@dcope - FYI, its really hard to figure out what you app is based on your blog. And there's no obvious link back to the site root to get more information.
Nowhere in the article does it seem to be mentioned where they actually got the carrier that's pictured in the article.
The Varyag is an abandoned Russian carrier that was transferred to the Ukrainians after the breakup of the USSR, and finally bought at auction by the Chinese after almost becoming a floating casino.
Set up an Apache mod_proxy from port 8080 on your server's localhost to a vhost at showoff.yourdomain.com.
You'll have to make sure to build your app to not make any assumptions about where it's running (ex: links to "http://localhost:3000/path), but you should be doing that anyway.
I agree that the cutoffs are a bit low, and, at least for Seattle, I think the numbers for buying ($400-500K) are a bit high of reality.
I was able to buy last summer, trading in a rented two bedroom condo at $1350/mo for a two bedroom house in the same neighborhood, and I'm paying less than $50/mo more for my 30-year fixed mortgage than I was paying in rent. Yes, I've got more skin in the game with my downpayment, but it's in a growing neighborhood and I'm pretty confident that values in my area will go up in the next 5 years or so (its already appraised for higher than my purchase price).
Plus there are a lot of benefits to home ownership that I can't really assign a dollar value to. When I come home from my tech job and I don't want to sit in front of a keyboard anymore, I hack on my house. I've done a bunch of plumbing and electrical upgrades on the house, and I'm planning on building a backyard office / guest house "shed". And nothing can erase the stress of a long day quite like taking your shoes off and walking around in YOUR grass and relaxing in the backyard hammock.
If that stuff doesn't appeal to you, you'll probably be happier renting anyway. If I'd looked at it in purely financial terms I'd probably be in a rental myself.
I agree. Anything that I can do for free in 5 lines of code or less (email, Twitter) should be sub-one-cent or less. I'd gladly pay for services like phone and SMS, although it seems odd to me that SMS is more expensive than a phone call.
