Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

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 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!

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 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

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.

Other posts of the day:
Dating Dames: Cat and Mouse Chase
Is it true that girls have to play “hard to get” game to get the guy?

Blog Fabulous: Sun’s iWork Program
Telecommunication works

Reposting “Goal Free Living”
I wonder why I was so stressed out on my last project. It was that damn promotion’s fault! ‘Cause I went from “no career goal” to an “important senior consultant” who must have a goal.

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I headed to central Colorado with a few friends for a ski/snowboard trip this past weekend. This was my second serious snowboarding trip after I broke my butt a few months ago. Last time I was at Wolf Creek with a few fun friends and we had a blast playing with the fresh powder. Although I took quite a lot of hard falls, falling into a few foot deep snow pow was like falling onto a feather bed. It was GREAT! I even learned how to link my turns… But Telluride snow is just like everywhere else. It was packed down, icy and hard… I had a rough time on the slope. Every time I fell, my entire body hurt like hell and I felt that I broke something again… I was completely taken over by the psychological fear and ended up with a limp leg after taking a few hard falls on my left knee.

It was frustrating, disappointing and I probably exhausted everybody’s patience that day…I can’t believe learning snowboarding has been that hard for me… Well.. I am going to try again soon enough after getting some heavy duty knee padding, thanks to our pro skate boarder Matt’s help.

We hit Silverton for a night and then stayed at Ouray, both are small mountain towns that have kept the 19th century Wild Wild West type of atmosphere. I wonder if any Western movies were filmed here. Very charming places!

While the guys were sliding down the extreme Silverton slopes with a guide, the girls took an easy stroll in Telluride. I was a little disappointed that unlike Silverton or Ouray, Telluride is very much expanded into a resort town in the past a few years. I may not go there in the winter again since other closer resorts such as Copper and Breck are as nice if not better.

Check out the Telluride/Ouray and Central Colorado photo album here. Some views are phenomenal.

After boarding at Keystone, Breckenridge, Loveland, Copper, Vail, Wolf Creek and Telluride, I must say that Breckenridge is still my favorite spot.

I went there again last weekend trying to work on my turns. The place has some widest runs I have ever seen. If you ever come to Colorado to ski or board, go to Peak 9 for the blue runs and Peak 8 for the greens.

My next destination is Beaver Creek in about 2 weeks. I visited that spot about 6 years ago and got knocked down by a snowmobile driver and twisted my neck for about 2 months. So that wasn’t much fun. I don’t remember the place anymore, but according to Mike from Heavywinter, it’s the white trash capital of the mountains. Can’t wait!