More goals...

Thinking about 2009:

• Plan daily/weekend outings: camping, hiking, mountain biking, golfing.
  
• Sightseeing: Monterey Bay Aquarium, Academy of Sciences, Filoli Gardens.
  
• Start a Catering company with Lisa. Do research into starting a business, plan the big take-home turkey event.
  
• Plan a group trip to Cabo for a week.
  
• Work on FF program.
  
• Pursue other non-work related interests.
  
• Play tennis with Dee and friends.
  

Revisiting Goals for 2008 and Looking ahead to 2009

Update on my "Goals for 2008" post on 12/17/2008.

• Studied for in-house CFA Certification and took exam.
  
• Read only one book, but many magazines!
  
• Always working on being a better person.
  
• Worked out for several months, but fell out of the habit about three months ago.
  
• Ran the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge.
  
• Haven't looked into ToastMasters
  
• Haven't volunteered at all.
  
• Haven't sent many b-day cards.
  
• Haven't created a disaster preparedness kit or plan.
  
• Take pretty good care of my teeth, have a dentist appointment for 12/11.
  
• Looked into Kiva, but haven't yet lent.
  

I haven't done a very good job of keeping up with my list of goals for this year. I think next time it would be prudent to create a timeline for the specific items on my list. I'm going to try and get the earthquake plan/kit taken care of before the end of the year, as well as donate to Kiva, but the other items are not as likely to be completed.

Preliminary Goals for 2009:

1. Continue studying for the CFA (Exam in April).
   
2. Start an online business with Lisa.
   
3. See a dentist regularly.
   
4. Workout at least 3 days a week.
   
5. Find a place to volunteer and go once a month.
   
6. Get more organized around the house.
   
7. Blog regularly (weekly).
   
8. Subscribe to a magazine about managing money.
   
9. more to come...

Earthquake tips

Earthquake tips from the American Red Cross

Starting an Online Business

I'm interested in starting a small online business to generate some additional income. I pretty much have no idea of what I want to sell at this point, but here are some thoughts and links:

• How Creating an Online Business Works
  
• Use Google's Merchant software
  
• Buy a server for web-hosing
  
• Register a domain name and several similar names
  
• Create a list of all possible product ideas, it's better to have a niche than to try and sell a broad range of products (e.g., Spatulas vs. Kitchenware).
  

Site ideas

1. Online Shopping List
   
   
   
   • Store recipes online and sort by category (e.g., main ingredient, cuisine)
     
   • Have check box or drag/drop feature to pick several meals at once.
     
   • Generate a shopping list and printable recipes based on this list.
     
   • Allow users to enter their own recipes/lists.
     
   • Allow users to share lists and add other recipes to their own profiles.
     
   
   
2. Shared Online Calendar
   
   
   
   • Start an online calendar for Lisa and I to share.
     
   • Tag pictures to event names on specific dates.
     
   • Post notes or reminders.
     
   • Have the day's events emailed first thing in the morning.
     
   
   
3. Simplify
   
   
   
   • Create a site devoted to making everyday life easier.
     
   • Start a list of all of the things that I am doing to ease my daily pains.
     
   • gmail on blackberry, shoe rack, organized recycle bins, paper shredder, file cabinet, shred/file baskets
     
   
   

Pic of the Month

I've decided that I'm going to post one pic each month of me doing something interesting. The first installment in this series will be a pic of me on my birthday, when my mom gave me a gift to remind me of one of my childhood accessories, a beenie copter.

Forgot the link...

www.nevblog.com

www.nevblog.com

I stumbled upon this blog while looking for recently posted investment strategies to see if anyone had any useful advice for long-term equity investing during these turbulent times. I googled "blog finance" and this was the first item that came up.

It's a far cry from what I had been searching for, but an hour later I still found myself reading entries. This guys is exactly 4 days older than me. I think it was his b-day post that prompted me to continue reading instead of hitting the back button. Anyway, as I kept reading I found myself becoming more inspired to continue blogging and to look into creating a side business of my own. Both of these have been goals of mine sometime in the recent past.

After some thought, I think I'd like to get in touch with Nishikawa again and see how things are going. It might even be possible for me to create a niche site for some his products and use the business as a drop-shipper. I've already got a great in and it would be nice to add a few bucks to my income each month.

I think one of my first steps is to create a list of goals. I believe I've done this in the past so it would be helpful to cross-reference while giving my new goals some thought.

Thanks for posting your blog, Neville. I'm looking forward to a more enriching future.

Echkart Tolle

Casey says to check out Echkart Tolle on YouTube.

Fear

"Never negotiate out of fear."

Fear drives the market, drives bad business decisions, and drives people in/out of relationships. Stop, don't be afraid. If you have good fundamentals, good core, good base, good values, you're fine. Sit back, relax. Don't over pay for stuff: house, stock, etc.

Paraphrased from Colin Cowherd, The Thundering Herd on ESPN Radio - 1/23/08

Email and Web Hosting

Research Notes:

• Mac Mail is synced with Address Book, iCal and other programs
  
• Entourage may work better with work email
  
• For Yahoo! POP, must have a Yahoo! Plus email account which costs $20/year. Gmail offers free POP service.
  
• Mozilla Thunderbird offers a third option, but since I already have two programs, might as well use what I've got.
  
• Probably just look into personal home network that supports time machine and a network printer. Possibly one with NAS capability (Mirra). Don't necessarily want software that automatically syncs all network computers. Can do that on my own and don't want business to mix with home usage.
  
• For web hosting, .mac account seems reasonable at $100/year. Can use own URL and supports email, blogs, etc. using iWeb.
  
• Look into Google Apps

Network Notes

Acronyms:

• IP Address - Internet Protocol Address
  
• URL - Uniform Resource Locator
  
• WAN - Wide Area Network
  
• LAN - Local Area Network
  
• WLAN - Wireless Local Area Newtork
  
• MAC - Media Access Control
  • any device with networking hardware has a unique MAC address
• DNS - Domain Name Server
  • converts IP addresses to URL names
• WEP - Wired Equivalent Protection
  • a passcode to protect a WLAN
• SSID - Service Set Identifier
  
• Hexadecimal Digits - 0-9 and a-f

Test

This is a test post. I'm using the ScribeFire plug-in for Firefox 2.0. I actually installed it months ago but didn't become a regular blogger until later and forgot I had it. Hope this works, it would make life a lot easier.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Hard Drives

I'm looking into buying an external hard drive to backup my laptop. At first I thought I would go wihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifth a small portable drive since I only have one computer and don't store too many files. But while researching options I stumbled across a few drives that let you access your data through the internet, effectively creating your own server. I really like this idea and think it could be a good fit for my needs, especially since I'll be traveling a lot in the near future with access to a separate machine than my home unit.

My chief concerns are:

1. Security
   
2. Price
   
3. Mac and PC compatibility
   
4. Size: I don't need a lot of space, but I would like room to expand.
   
5. Heat, noise, general disturbances caused by running the unit

Here is a list of links with my research thus far:

• CNet - Drives that let you access your data wherever you are
  
• Buffalo has gotten very bad user ratings on CNet
  
• Western Digital - Bad ratings for MioNet software package
  
• Linksys - Poor transfer speeds
  
• Iomega - Poor software
  
• SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS Server - cheap, software has very high reviews, tech support mixed reviews, note: quiet, Mac and PC Compatibility (apparently not for Vista), not sure if it works as a server

Presentation Zen

Notes from Guy Kawasaki's blog: How to Change the World

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds

Edward Tufte - books on designing appropriate visuals

TED a site with presentations of 'ideas worth spreading'

I don't make many presentations at the moment, but I likely will in the future. Along with some practice through a local ToastMasters group, these should serve to help me become an effective presenter.

Things to remember

• Real Estate book by WSJ from Frank
  
• Printer/Scanner/Copier at Costco for $85
  
• www.bankrate.com
  
• MacWorld Expo
  
• Wikinvest
  

NCAA Men's College BB

There are 6 major conferences and 11 mid-major conferences:

'Big 6' Major Conferences:

• Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
  
• Big East
  
• Big Ten
  
• Big Twelve
  
• Pac 10
  
• Southeastern Conference (SEC)

Additionally, Gonzaga (WCC) and Memphis (USA) can be considered major programs within non-major conferences.
Mid-Major Conferences:

• Atlantic 10 Conference
  
• Colonial Athletic Association
  
• Conference USA
  
• Horizon League
  
• Mid-American Conference
  
• Missouri Valley Conference
  
• Mountain West Conference
  
• Western Athletic Conference
  
• West Coast Conference

NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball Championship - March Madness

• Began in 1939 (Phog Allen at the University of Kansas)
  
• Consists of 65 teams
  
• Composed of conference champions from each Division 1 conference, plus 'at large' bids voted in by the NCAA selection committee
  
• 31 division 1 conferences, 34 'at-large' bids
  
• Selection process and seedings are determined by team rankings, win/loss records and rpi data
  
• 'Play-in' game is the first game of the tournament and determines who will fill out the 64th spot in the overall tournament bracket

*Info obtained from wikipedia: College Basketball, NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball Championship

Re: ID Theft

The Transunion site finally came through.

Book

Made to Stick - Chip Heath and Dan Heath

ID Theft

Free Annual Credit Reports

FTC Identity Theft site

1-888-5-OPT-OUT - Phone number to remove your name from the list maintained by the major consumer reporting companies for firm offers of credit or insurance.

I printed 2 of 3 of my credit reports for free. Experian and Equifax were quite simple and painless. In contrast, Transunion has been rather difficult, requiring me to create a user account and then claiming that the site is experiencing high volumes of requests and asking me to return in 30 minutes and try to process my request again.

We'll see what happens, but at this point I am quite peeved.