Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

I haven’t done a photo blog for the longest time.. Here comes 2006’s first photo blog - LA 2006 Auto Show!

I was fortunate enough to catch the show while I was visiting the city in January. I am not very auto-savvy so I can’t really remember what these funky cars are.

When I was visiting a high end show room, a few Mafia looking guys were checking out those ultra expensive cars with wings. I thought that was quite amusing.

The lady and the car

They only let the potential buyers check out the cars. These guys sure look like mafia to me…

Anyway, check out the LA Auto Show album. If you know what those cars are, leave a comment and enlighten me.

I took a leave of absence in Jan from my professional blog company b5media to deal with my real job. Finally, I was done with my slavery real job so I picked up my slack and started blogging for food again. Turns out, all of my proposals back in 2005 got approved so I now end up with 3 professional blogs to keep up with. That’s why I haven’t been able to do anything fun on my own site. I kind of regret that I am taking on too many blogs too soon…When I am under pressure to post on schedule, the used-to-be-fun blogging doesn’t seem so fun anymore. Well, let’s just see how this goes…

Here is a list of the posts I did on those sites in the last a few days. I am also introducing a new site I will be writing for: The Play Gadgets. It’s about video game gadgets. I am rewriting my template files to include these blogs on the side bars too. Hopefully you guys will still be enjoying reading my stuff …

Posted on Feb 22: Universal RF adapter/switch for all game consoles

Posted on Feb 22: Lazy guy’s gift guide
If you are one of these guys who is clueless about what to get for your lovely lady without breaking your bank, here is your guide.

Posted on Feb 21: Men And Calendars
Why men hate Valentine’s Day and why women have to have gifts on those dates.

Posted on Feb 16: Worst Pickup lines you can ever think of
This is my usual brew-ha-ha of the day…

Posted on Feb 15: Housework and Sex
Why neat home can lead to better sex life for the couple.

Posted on Feb 22: Why Women Make Less Than Men
Well, simple. ‘Cause we don’t ask for it the way men do

Posted from Feb 14 through Feb 21: Lessons learned after qutting my consulting career
Lesson 1: Learn to say “I can’t do it”
Lesson 2: Break that Agreement
Lesson 3: Learn to believe it is not my fault
Final Lesson: Make Changes Today

One of my peers in Raleigh, NC set up a blog site to track his journey and progress to achieve financial freedom by reaching 2 million dollar net worth mark. (Thanks to Matt for the link). He has currently accumulated $216K and he is only 29 years old. Impressive, yeah?

Here is his Jan tracking chart of his wealth. (ESPP is our employee stock purchase plan)

I just had some time to read his stories. I must say that his example is definitely inspiring which I can relate quite a lot.

I personally believe in saving and investing by living under my means and paying attention to personal financial educations. Thanks to my mother and The Richest Man In Babylon, I started saving and investing when I was still in college. I must say that another reason why I was able to walk out of my job was because of my financial capability. Even if I couldn’t find a job for a long while, I know I am taken care of and I will not worry about money.

2million (he didn’t use his real name of course) also started out as a broke student and able to accumulate this much wealth. I am sure every one of us can do the same but the key is to start RIGHT NOW.

I strongly encourage you to read his site. Here is the URL : http://2million.blogspot.com/ I also copied his financial history story here for your amusement:

I graduated with a BS degree in Computer Science in December 1998. I was just like any other college student, broke, but I was blessed enough to have the support of my parents to pay for my tuition and basic living expenses while I worked to get my degree.

Rather than entering the workforce like most of my graduating peers, I opted to stay and get a MS degree in Engineering. I was luckily offered an assistantship at the university which gave me free tuition and a stipend (roughly $12,000 a year). I was again blessed to have my parents agree to continue to pay my health insurance premiums during this time.

While in graduate school, I purchased my first car, a newly used Nissan Sentra. I put $5,000 down (my life’s savings) and I received a loan from my parents to pay for the remaining amount (roughly $7,000).

In addition, while I was in graduate school, I started a dot com business with my brother. We spent several years and roughly invested $8k of my savings in the business which we finally shutdown and sold off most of our assets in 2004 for a sizable loss.

In August 2001, I finally entered the real world and have been working at IBM ever since. I began paying close attention to my finances after reading The Millionaire Next Door given to me by a professor towards the end of my grad school career. As I entered the workforce I realized my limited financial means at the time would limit my choices in the future and I wanted to do something about it.

Since 2001, I have made steady progress in my increasing my net worth. I paid off the car loan from my parents and purchased my 1st house in 2002. In 2005, I rented out my house and I am currently looking for a new home.

I left graduate school with a signing bonus and moving allowance that accounted for the majority of my $14k net worth in July 2001. As you can see I have been steadily improving this number to a more reasonable $216k net worth today. Hopefully this streak will continue for many more years.

I personally don’t like V-Day that much simply because it is so commercialized. And I feel bad for the guys getting ripped off by those floral shops. Ok, chocolate is still good! And I just had the best chocolate musse from Target for 5 bucks a box!!! Yum Yum!!

Anyway, I have a gift for ya too! Another Yuna’s Blog!!! This time, it is all about love!!

It’s another b5media professional blog. We actually started to sketch the ideas last year around Christmas time. Then my shitty job took every bit of my energy in Jan when the site was launched. Gayla, a girl from Indiana has been taking the sole responsibility ever since. Thanks girl!

I am glad that I am finally able to jump back in!

The site is targeted at couples who are dealing with relationship issues and the older singles who have been there and done that and for whatever the reasons have to jump back into the dating scenes all over again. There are about 30+ posts already including the two I wrote last night.

Have a great Valentine’s Day! And if you don’t have a valentine, tell your mom, dad, sis, bro, dog, cat, bird how much you love them… It’s a day about giving your love to your love ones!

The slavery is finally over! After pulling 12 - 17 hours a day on the job, I walked out of the consulting career for good last Friday. I had been long curious about how I would feel when this moment finally came. I pictured it as the most relieving or the most exciting moment of my life. Well… let’s just put it that way… when I walked out of the office building, I was actually frightened that someone would chase me down and ask me to do more work. It actually took me about a day to gain a sense of excitement and finally feel the relief.

You can catch the story “My Last 5 Days On the Consulting Job” on my professional blog site.

It’s Monday afternoon. I am sipping a cup of coffee in my family owned store in Nashville, chatting with my mother and … finally blogging!!

I scanned through my blog and saw only 6 posts this year! What a slacker! Hehehe…:-)
With all the time I have now, I am sure you guys will see a lot of nerdy talks, photo updates, climbing journals, 5 More Reasons Why Thongs Must Die… you know.. the usual stuff..

Thanks to all of my friends and families from all over the places for helping me to go through this difficult time! Boy! I am so glad that I am finally back after a long absence!

Now, I have to clean up my yunasville email inbox.. 717 emails??? Wow! What did I miss??

I just posted the newest development on my professional site. Yes, I have a new job now. Check it out:

A New Job A New Life

I took my first step today by submitting a informal resignation letter to my manager. Informal meaning that I didn’t state the exact quitting date… Here are a few paragraphs:

I am considering quitting ABC Company and this job because I can tell that I am physically and mentally tired. And I feel that without a break, my current condition does not allow me to take on the challenge as a senior IT consultant regardless how much I want to perform. As my long term manager, you know all the history in the past including my medical issues and lost eye sight.

I truly think that in order to be responsible to myself, I need some time to manage my health and person life so that I can continue the next phase of my career. I also think this is the right thing to do to step down from consulting career right now before I start to under perform or jeopardize the projects.

I have already talked to my project manager and gave him a heads up that he needs to look for replacement so we can still deliver the project on time.

….

You can tell that I don’t want to burn the bridge. But I am very clear on making the point that I can’t do this anymore. Since this a public website, I can’t disclose too much more information. I can tell you this much: I had a conversation with my manager after this letter is submitted. And he is trying his best to work out a couple of exit options to reduce my financial burden.

Just a few hours before I had the conversation with my boss, I was called into another management meeting to receive a cash reward for all the weekends I worked last year in Denver. It’s funny how these two events happened on the same day. The extra cash I received is very nice, however, my life is worth a whole lot more than that check.

I will stop traveling and leaving my current project in 2 and half weeks. Soon, I will have my life back! Yeeeeha!!

Jason, my good friend and my loyal reader dropped a note today asking if I were still alive. I feel that I own a short post just to explain what’s going on lately. Actually, if you read the posts I did on my professional blog, you may already figure it out.

The project I am working on recently has taken its toll on me. I can rarely find time to breathe, sleep or eat. Maybe I forgot how to say No again. Maybe I am no longer the 20 some year old who can think 15 hours non stop. Maybe I am just too tired to keep going with this job. I am absolutely feeling frightened when I’ve learned that I have to work overtime at night and on weekend again. I started to make critical mistakes on the job which resulted in serious consequences and caused my company some damages.

I have sold my soul to this company in the last 10 years by working overtime year after year. I was ill for 2 years; I lost half of my right eye’s sight; and I lost my family because of this job. I kept going because this is all I know and I like my manager who gives me big bucks.

I finally decided that it’s time for me to retire from the consulting life, retire from the travel job and start to focus on having a normal life. I am 32, yet, I am still trying to figure out where my home is. That’s just plain sad.

I do feel being defeated and I do feel that I am sort of kind of running away from my problems by quitting what I do. But I know one thing though: my current job is the source of my unhappiness and I gotta do something to get my life back.

Stay tuned…

I watched a few movies on my new video iPod and wasn’t impressed until I viewed the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children (see images below) last night. Initially, I was really worried about the tiny screen with tiny English subtitle. It gotta be no more than font size 2. How the hell can I read it?!

I ripped a high resolution version and surprisingly, I could read every letter! The graphical detail is so impressive even with the screens filled with all dark gray lines. The resolution and contrast are good enough for the human eyes to differentiate objects in super dark scenes.

Cloud with Tifa:

All computer graphcis images, baby!

This is by far the best iPod yet. Although it takes me about 2 hours to burn a movie, it is well worth the effort…

Mike from Heavywinter did a post discussing his traffic and stats. I figured I’d do the same for the “Documentary” purpose.

This picture actually says it all about the traffic (click to enlarge):

The stats software I use measures both unique visitors and unique visits. My guts feeling is that my regular readers should be a small subset of the 37000+ unique visitors.

I can pretty much explain the traffic surges from month to month (i.e. I got dugg by digg.com in Aug, etc..) except December. I had neither outstanding posts nor major external links coming in. All the sudden, I am getting tons of Google image search hits in Dec. As you can see in the following tow pictures, the Google image hits brought in major traffic in Dec and the traffic exploded this week with 800 to 900 unique visits per day from the image hunters. I can’t explain why all the sudden my PhotoBlog became so popular, especially the Thongs Must Die Album I came up by myself. I guess people dig original stuff? Or was it because “Bare Butt Sells”?

Dec traffic distribution (click to enlarge):

Jan 1 - Jan 4 daily traffic:

I am definitely feeling a bit lazy about blogging in the past a few weeks. I guess it’s a cycle every blogger has to go through. Once I pick up some more energy, I am going to co-author two more b5 blogs: I will be answering dating burning questions for the older and professional singles; and another one is a console game gadget blog.

Now, I must sleep…