Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

Ok, we’ve heard this enough times from the girls who just came out of the broken relationships:
“I am smarter, faster, taller, richer and prettier. So he must feel too intimidated to be with me. “

Yep, this is the best excuse we can come up with. Think about this, we are successful, we are beautiful, we make great money, we are fun and furious females (using Cosmo’s lingo). So what could possibility be the reason why the guys don’t want to be with us? They must be intimidated, we believe.

I was at Comedy Works the other night enjoying Greg Behrendt performing on the stage. If anyone is not familiar with this name, he is the author of a quite popular book He’s just not that into you. The guy had some insights of relationship topics in general so I picked up a copy after the show.

Basically, Greg’s theory is that even if a guy doesn’t think he can match up, he will still move mountains to chase the girl he likes. So when a man breaks up with a woman, all it means is that he is just not that into her, regardless how much smarter, faster, richer and prettier she is. No other excuses ladies!

Although Greg does have a good point, I am not so sure if I totally agree with him. Men find their values when they can provide for their women. If a man feels that he has nothing to offer to her, he is probably going to feel a lot of pressure and eventually withdraw regardless how much he adores his capable woman.

So, will a man chase after a woman who is 10 times more capable than him? I believe he will. But will a man stay with this woman if he finds that he has no value in this relationship? I don’t think so.

My theory (maybe I am in my own dreamland) is that a man will leave the woman for other reasons even though he is still very much into her. What boils down is whether it is a balanced relationship where both parties are able to find satisfactions. For man, I guess the most important thing is to know that he is needed.

But on the other hand, if the relationship is still at its baby stage ranged from a few hours to a few months, I guess Greg is right about that “He is just not that into you” theory.

Did any guy ever initiate a breakup while he was still very much into the girl? I’d be curious to see what you think…

The only time I had pets for a while was down in Atlanta when I was working on an AT&T account. My co-worker bought me a small fish tank and 2 Mollies to keep my daytime job a little bit more interesting. I kept on feeding them and feeing them and one day the female got pregnant. She had her first baby and we named him Dobby. I was actually amazed to see that Molly gave birth to a live fish instead of eggs. Anyway, Dobby grew quite fast. After a few weeks (? I can’t remember), he was almost a quarter of his parents’ size. Then the mama got pregnant again. And this time, she kept on popping out little fishes from her tummy. Although the mama was only a fish, it was amazing to witness such a long birth. We waited there for a long time and she kept on popping out babies. On count 15, the baby fish was too big and got stuck in her tummy. We could see the baby fish’s tail but no matter what she did, the head wouldn’t come out. She gave a final push, jumped all the way to the surface of the tank, then sunk to the bottom and died. We were all shocked and stunned at what we saw. It was a very sad moment. But we were very happy to welcome the other 14 baby fishes to live with Dobby. Just a couple of weeks later, my co-worker’s husband killed my entire tank of fishes when he was exchanging the water for them. Dobby died too. I was quite upset for a while. Ever since then, I’ve never had another chance to have pets.

Maybe one day I will have a dog. But the thought of dealing with a dog’s death does scare me a bit. Oh well. In the meantime, I’d be happy to look at some cute baby animal’s pictures.

Check out today’s photoblog : Lovely baby animals. Thanks to Bib for the photos.

There are many ways to make money on the Internet. Blogging is one of them. However, to make close to 200K a year, Darren Rowse probably puts in 15+ hours a day to write on 20 blogs. I put in 30 hours a week trying to get my feet wet. But D’Angelo puts in an hour a day to make $150,000 annual profits. He sells chairs on the internet. Here is his story.

The late 90’s Internet boom and burst is still pretty fresh in my memory. At that time, the concept is : build a site or so-called Internet business, get venture capital, sell it for millions. We know the reason why the bubble busted. There was no business model or foundation built into these sites to simply bring in any profits. 10 years after the first boom, the Internet is revisiting itself and I think we are now in a much more mature stage to launch real businesses on the Internet to make real money.

One of my observations is that no matter what Internet business you are in, it is still based on a traditional form. Take amzon.com as an example, the concept is based on the traditional retail. Blogging is a new form of magazine or media business. Ebay takes the traditional Auction online and makes it available to massive audiences. Bottom line, today’s Internet businesses have a clear model how they can bring in the dollars.

I believe anybody can make money on the Internet. And if you are persistent enough and dare to experiment, you can eventually quit your job and make a living by selling products (or advertisements) online. A few keys here:

1. A good idea matters the most. We need to have an idea of a product (products) we want to sell. D’Angelo experimented for a while to find out the chair was a good business. Alex Tew is half million richer because of an idea.
2. Do it! A lot of us sit around dreaming about making 100K a year with our brilliant ideas but never put that idea into reality. Then, opportunities are lost in our busy daily schedules when dealing with our bosses and our kids. Get the site up, sign up on eBay. Whatever…Just Do It! Thanks to today’s technology that wasn’t available a few years back, you can pretty much get a site up in a few hours. I got mine up in 2 hours.
3. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to experiment. There are going to be a few failures before you hit a home run. Keep trying and keep tweaking. Eventually you will find your star product or an idea that works.

As of me, yes I have big plans on the Internet. I will start with blogging and give myself a year to experiment. I am hoping to expand beyond blogging horizon and start a new form of business on the Internet. Well, the rest is a secret…

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.

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.

It looks like the struggling Tommy Hilfiger has to put itself up for sale and Wal-Mart is the biggest bidder among all. Now talking about bad merge and odd couple, this pair certain makes to the top of that list if the deal goes through. My 2 cents are that if Hilfiger wants to keep its not-so-hot brand image as it is if not any worse, STAY AWAY FROM WAL-MART!

Frankly speaking, I don’t like Wal-Mart. It’s noisy, dirty, crowded and … crowded. It kills local retail businesses and drives out little unique stores from the neighborhood. I used to shop there but I don’t go there anymore. It’s not worth the time to drive 20 minutes one way while the much cleaner Target is within walking distance.

Some people ask me, “How do you survive without Wal-Mart??!!” To a lot of folks (my own folks included), I am like this alien from Mars with two horns because I don’t shop in Wal-Mart. Hey! There are a lot of alternatives. Target, grocery stores, small family retail stores, etc… There is definitely a world outside of Wal-Mart.

Hilfiger has already started selling products on walmart.com. I personally think Hilfiger makes pretty good clothe such as man shirts. I always buy a few for my family members now and then. If the brand gets absorbed into Wal-Mart, I don’t know if I would trust the quality anymore. I think Wal-Mart would first ditch its design studio so a pair of Jeans could be sold at a Wal-Mart price like $19.99. This is just all wrong!

The hardest part of a consulting life is to say goodbye to the people I care about CONSTANTLY even after making an attempt to stay in one location.

My good friend/climbing partner/salsa partner/Yuna’s Village frequent visitor MaleDNASpecialist (alias he used on this site) is permanently leaving Colorado tomorrow since his contract with his current client has expired. I gave him a CD with our climbing videos and pictures, hugged him outside of Maggiano and walked away with a pretty heavy heart.

Usually, I am the one who is leaving everyone behind and move onto another city because the nature of my job. My worst experience was when I had to leave Richmond, VA close to 2 years ago right before I came to Denver, CO. I was consulting in Richmond for a financial firm and met a few great guys. We quickly became really good friends and formed a small game team called “Unreal”. Soon, Ryan’s girl Colleen came on board also. Every Wednesday, we would have family style dinners and share a few gossips about work and other silly stuff. Then, we’d kick each other’s ass in Ryan’s game room. We are not just some game buddies goofing off once a while in front of 3 game consoles. We’d be there when anyone needs help or a friend to talk to. We share the same views and other passions such as technology, foreign movies and Japanese cultures. We’d do home improvement projects together. We talk to each other about friendship, relationship and personal problems. We traveled to San Diego together on our own dimes to attend SigGraph conference. When you are talking about a tight circle of supportive friends, I couldn’t ask for more than what we had shared. I went back to Nashville for Christmas that year thinking I’d be back in a couple of weeks. Then the shocking news came. The client didn’t renew the contract and went for the cheaper Indian consultants. Overnight, I lost my job in Richmond. We did everything in our powers for the next 6 months trying to get my job back but every attempt led to a dead end. I was very grumpy about moving to Denver at that time. It’s been 2 years and I still go back to VA at least twice a year to hang out with them. Once real friends are made, they are friends forever. So here is an album dedicated to my dear Virginia friends.

This is my last week on the Denver project before I move onto Colorado Springs. It’s going to be sad to leave this office where so many wonderful people had once worked and had fun together. I probably attended at least a dozen goodbye parties at Rock Bottom to send away my great friends like Paco, Traveling Aussie and RJ. Although I am lucky enough to stay in Colorado this time, I won’t see my climbing partners and friends that often anymore because of my busy weekend travel schedules. These are the people who welcomed me to Colorado, showed me a great time in the mountains and shared their passions with me. So here is another album dedicated to the Denverers/semi-Denverers I have crossed the path in the last year and half.

Saying goodbye really sucks. But there are always going to be cool and exciting people down the road for us to meet. I am looking forward to have some good time again in Colorado Springs!

Yuna’s Village will be 3 months old the next week. Before I write another post about how the Village is doing (stats, readers favorites, backstage stories, etc.. ), I’d like to take this opportunity to spread some love around in the Village.

My special love for:

• Cyco Miko – Well, this guy is the real engineer behind Village’s construction. I estimated that he probably spent 300+ hours in the last 3 months to construct the site and customize the WordPress template for me. He is an expensive software consultant so if he bills me these hours, I’d go broke instantly. Thanks man!
• Paco – He is my ultimate content feeding machine. I have no idea where this guy digs out all the stories. He manages to send me stories and contents almost on a daily basis. As he put it, “…just helping my friend out… ” He is also a highly paid consultant. I’d go double broke if he sends in the bills for each content he feeds. As a small token to show my appreciation, Paco can bullshit about anything at anytime with his no-restriction publishing rights on the site.
• Kimmi – Kimmi and I go way back when we were still wearing diapers. Ok, maybe not that far. After each of us moved to the other side of the planet ( I came to US and she went to Australia), we lost contact. But Yuna’s Village got us reconnected again. Isn’t Internet a lovely place! Kimmi is largely responsible for all of my Photoblog contents and the video files in the Brew-Ha-Ha. Remember those lovely shots of the animals and super Mom video? Yep, this girl surely knows where to dig visually stunning materials.

My fellow bloggers:

• Darren and Duncan: These are two big Aussie boys. Darren runs about 20 blogs and featured a few blog tips I wrote on his problogger.net. Duncan from Blog Herald featured my blog site on the 2nd day after he launched the 100 blog project. These two guys surely gave me the jump start to drive up the site’s readership from two to three visitors a day in June to a steady 250 visitors/day by mid-late Aug. Thanks guys!
• Thanks to Liz(Me Strauss), Ron(Reactuate), Jim (KrazyDad) , Retz (Retzwerx), and Brandon (User InExperience) for supporting your fellow blogger here! Your emails, comments, links and readership have helped to keep the Village very much alive and visible in the blogosphere. I am sure I have missed a few bloggers since I can’t tell who is who from the IP addresses. So feel free to shoot me an email or leave a comment. And thanks for stopping by!
• Mike Rivera from Heavywinter: Without him, there wouldn’t be a Yuna’s Village. I learned how to spell “blog” when he invited me to write on his site. I still go there everyday and chill out with my friends and enjoy his rants and raves. This guy also helped me to maintain my sanity when I was suffering from several blogger depression and obsession not long ago. Thanks Mike!

Hugs and Kisses to the Readers!
Ok, maybe hugs and kisses are too much for you guys to handle. But without you, the Village would go empty and I would end up talking to myself everyday. Every night when I was looking at my stats and noticed these familiar IPs on the repeated visitor list and aliases in the comment sections, I really have the desire to know all of you. Although I do know mountaincurmudgeon, Chalk Abuser, Traveling Aussie, MaleDNASpecialist , Beth, Nosaj, RJ, Michael, Bib and Rick in person and Kris through emails, there are tons of other regular readers who only appear as IP addresses or IP ranges. So thanks to all of the regular IPs from all over the world!

Spread the love and let’s blog on!

Once upon a time when I was still in college struggling with spoken English and public speech, a communication dept. professor suggested me to tape my presentations. She gave me a checklist and asked me to rate everything (gesture, voice, grammar, eye-contact, etc…) for a whole semester. And it worked wonders.

So, I figured I can do the same thing to improve my rock climbing skills by taping my performance. Wow! It’s amazing to see yourself on the screen from a third person angle. I can be as critical as anybody and it is so much easier to pick out the problems.

Here is the 60 second video of me climbing in the indoor gym. I figured that after talking about rock climbing for so long, you might be curious to see me in action.

Like good old time, I made a checklist and figured out my problems and how to improve:

1. I swing too much when I climb. Although I am good at turning my hip around, it seems that I don’t have a solid lower body while I climb.
2. I am still doing a wrong sequence. A good rock climber locates foot holds before hand holds. From what I see in the video, I still try to secure my body with hands. If I can trust my feet a little more and place them first then look up to find hand holds, I can climb 5.11 very soon.
3. I am doing much better to lock my arms straight while climbing. But that’s still an area I can improve so eventually I will only use my arms to lock positions and gain balance. After all, we should climb with our legs and fingers.

If you are into any kind of performing arts or sports, give it a try and tape your own performance. It’s really fun to watch yourself doing that signature move on the dance floor or smashing your face on the field.

By the way, if anyone knows a good video converter (convert .mov, .avi to .wmv, etc…), please shoot me an email or leave a comment. Thanks!

I was hanging out with my friend MaleDNASpecialist (alias he used on this site) in a salsa dancing club the other night and he told me how his politically incorrect truth-telling pissed off her dancing partner.

He was trying to point out a real good dancer in the far corner by describing her clothes and the accessories she had on. But no matter how hard he tried, his partner kept asking, ‘which girl? Which girl?” Finally my friend gave up and said something that all of us are taught not to say,

‘The girl behind that really fat girl in the corner.”

Well, it worked. The word fat effectively pin pointed the visual target in the far corner; however, MaleDNASpecialist apparently didn’t know anything about the female DNA and got his partner all pissed off. “How can you call people fat.. blah blah blah…”

So he asked me, “How do you suppose to describe a girl who is about 5’2”and weights 250 pounds?” Although I tried my best to educate him about top 10 things you should know about women, I too find this question rather interesting. Is “fat” really an offensive word or just a regular adjective that describes a factor? A sensitive factor that most of the people deny to accept which eventually turns this word to the “evil” side?

“Even a girl weights 98 pounds gets mad. Com’on! How can you be fat if you only weight 98 pounds?! It’s gotta be an insecurity issue you women have with your bodies.” My friend argued.

Hmm… I don’t know if this is an insecurity issue or not. There are certain words people just don’t like to hear under all circumstances. Even though I know very well that I am far from being fat, I’d still give you a nasty look if you use the word “fat” on me.

Is it worth telling the political incorrect truth to get people all pissed off? Should the politically correct white lies stick around so we all live happily together ever after? Will we go to hell if we tell a balloon shaped lady that she looks like Princess Di? These questions are too deep for my little head to think about… But for the sake of the world peace, I’d say let’s stay away from the words such as fat, old or small penis.