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http://www.photosig.com/go/photos/view?id=1216964
http://www.photosig.com/go/photos/view?id=1212439

Enjoy

Places that used to feel friendly now seem hostile. What seemed so right now seems wrong. What was clear is now obscured. What was open is now closed. The unbreakable is shattered.

Now I know what a tumor feels like after being surgically removed.

Right now, I’m inspired by billionaire Mark Cuban. Not because he’s rich, because there are a lot of rich people out there, but because he’s got the right attitude about life. He makes money because he’s good at what he does: spotting opportunities and working hard to realize his dreams. He’s got passion for everything he does.

I saw an interview with him last night on 60 Minutes. He’s got a childlike enthusiasm. He’s outspoken and brash, yet charismatic and down to earth. After selling his first computer company to Compuserve for $30 million, and then his first Internet company to Yahoo for over $5 billion, he bought the Dallas Mavericks, a struggling NBA basketball team. He turned the team around and now it sells out every single game. Mark Cuban is in the front row at every game, yelling and screaming at the referees. He continuously gets fined by the league for his outrageous behaviour, and he matches all his fines with donations to charities.

Anyway, I was shocked to find he has a blog! He offers stories from his past, and inspirational advice. It’s cool that someone as busy as Mark Cuban would have time to share the secrets of his success. Then again, this is the guy who publicizes his private email address, and then answers messages from fans during half-time of every Mavericks games. Right now he’s having a bit of a public feud with Donald Trump, which is cool.

I doubt I’ll ever be as rich as Mark Cuban, and I don’t really think I want to be. But I think I can learn a lot from his enthusiastic approach to life.

Seemed like a very long day today. Money was the biggest concern of the day. I hate thinking about money. I prefer just to have it and spend it. But given my extravagant lifestyle, I need to generate it at some point or another. Sunday’s as good a day as any. I stayed up until 3 last night doing computer stuff… things that I didn’t have time to do during the week and during the day yesterday. Then, this morning I had an appointment to do some server maintenance and consulting with one of my big clients. They’re planning a major expansion and since I’ve been working with them for a long time now, they chose to deal with me instead of approaching Dell or Compaq or one of the big providers. I’m kind of commited to helping them with the equipment acquisitions and network setup. The contract is potentially worth a couple hundred thousand dollars, which would be the biggest deal I’ve ever put together. It’s intimidating, since the offices will potentially be all across Canada. Anyway, today was a strategy meeting to plan a zero-downtime policy. It’s going to involve weekly schedules for maintenance, setting up redundant services in different cities so there’s no dependence on one location, setting up servers and user accounts to keep users from messing up their own computers, and a ton of new workstations. I’ve never implemented anything so complicated before, so it’s a little intimidating. There may be some travel involved, but not enough to actually enjoy the places I’m visiting. I’ll be flying in, checking everything, flying out. It’s funny how as soon as I start to distance myself from this business, it sucks me back in again.

After the meeting I had to rush around to collect all the stuff I needed to do my taxes. Next week looks to be crazy, and taxes are due on Friday. I didn’t anticipate having the energy to do them after tonight. I brought everything over to my dad’s and did them there using Quicktax. That’s some seriously amazing software. It only took me about an hour and a half to get it done. I had been fearing that I’d have to pay a huge amount of taxes on top of what was already taken off of my paycheque automatically, but I managed to scrape up enough expenses to keep it at a reasonable level. If I really looked hard enough, I could probably bring it down to $0 owing, but that tends to attract unwelcome attention from the government. Today’s lesson: writeoffs make a huge difference. Now although I don’t get a refund, I’m paying at least $2000 less than I expected. It’s almost like having a refund. Is this the excuse I need to buy a new stereo for my car? Hmmmm….

On tomorrow’s agenda: straightening out the mess with Bell and my phone services, cancelling office insurance, two medium-sized network jobs in Oakville, a steering committee meeting with a non-profit/charity organization I do some work for, and a photo shoot with the Scrambled Leggs. I hope I still have some creativity left after all of this seriously business-y stuff.