So I bought an onsite camping pass and a two day pass to Coachella, but due to recently taking on working with one of the largest websites lack the time to go.

I gave my $200 worth of tickets to a friend. Turns out the concert sold out and the camping pass is going for $200 on eBay while the day 1 ticket is going for $80 and the day 2 ticket is going for over $300.

Had I been more of a ticket scalper type that would have been a killer investment...a 200% return. If you would know that they would sell out buying 4 extra would pay for the cost of your ticket, a hotel room, rental car, and the round trip flight.

The thing is I feel like I am close to doing really well, to getting to a point where I can really start saving cash. I sorta want to move, and I would love to buy my mom a house. I could already put down a solid down payment on one, but want to make at least $10,000 a month outside of client work (which is going exceptionally well right now) or work related to my single most profitable channel (which also is going stupid good).

Right now I could lose my reputation and my most profitable channels and still pay the cost of living with my other stuff easily, but I want to be to a point to where I can hook up my mom and have it so money will never be an issue. It might take another year or two of focus, but being able to be semi retired before the age of 30 when I was suicidally depressed and almost bankrupt at the age of 23 sure has an appealing ring to it.

One of my friends just quit his full time job to become a minion / partner of mine. One of our sites makes about $1 a day per page. If we can scale that out to 500 or 1,000 pages, even if the revenue is cut in half that is still $7,500 to $15,000 a month in revenue off of one channel.

I am hoping to go to Bonnaroo this year still. I should buy a plane ticket quick.

So I bought an onsite camping pass and a two day pass to Coachella, but due to recently taking on working with one of the largest websites lack the time to go.

I gave my $200 worth of tickets to a friend. Turns out the conference sold out and the camping pass is going for $200 on eBay while the day 1 ticket is going for $80 and the day 2 ticket is going for over $300.

Had I been more of a ticket scalper type that would have been a killer investment...a 200% return. If you would know that they would sell out buying 4 extra would pay for the cost of your ticket, a hotel room, and the round trip flight.

The thing is I feel like I am close to doing really well, to getting to a point where I can really start saving cash. I sorta want to move, and I would love to buy my mom a house. I could already put down a solid down payment on one, but want to make at least $10,000 a month outside of client work (which is going exceptionally well right now) or work related to my single most profitable channel (which also is going stupid good).

Right now I could lose my reputation and my most profitable channels and still pay the cost of living with my other stuff easily, but I want to be to a point to where I can hook up my mom and have it so money will never be an issue. It might take another year or two of focus, but being able to be semi retired before the age of 30 when I was suicidally depressed and almost bankrupt at the age of 23 sure has an appealing ring to it.

One of my friends just quit his full time job to become a minion / partner of mine. One of our sites makes about $1 a day per page. If we can scale that out to 500 or 1,000 pages, even if the revenue is cut in half that is still $7,500 to $15,000 a month in revenue off of one channel.

I am hoping to go to Bonnaroo this year still. I should buy a plane ticket quick.

So I watched another movie.

Citizen Kane is a bit long and drawn out perhaps, but it did so to show its depth of character in pieces and make a lot of sense as to its message. A man who can only find love on his own terms who tries to build things, people, and relationships into his vision for how they should be rather than accepting and enjoying people places and things for who and what they are.

Many of his faults are mine and yours, most likely. He just had more opportunity than most, and thus was able to push things further than most.

I think three things that are really hard in life are:

• not passing on bad traits: not passing on bad traits or addictions which heavily influence how you were born or raised (some of these you may not realize how much they hurt your potential)
  
• changing motivation: trusting yourself enough to change your motivations to good positive forces and energies if you have largely been driven by negative forces for an extended period of time
  
• overcompensation: trying not to focus so much on avoiding the bad parts to where you only reinforce them and/or miss out on the good bits

I rarely smile in pictures...and I rarely like pictures of me, but this one is sorta fun I think.

My mom told me I should get my hair cut. While at the conference multiple people complemented me on my new hair cut, but I never got one...just letting it grow :)

Amazing! I can't believe how many bloggers have mentioned that they are glad they believe in ________ over _________ and _________ after referencing an ill blogger that allegedly chopped up some little girl.

Here is a tip for you Mr ultra religious ______ wing better than whoever nut job blogger: if God is true and so omnipotent then he chose to make the person that chopped up that little girl AND he chose to make it happen AND he chose to have you blog about it as if it was a function of athiesm even though ALL OF IT was HIS CHOICE.

I am not going to post my religious beliefs here, but anyone who thinks the wrongs of the world are created by a lack of religious beliefs needs to ask themselves why the all powerful creator created many of the shitty things that occur on Earth.

I am sick of people who just want to divide the world and state that every thing good is me and everything bad is not me. The best and worst parts of all people who ever lived are in all of us. We are all far more connected than we would ever know, and the attempts to come together usually revolve around tearing something else apart.

To be honest I am usually most motivated when I or people I know experience injustice, but I don't think it needs to be that way. And I am going to be a way better person when I am more motivated by good things than by stopping bad things. You have understand what drives people and you have to create alternatives if you want to change the world.

Some people due stupid shit for the rush, and then as they do one thing that is slightly abnormal it is easier to do something else that is more abnormal. I think killing people is shitty, but we do that each day we pay taxes for bombs that land on small 3rd world villiages.

You can't stop humans from having fundamental human flaws, you can only do your best to learn about the world and yourself to reach your full potential and then with a bit of luck maybe help set up a framework that hopefully makes it easier for others to do well.

Many religious systems teach people not to question things. And even if the religions were completely pure that single feature (large groups of people not questioning things) means that corrupt scumbag individuals will gravitate toward certain religions just because they have an easy prey to market their message to.

most things that are sold as right and good limit your potential and / or destroy the lives of people who follow that route. Your path should - to the best of your ability - be chose by you.

Sometimes words have multiple meanings. On occasion I dig the lesser known meanings and / or use improper words just to screw with people.

For example, the word haus means house in German, so I call some friends haus to tease them for being big. In reality I am really fat so its just a joke, but I find it fun.

What words do you like to use for their alternate meanings or misuse?

I could charge subscriptions and whatnot for some of the things I do, but generally I have avoided them for a couple major reasons:

• One off services are easy to add a ton of value without you having to dedicate tons of recurring mindshare to things you may eventually grow disinterested in.
  
• I have though many subscription based services to be evil.

The reason for the second part there is two fold

first, many of the subscription based services I have used have gave me shitty service. I started typing this post on leeched WiFi from the neighbors because my Verizon DSL did not work for about 12 hours. No refunds of course, and I could bitch for 20 hours to get nothing out of them, but that is just how it is.

Also my cell phone...it amazing me that on the streets in NYC Sprint sometimes offered analog roam and sometimes had no service available. The same thing often happens in my house. I was talking to a friend the other day and used the land line to call him back and apologized. He asked if I was using Sprint. When my phone in NYC wasn't working the guy who was making my sandwitch in a deli asked "Sprint?"

The second part of my distaste for many subscription based models is that I think many of them aim to solve symptoms instead of problems. But then again markets just try to solve problems the way people want them to be solve, and many people are not willing to work for real change (thanks Andy for the chat). Many of those people who are getting ripped off are not really getting ripped off, many of them are getting exactly what they want.

If the world is to become more sustainable more business models are going to require recurring relationships and subscriptions, so I may as well get used to it and not hate the model.

The model isn't bad, just a few (or really many) soulless corporations exploit it.

Although I have had no formal education outside of the military (which I departed on bad terms a few years ago) I have been asked if I wanted to be a college professor. If that wasn't crazy enough...

In the last year I was offered to write a book for a major publisher, but turned it down. In spite of having no formal training on how to write and a higher price point than most books I have well outsold most books in print.

How weird is it to read a book about companies worth 10s of billions of dollars that are redefining the underlying economics of advertising, knowledge sharing, and publishing, and to come across a section about how the companies related to one another...only to realize what a profound impact you can have on the sustainability and profitability of said companies.

I am totally awestruck by some of the opportunities I have been given.

I just watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and feel guilty for not having done more sooner, and for not achieving my full potential. In a way we are all nuts. Put a person in the wrong society or wrong environment and you can make just about anyone go crazy.

I have the opportunity to help tons of people in many ways, but I need to have more regular exercise and social interaction in my life. On the web counts in some ways, but off the web matters so much more. If I limit my life to what I can experience through a stream of electrons on a screen then I never really lived. Which would be sad, given all the opportunities I have been given.

Not really intended to be much of a forum thread, but one blog page I created has became an emotional roller coaster.

Check out this comment and this lovely reply.

This email just made my day:

I'll be totally honest with you. I'm from Argentina, and here u$s 79 are like u$s 237 for you. It's a great country, but our currency was devaluated a few years ago, and buying things which are priced in american dollars is not easy at all. On the other side, if something is really worth, you may do the effort to afford it anyway.

So I'm the kind of person who likes to try before buying. I know you have a guarantee policy, but I would not feel comfortable asking for a refund anyway. So -even if it's wrong from your point of view- I've downloaded your book from a P2P network (EMule) and printed it.

After the page number 10, I knew it was worth buying it. So now I'm on the page 80 and five minutes ago I sent you the money (bought the book from your page).

The only reason for this mail, is to tell you that your work is so great, that I'm still flabergasted. I really really really thank you for doing such an incredible job, and you deserve the best. I'm glad (even if it's a lot of money in Argentina) to "cooperate" buying your book, supporting your work and letting you continue to make great stuff like this one.

Is it scary that Google News's top recommended story for me today was Man took 40,000 ecstasy tablets?

I don't know how the hell a person would take 25 a day for 4 yrs (that is like a smoker smoking a cigarette an hour even while they are sleeping)...that just seems out of hand. I have known friends who liked doing psychedelic drugs like acid and the like, who sometimes blacked out from just taking 1 ecstasy pill.

I have debated the effects of search personalization, noting that it may lead us to see our own self imposed biases which are represented by the ideas we look for and the way we search for them. Maybe some recommending engines will offer things that are from other perspectives or things you have not looked at much in a long time? Here is a try (or it was supposed to be but the following code did not work right away...the bastards. hehehe):

Google is also said to be working on a health portal. Those guys are a bit nutty with all the things they do. But there are obvious flaws left in the markets they create. Many of those flaws are related to other people not sharing the same idealisms that Google states they do. It is easy to lose passion for an arbitrary set of guidelines that sometimes a company itself does not follow.

Google has acquired probably more information about humanity than any group ever. How relevant are their ideals to the real world?

If Google falls they will fall hard. It won't be because their competition is better or smarter than Google, but because the competition will be less attached to ideals and more in tune with how the world works.