Captain's blog: 2003/01

Posted Tuesday, January 28, 2003 at 1/28/2003 10:43:52 AM

You know you’ve had too much Italian Renaissance Architecture when the subway announcer says "Lawrence" and you hear Florence.

"Florence is next, Florence...."


Maybe I’ll build myself a Palazzo too someday, with the rusticated masonry, hiearchy of floors, courtyards, pilasters to declare "yeah I’m all intellectual and know about that humanist stuff too" (actually after 2 more years of fine art history and architecture I just might..more than I’ll ever need or want to know...ugh) ... and of course the place would have some kind of broadband high speed internet connection, preferrably directly connected to a backbone router.. IT would be completely pre-fabricated construction using 100% recycled materials to reduce construction waste and run on a hybrid energy system - taps into the main power grid but also has out-of-sight solar panels for the roof.... yeah...

Nah, if I had funds to build a Palazzo of Robert then I’d make it a hotel, that way its not an extravagant bottomless money pit but will actually produce money, and I’d still have a Palazzo (to stay at for summer retreats, etc...)

Posted Sunday, January 26, 2003 at 1/26/2003 09:11:21 PM

Played my second game of CASHFLOW 101 this afternoon (I booked the study room in Pratt at U of T, and thanks goes to Vince for bringing the board game and other players) . I did much better this time, didnt pay off my debts so early in the game the way I did last time so I was able to have money to buy some investments... only landed on a "downsized" spot once or twice, had only 1 child (while the waterloo coop student beside me landed on a BABY spot more than 3 times...I congratulated him each time while another person called him a rabbit =) luckily you can only end up w/ a max. of 3 children in the game...and of course you’re not allowed to get rid of children to cut expenses... hehehe) , but most importantly with this game... i actually understand better how to read a house/property deal card.. just so I dont forget next time, I scribbled some notes on this. (note the link simply links to the scribbles at the end of this posting...)


other things :
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Finished the abridged audiocassette version of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card... (science fiction)

Woooahh. About the same Woaah feeling I got after finishing the unabridged audiocassette version of Dune by Frank Herbert (that took like 8 or so cassettes..) but this time the Woaah feeling was accompanied by a feeling of surreal freaky-ness. The little boy didnt realize the war simulation wasnt a game it was for real.... (in my class the previous day we had just mentioned about how modern technology distances the slayer from the slain... the implications...what if the slayer was so distanced he didnt know he was slaying ????? ) and the part with the dream-like virtual reality game where the computer retrieved imagery from the player’s subconcious without knowing why..that was freaky too... freaky cool...cool freaky....hehehe

thanks goes to Ed for recommending it I greatly enjoyed it =) apparently theres going to be a movie by 2005...

have also been exploring PostNuke ( a free open source content management system) which I installed on the apache/mysql/php setup on my computer)..

also played with the web based email client squirrelmail

as well as with a newslettering software called php multiple newsletters

and for both to work I installed a mail server on my computer and the only one I could find was a java based one called Foedus Mail...

but i think something is wrong w/ the mail server because I cant get the new folders I make to show up in squrrelmail.. (maybe i shud submit a bug report...since this is all open source..). The newslettering software works fine though.

this posting has ended about here. anything below is not part of this posting, really.

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my scribbles/notes on cashflow from today
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*** warning: potential confusion ahead ***

- risk of confusion...read at your own risk...barely comprehendable
- included here for my convenience only so I can easily find these notes by following the postings..
- this was written for an intended audience of one - ME - so dont worry if you, the casual reader cant make sense of it.. im not so sure I can make sense of it tomorow... but thats ok its for ME so i will figure it out ... as to the game , you’re supposed to learn by playing the game not by reading about here on someones obscure weblog.... =)

*** end of warning: potential confusion ahead ***


so heres my notes on looking at a property deal, the parts to look at are:

• price : eg $50,000
  
• downpayment : eg $4000
  
• mortgage : eg $46,000
  
• cashflow : eg +$200 (read this as "positive 200 dollars a month")
  

Price is the toal price of the house, but first you should look at the downpayment, because thats the dollar amount you need to come up with to buy the house. If you dont have $4000 on hand then you can choose to borrow from the bank , borrowing is only in $1000 increments and interest is always set at 10% which must be paid each time you cycle through and land on the pay check/day slot . Dont worry about the mortgage for now because the cashflow says its positive $200, which means that the tenant’s rent takes care of the mortgage, taxes, insurance, property manager’s fees so that at the end of the month you get 200 bucks. Mortgge is used later if you choose to sell this property, you calculate how much you get by Sell price - mortgage amount . all other times you dont worry abotu the mortgage...just the downpayment to get the property.

so in this deal what i have to see is (downpayment costs $4000... the house gives me $200..):

1. borrow $0 ( pay $4000 from my own pocket) then at each pay day I pay interest: $0, and that house gives me: $200 .
   
2. borrow $1000 ( pay $3000 ...) then ... I pay interest: $100, ... gives me: $200 .
   
3. borrow $2000 ( pay $2000 ...) then ... I pay interest: $200, ... gives me: $200 .
   
4. borrow $3000 ( pay $1000 ...) then ... I pay interest: $300, ... gives me: $200 .
   
5. borrow $4000 ( pay $0 ...) then ... I pay interest: $400, ... gives me: $200 .
   

Views on this: #1 is great if you have actually have $4000... but this way you are not using leverage at all..so you would have less cash to buy say some other opportunity that comes up next turn... If we go the other extreme with #5 you are entirely using borrowed money.. but interestingly you have to pay interest: $400 but the house only gives you $200, so in the end you are actually losing $200 per month on this if you do the downpayment this way...

interestingly what I did was I went with #5 not understanding I would be losing $200/month, but on the other hand i started paying off the $4000 loan so that I stopped losing money on this one specific asset and started actually making money, the postive $200... but by that time I had already bought a condo and another house all positive cashflows so whatever confused blunder I did earlier didnt matter as much...

Vince suggested : that if you intend to flip property - that means to buy a property such as a house and sell it for short term profit - then borrowing money and possibly ending up w/ a negative cashflow wont be a big problem since you will be selling it shortly for short term profit.. but that all depends on if someone draws the deal card allowing you to sell, that wud be the risk you take... If on the other hand your buying the property to keep it for the long run then by all means you’d want to avoid bleeding/loosing money on it all the way due to unpaid bank loans...

all thigns to think about... AND very important: everyone can have their own strategies to their wealth building, which is why its always interesting to play w/ different people , see the many different combinations, strategies to use to "get out of the rat race"

have I confused anyone yet ? hehehe I did better this time.. ended up holding 3 properties.

NOTE to self next time: remember not to be so focused on getting more small deals, make profits too (by selling some properties, stocks etc) to allow you to have lots of cash to allow you in turn to invest in the BIG DEALS stack which will have even higher-income producing opportunities... dont get so caught up in the small deals if you can start affording the bigger ones...

Posted Tuesday, January 14, 2003 at 1/14/2003 11:07:07 PM

I just got back (an hour ago) from the "thank you " event for all the volunteers of the ebay charity auction project that took place over the holidays -basically there was a short tour of the ebay canada office and then drinks, nachos over at a bar/restaurant across the street .

note: You can read more about this recent project in my earlier post in december, but basically it was joint effort put together by : eBay Canada, Get On Target , Making It Work for Volunteers and TakingItGlobal , the idea being to hook up volunteers to help charities raise money through eBay auctions at a great time - during the holidays. So I helped raise money through helping the Mix99.9 ebay auction for Starlight Children’s foundation, along w/ 2 other volunteers in our group (there were multiple groups each helping a charity and some people even took on more than one charity) we posted total of 99 items, and today I think I saw the email printout we raised a 5 digit figure, cant remember what it was now...

I cant believe the thought ever came across my mind of not going, simply because I was late by 15 minutes and thought I’d missed the tour... but i didnt! Great office tour ( I liked the organic layout/furniture and the couple self-decorated desks including the one by the category manager exhibiting all those unique collectables ) , and it was a great evening spent in friendly conversation with the other volunteers, with the ebay folks who stayed late for us, along w/ the partners in this charity volunteer program.

oh yes, you see that moose on the right? The first time I came across it I thought that was just a holiday one time graphic... in the ebay office that moose is actually painted, at about 40 times that size , repeating on the translucent glass curtain wall that runs along one side of the boardroom , its part of the symbols of ebay canada (moose, beaver, hockey puck) and every country has their unique associated icons.

This was a great project, I understand this is a first and that Making IT work for Volunteers (www.volunteersonline.ca) wants to make it as a model that can help future charity--companies/volunteers understand how to work together and create win-win situations (as in this case w/ charities and ebay) so I hope they succeed. and Thank you TakingItGlobal ! for that email about this amazing opportunity.. I cant believe I ever thought about this as "nah... maybe too much work...dont bother". Im glad I went to that initial training session to find out more about it before making up my mind =)

Posted Thursday, January 09, 2003 at 1/9/2003 09:35:32 PM

I made it to the Making It Big speaker event , it was well worth the trek against wind and wet snow and slushy ground across queens park and most of campus =)

note I didnt take notes as I was busily muching on dinner at the back of the room... so im going to do a memory dump now =p

The room was about the size of a high school classroom so and was actually quite packed but with people genuinely interested in listening to Michael Bregman ( Former Chairman and CEO of Second Cup Ltd., Founder of mmmuffins Inc) . He spoke for the first half and then opened up to Q & A for the second half.

I learned a couple things, especially remember the part when he said back then when things were just getting started it was crazy for him, didnt think of himself as being successful but rather felt like a failure because he'd plan to do 90 things in the morning waking up but never did meet his goals, how he was completey burnt out, would fall asleep on the couch when visiting friend's houses... that was interesting.

Also about risk: his mentor/boss at Loblaws had this philosophy about trying 10 things, because expected 7 of the things to go wrong and 3 thigns to go right, and the idea ws then you go ahead w/ 3 things that did work.. try the next 10 things. Bregman liked retail because he could easily have an idea and try things.

It was also very memorable what he said, about the way he planned to minimize risk when starting from scratch with his mmmuffins, his philosophy was : he wanted to, if the endeavor failed, he could still look back and he would never have to wonder/say to himself "if only...maybe if I had.." he did not ever want to say for example "maybe I would have succceeded if I had done a better store design.. if only I had gotten a better recipe.." so from the start there were no compromises, he got the best store designer, got the best recipes and highest quality materials from the start..

about Financial risk: He also said that he made sure he had enough private financing to make sure that for months even if the business wasn't doing so well they wouldnt have to shut down right then and there, that they'd have time to learn and adapt.

career risk: his advice/ encouragement to us in the audience was that if we had an idea that we felt strongly about that we think could do then its better to do earlier than later, for him he said he started then because he figured he could always go back to the corporate track... "you go 10 years into your career, you start a business and fail.. that looks bad. But if its 2 years into your career and you start a biz and fail, well then people say you had initiative.."

Those were the more memorable points, he also talked about competition, about planning (or lack of .. in his case w/ the Michelle's Baguette they were only weeks away from opening the store but didnt have the main product ... but managed ) .. about systemizing/regimentalizing things for your business ( if you read E-myth series of books by Michael Gerber, thats what its about if you want to know more about systemizing).. and about having a good attitude, the store owners who succeed arethe ones who are the "masters" of their lives rather than those who have an attitude of being the victims of things..

Posted Tuesday, January 07, 2003 at 1/7/2003 03:31:25 PM

I just posted 4 events (find it on the TIG calendar for january 2003 or links below) - its a series of student entrepreneurship related speakers brought by UTEC in cooperation U of T’s career centre , running every thursday through january ( UTEC January "Entrepreneurs’ Month" )

No need to register. Don’t need to be a U of T student or member to attend, just come and find a seat. I didnt know the career centre had a seminar room so I dont know what the seating is like but from past speaker events I’ve gone to... theres always plenty of room.

This week for example, the speaker is the founder of mmmufins and former CEO of Second Cup.

the events:
http://www.takingitglobal.org/opps/event.html?eventid=1883
http://www.takingitglobal.org/opps/event.html?eventid=1884
http://www.takingitglobal.org/opps/event.html?eventid=1885
http://www.takingitglobal.org/opps/event.html?eventid=1886


the url listed for our club ( http://utec.sa.utoronto.ca ) just goes to our website which is currently a page with the same information. Its a temporary page which will be replaced once I finish making the new site..sometime this week... still not done yet.

By the way
has anyone come across really great , short and concise online tutorial / articles properly explaining cascading style sheets (CSS) and what points to keep in mind for using CSS on web pages to be multi-browser/multiplatorm compatible? (netscape 4 being the earliest I’ll try to be compatible for) I’ve never been able to use CSS to work consistently ... other than for setting minor text color. im planning to use dreamweaver and a bit of directly editing the css file.


thanks !