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I recently started a poker night with some guys in my condo building. We play up on the 44th floor of our building. I think that all guys should have some sort of poker night. Poker night is not just about poker. It is about guys getting a little break from their normal lives. It is about freedom. Poker night is all about our individual rights as humans to get out of the house. We need to get out of our house and just talk with our friends. The guys that i play with are not that good at poker. They just like to drink a few beers and talk about stuff. I think that im a pretty good play. So naturally, i end up winning on most nights. Even before i moved into this building, i would always have some sort of poker night running. For me, i think that poker provides a great metaphor for life. You have to be skilled and get lucky at the same time if you want to be successful. Life is all about taking chances. Life is a big gamble. Just like poker, you have to ante up if you want to play the game. And just like life, you will end up losing a big pot every once in a while even thought you played the cards right.

Rich people really have it made in life. They get things for free because they are rich. If a rich person checks into a nice Hotel if Las Vegas, they will get a lot of things for free. I guess this is one of the many reasons why rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. We can really learn a lot from the way rich people think. First of all, rich people do not think that much differently from us. If you are a business minded guy, you probably think like a rich person. The only difference is that you do not have the money to go ahead with your ideas. The only difference is that rich people have deep pockets to see the whole thing through. If you start a business with a lot of money, you have like 100 times more chance of succeeding. Once you make a certain amount of money, things start building up momentum. They say that the first million is the hardest to make. I totally believe this to be true. I think that the second and third million will just drop into my pockets. I just need to weather the storm and figure out a way to make my first million dollars.

While i was out doing some grocery shopping, i did some research on my iphone. First of all, i just wanted to say that i love my iphone. It is like having my own tiny little computer in my pocket. The powerful phone lets me do so many things. I was at whole foods and started thinking about the owners. I remember reading about how the owners are not that old. So i accessed the internet via my iphone and did some research. It turns out that the found of whole foods started the organic chain with about $45,000. I was amazing. The company makes about 6 billion dollars a year. The company was started about 30 years ago. A 25 year old college drop out and his 21 year old girlfriend borrowed forty five thousand dollars and started an organic food store. The were having money trouble so they got kicked out of their apartment during that time. They were living in their market for a time. Whole foods is really successful now. But if you think about how it started, you can really get inspired. I was shocked and inspired at the same time.

There is a comedian that has become really popular in the last few years. His name is Jeff Durham and he is a puppet guy. First of all, i hate prop comedy. Secondly, this corny comedian is not funny at all. I think that he became popular with little kids via youtube. I remember his act from when i was a kid. Even when i was a little kid, i hated his act. I thought it was childish and boring. Amazingly, he looks the same. His face hasn’t changed much in 15 years. He is sort of like Dick Clark in that regard. I was looking over some dvds at best buy and found Jeff Durham Christmas comedy DVD on sale. It was one of the best selling items. I couldn’t believe this. It made me realize how stupid Americans are. I think that you can tell a lot about a person by the type of comedy they like. If someone close to you thinks something is funny and you don’t, it can wreck havoc on the relationship. It is both annoying and tragic. I guess that taste and personal preference is not a concrete thing. I guess people all have different tastes. My opinion is just that. But, in my honest opinion, the puppet guy needs to go.

I was over at best buy earlier today. I wanted to get some holiday shopping done before the big rush. I noticed a lot of price drops from a year ago. Digital cameras now are really cheap and affordable. You can find a good one for around $150. You can find useful ones for under one hundred dollars. I remember when i bought my first digital camera. It cost me over four hundred dollars for a 1 mega pixel camera. Now, you can get a 8 mega pixel camera for about a hundred dollars. Video camcorders are also really cheap. I was looking over this Sony high def camcorder that has it’s own hard drive. That machine was under a thousand dollars. The picture quality was amazing and i was starting to pull out my wallet before i came to my senses. If the price drop a bit more for that HD camcorder, i will have to buy it soon enough. The point i am trying to make is this. The cost of new technology is going down. This means that we all have the tools to create a small business. We can do what the big guys do for a lot less now. If you have dreams of becoming a movie maker, you can do so without spending a lot of money.

Christmas is the time for giving. But in today’s market, it seems like Christmas is the time for losing. I know a lot of friends who have lost their jobs in the past month. I was reading the news that reported that many more jobs will be lost by the month’s end. I think that we should all pull together to do something about this. One man or one group can not do much to help out this situation. But, if enough of us work together, we can really make a difference. I think that we should be a bit more liberal with our spending. I know that we do not have as much money as we did last year, but we need to do something to drive up our economy. So, we should spend money this Christmas. We should do what we did last year. Don’t just leave your money in the bank. Take it out and make a few investments. I know that the stock market is bad right now. But, if you look at historic figures, it will go back up. I know that the real estate market is bad right now, but if you look at the figures from a generation ago, you will see that it goes back up. Even if you lost your job, try to spend some money.

If you want to get anywhere with you blog or web site, you need to do a little more then get links. You need to get links that matter. It is important for you to do your own research. There are a lot of bloggers out there who claim to be experts. But the truth of the matter is that only a handful actually know what they are talking about. The rest just spit out the same stuff said by popular bloggers. And the popular bloggers only know how to sell. They don’t really know how to do the hard core search engine optimization. If you want to rank well in the search engines, i suggest that you go with trial and error. Try out a lot of different things and see what works best for you. Getting links is important. But, you have to try to get important links. What exactly is an important link? Links that have your desired anchoring texts are important. Links that appear in the post instead of the sidebar is also important. Links that are homepage only as opposed to sitewide is also a bonus. Try to figure out what type of tweaks work best for you. I usually set up a lot of different test blogs. Doing that helps me isolate what tweaks work best.

The old operating system is still a popular force in the computing world. People have been really confused or frustrated with the performance of windows vista. So, a lot of people are going back to the less meaty windows xp. This ultra popular operating system is also the clear choice for ultra mobile lap top computers. I was checking out the new small portable computers and a lot of them have windows xp on them. The smaller computers need to have to an operating system that will not slow down the computers. Since the machines do not come with strong processors or a lot of RAM, windows xp is perfect for these new computers. I have windows vista on all of my PCs but on my small laptop, i still use windows xp. This makes it easy for me to check out the performance level of my web sites. I make sure that i test out each new web sites on the old browser as well. I want to make sure that people using windows xp or the old version of internet explorer can still see my website clearly. If you are a blogger or web site owner, you should still have at least one of your computers on windows xp.

We often times overlook things that are directly marketed to us. The marketing machines is everywhere. It can be found at work and in the schools. You can even find it in government and at church. We are always pitched some sort of deal or idea. We are constantly bombarded by other people or organizations wanting us to try their product or service. This is not just in the business world. We see it everywhere.

I would even say that our friends are responsible for this madness. Word of mouth advertising is something that is supposed to be generic. But it isn’t. A guy or a girl that likes Apple products will get all religious with it. They will preach on how great it is to their friends. Even thought they may not have any personal gain, they are advertising to you because they want to be the one to introduce you to the new cool tech toy. Do not get fooled by these types of friends. I always think about the amway or other mlm programs. It seems like everything is some sort of pyramid scheme.

For those of you who do not know what i do for a living, i wanted to address a few things with this blog post. I work as a real estate developer. I got into this game because i made a few real estate investments back in college. They turned out to be pretty profitable so i decided to learn more about this industry. The market is really bad right now, but it should pick back up in the next two year or so. During the beginning stages of my development career, i started a small trade magazine for real estate investors. The magazine was not as successful as i had hoped, but i did manage to learn a lot about how our economy works. I made my magazines free for people in the industry. I drive up the number of subscribers and kept growing the ad prices on the magazine. This allowed me to print up a lot of great content for my readers. I believe that type of transaction happens all around us. If you look at any type of medium, you will find this type of arrangement. Magazines, newspapers, and TV all run this way. We are given free content in exchange for our viewership or readership. The time that we spend in front of the tv or reading a magazine is valuable. We should all understand that and get some free magazines in the future.