I keep promising that I’ll come back and blog more, but with the addition of Twitter and Facebook status updates and various things like that, lol.  Who knows!  But anyhow, look forward to more changes on this blog coming.  I’ve been experimenting with a few tools to “spice” up this blog a bit more so we’ll see what we can do!

And my tributes go out to the great Michael Jackson and Steve McNair!

So it’s that time again, and I must say, Kobe and Lebron are unstoppable.  Even though I’m not on Kobe like some people are, he’s hands down the best player in the league right now, but Lebron isn’t very far back.  In fact, he’s very close behind.  Once he gets a jumpshot, it’ll pretty much be all over.

Kobe vs. Lebron

And other news, my favorite player of all time (although he’s becoming less and less my favorite) has been sitting on the Detroit bench and will be for the remainder of their season.  Allen Iverson just refuses to change his game up.  Come on Iverson, you’re my boy and all, but if you want this ring, you got to change up your play.  Just doing you won’t get you a ring, lol.  You need help!

Allen Iverson

Affiliate Marketing is something I’ve been learning slowly bit more and more.  I’ve been doing client-work for as long as I can remember.  (Client work being that I help market other people’s sites on the web).  However, as I continue to read more, network, and meet with other people who are already successful in such an industry, it makes me want to further my horizons in such an industry.  Lately, I’ve been meeting some really young people who are making 15 – 20 times what most people their age make in a week or month (yes literally).  For those of you who read my blog (which I can’t imagine to be too many, and for those that do, probably don’t understand what affiliate marketing is), here is a quick defintion on it.

“Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer”

In a nutshell, Blockbuster sells video/rental memberships, with plans varying from I think $10 / month – $30 / month.  If you become an affiliate (advertiser) for the Blockbuster membership, and promote their plans on your website or in some way refer a visitor to sign up for Blockbuster’s membership plans, Blockbuster will pay you a % of the sign up.  So how are these young guys making so much?

I’m not sure exactly how much Blockbuster pays its affiliates, but let’s say $5 for each $20 membership an affiliate sells.  Let’s say that affiliate manages to sell 10 memberships, so their cut’s $50 out of the $200 Blockbuster just made.  These young guys have gotten so good at affiliate marketing, that they can probably sell a few thousand memberships a day, easily.  So 1000 memberships at $5 a piece, that’s $5000 you just did that day.  (Keep in mind though, these affiliate marketers may spend quite some time preparing the infrastructure and plans in place to launch at single campaign).  Nonetheless, you get the idea .

I would refer you to some sources to read and learn more about affiliate marketing myself, but I’ve found that the most successful affiliate marketers stay under the radar, so it’s time for you to start going out and meeting some of them .

I’d like to first devote this post to the great Coach Kay Yow (Head Coach of the NCSU Women’s Basketball Team).

Coah Kay Yow

I don’t know much about her or her career, but I do know that she was a good person.  I’ve heard so much about her compassion for her players and always putting others before her.  It’s unfortunate that she lost her decade long battle to cancer.  I wish her and her family well, may she R.I.P.

I know, already I’ve been slacking behind.  It’s been 5 days since the last post, but I just got caught up in some things, and next thing you know, days just go by.  I ate at Ruby Tuesday earlier tonight, and I must say, their strawberry lemonade is AMAZING.  And its free refills .  So there, Ruby Tuesday just got some free advertising out of me.

Anyhow, I don’t have much time to post or write much more because I have things that I need to be doing.  But I thought I would at least update the blog .

It’s snowing outside, there’s like 4 inches of snow.

Snowing in Raleigh

Snow Through the Window

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it snow this much here in Raleigh.  It’s a nice sight to see, although I am tired of the cold.  Every time I have to take the dogs out, I have to put on like 4 layers of clothing and that’s really starting to get annoying.  This is a nice break to have once in awhile, but I’m glad I’m not in Chicago, Minnesota, or Boston where it snows like even crazier than this all the time.  I’ve decided that I’m not a cold person, and that’s probably because I have dogs.  I have to take the dogs 2 – 3 times a day outside to use the bathroom, and it’s colder every time I do it.  Speaking of the dogs, here they are, Lucy (the smaller all black one)

The Innocent Face of Lucy

Lucy Pham

and Suzy.

Suzy Sleeping

I’m also at a dilemma for dinner because I already have some chicken thawing in the fridge for food later, but every time it’s cold like this, I want to make some Vietnamese soup (we call it Pho, pronounced “fuh”).

Pho

Anyhow, just thought I needed to post something since it’s been a few days.  I’ll try to post something more meaningful later tonight.

One thing I’ve always prided myself in is the ability to persuade people.  Now I don’t always persuade people into the thinking or making the decision that I desire, but I feel like I’ve done it enough times for me to have confidence and pride in myself for it.  Today, I was trying to get into the school gym to catch a few last games of basketball before they closed.  I arrived at around 6:20, and the gym closed at 7:00 pm (freaking Martin Luther King Jr Holiday hours!).  Anyhow, a friend of mine was with me who couldn’t get into the gym, but had no where else to go, so thought they’d tag along to watch me.  Now usually when I’m trying to get people into the gym, I just sneak in through the fire exit door near the locker rooms.  Now anytime any of these fire exit doors are opened, the alarm goes off like crazy, but only for the duration while the door was open.  I didn’t think it’d be fit to use it for this occasion.  So I approached the person working the desk who scans the membership cards.  It was a foreigner, and if I had to guess, an Indian (but please don’t hate me for trying to judge, I’m obviously or clearly not trying to be racist or stereotypical in any way).  So here’s the conversation…

“Is it ok if my friend comes in with me to the gym?” – Me

“Sorry, I can’t allow it.” – Worker

“Well all he’s going to do is watch, I mean look, not even dressed to come to the gym!” – Me

“I don’t know, I don’t think so.” – Worker

“The gym closes in 40 minutes anyways, so it won’t be very long, completely harmless.” – Me

“Where are you all going?” – Worker

“Basketball courts” – Me

A moment of hesitation occurs….

“Ok, that’s fine.” – Worker

“Thanks!” – Me

You see? Never hurts to ask .  Mission Accomplished!

I have to say that I am very proud of my good friend Bryan Young.  At just 22 years old, he’s already an owner of two businesses (a trucking company and an online business magazine).   I recall back in the summer of 2007 when he was talking about the idea of a business magazine.  Without hardly any knowledge of Internet, web-design or development, he’s taught himself everything to get started in the development of his own site.  I’ve never met anyone with the focus, discipline, and motivation he commands to stay with the development and push to be successful.  Don’t ever say you can’t do it, because with determination, Bryan Young sure as hell did.  Check out his business magazine.

Here’s me and him (I’m obviously on the right).

Bryan Young and Bobby Pham

Had about a 2 hour online poker session last night.  I played 6 1-table Sit n Go’s (3 on Pokerstars and 3 on Full Tilt).  I started off real well, played well, then busted out of 4 of them like all at once.  I ended up winning one and getting 2nd, so I guess that’s not too bad.  I ended up +$15 overall in the session, so at least it’s not a negative.  My goal this year is just to continue to improve and diversify myself over cash games, tournaments, and sit n gos.  My following poker goal for the year is to achieve a $10,000 bankroll online.  Chris Ferguson did it in 9 months starting with $0.  So I think I can achieve the same if I just focus and push myself to succeed.

That’s all for now….

So I’ve been a customer with Time Warner Cable for nearly 4 years now, and I just have to say that all these promotions that run out are starting to piss me off.  I have HD-Digital Cable, Road Runner, and a 2nd DVR box and was paying for all of that at a great rate of $99.  The thing is, they don’t warn or tell you before the promotion’s up and suddenly you see your account shoot up.  So my standing account balance is right now at $118 because my DVR promotion ran out.  Once my Road Runner promotion runs out in May, it’ll be at $140.  They proceeded to tell me that I could lock my rate in for however long, so I’ll always be paying the $118.  Wtf, why didn’t you tell me about the stupid lock in rate when it was at $99?  So now I’m considering switching over to Direct TV, but maintaining my Road Runner with Time Warner.  Their Internet is very fast which is awesome.  The stupid outages every  now and then really suck (since my jobs require me to have online access at all times, oh how I miss the days of living in a dorm and having like a freaking bigass T1 or T2 line or whatever they had).

Unfortunately, I’m caught in a predicament.  I have some strange promotion because I’ve bundled my cable and internet services, so I’m paying for Road Runner at $40.  It’s typically $49.99 for the 7mps download rate ($34.99 for 5mps and that is just not that fast).  So if I do Direct TV for cable ($49.99, unless they offer some promotion) I’m essentially paying for the same shit.  So I’m caught in a dilemma.  However, I did think of one solution.

I currently have Vonage in which I pay $24.99 / month.  So combine that amount with my Cable/Internet package (I’m paying about $143/month for Cable/Internet/Digital Phone).  Now if I do it ALL under Time Warner, I can probably reduce that to $135 or $125/month, which’ll save me between $18 – $8 / month (Time Warner always has all these crazy promotions they offer if I upgrade or start a new service or whatever).  So that might be the better route.  But Vonage does have this one awesome thing, Call Forwarding which I love, although I’m sure Time Warner Cable can do that too.  So if anyone is reading this that would love to give me their input about my current situation, please do tell.

That’s right, after a 6 month absence, the great one has returned!  Well, there’s no reason or excuse as to why I stopped blogging.  Pretty much just caught up in work, and I got a little lazy.  And I wasn’t going to really get back to it, except that my web-hosting and domains renewed, and I kept getting an email saying that there was some vulnerable script that I needed to update.  So after doing all that, I figured I could starting making a few posts again.

Originally, I started this blog as a resource for learning how to work and make money, however, I think I’ve decided to use this blog as a medium just communicate my thoughts, experiences, and life lessons that I’ve learned, and perhaps can pass those along to whomever can benefit.  Of course I’ll blog about random things, interests, and hobbies as well, so I hope my writing is also found as entertainment for readers as well.

So let’s start….

Stupid Wolfpack basketball lost.  For the past 6 years I’ve become a NCSU fan, in football and basketball, we just can’t seem to be consistent.  We can beat the best teams, and lose to the worst (but at least we didn’t lose to Harvard, BC SUCKS!).  I watched us play Clemson, the only remaining undefeated team in our conference, and we played so well against them, then started to fall apart in the last 8 minutes of the game.  I was impressed that Clemson can maintain a full-court press the entire game, so hats off to their defense.  But I can’t figure out who’s to blame, our terrible offense that game (15 turnovers in the first half), or the Clemson defense.  Anyhow, we’re not doing too bad.  I thought we’d be much worst when I found out J.J. Hickson left for the league.   However, Duke, my true favorite basketball team won against FSU.  Gerald Henderson did his thing, I must say.

I recently watched two movies, Bangkok Dangerous and Traitor, in which I’ll comment on.

SPOILER – Alert (Well, I’m not 100% sure I’m going to spoil anything, but just in case).

Bangkok Dangerous stars Nicholas Cage and some other actors I’ve never heard of.  He’s a hitman on his last job in Thailand.  He comes to town and hires a Thai local to help him with his miscellaneous tasks and errands, which he eventually befriends and trains as a student.  He also starts falling for a deaf worker at a pharmacy store.  Unfortunately, the bad guys catch on to his developing soft side and begin to take advantage.  Go figure, so Nicholas Cage gets mad, takes revenge because of course the bad guys kidnap the people he cares about, and there you have a failed hitman movie.  This movie does not compare to Hitman (starring Timothy Olyphant).  But, I do like Nicholas Cage, so it might be worth a Blockbuster rental on a boring Thursday night.

Bangkok Dangerous

Traitor stars Don Cheadle, Jeff Bridges, Guy Pearce, a few notable actors.   Don Cheadle plays a military operative who is deep undercover as a Muslim in a terrorist group.  The movie portrays him having to balance maintaining his cover in the terrorist group and working secretly with the US Government (only one guy knows his cover).  It’s tough because he expected to plan terrorist and bombing attacks against American civilians, so he has his challenges.  Anyhow, I won’t spoil much more.

Traitor

My conclusions, rent Bangkok Dangerous and watch it with your goofy friends, and take a few hours to seriously pay attention to Traitor.

Well I hope this return was enough.  I’ll keep you updated with the next adventurous tales that happen in my life.

Well, I didn’t win the poker tournament, but I did get 2nd place for a cool $8300.  I invested $30 and 6 hours of my time and had a nice cash.  I started playing around 10:00 pm, kind of a last minute thing.  I noticed that the tournament was starting in about 10 minutes, so I registered before I took a shower, showered up and begin my adventure.  What an awesome feeling!  Out of 1890 people, I lasted 6 hours and ended up with some nice change in my pocket.  Now I can take some of this money, pay off some bills, blow a little, then put it back into the poker game.  Only thing to do is to keep playing and improving. But man, what an AWESOME feeling .  I woke up feeling REAL good this morning .  I’ll keep you guys posted on my status…