noodle Broth
6. Miso Soup
6. Green Curry Tofu
7. Kimchi
8. Korean Ramen
9. Winter Squash
10. Garden Salad
11. Herbal Tea
12. Yogurt
13. Select Campbell’s
14. Eggplant Parmesan
15. Zucchini Cakes
17. Egg White Omlet
18. Subway
19. Amstel Light
20. Popcorn

All of these tasty delights have proven to work well for me when prepared properly. I.e.; very little oil, fat free or low fat dairy products, label reading, etc. The secret is to actual enjoy what you eat while being conscience of your calorie intake. Blending in a regular exercise routine is also key.

Do yourself a favor, and hook it up!!!

I love my job. I wake up, start the tea pot, walk down to my office, and boom, I am at work – no commute, no fluorescent lights, no annoying co-workers or grind to fight. Is it a dream? Maybe, I seem to have found a loophole in the system, for now. The catch? Faith alone keeps me plugging away on a daily basis. I am NOT a laborer, I don’t produce something you can hold or touch.

Like most big companies Google is unreachable, godlike. Do I practice prayer in order to get a high organic ranking? :} AMEN!  There is no public contact information of any kind to communicate with them directly. Yet like a mouse through a maze I run Google Webmaster Tools whenever I launch a new site. When I went to start a PPC (pay per click) Campaign I use Google AdWords, when I went to order pizza I use Google Search, etc.

The fear is Google will taketh away, what Google giveth, but for now, I’ll just fly under the radar. After all, I’ve made it this far…RockandRollHosting.com – “Be Heard | Established 2001″!

Originally support ticket response time was fairly slow with ModernBill, however I felt like Sarah and Sean would take care of me when it really mattered. In fact, even though the installation fee was outlandish, I did receive a two hour phone consultation and was walked through the software with my hand held. Then, big brother came along, the Parallels acquisition of ModernBill. The support has since disappeared and attempting to do something as simple as retrieve a lost password is terribly difficult as well as completely frustrating. The last shoe finally dropped this summer when my license expired (I own a perpetual lifetime license) and I couldn’t make contact with Plesk Billing support without paying $59.95 for Parallels precious time. :{ No thanks! There are other fish in the sea.

Enter WHMCS (Web Host Manager Complete Solution)…Wow, a company like my own, a business and people who care about their clients! I had looooooooong forgotten what this was like. Support tickets are generally answered the same day, the prices are cheaper, the products more robust and user friendly, and my business is now easier to manage.

Let me go into a more technically detailed review.

1. Customization

WHMCS – Easy money, upload a template(s), go to General Settings, activate…Also the directory tree structure is built for common sense. Oh, and if you don’t got the time? WHMCS offers a top notch Integration Service – $34.95!!! WHAT?! YES!

ModernBill – Ouch, dig dig dig, customization is possible because I’ve done it. Wait, I’ve done it three times. Why? Because when you upgrade your software version your customization is wiped out, overwritten. It was so ugly I finally created a lenghty list of files that I had to modify with each software upgrade. Painful!

2. Automation

WHMCS – Honestly the module list here is very impressive. What’s mind numbing? WHMCS has a better Plesk module than ModernBill (Plesk Billing).

ModernBill – Clients had a tough time in the shopping cart figuring out how to “associate” a domain name with their hosting package and in turn in most cases I had to manually create cPanel or Plesk accounts. Look, I’m a busy guy, I’ve got other things to deal with. I think I bought this software to resolve issues…not make them. UGH!

3. Backup

WHMCS – Sends me an email of the MySQL database back up every morning, not to mention a cron report.

ModernBill – Can anyone even figure out those weird Plesk back up files? What format is that? .trouble?

4. Client Area

WHMCS – Let’s put it this way, once I switched from ModernBill to WHMCS. Our clients actually started using the client area. It is layed out in a much more sensible manner.

ModernBill – You tell me, try the demo. ModernBill uses its software for its clients. It just barely functions properly or understandably. So if I can’t login and use it well how can my less tech savvy clients feel about it? Answer – not good.

5. To-Do List

WHMCS – This is a simple basic to-do list which is helpful as a reminder tool. For instance right now in my WHMCS To-Do List I have a pending domain name transfer.

ModernBill – What a joke! I noticed that my ModernBill admin To-Do List was made public in the client area. HUH!? When I inquired about this issue I was told that ModernBill wasn’t sure what they were going to do with this feature yet. UH, you might want to get on that! I had to cut the code out of the template, yes during every software upgrade.

5. Affiliates

WHMCS – There is a very slick, easy to use interface which essentially runs itself. You can offer bonuses for joining, flat fees or recurring commission, minimum payouts, monthly newsletters/reports, etc.

ModernBill – They got nothin’.

L@@k, I was going to lay down a list of ten points, but let’s face it, this going to nowhere fast besides a rant and rave session. Luckily though I made the move forward to WHMCS, so I don’t have be hostile or angry.

Now let’s get to the gravy. For one, the whiz kids over at Flock openly communicate with the public. This is pretty rare and super cool. Just yesterday Evan, Flock guru, personally replied to my community question and offered to dish out a free Flock T-shirt for my interest. Secondly, Flock has introduced Top Flockstars which works hand in hand with Facebook Connect to track the number of download referrals a Flockstar sends. Once you get enough of your friends “flocking” the rewards tokens turn into sweet sweet victory – a free Flickr Pro account (25 tokens) or $20 Amazon gift card (20 tokens).

Here is the latest from the HowToFlock YouTube feed. Enjoy! :}

In my most recent quest, a fresh make over for www.RockandRollHosting.com, I found a great designer aid – BrowserShots.org. This little peach takes screenshots of any url and spits out .pngs for download. Between the OS and browser checkbox options seeing your website through about 50 different computer eyes is possible in mere minutes.

Anyway back to my point…INTERNET EXPLORER SUCKS! It renders websites in an unflattering manner in most cases, yet it is widely used forcing coding professionals to be its slave. If you are viewing this page right now in IE I strongly encourage you to download Firefox and utilize a modern browser that functions well on multiple platforms.

In the near future I will giving my insight and opinions towards my past, present, and future experiences in the hosting industry.

Talk to you then,

Seth