This is the third post in an ongoing business series I’m going to be writing. You can view them all by visiting here.
A few years ago I read a book called The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, an interesting book by Tim Ferris. Since that time, I’ve seen Tim talk at least once (maybe twice?), and have read a few other books with similar concepts as the ones presented by Tim.
While there are a few things in Tim’s book I don’t entirely agree with, some of his core concepts are fairly important if you’re thinking about branching out on your own. For instance, ...
Getting old sucks. It sort of creeps up on you when you’re not really looking.
I’ve been fairly lucky in that I don’t really have many grey hairs yet. Many of my friends starting getting their first grey hairs in university. While I have a few now, they’ve only recently emerged. Grey hairs don’t really bother me, but joint pain and random aches do.
The first real joint pain I ever had was due to an injury I had after doing the West Coast Trail years ago. I hurt my knee pretty badly on day three (I suspect I tore my ACL, but never had it looked at), and was forced to chew tylenol 3’s ...
Yesterday I went down to Friday Harbor and hung out with my friend Lynn. I hadn’t been to Friday Harbor since I was about 17 or so, so it was definitely cool to go back. There wasn’t as much there to do as I thought there would be, but Lynn and I managed to find a few watering holes to hang out in and observe the locals for a while. “Chap-man” pretty much took the weirdo cake, but there were lots of runners up. It was great catching up with Lynn again too, since we hadn’t had a chance to hang out for over two years now. In addition, the weather was nearly perfect, and reminded me of ...
It’s hard I imagine. Yet BC’s finance minister seems to do it rather well. On AM1150 this morning, he had the following to say:
Speaking on AM1150’s Early Edition Monday morning, Finance Minister Colin Hansen says, “Going to a value added tax system, as 130 other countries around the world have already done, and most provinces have already done is exactly the right thing to do at this time. It is the thing that will stimulate the economy and create jobs more than any other single action that the province can take.”
Sounds great, but does it blend? I’m still waiting for someone to ...
Dale and I are going to start putting out a newsletter from time to time. If you’re interested in WordPress and want to be in the loop when we write about cool tips and tricks, then head on over and sign-up. ...
I was just sitting here, watching a bit of Lost on the DVD player and also doing a bit of research. Like most evenings, I usually wind down my evening by reading about the state of the world, or sometimes about the latest technology. I came across this interesting article about how the US Navy is toying with the idea of turning seawater into Jet Fuel.
The reason they are considering this is because the United State’s oil production is on the downward slide. In fact, the United States reached peak oil production sometime in the 1970s I believe. Of the 30 or so countries that produce significant ...
First, I gotta say, I’m all over this little pub at Cultus Lake. I first came up here with Rebecca and John on the weekend, but it not only has one of the nicest patios I’ve been on in a while, but a pretty decent selection of food and drinks as well. I’m fairly certain they’re all gonna know me by name here pretty soon.
This weekend I’m meeting my friend Lynn down in Anacortes, WA, and we’re going to take the little ferry over to Friday Harbor for the day. I actually was there a very long time ago (it was a field trip back in high school for some of us), and I remember it being fairly ...
This is the second post in an ongoing business series I’m going to be writing. You can view them all by visiting here.
So there you are, on the brink of making a big life-changing decision, and you’re trying to get the nerve to finally do it. You have this great business idea, are tired of your current 9-5 job, and are ready to take the plunge off the cliff, hopefully landing somewhere far better below.
This is probably the hardest stage of a new business, in my opinion – getting up the nerve to quit your day job. You’re forcibly taking action that is going to upset your life and move ...
We just did a quick update to WordTwit to include support for the Ow.ly service, and also fixed a few old bugs (the most important of which is the weird one involving encoded characters in the update message). The WordPress repository is updated, so you should see it shortly.
That is all. ...
This is an open letter to the people of the United States, namely those people who think universal (or government run) health care is bad.
In November of 2006 four idiots I had never met threw me through the plate glass window of a 7-11. Apparently, it was a fun thing to do after a few beers. I ended up in the hospital that night with five fractures in my face. Approximately two weeks later I had surgery to repair the damage to my face, and ended up getting a piece of plastic surgically fitted under my left eye. Without it, due to the lack of bone, my left eye would probably hang down into my ...
Ok seriously. What the hell is going on in our province? First, Gordon Campbell springs the Harmonized Sales Tax on everyone, saying it will create jobs and somehow help the economy. I obviously voiced my concerns over that move, especially since the public seemed to be caught completely off-guard with the whole decision.
As we all know, the 2010 Olympics are just on the horizon. We also know that several cruise ship lines recently pulled out of Vancouver since it’s a more expensive destination than surrounding ports, such as Seattle. Given how much money tourism generates in BC, you’d think ...
I’ve been involved with a few projects lately where the company doing the hiring has brought on special SEO consultants for the purpose of optimizing the SEO of a particular site. I know for a fact that many web companies look at SEO like it’s the proverbial cash-cow, so I’m really curious to understand just what it is that SEO specialists are doing. And while doing a search for that, I came across this website, that I thought interesting.
First, I’m going to exclude black-hat SEO, because I don’t think it’s ethical, and it’s definitely something I never want to be involved in. At ...
I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading lately with regards to travel destinations. First and foremost are a few travel books I picked up last year, namely one on Montenegro. But I also have books on Eastern Europe and various city destinations such as New York City.
Reading them though one can’t help but feel that a lot of what made these destinations unique has slowly eroded over time. For example, you’ll find english speaking people in almost every city nowadays. I always like traveling to a remote destination and trying to speak in their language, but even on my trips I could always fall ...
I wrote a blog entry a few weeks ago where I toyed with the idea of maybe doing some traveling in the next year or so. While sitting on the couch here today watching movies, I started thinking about that idea more and more.
The reality is that I can work from anywhere. All I need is a backpack with some clothes in it and my trusty MacBook Pro, and there’s really no reason why I couldn’t work from any little coffee shop I encounter. Now that my car and student loans are mostly paid off, my monthly expenses have dropped significantly.
In an ideal world, I’d be able to rent my apartment out ...
There has been a lot of talk in the Twitterverse lately regarding diabetes, so I thought I’d write a small entry dedicated to it. While I don’t suffer from diabetes, I do a lot of research in the area of something called metabolic syndrome, which in a lot of ways directly relates to diabetes.
Prior to around 1980 or so, there were two forms of diabetes. The lay public generally referred to these as juvenile diabetes, which many people essentially were born with (or diagnosed with at an early age), and adult-onset diabetes, which was usually diagnosed later in life. Nowadays we call juvenile ...
Gary asked me to write a follow-up post to my last entry, so here goes. I’ll also point out that I’m not a doctor, and this information is mostly my opinion based on all the research I’ve done over the years.
In terms of Type-II diabetes and obesity, here’s what the research seems to show currently (which may change as research continues):
Type-II diabetes is caused by insulin resistance at the cellular level, which in turn increases the body’s requirement for insulin. If the pancreas can’t keep up, additional insulin is required
At it’s core, the prime defect in obesity appears ...
I had a call yesterday from a good friend of mine who lives overseas. We used to work together in Vancouver, so it was good to catch up. He actually lives in a little small town in the middle of Serbia, a place where glasses of wine go for about 50 cents, and people spend a lot more time hanging out and socializing than over here. Prior to moving to Serbia, my friend lived in both Kelowna and Vancouver.
I spent most of my 20s working 60 hour weeks, all for the promise of that golden carrot. Looking back, I’m thankful I had many of the experiences I ended up having, but regret the amount of time ...
You see, I have this friend.
This friend of mine, well, he was screwed out of a lot of money for a client job he did. There’s a substantial email chain verifying that the work was requested, and the price was agreed upon, so he says. But unfortunately, when it came time to pay, the client became unresponsive and has since disappeared.
Normally my friend would be quite content to write off the amount owing, and chalk it up to bad debt. But in the process of trying to get a contact number for the client, he discovered someone else who was owed money by the client. And after talking to that person, ...