Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

When I saw the title “What is your envy list? - 25 people you want to be” on the cover of the magazine, three (OK, four) people’s names immediately popped up in my head. I have been envying these people ever since I knew how to spell their names.

Mark Cuban
If there is ever going to be a “World’s Luckiest Bastard Award”, this guy gotta win the grand prize. He sold a startup company to Yahoo for a few billion dollars during the venture-capitalists-gone-wild-and-any-junk-worth-a-million era back in the late 90’s. Then, he heavily invested in and promoted HDTV. Now look around, everybody’s got a HDTV or dreamed about having one. Just before the mainstream media began to pay attention to the blog phenomenon, he teamed up with Weblog Inc and started Blog Maverick. Then AOL bought it. Oh, and not to mention his full time job is running around with Dallas Maverick and showing the world that he could afford 1+ million dollar fine if he needs to freely express his emotions on the basketball court. He had a TV show too? Man, it amazes me that this guy hasn’t placed a wrong bet and every move he makes is a few steps ahead of the crowd.

Alex Tew
Yeah, that milliondollarhomepage boy made 300+K in a month with a brilliant idea and a few lines of code. What’s not to envy?!

Sergey Brin and Larry Page
They are Google’s daddies. They turned a Ph.D thesis/research topic into a billion dollar business, without even running the company themselves. I am kicking myself for not accepting Stanford’s offer back in 1995. I’d be in the same department with these two guys if I wasn’t aiming at the money (Univ. Penn offered a full Ph.D scholarship package and Stanford only admitted me into a Master program with no financial aid). Google was born on campus in 1996. Both these guys are worth billions with their stock holdings.

What is your envy list?
Have a few names in your head and then check out Fortune’s 25 people envy list. I read the article afterwards and I got 75% hit ratio (if including the Lucky Hall of Fame list).

I think what separates these people from the rest of us are:

A) They all had a great idea
B) They worked hard to turn the idea into reality.

A few minutes ago, I got a phone call from the Farmers Insurance agent who was assessing the damage of my car. (Here is the post about my car crash two days ago) First, he told me my car was a total loss. Then he said to me, “You know your seat belt won’t track back anymore. I thought I would be talking to you in a hospital. You are a very lucky lady.”Then he told me that the impact was so severe that most of the internal structures of my car were damaged. I don’t know cars at all, but after listening to a long list of the auto-part jargons, I was pretty scared. Axel was broken; front wheel was almost detached; suspension was smashed and another dozen internal parts were not repairable anymore.

Now I try to rewind and think back the moment when the impact had happened.I only remember that the seat belt was holding me so tight on the seat that I wasn’t really going anywhere even though the car was slamming back and forth for a few seconds. Before the agent hung up the phone, he said to me, “This Honda did what it was supposed to do to save your life. I am glad you were wearing the seat belt.”

Now, to be honest, I am in a much deeper shock than I was 2 days ago right after the accident. I didn’t realize this could be the accident to severely damage my physical well-being if not taking my life. And the only reason why I am still here typing this post is because I worn the seat belt. I know we all beat this topic to death. I saw plenty of people on TV showing us the consequences of not wearing one. But this is BLOODY REAL to me. And to all the people who are reading this post at this moment, WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT! And make sure your passengers are wearing seat belts too. You can save yours and other people’s lives.

I will go back to the body shop this Thursday to pick up my belongings and say good-bye to my Honda before they tear it apart. It’s sad … After all, the car has accompanied me for the last 2 years, moved me to Colorado, and gave a lot of people rides to the mountains after it arrived in Denver. As sad as I am right now, I am truly happy that I am not part of this “total loss”.

2005 Annual Customers First Awards just released the 15 winners. Here are my top three:

Netflix
I must say that Netflix absolutely deserves the first spot. If you love watching DVDs and haven’t tried Netflix, you are missing out on something big. I love Netflix because of the convenience and the large title collections they have in stock. And if you live in any metropolitan areas, you can get your DVD in 1 day after the selection makes to the shipping list. The business model is simply brilliant.

Craigslist
The next best thing is Craigslist. I spent only 800 bucks to furnish my place with the items I found on this site. If you are a landlord or looking for a place to stay, use this site. I recently helped a townhome owner to rent part of his place. I didn’t think he would have any luck because of the location and the competition, but we found a tenant within one week. The site gets millions of hits and nicest part of it is that it’s free and easy to use. No registration. You can’t beat that deal. The only thing I don’t understand is how they make money? I don’t see Google Ads on the site. I have been scratching my head for a while…

Whole Foods
Ok, Whole Foods is expensive. But the quality is top notch. I am sick and tired to shop in Safeway, Kroger, KingSuper, etc… ‘cause they all have the same stuff. Grocery shopping was so boring until I discovered Whole Foods. Besides the quality, we all want different experiences. I just don’t understand why all the grocery chains can’t be a little more creative to sell some new products?!

Everybody is talking about XBOX 360 in every corner on this planet.. OK, maybe just in every corner in US. But after reading tons of reviews, I decided NOT to buy a 360 this year.

Here are the top reasons:
1. One of the greatest offerings come with 360 is the online broadband bundle. I am not a XBOX Live player and I don’t have a profile with five-star meter in any game zones. So I don’t really care for this hot feature
2. I’ve got an iPod, a DVD player and all three current game consoles. So I don’t really need another “media-center”
3. Day one games are not that appealing. I looked at the list and the hot ones are mostly in FPS, driving simulation and sports categories. I don’t see Halo3, Splinter Cell 4, and Fable 2, although rumor says these hot titles will come out when PS3 hits the stores. I can wait until they are out.
4. Maybe Microsoft will drop the price when PS3 is released the next year?
5. Is the first generation hardware going to be glitch-free? I probably will feel more comfortable with a release version 3 or 4 after some fix patches are applied.
6. Although I admit that I am a total graphics whore and I will probably buy the machine just because of the enhanced graphics, I am skeptical about the day one graphics performance. PS3 has already warned gamers that the initial release of the games may not have drastic visual differences. So until I see some demos and truly believe that the dots and gray lines are much sharper, I am not going to trust what I read or hear.

On the other hand, I will drop 400 bucks in a split second as soon as Sony releases PS3. Screw the reviews; I just love that system especially if they would release either Final Fantasy XII or Kingdom Hearts 2 with the new hardware. Microsoft has to work a little harder to win the loyal Playstation fans’ wallets.

If you are watching the news about the Colorado’s snow storm and feel sorry for those who had their cars wrecked, then feel sorry for me ‘cause I am one of them. And this is my dead Honda in the picture.

I was on my way to Colorado Springs this morning and somehow I hit the black ice with 55 mph speed. I pretty much lost control and all the skills I acquired by playing “Need for Speed” and “Grand Turismo” didn’t help in the real world scenario. Although I managed to get over to the left shoulder, it was too narrow for my fat Honda. I was squeezed right between a truck and the guard rail. The car died instantaneously.

The collision stopped the sliding car and the seat belt literately saved me from slamming around. I smelled the gas. My driver side of the door was completely stuck. For a second, those car explosion and burning scenes were flashing through my head. Ironically, other than a slightly twisted neck, I was OK without a single scratch.

After a few minutes of sanity check, I dialed 911. The lady on the phone told me there were too many injured people who needed help so they couldn’t help me. She gave me a towing company number and hung up. “No cop?” I was scratching my head.

The truck driver whose car got all scratched up because of me stepped out and asked me if I were OK. Then he said to me, “I don’t have a driver’s license, so I have to run. “ He took off before I could even take down his license number. Wow, anything could happen in this world.

So, my victim ran away; 911 wouldn’t take my call; my car had no heat and I started to feel cold; I called towing company but couldn’t give them exact location so they told me to call back until I found out where I was (and how in the world was I supposed to do that? Walk on highway in storm??); nobody on the highway was checking on me (they all drove around me; what the hell???!!) and oops, my cell phone only had one bar left. What else could go wrong?

Ok, I admit that at that time, I started to cry like a girl until a highway patrol trooper stopped and knocked on my window. It was probably half an hour after I had the accident and the cars were starting to back up because of me. The cop took me to his car and started to look for a towing truck. I finally felt much better, warmer and safer. Thanks to my climbing buddy too who stayed on the phone with me for a while to offer a lot of options and advices.

I stayed with Officer Ernie (I only got his first name) for nearly two hours. He was on the radio, cell and computer to coordinate a towing truck but accidents happened everywhere this morning. The traffic was backed up miles in front us and my dead Honda was pretty much blocking half of the left lane. We simply couldn’t get one to come in until another trooper showed up to help to redirect the traffic.

On my way back to Denver, I counted 5 accidents with one truck completely flipped over. The tow truck driver told me I was one of the very few passengers he had in the last 3 days ‘cause “everybody ended up in the hospital”, he said. I could feel a chill went down my spine. Ok, buddy, you are not helping!

Ironically, the Honda body shop he took me to is right next to my usual climbing gym. After getting all the nasty paperwork done, I had about 2 hours before Hertz rental to deliver a car for me. Hmm… rather than sitting here waiting, I could go for a climb. So I did and I got my ass kicked badly. I, a solid 5.10 climber fell on a 5.8 route. Lesson learned? Never engage in extreme sports after a car crash. Durh.. what the hell was I thinking..

Well, I guess after a long nasty scary day, it wasn’t too bad after all because things could be a whole lot worse. At least I got to:

• sit in a cop’s car for the very first time and chat with a nice cop. Oh, I found out a supervisor like Officer Ernie can actually make $80,000.
• I didn’t get a ticket for reckless driving and my victim ran away so I didn’t have to pay for his damage.
• I got a snow day off!
• And most importantly, I am alive and all of my body parts are still at where they are supposed to be.

Tonight, I am sitting in my Denver apartment to chill out. Tomorrow morning, I am going to give the nasty highway another shot. This time, I am going to go 40 miles an hour if the snow condition isn’t improving. So wish me luck!!

When I started blogging about 3, 4 months ago, I didn’t know people could actually become professional bloggers to make livings by blogging.

If any of you found my site through Darren and Duncan’s Problogger.net and Blog Herald, you will know that these two guys are starting a new blog network called b5Media with Jeremy Wright. I submitted an application with a few ideas to them about a month ago and then went back to my normal routine.

Today, I got informed that b5Media would like to work with me to create a few pro blogs. I am very excited to have this opportunity to work with some respectful A-listers. Although I am well aware the amount of time I have to put into the new projects, I am willing to give it a shot. Otherwise, I will never know how this whole pro blogging thing works.

Darren Rowse is another reason why I want to work with b5Media instead of applying with Weblog Inc. Although I have only exchanged a few emails with him, I truly respect Darren’s work ethics.

So, what does that mean to my personal blog site? I only have 24 hours a day and I still have a full time job. So, I will have to slow down a bit, however I have no intention to close the shop here. After all, this is one site where I can exercise the right of freedom of speech and bitch about anything in any location at any given time without worrying about Ads click rates.

Anyway, I will keep you guys posted if I am writing any new blogs. In the meantime, let’s have a good time in the village.

Mike from Heavywinter just wrote a post to state his disappointment in today’s news media. Like many bloggers out there, Mike chooses Blogosphere when it comes to digging newsworthy articles to read. As he stated in his post:

…train wrecks, abductions, wheather phenomenon, killings, etc. There’s nothing truly new about that stuff. …Different names, different places, different dates, but nothing truly new among it.

But what about the 90% heating bill increase warning that will affect our wallets soon, or Greenspan’s Jan 31 step down plan that will eventually affect every corner of the US financial sector?

I am not denying the powerful social influences caused by the 18 million blogs out there, and the 80,000 new ones being created every day. Comparing with one year ago when there were only 4 million blogs, today’s Blogosphere is filled with an incredible amount of information and the talents. Look! AOL is buying Weblog Inc! Finally, the mainstream is taking blogs seriously. However, as you all noticed, the blog articles simply either link to the original sources, comment on the original sources or do both. So, my argument is - why reading the second hand news when the original sources are available?

Regardless how many brilliant articles Boing Boing has been collecting or Jason Kottke has been filtering, the blogs are simply not positioned to take over the roles of the traditional news sources. The reason is very simple - resource. The big boys such as CNN, NBC, USAToday, etc have the deep pockets AND the connections to get the stories that few bloggers can lay hands on. They have the money to hire experts from all areas to give in-depth analysis. They are able to walk into the press conferences hosted by the White House. And when you look at the big blog sites, they are still linking back to the news from Yahoo and Reuters’ RSS feeds.

Mike may be able to survive without newspapers and solely rely on the blog articles to get what he needs. I know I would be dead in the water if I don’t read USA Today, money.cnn.com or The Wall Street Journal. On the other hand, my day would be dead boring without digg.com’ geeky tech news and fark.com’s goofy odd news.

After all, the Internet readers are trying to find the best balance. We need to read original sources and we want to hear what people are saying. It’s like TV’s original dramas blended with the reality shows. So in my opinion, the traditional news sources and the Blogosphere work hand in hand to provide us with both sides of the world. The only thing we need to watch out is information overflow, ‘cause I am about to explode with a few dozen feeds I am scanning through each day! Soon, reading RSS feeds is going to become a full time job when each citizen owns 15 blog sites.

Happy reading everyone!

It’s been a while since I ran a collaborative brew ha ha list after I launched the left link section. But after a few weeks of experiment, the left section doesn’t seem to catch much attention. So I am bringing back the brew list to highlight a few hahas.

If you have a story or a link you would like to share with other people, feel free to send it to me. Here is how.

• English 101 – the purpose of this course is to give every student a comprehensive look at the most used English word – the F word. Now, watch the video carefully.
  Exercise: Describe what you are doing at this moment by applying what you have just learned:
  Yuna turned in the following answer:

  It’s f@#king 8am on Sat and I am in an abso-f@#king-lutely boring architectural class that I don’t give a f@#k! F@#k the instructors who came up with this f@#ked up Wed – Sat schedule! Now, I sound in-f@#king-credibly rude.

  That’d be f@#king hilarious to Podcast this entry Thanks to RJ for submitting such a valuable education material.

• Paco is hungry and he wants to eat this. If you want to give it a try, make sure you have an ambulance ready if you have high cholesterol. And don’t touch any food afterwards since you would have consumed 104% fat for the day by the time you finish your breakfast.
• Kimmi is finally back on broadband after her broadband company decided to cut her speed down to dial up. Is that even legal in Australia? So, check out today’s photoblog - Mastercard Priceless moments

• To all the bloggers out there! If you are still a stats whore, check out this one click tool to find out your link popularity score. Thanks to Heavywinter for the link.

• This is one of my favorite diggs of the week. An algorithm is used to animate how people walk based on gender, mood and other factors. Check it out.

The next time when you see those credit card offers or balance transfer offers in your mailbox, don’t throw them away. You can really make some money with them.

The concept of “Using Other People’s Money”
It’s all about “using other people’s money”. In this case, I am using bankers’ money to invest and make money.

I have been using this trick for years. If you are willing to spend some time dealing with the paper work, you can make a few hundreds or even couple thousand easy dollars.

Here is how it works:
I get quite a few balance transfer offers with 0% introduction rate every now and then. I pick the ones with lowest transaction fees (no more than $50) and a longer introduction rate period (usually 9 to 12 months).

I take maximum amount out of the credit cards (leave enough space for the $50 balance transfer fee), and deposit the money into high interest paying accounts such as ING Direct Orange saving or a CD.

I just took out $25000 this week from two of my MBNA credit cards. Currently, ING is paying 3.4% interest, which is $850 annual payment. So, minus $90 balance transfer fees, I can make $760 with just 15 minutes of work.

The 0% rate is good till next Nov. Since the principle is sitting in my bank, I can pay off the credit cards right before 0% expires. I usually transfer the balances again to another 0% credit card and keep the interests rolling in my saving accounts.

Other benefits
Another benefit of doing this is that I am forced to save by making minimum credit card payments every month. Then, the money becomes part of my savings over time.

It may not seem that much, but it adds up after playing with quite a few cards after quite a few years.

I have used the same trick to buy new cars since I can really lowball the dealers with cash payment. I also used the trick to come up with down payments for the real estate properties I bought. Again, it’s all about “using other people’s money” to make money for you.

What’s the catch?
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to try this:

• You need to have quite a few cards. Credit card companies normally won’t offer you good deals unless you keep zero balances on the cards for a while. So I usually occupy a few cards and leave many of them with zero balances for a year or two. I like Citi cards becasue they usually waive the fees. MBNA is another good one. They usually offer me zero percent deals again within 2 months after my previous balances are paid off. I have 8 MBNA cards and for a few years I didn’t even have to go outside of the MBNA family to seek for free funds.
  Many people think owning a lot of credit cards is a bad thing. My personal experience has proved to me that having a lot of available credit helps me to gain a better credit score simply because my debt/credit ratio is much lower. So I usually grab the 0% credit card application when I see one.
• I have tried to use this “borrowed funds” to play with the stock market once and I lost a few bucks. I guess since it was the borrowed fund with a dead line, I couldn’t follow my usual investment principle and tried to make bets. So, if my Dad told me, “Never gamble with borrowed money”, I better listen to him.
• You have to be very rigid on making on time credit card payments. If you are late even once, the penalties incurred will offset any gains. So schedule auto payments on all of the cards except the ones you use for daily purchases.

Umm…I cheated…

1. I refreshed my visitor statistics sheets every 13 minutes, although it was a huge improvement from the usual 13 second interval
2. I didn’t post anything, but I wrote down 12 posting ideas
3. I was on quite a few forums and engaged in some discussions about the million dollar copycat topic. That probably explained why the entire world’s copycats were on my site in the last a few days.

So, the next time if I am going to take a blogger holiday for real, I better ditch my computer and hide myself in woods or on a beach with no connection whatsoever…

But … wait, then, I would be doing this:

Gosh, I am officially addicted to blogging. This stuff is worse than crack. Somebody help me!