or is it just mine?

For Christmas this year, my lovely wife bought me a Kindle 3, and I’m lovin’ the little thing. Been spending a bit of time with it almost every evening, and have already plowed my way through a few books along with a large chunk of my ridiculously large backlog of online marketing PDFs.

What’s that, you didn’t know you could send your PDFs to your Kindle? For an info collector like myself, that ability is a godsend. I literally have hundreds of PDFs frittered away in series of well-organized folders waiting to be read that day I have some free time while sitting in front of the computer. In other words, never.

But now that I can casually look through them while kicking back in the recliner or while putting a few miles on the recumbent, I’m actually reading — rather than just storing — the documents. A ton of great info there, just waiting for me to take the time to read it.

Anyway, about the title. As I said, I love this thing, but I worry that I may have a potential dud Kindle on my hands. Either that, or I don’t know how to turn the thing on and off. Almost every day, I find a time where I can’t seem to get the Kindle to turn on, forcing me to do a hard reset to get any sort of response out of it. Once she starts back up, all appears fine — all my books/PDFs are there, all my notes/bookmarks/etc. are in place. But it concerns me that one of these days it won’t start back up, and I’ll be without my latest addiction for a while.

So, the question dear readers, is it just me, or should I harass Amazon support and see about getting a replacement? Oh, and anyone have some cool Kindle tricks they want to share?

Returned the middle of last week from a great couple of weeks wandering with the family through the Colorado wilderness, with more than a fair share of time spent recouping at the wonderful Cheyenne Mountain Resort between stops. If you ever make a trip to the Colorado Springs area, I have no hesitations recommending the resort — the cost may be a little steep, but the service was amazing. Plus, we got a hell of a deal when we booked through Expedia and ended up paying no more than we would have at a decent national chain hotel anyway.

So the last two weeks’ reports were right — I got absolutely nothing done towards my goal. Exactly as planned. Hell, even though I brought along my netbook, and free wifi is pretty much anywhere people congregate, I didn’t even bother to check my email for a week+. I was on vacation, damn it — we spend far too much time tethered to our tech as is!

Anyway, now that I’ve returned, it was time to get back on the saddle:

• Threw my hat into the ring for the next Blast Challenge. The latest challenge started while I was on vacation, so I missed out on the first week and a half, but I’m shooting for a full 100 blast by the end anyway. Because, as you may or may not know, THE holiday is coming much sooner than you realize, and I fully intend to take maximum advantage of the opportunities around. A ton of preliminary work was completed, but the first official blast of the challenge hasn’t went live as of yet.
• Since I missed out on the last Earn1kADay seminar because of scheduling conflicts, I’ve kept my eyes open for something similar that didn’t absolutely break the bank. I believe I found it with the Practical Profits seminar happening in a couple weeks. Looks like some great presenters, so signed up to attend and just have the hotel room left to finalize. Which I intend to do as soon as I finish this update!
• As I was gone for a couple weeks, I had a couple weeks worth of stats from the various programs I earn from to process. The system I have in place to aggregate it works pretty slick, but there is a little bit of effort involved in bringing all the pieces together. In the end, had some great days and some not so great days. But then, this time of the year has been all over the place earning-wise since I’ve been doing this, so no big surprise there. Plus, even those not so great days were at least profitable ones. You do recall I was on vacation and not even checking email during that time? Sounds like some pretty passive income to me…
• Oops, forgot about some homework for my class. Scrambled to squeak it in under the deadline!

Onward to week 30!

[What is this all about?]

Well, business wise, did my bit — another 20 landing pages created, advertising campaigns set up, blasts put out there live to the world, blah blah blah. So did make an entirely appropriate level of progress on that front. But it certainly wasn’t the big news of the week.

That particular seat was taken by my chance to welcome another soul to the world. My son and I decided, at almost the last minute, to accompany my wife on her trip down to KC for my sis’ baby shower. Thought it’d be good to go down, check out her & her hubby’s new place. And, of course, poke a little fun at her very pregnant state as I wouldn’t see her gigantic self (not really sis, if you happen to stumble on this… ) before her due date late this month.

Instead, sis decided to skip the baby shower altogether and just go ahead and have the baby the day after we arrive! Just a little early, but the new mommy & baby are doing just fine. Best of all, everyone arrived home yesterday.

And things like this, really, are the true kick in the ass.

Money. Work. Business. No doubt, all necessary things.

But having the opportunity to be there to greet a new life shortly after it make its grand appearance in this world puts those things in their right place, a few spots back.

Welcome to the world little Lea!

If you recall, I set a pair of rather hefty goals to be met on September 1st:

1. A health goal of losing 20+ pounds
2. A financial goal of paying off the remainder of the mortgage

So, how’d I do? Am I now a flyweight with no debts in the world?

Well, no, not quite. Actually, neither goal was met.

I’m still 10+ pounds away from my health goal. But I’m well on the way, and just reset my sticky to read 195 by 12/1. Most days I am successful in keeping 30-60+ minutes of some form of exercise in my routine. I’m also fairly addicted to the tracking provided by my Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor, which I picked up to allow me to track my progress. I now do goofy crap like seeing how many calories I burn while mowing the lawn or assembling a swing or playing a few rounds of Wii Sports Tennis… So while I didn’t meet that goal, I must say I’m feeling a ton better. And have absolutely no doubt about that number being reached!

As for the mortgage, it’s still there, but we’ve been throwing fairly big chunks at it to kill it off rapidly. Honestly, we now have more than enough sitting in our savings account that I could write that check and be done with it if the mood struck me. But a healthy chunk of that account is our emergency fund, and another chunk is quasi-allocated for next year’s taxes. I haven’t taken the time to research exactly what we will be owing tax-wise come next April, so emptying it would come too close to cleaning out that account for my personal risk tolerance. That, and being a Dave Ramsey acolyte, I don’t believe zeroing the mortgage quite qualifies as an emergency! But, that said, once I do hash out what will be going to the taxman, everything above that emergency fund is earmarked for the mortgage. So sometime early next spring may see a mortgage burning party yet. Look for your invitation…

So, do I feel like a failure because I met neither goal? Absolutely not. I’m well on my way to both, and purposely picked timelines that were going to be very difficult to reach in order to stretch myself. Like I’ve said, the trip is often more important than the destination!

I suggest you check out almost anything with Scroobius Pip…

photo credit: giiks

At long last — in other words, a month — I’ve tracked down a Wii in the configuration I want… Every now and then, my December motivator would pop into my mind, but of course it was never in stock at anything like retail price. Sure, there are all kinds of ways to pick one up if I was willing to pay retail+50%, but I guess I’m just not that eager a consumer. Today, one is en route to me.

For those looking for one (or similar always out-of-stock items), here’s how I ended up tracking it down this afternoon:

• Install the Firefox plugin Check4Change.
• Load up a few retailers’ Wii console page, and find the Out of Stock text that almost always exists there.
• Highlight that text, right click, and Check4Change -> Every 5 Minutes.
• Do whatever you normally do, but keep Firefox and those tabs loaded.
• When that tidbit of text changes, Check4Change will give you a little visual cue on the tab that something has been altered. You can also configure it to play a sound or bring the window to the front if you happen to not live in your browser.
• Order your Wii.

This will certainly boost my productivity…

Well, it’s more than theory now. Looks like I’m pending no more…

With half a foot of fresh snow on the ground — and more annoyingly to me, a bit of ice — to drive upon, I’m anxious to see how this all pans out in the coming non-holiday months. It sure would be nice when the snow goes flying to be comfortable saying to myself

Hey, why don’t you put a pot on the stove, make a few hot chocolates for you and the family, and not head into the office this morning?

Because the office is wherever I would happen to be that day…

photo credit: ColKorn1982

Because my brother & sister are going to be in distant corners of the world come Christmas time, my side of the family celebrated the holiday a little early this year. A fine ol’ time was had by all!

But I think the most fun was had firing up my parents’ Wii (an earlier gift that probably hadn’t hardly been touched by my technophobic folks since it was given) and getting everyone involved in a bit of living room virtual — and real — exercise. Enough fun that I made a bit of a deal with the wife so that she wouldn’t give me too much crap if I went and bought one.

Now before you go off and call my pussy whipped, you’ve got to understand. We’ve been in fairly heavy debt killing mode the last couple years, and superfluous purchases like a Wii have been pretty much nonexistent for quite awhile. It feels weird to spend even $100 that hasn’t been specifically budgeted. But the deal I made seemed pretty harmless anyway: have a five-figure month in December with my side endeavor, and I get to be guilt-free in making the purchase. Seemed like a stretch to both of us.

And then November ended. And a few things fell into place. And I had a five-figure month in November. And so far, December is looking to be even better than last month.

So, even if I may be a little premature, I’ve been doing a little Wii shopping. And I’ve just gotta ask: WTF Nintendo? Every time I look around, I find yet another Wii bundle. Can you possibly throw together just a couple dozen more to make the selection even more difficult?