Buh-Bye 2006

It's kind of interesting to wave goodbye to 2006. I'm not sure if it's a happy or sad wave. More happy than sad, I suppose. But not quite the same as joyfully bidding 2005 adieu, either, for a variety of reasons.

If I had to wager on it, my money would be on 2006 improving with age, as far as looking back on it as the start of many good things. Buying a second house introduced a lot of short-term headaches, but it's the first necessary dominoe to tip over if I'm going to get out of the corporate monkey cage and give real estate investing a go. Throwing in the poker towel and giving up any notion of playing full-time or semi-full-time makes me a sad monkey, but I'm just not wired to be successful at poker under those conditions. Having virtually all of my extra income from affiliate sites wiped out by the UIGEA shenanigans and being forced to rebuild things from scratch sucked pretty royally, but I'd been getting kind of lazy in regards to that stuff anyway, and needed a jolt to get my ass in gear again.

Nothing bad happened to anyone close to me, so there's that to be thankful of. As a country, we inched a year closer to the 2008 elections and our collective waking nightmare at least easing a bit, regardless of who ends up being elected. Hopefully the economy can continue its precarious balancing act for a bit longer until some of the damage of the last eight years or so can be unwound, lest we fall head-first over the cliff.

See you in 2007. Be safe and have fun.

You've Been on Vacation Too Long When You Pine for the Salt Mines

I hope everyone had (or is having) a very nice Christmas holiday, assuming you celebrate such stuffs. Ours was pretty low-key, which was nice. ScurvyWife and I agreed not to go nutso with the gifts this year, as there's a million things we want to do with the new house, and, unfortunately, houses have pretty damn expensive tastes.

All this time off from work this month has left me in the third or fourth level thinking of: "I need a vacation from my vacation from my vacation". Don't get me wrong, not having my soul sucked from my ears and nostrils at the place I work is the best thing in the world, but I am starting to miss the social interaction, even with the mouth-breathing, gold-chain wearing, calliope-ringtone-playing types. My wife is very cool and my rat is very cool but I'm starting to miss, oh so very slightly, that slant ego boost one gets when working on a daily basis with some of the pettiest, insecure, and/or vindictive people that corporate America can churn out. Kind of like how watching Cops can always make you feel a bit better about yourself, no matter how much your life is currently sucking. Unless it doesn't. At which point you know you're in real trouble.

Some interesting posts and experiences here (Early Retirement) and here (Retiring young, happiness), in regards to the whole-make-lots-of-money-retire-early line of thinking that many of us (myself included) are obsessed with. I flip-flop pretty regularly on the subject, as far as imagining what my life would be like if I'd socked away enough money to simply do whatever I wanted at any given time.

In many ways, it'd probably be largely similar to what it is now, except with lots of travel thrown in. We'd probably live in the same area we currently do, in a similar house (except maybe more in the country with acreage for horses and donkeys and what-not), drive the same cars, etc. I'd probably still do all the affiliate marketing stuff, buy and sell real estate, finally get around to seriously trying to write a book, and continue to fail miserably in trying to trade the precious metals markets.

Travel is the one thing that'd be drastically different, though. That's the one thing that I feel like I'd have really dropped the ball on, if a safe crammed full of rubies fell on my head tomorrow. And not for any socially-aware, mind-expanding reason, but simply because there's so much shit out there in the world to see, for the sheer sake of seeing it. Everywhere. Pick a continent.

In the end, I suppose that's pretty hopeful, as I'm reasonably close to living how I'd like to live, if money were no issue. I'm blessed/cursed with the busy gene, with a healthy dose of the greedy monkey acquisitive gene, so I doubt I'd wrestle too much with struggling to find something to keep myself occupied with. But it is interesting to ponder, especially at the end of the year when it's reviewing and/or resolution time.

The Amazing, Flying (Well, No) Rat

I honestly don't know how you breeders manage it. ScurvyRat somehow consistently manages to, at any given moment, do the exact thing that will maximize trouble, consternation, and/or woe. I mean, he weighs like a pound and a half. How that much trouble-causing can be packed into such a small mass, I do not know. We could probably solve all that stuff over there in the Middle East by simply releasing a few rat bombs to wreak utter havoc and doom, until the "terrorists" capitulated and all was well in the world.

He managed to bung up his hand last night, doing his best impression of a flying rat (which in reality was pretty poor, flight-wise), and is moping around now, not eating much. Which would normally be fine, as he's fine and just cut his hand a bit, but we're supposed to drive to Dallas on Saturday and had planned to just load him up with food and leave him to his own devices until we got back on Tuesday. Which will probably still be the plan, given that he gets insanely car sick and hates even short car rides, much less trips to Dallas. But now of course I get to worry too much about him, with the added bonus of irrationality and consternation that always accompanies me worrying too much about the rat, because, umm, dude, he's just a rat.

Nice work, non-flying rat.

Absolutely no one in the office today. Thanks for making me come in, instead of the normal schedule of today being a telecommuting day. Watch as I amaze you with my lack of productivity and ability to sit here all day, mashing keys on my keyboard, accomplishing nothing. Whee...

Many thanks for for assorted support (especially you, Senor Falstaff) of the Gadooney affiliate project. It's been pretty refreshing to work on something like that that I truly enjoy rambling on about, which isn't always the case with some of the affiliate work I've done.

Not much else going on these days, other than scurrying around to finish up the Giftmas shopping. Visiting assorted malls and retailers this time of year is pretty much my own personal vision of hell, but I suppose that's what I get for putting off shopping past the point of no return, as far as buying anything online and getting it shipped to you in time.

We Have Liftoff

So I've been threatening to launch a new blog detailing everything you ever wanted to know about affiliate marketing, and lo and behold, here it be:

Gadooney.com

It's very much a work in progress, but that's the plan for the site, as I'm enjoying setting it up as a project that is by nature a work in progress, with it being a meta-y affiliate site that shows you all the steps in setting up a successful affiliate site.

I've been surprised at the volume of emails I've gotten asking about it, but it makes some sense when I thought about it. Many bloggers play poker to make money, so it's pretty natural to be curious about other ways to make cash, armed with nothing more than a keyboard and the ability to write well. I also like to think I have a decent track record of showing people assorted ways to make cash, so there's that, too.

Since it's still in its infancy, it's still very much at the nuts-and-bolts stage, and I plan to get into more technical stuff as it unwinds.

Any and all links and bookmarks are, as always, appreciated.