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Is there a way to put a mute button on people ala the movie “Click” where Adam Sandler could just mute the sound of anybody he chooses?

My oldest son would be one good candidate for that button :). He just can’t stop talking, from the moment he wakes up till he falls back asleep, there’s hardly any one minute of silence. Can you imagine having to listen to someone talking all day all the time, and in lots of cases, it’s whining/bugging us for something? Trying to be patient just doesn’t work after a few years of this, and I”m just stumped on what to do right now. If someone could invent that mute button, it’d be greatly appreciated

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Well, it’s been just over 9 months since I’ve done anything for a career. At the moment I’m just stuck as to what I plan on doing in the future. Some of the options I’m considering:

Investing

My top choice really, even though I don’t have much experience in it. There are a couple of investments that I’ve been looking at which seem pretty good as a source of income. One is investing in EPSI Canada, which does processing of Interac, cashback and Mastercard (basically swiped transactions). The investor gets to purchase the terminals, and they do all the maintenance, as well as guarantee a minimum number of transactions per month (24% ROI per year – which is written in contract). I’m currently looking at the contract agreement, trying to find a lawyer to view it and trying to call the references that they’ve provided. It seems a pretty good deal if I can get a steady income from this while in Indonesia, so I can concentrate on doing something else.

The other investment opportunity which has come up is a company in Indonesia where one of my friends works and has shares. He’s offered me to invest in a new spin-off of the company or the current parent company where his investment has grown 750% within the last 5 years.

The issue with these 2 of course is the capital, I’ll need quite a bit of money to invest on these, which means we won’t be able to buy a house in Indo for now. One solution I’m thinking of is getting a secured line of credit from a bank and use it for the investment. We’ll see how that goes since getting a secured line of credit doesn’t seem so easy after all.

Back to the workforce

My second option of course is the easiest, whether here in Canada or back in Indonesia. Back to doing development, systems analysis, programming, database etc. The problem with this is that I’m not sure I really enjoy it anymore and I’m 9 months behind on technology anyway. Going back to this means I have to find some specific niche that I truly enjoy such as Web Development or I”m just gonna find it dragging away again. Doing this in Indo also means mediocre pay and hardly worth the effort.

This was a subject that I had interest in awhile back: Project Management. Being involved in projects (specifically IT ones), dealing with people most of the time, new technologies, managing and yet not having to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff sounds like quite an enjoyable thing to do. Of course the stumbling block is that I don’t have the experience nor certification to get started in the field.

Work from home

Something I’m really serious on, especially if the investment in point 1 above can produce enough income. The 2 main culprits being online day/swing trading and playing poker professionally.

I’ve tried online day/swing trading with limited success (well, almost no success in financial terms ), and yet I keep thinking that if I persist in studying all the variables, charts, patterns et.all , I’ll be really good at this. During the times I traded with full concentration and no distractions, I managed to gain good profit. But since there was only a short period of time in a day I could do this (no more than 30 minutes, due to a toddler rampaging the house and a newborn asking for attention ), I tended to get sloppy and made transactions without fully analyzing it, hence lots of losing transactions. Tighter money management and better analysis would probably be necessary for me to be successful here.

Playing professional poker is more an indulgence than anything else. I do enjoy watching those people play on TV, and it seems like fun trying to get in the other person’s head, figuring out what they’re thinking and what they’re gonna do. I haven’t played with real money yet, just play money in Sit & Go’s and online games, enjoying winning quite a bit with (probably) inferior competition. I dunno what it’ll be like playing with professional players, but I sure would like to give it a shot if I get the chance :).

Well, all these options are just confusing the heck out of me. They all have their plus and minuses, and yet none that has a significant edge over the others. So right now, I’m just trying to figure out if I can spring enough money for the investment options, as that seems the best route, after that then maybe I can make a decision on what’s best to do.

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*Life Update*

Well, it’s been almost 2 months since I last posted. Still in Canada at the moment, waiting to sell our condo unit. The original plan was to move sometime early September (ie. NOW ), but after having the unit on the market for 4 months with exactly 1 lowball offer, there has been no indication of when this thing will sell.

So right now, we’re just waiting before moving back to Indonesia. I’m getting quite frustrated since that means I can’t start doing anything yet, while income from EI is quite limited. Been doing almost nothing for 6 months and I’m feeling really really bored and anxious to get moving :). I just hope I don’t have to go through another winter here. The only good thing is that I still get to see my parents and brothers for awhile more, I’m gonna miss them once I go back.

*/Life Update*

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RIP Steve Irwin, best known as the daring "Crocodile Hunter". He died getting pierced through the heart by a stingray tail because he got a bit too close to it.

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As some of you might know, I’m currently receiving parental benefits after the birth of our second child. The money is ok, but it’s less than half what I was making during work, and it’s not really enough to cover all our expenses for a monthly basis.

I’m allowed to make about CAD $100 per week without getting it deducted from my benefits, so I’m wondering if anybody out there needs a work from home part-time/freelance IT person? I can do ASP / .NET web application development, regular Windows applications, web maintainance, database development, setting up hosting etc etc. Basically, just ask me if you need anything related to IT and I probably can help you out.

Time availability would be 2 – 3 hours per day to work on what I’m hired to do, so if you need me, please give me a shout at darrick [at] darrickrochili.com.

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Man, am I p***ed off at Fedex (Federal Express) right now. Trying to ship my goods overseas, I decided to go with Fedex because the customer rep told me they could do door to door shipment within a week, no problem for quite a reasonable price.

Well, here’s what happened, see if you wouldn’t get enraged by such crappy and idiotic customer service:

- Called in Tuesday to confirm that I wanted to use their service.
- I specifically asked the rep if it’s ok to have the goods not at home, but at public storage, and the driver can ask front desk to call me to come over. She said ok, driver can do that and wait for me since I live so close.
- I asked if there’s a specific time we could arrange for pickup. She replied saying driver needs 2.5 hour window, so I need to be ready within that window of time.
- Agreed to pickup between 4.00 and 6.30 pm next day (Wednesday).
- Wednesday about 5.23 pm, get called from the public storage person, saying truck is entering gate. I rush to my car, get there at 5.30 (passing a Fedex truck at the nearest intersection to storage).
- The public storage person tells me, driver doesn’t want to wait, it’s a waste of time, can’t wait for customer even 1 minute.
- I curse Fedex and call them from my cell, got put on hold for 20 minutes. So I decide to leave a message and drive home.
- Get home, call again, talked to another customer rep. Blames the other rep, saying she shouldn’t have agreed to that. Says that I need to arrange for someone to always be there within 2.5 hours. (Geez… so customer has to suit Fedex and wait 2.5 hours, while they won’t even wait 1 minute for customer to arrive… sounds fair… great job whoever made this decision *sarcastic*). The rep doesn’t even bother to apologize for their mistake (the other rep agreed to this yesterday). I just hang up… too angry.
- My wife who’s a bit calmer decides to call and try arrange something. Finally agree to leave locker open with documentation so that driver just has to be let in and can pick up goods without anybody being there.
- Rep said I need to label boxes with destination address, number of boxes and fill in 1 airway bill for pickup.
- Thursday morning, I call to Fedex to confirm a few fields in the airway bill, and was told my rep that I also needed the Export Form (B13) and Proforma Invoice. (argh.. why couldn’t the rep last night tell me so I could do it earlier)
- Call in again to confirm something within the B13; this time another rep says… no I don’t need a B13 for personal items. (Can’t you guys get along on procedure?)

*** Note: *** Everytime I call in to Fedex (about 4 – 5 times up till now), they ask me what’s in the shipment. I keep telling them it’s personal items, clothing, books, photo albums etc. Each time, they say OK, no problem. You’ll see how this becomes a problem later on.

- So Thursday comes along, no problems it seems, shipment gets picked up by Fedex driver, noting that I might be missing some documentation, but that can be sent later on.
- Thursday afternoon, got a message from Fedex, saying there’s problems with shipment. I need to itemize every single item in the 5 boxes, including materials, country of origin etc. (Oh my God… hundreds pieces of clothing, books and photo albums, and I need to do this – yes, customs requirements, but would be nice to know earlier before boxes were packed….), and that Fedex cannot arrange customs brokerage in Indonesia, ie. I have to find my own.
- I call the rep, saying why the hell didn’t you tell me this beforehand? After calling Fedex so many times, confirming that it’s personal goods, nobody said anything then, so why now when everything’s on the go? What kinda bullshit customer service operation are these guys running? So unprofessional and unfriendly customer service.
- I ask for a discount because of the inconvenience caused, rep says can only give additional $100 max. Ok, so I have to sacrifice 2 working days (approx. 15 hours x my average hourly rate if working $30 = $450), get told lies and more lies about how easy this would be, get angry at Fedex’s idiotic customer service promises, and you only give me another $100 discount????

That’s the story so far. I’ll have to try to get a customs broker in Indonesia just because I have to use Fedex at the moment (well, my goods are at their place, and I’m not gonna go through the hassle of them returning my goods to public storage), but holy crap…. can you believe these large corporations trying to trick customers into buying their service, only to be told later on that there are lots of catches behind their good price and promise?

Update:
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they just made me even madder *sigh*. We decided to forget shipping with Fedex because of all the trouble they’ve caused us and request our goods back. Here’s how it went:
- Call in Fedex to ask goods to be shipped back to house address (different than public storage… not gonna wait there for 2.5 hours for delivery truck to arrive. Enough of that the last few days.
- Agent says someone will call back.
- Rep calls, asking if we want goods to be returned to sender? I say yes. She says, will this be charged to the account. *Me rather stunned*.

I’m completely baffled. Are we living in looney world or something? They make all the mistakes, misinforming me and deceiving me saying no problem will occur, that they’ll handle everything etc, after putting me through hell just to get my goods picked up, making non-coordinated errors everywhere, and I GET CHARGED TO GET MY GOODS BACK????????? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FEDEX?

Words just escape me at the moment, I’m too enraged by this sheer lunacy of how Fedex. They have no coordination between representatives, mis-inform customers on procedure, documentation and ease of shipment, have no respect for customer time, expect customer to meet their deadlines, and expect the customer to pay for their mistakes. I must be having a nightmare or something. Quick, somebody wake me up before it gets even worse.

Stupid Fedex, crappy service, bad customer service attitude, I just hope one day all small customers like me band together and boycott you guys, to teach you a lesson in customer centric service and satisfaction.

AAaaaaaaAAAGggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!#%#@!$&@#%&*@$#%*@$*$%$*%
Sooooooo mad right now.

Tags: Fedex, Federal Express, Bad Customer Service

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Sorry people, haven’t had time to update the blog about my new notebook :). It’s a great machine, and I’m writing a review on this A8Jm review page. The link is available on the right navigation menu. The review will be an ongoing one, as I don’t have the time to complete it in one shot.

Tags: Asus, A8Jm Review

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Well, after months (even years) thinking about buying a notebook, I finally got one. It’s an ASUS A8Jm. Gonna pick it up this afternoon.

I’ll post the details this evening after I get it

Tags: ASUS, Notebook, A8Jm

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Well, another year just went by in my life. Last night, a couple of my friends took me out to dinner to celebrate. It’s really great to have a group of friends whom you’ve known for a long time and see how everybody’s grown in life. Some of us have kids, others just got married and some getting married soon. Very nice to reminisce of old times and have fun together :).

A birthday is usually a celebration of life, what you’ve accomplished so far, wisdom of another year spent on earth, and time for reflection. For me though, the last few years was just a reminder of what I have NOT accomplished, and if it weren’t for my family and these good friends of mine who celebrate with me, it wouldn’t really mean anything.

The truth is, I’m not really satisfied at where I’m at in my life at this moment. Sure, I have a wonderful wife and 2 kids, nice life as it’s seen from an outsider point of view. But I just feel that I’m not in the position I’m meant to be at this time. Somehow there’s a feeling of many many missed opportunities the last few years, that there should’ve been something different, that somehow I made a few wrong choices in the past.

I see people everywhere building careers, businesses, families and think, all these people at my age, some at managerial positions in big companies, some self made millionaires, some strong families, enjoying life etc etc. And here I am, almost 30 years old (not yet ), no career, no business of my own, no sense of accomplishment, no mark in society, and I think my wife and oldest son would agree that I’m not being the best family man I can be towards them right now.

One of the reasons I agreed to go back to Indonesia, was to fix some of these issues. I wanted to start something on my own so I can be successful financially, enjoy quality time with my wife and kids and in general make a mark in life, contribution to society, do what I’m meant to be. But even this presents its own burdens; trying to find funding to start a business, finding the right partners and business to do, high medical and educational costs, safety, no support net but yourself, and so many more …

Birthdays are a time for reflection, and in reflecting, I find that life just doesn’t get any easier. It’s as if, once you hit adulthood, there’s no more fun and games, you’re in a war to accomplish your purpose in life, and choices made, good or bad, will affect whether or not you can accomplish that. Right now, I’m just hoping that I’m making the right choices in life and the bumpy road ahead won’t break down my spirit.

Well, well, that’s my reflection for this year. By the time next year rolls around, I’ll be in Indonesia and doing something to try and achieve something meaningful. Maybe the best thing is not to look back, but to look forward and keep on going. Wish me luck.

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My wife just had her laser vision correction done at LasikMD. The procedure itself according to her only took about 5 minutes or so, but the preparation and recovery time included made it total almost 5 hours.

When I picked her up after the procedure, her eyes were very sensitive, sore and it was hard for her to even open them. Apparently this will be the norm for the first 6 hours after surgery. There are a couple of other issues during the next while that she has to follow such as:

• - Wearing black sunglasses ala Stevie Wonder for quite awhile :).
• - Using eye drops on the eyes every 15 minutes for the next 24 hours, and as needed till about 3 months from now.
• - During naps and sleep time, she has this gel that she has to wear and a pair of glasses that will prevent accidental scratching.
• - The eyes cannot be touched by water for at least 1 week, which is quite hard for her because it means taking extra care and time to wash her hair. The doctor recommended wearing swimming goggles anytime she’s near the shower :).
• - Regular checkups tomorrow, 1 week after, 1 month after and 3 months after.

All in all, I think it’s a great technology to have, allowing people with vision problems to have it back to perfect 20/20 vision. It’s not a cheap procedure (they start at about $490 per eye, and gets more expensive if your eyes are worse), it cost my wife almost $800 CAD per eye, totaling $1600 (not including insurance).

A piece of advice to anyone thinking of doing this: try negotiate the price. My wife tried to ask for a better price and couldn’t get any, but while she was talking to another patient this afternoon, she found out that the person forced the issue, and got a reduction in price + a 3 year insurance. That person then added $100 to make it lifetime guarantee (meaning if the eyes get bad again, the procedure is free for as long as you live). The price my wife was told was an extra $400 for a lifetime guarantee, so she didn’t go for it. If she got the deal that person got, she would’ve been able to get the lifetime guarantee for $1700 CAD.

[eminimall products="lasik"]

Tags: Lasik, LasikMD, Laser Vision Correction

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