Month: January 2014

Yep, this pretty much sums up professional sports.

Props to VectorBelly

For reasons beyond my ken, Brian and James have been talking for weeks about having a grand chicken-nugget-eating competition. James insisted that a real man would be able to down sixty nuggets at a sitting.

Today, finally, was the day. They went to McDonald’s (purveyor of the finest nuggets) and each bought a box of sixty nuggets. The cashier handed Brian a slip of paper and told him next time he could call ahead for an order like this.

Back at the office, they went to work. They both managed to put down thirty-some nuggets before deciding sixty was a bit too ambitious. Brian finally managed to polish off forty, but James had to call it quits after a mere thirty-one.

Real men, indeed.

I received an error email from Ben’s development machine, where he’s doing some work for a client. In the email I can see his computer’s hostname, vinz_clortho. I didn’t know what that meant, but a quick internet search revealed that Vinz Clortho is the Keymaster of Gozer, and the alter-ego of Louis Tully.

Now it all makes sense. Ben has proven once again that he’s the king of obscure cultural references.

Brent and I stopped by a client’s office today to talk briefly about a little project they have. We dropped off a Zing lava lamp as a token of goodwill.

The women working there literally shrieked with delight. They were ecstatic about it, and kept going on and on about how this was the “best schwag ever!”

It’s fun to give a nice little marketing gimmick (Brent’s idea) that makes people so excited. Then again, these lava lamps are pretty cool… I have one on my desk.

One of my resolutions this year is to get up earlier. Laralee and the kids are all up and going by 7:00 every morning, and I would tend to sleep until 8:30 and then roll into the office by 9:00 or a little later. I’ve always enjoyed staying up late and sleeping in, but I felt a little guilty snoozing for more than an hour after everyone else was already at school.

So this year I’ve decided to be in bed by midnight and up at 7:00 at least four days a week (I get one day to sleep in). Last night I was engrossed in some research and ended up staying up until about 1:00am. Not surprisingly, this morning I decided to make it my sleep-in day. I finally rolled out of bed around 8:30. But I felt pretty groggy, and didn’t have the usual energy I’ve felt the past few weeks as I’ve been rising at 7:00.

Clearly I ended up with roughly the same amount of sleep, but the late start was kind of a drag. I hate to admit it to myself, but I may be slowly turning into a morning person. No, not one of those people who rises with the sun and dances about, talking about what a beautiful day it is and insisting that everyone else be up with the birds as well. But still, perhaps there’s something to getting an early start on the day and going to bed at a reasonable time and not 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

We’ll see how this turns out…

Udi’s is one of our clients, and as part of their buyout and business shift, they’re renaming the company. They’ve invited “vendors and friends” to help with the renaming effort, so I just received an email invitation to a web site where they’re asking for suggestions.

There’s a $1,000 party for the person who suggests the winning name. The rules say this:

“Enter early and often and YOU just might be the one who renames Udi’s.”

My diabolical brain thinks “Hmm, it’s just an HTML form. I could write a script that submits thousands of random names. That would overwhelm the rest of the competition, and greatly increase the likelihood that I’d win!”

I’m convinced that rock bands and startup companies just use random name generators that combine two dictionary words.

face + book
linked + in
green + day
smashing + pumpkins
etc.

Why not Udi’s?

Heh heh heh.

It’s official– as of this year, all of our kids are responsible for their own laundry. Zack was doing his first load in the washer the other day and he told Laralee to take a picture of him.

He was so proud. Now it’ll be interesting to see whether he manages to actually do his laundry weekly. He’s the kid who would go for a week without showering if he could…

Tonight we headed up to UNC to watch Kyra play in an honor band. There were about a hundred students selected from 18 high schools in northern Colorado, and they did a great job.

There’s my girl, the floutist:

Seen in a restroom at UNC in Greeley tonight:

I guess there were problems with people bathing in the sink…

Last night I read a thought-provoking article by Daniel Tenner about the difference between money and wealth. Having a big pile of money, he argues, is not the same as being wealthy. Rather, wealth is the ability to create money.

Money, everyone knows, is simply a way to facilitate the exchange of things of value. I can buy a candy bar or a house with money, and the recipient of my money can then use it to buy a book or a game console or whatever. In the end, it’s the candy bar and the house that have value to me; the money doesn’t have intrinsic value. Daniel says:

He goes on to talk about creating wealth:

And finally, the whole point of having wealth:

I find all of this to be interesting, particularly at this point in my life, because I’m now almost a year beyond my self-imposed goal to retire at age 40 and I don’t have a solid “exit strategy”. Back at the tender age of 26, when I made this wild plan, I had decided that having two million dollars in the bank would allow me to retire and live a nice comfortable life by earning 5% annually on that money.

Well, here I am, with nowhere close to two million dollars in the bank, working nearly as many hours every week as I did a decade ago. Something needs to change. I’ve set some resolutions for myself this year; amongst them is the desire to work fewer than 40 hours every week and generally taking time off on Fridays. We’ll see how that goes.

But that still leaves me wondering what my “retirement” is going to look like, and when I might be able to ease into it. This essay has let me view it in a slightly different light: rather than having a pile of money in the bank, perhaps I should instead focus on how to have enough money to meet my needs and continue generating this money for the next sixty years or more.

Owning two businesses is certainly a big step toward this, so long as I can ease back on my involvement in both of them, allowing the businesses (and ultimately the employees) to keep me in the lap of luxury. Heck, after all of the long nights and weekends building up my businesses for the past fourteen years, I’ve probably earned it.

It’ll be interesting to see how things change this year and whether I can take the next step toward retirement (and, more specifically, wealth).