Nick’s Vibe Check

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Website builders are wildly overpriced

“There needs to be a website builder for the little guy. I feel like that’s an untapped market.” —Justin, my coworker Every two years, I’m faced with renewal options for both of my websites: nalvarez.net and djnicky.net . I built and host these with Zyro, which was recently bought by/merged with Hostinger. My personal site was purchased on a basic Zyro plan for $36 and that lasts two years. During my 2022 renewal, they grandfathered me in at that price, so once again my renewal cost was $36 for another two years. Then, this week, I get an email from Hostinger reminding me it is time to renew my website hosting plan. So you can imagine my surprise when I check the invoice to find a whopping $167 charge for the same two year plan . That’s a 363% increase in price. To my knowledge, there has not been any groundbreaking new features (unless you count the merger as a “feature”) and I’m even more puzzled as to why they wouldn’t honor a plan I was already using the past four years. Like

Too much stuff, not enough space

Living in a studio comes with its challenges… mostly myself. After a recent trip, I came home disgusted at the state of my place. Not that it’s dirty or wall-to-wall in junk, but more the fact I had too much crap laying around. It gave me an overwhelming sense of dread just looking at my countertops, shelves, bathroom (my god - the horrors), etc. I hear my dad’s voice in my head (and see my parent’s garage) saying “don’t get rid of it, you might need it someday!” and while that may be true for the countless, mostly used 5w-20 oil cans in his garage (”use those first!”), I could not apply the same logic to old clothing, expired medicine, and other trinkets I haven’t touched since I bought them. Drawing from Dana K. White’s (and Marie Kondo’s, somewhat) teachings, I found myself asking a few essential questions: Have I used this in the last year? Do I care about the thing or is it just the memory associated with it? Would I pay to move this across the country? With those in mind, I g

Logistical lessons from a fraternity travel planner

Sometimes, if you want to guarantee that something is done right, you need to do it yourself. This was my thought process with a lot of things, especially those involving my time and my money. This often coalesced in the form of spring break trips (and similar excursions). I knew I wanted to bring a fun experience to the table and showcase my logistical skills. One thing I did know about my fraternity that created the challenge for me was their apprehension to spending money and their lack of time management. Fun! This post is about travel planning and I’ll mostly focus on my spring break trips, of which there have been three (avg. attendance of 12). However, I’ve applied some or all of the same methods to houseboats, camping, road trips, etc. Phase 1: Initial survey and location research You want to take a trip with the fellas, that’s great! The most difficult part of all this is finding dates that work for everyone. With spring break, it’s no issue since almost everyone is in scho

iOS 17: Finally, some useful changes

Maybe it isn’t the most groundbreaking update, but I see the value. Another end to the spring season means another WWDC from Apple. This time, they really surprised us all with the Vision Pro headset (blowing the Metaverse out of the water – not like that was going anywhere though). A new 15” Macbook Air was announced which seems interesting but only has two USB-C ports. And, of course, the yearly software updates with iOS/iPadOS 17 and MacOS Sonoma. I was particularly interested in the iOS update. There’s always some “who cares?” features: in this case, Standby (like an alarm clock) and the Health app changes. But for a decent portion of the other changes, I really thought “wow, I can see myself using that” often. In no particular order, here’s what I think is useful. Messages Considering a decent portion of my phone usage is from messages, any changes to how that works is bound to have an impact. I think Apple finally acknowledged iMessage apps weren’t all that great and put all of

My odd affliction with domain names

If you haven’t fallen down this rabbit hole yet, enjoy it. I was always a bit mystified at how one would actually get their own domain. GoDaddy commercials during the Nascar races were about as close as I came to figuring that out (but I was still too young to care). However, I decided marketing myself started with creating my own website, and I quickly settled on nalvarez.net via Squarespace ($20/yr, switched to Google Domains for $12/yr later). And, for a while, I was content. Playing with all the DNS records, seeing what I could integrate with my home server, and just having my own website was my entertainment. A year later, the domain itch came back… justifiably. My aspirations as a DJ had accelerated enough to the point I thought my own DJ website was necessary. Until that moment, I had been running everything from a subpage of my main site: nalvarez.net/dj . So, Google Domains once again received $12 from me as I purchased djnicky.net . This one had a bit of thinking involved

MoreRNO and what it means for Northern Nevada

Hopefully this really gets done in the time frame they’re promising, but I’m not confident in that. If you’ve flown out of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport recently, you might have noticed the lane closures, construction, and somewhat longer wait times getting in and out of the ticketing area. This is all part of the MoreRNO initiative by the Reno-Tahoe Aiport Authority (the same one that just canned the air races ). I think this is stems from every medium-sized city’s growing pains. Reno has been expanding quite a bit since I moved here about five years ago. Dirt lots have become luxury apartments (or ones soon to be) and old motels are being demolished along 4th Street. We can thank the influx of tech hubs (Tesla, Apple, Google, etc) and the exodus from California. Accordingly, the airport has been seeing more traffic: 4.3 million passengers in 2022 — a mere 3% less than 2019’s numbers. I believe airlines recognize this, too, as we’re seeing more flights into the region (23 n