Mocca Gallery

So, Leo woke us up early this morning. Seems he was starving for wet food even though his dish of dry food was full. Of course I got up and feed him, he is the boss after all.

I was wide awake with an extra hour on my hands, so I decided to play a one table poker tournament on Poker Stars. It was 5:30 AM Pacific Standard Time. Around 8:30 on the East Coast. A table of me and eight others players filled up quickly. Here are the cities the other players were from:

• Groningen, Netherlands
• Hallstavik, Sweden
• Munster, Germany
• Aalborg, Denmark
• L’Aquila, Italy
• Waldstetten, Germany
• Prestatyn, North Wales
• Barcelona, Spain

Isn’t that fantastic. I was the only player from the US. This internet thing is big. Very big.

The Jeep is back in the shop, this is the fourth time for the same problem. I’m running out of patience, and money.

I must admit, this is what it must be like when some user has bugs, but the software works fine when I run it. All I can say is, well, I changed this, try it now. The difference is I don’t keep handing them bills for $500 every time I try something that doesn’t work.

Hmmm, I guess maybe I do, I just got paid today, and I did spend a lot of time last week working on fixes that didn’t fix anything.

Now I’m really depressed.

I’m still getting fucked, but now I feel guilty for getting mad about it.

I need a three day weekend.

Motionless at 70 miles an hour
No reason to daydream
Days without walls
Never hurrying
Busy with no plans
Joyous intentional pointlessness

So, I’m working on a programming project.
It’s going smoothly.
I have a series of tasks to complete.
I’m thinking it will be great when I’m finished.

Then I get stuck.
Something doesn’t work the way it’s suppose to.
My mind is already three steps ahead.
But I’m stuck on this damn problem.
I feel frustrated, angry, confused, annoyed, irritated.
This shouldn’t be happening.
I’m wasting time.

Then I remember.
These bad feelings are indicators.
Like gauges on a car’s dashboard.
These indicators tell me I’m thinking about this all wrong.
Problems are wonderful.
It’s so easy to forget that.

What I have to do is stop thinking three steps ahead.
Just focus on the problem that is in front of me, here and now.
Apparently, the way I think things are, is not the way they are.
I may not need to change the thing, I may need to change my mind.

This is really a fabulous opportunity to learn something new.
When things go smoothly it’s because there is no mystery in them.
I’m stuck now because there is something I need to learn.
But I don’t know what it is.
If I knew, I wouldn’t be stuck.

So, take a deep breath, and relax.
Let’s see if we can figure this out.
And don’t worry about the time.
I always figure it out.
It may take a few minutes.
It may take a few days.
But when we’re done, we’ll know something new.

I’ll know I’m done when I feel good about it.
That is my gauge.
When I feel good again, the lesson has been learned.
Class Dismissed.

It turns out, my corporation is what I say it is. It’s that simple.

I do have to act it out, play the part, behave as though it were true. If I do that, then other people believe it too. The more I work it, the more paper is created with the new name on in, the harder it is for people to see that it is just a made up thing.

If one person believes – he’s insane.
If two people believe – it is a religion.
If everyone believes – it becomes reality.

So, doing something, anything, with the corporation is really just a matter of changing other peoples beliefs about it. I like this game.

This occurred to me today – during the Renaissance it became clear the Bible did not have all the facts, and truth could not be found in other books at the time. To know, you would just have to look for yourself. A novel idea. Some looked directly at nature for the first time, and it was not what they expected, many great discoveries were made.

Today, I don’t seem to live in the natural world. I live in a world of concepts of corporations, governments, markets, and currencies. All very abstract, mind stuff, but with real consequences. Can I retire, or will I be a Wall-Mart greeter when I’m 75?

With the stock market gyrations lately, I thought – I want to understand what it going on. So where do I look? There is no nature to look at, nothing independently physical. All I can see are people on TV, in magazines, on the internet or in person. All I ever get is other people’s thoughts about what is going on. How the hell would they know? Their only source is other people’s thoughts too. There doesn’t seem to be an original source.

Oh, there are facts. The Fed cut rates by half a percent. IBM opened at 111.87, today is Friday and the temperature will be 107. But what the hell does that really mean? I don’t know.

With programming, if I don’t know, I can look it up, I can figure it out. With life, I’m beginning to see that, not only, don’t I know anything – I can’t think of anyplace I can go to get the answers.

It seems I am going to have to get comfortable with not knowing.

This morning I had an idea for a new website. It will be a website/blog about building a website/blog.

I recently read an article explaining how bloggers earn money online. I knew a little bit about Google ads, and wasn’t impressed. But this article described how, once you have enough traffic, you can rent out ad space to specific advertisers for a surprising amount of money. Instead of those annoying little ads, you could have one discreet expensive ad.

So for the past week I’ve been wondering, how would you go about doing that? Of course the main ingredient is content. Something worth viewing. Then it hit me, that would be the content. The building of the site will be the content of the site. My biggest skill, and favorite interest, is learning how to do new things. Especially technical things. Perfect.

The basic idea is:
a) This is a Do-It-Yourself project.
b) I don’t know how to do it, yet.
c) Information on how to do it is available for free on the Internet.
d) All I have to do is research it, and learn it, and do it, step by step.
e) Each step, and misstep, would be the content of the site.

How do you get a domain, how much does it cost, where do you find templates, how do you tell search engines about your site, how do you monitor traffic, what is page ranking, how do you accommodate traffic builders like Digg or del.icio.us, how can visitors suggest improvements, how would you get an advertiser, what would they pay? The topics are endless.

It would be a naked site, totally transparent. Everything on the site would have complete instructions on how it was done. All code would be download-able for free. All financial information would be posted, what everything cost, who the advertisers were, what they paid, down to the penny. Day by day traffic statistics would be displayed. Any books purchased that helped me would be listed as affiliate links. The more transparent, the more content, the more valuable it would be as a resource to anyone interested in building or running a moneymaking website/blog.

I think the next logical step is to look around the web and see if anyone is already doing this. Am I the first? Who are the competitors? What new ideas will I get by looking at their sites?

If this works, this little post will be the first post on the new site.

This idea to start a corporation was a great idea.

At first, I just wanted it as a way to create wealth by cutting down on our taxes and then investing the savings.

Then I started reading more about it, and it is not that easy, it is not that hard, but it is not easy. I wanted a corporation as a sort of trick, but this no longer interests me. I read that to make it work, you have to have some sort of business, and treat the corporation just like it was a real corporation.

I thought, well, sure I can do that. Treat it just like a real corporation. Then I realized, if I can make look and behave just like a real corporation, why not really make one, for real. I see now that I could do it. For awhile it would still be just us. But with tax savings. Then, one day, I’d land a larger project through the corporation, and I would be all set up to really hire other programmers. We would already know how, and be able to handle the paperwork, or we would already know a CPA who we trust and could use.

It would be a real business. Wouldn’t that be fun?

And the best way to make a real corporation is to do what I do best. So, I can start by doing a better job at my current contract, good enough to feel better about asking for more money later. And get a real CPA do the corporate set up for us. This benefits my current client, and a CPA, and us too. And it benefits anyone we are able to help later on because of it.

This idea to start a corporation is a great idea.

the employment train wreck is just ahead
should be coming up around the next bend
just looking for a good place to jump off
got to get the timing just right
got to get my mind right

Old Charlie stole the handle
and the train it won’t stop going
no way to slow down

looking forward to the next gig
the next gig is always the best gig

Time to reinvent myself yet again. I am now a Capitalist Entrepreneurial Artisan. And why not. This is America. I am now on the road to wealth and financial freedom. Halleluiah!

So, I have this friend, let’s call him – John.

John’s game is to pose as an entertainment writer, as a way to finagle free show tickets to shows he wants to ‘review’. He actual did review some shows years ago, and some of these articles are still online in archives. He wanted to update this as a new store front he can point to when people ask “who do you write for?”

John is computer illiterate, so I created a free GMail account for him. Then I created a free account on Blogger, with a nice literary style skin. I named it Vegas Entertainment. I copied his old stories over. A few minor touches to transform a blog into a reviewers site, and he’s back in business.

In the past I would have done this for free. But this time I didn’t. I charged him $40. Small money-wise maybe, but very big physiologically. I am now a person and a businessman.