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The holiday times are expensive. Traveling, gifts, birthdays, special occasions etc… Before every holiday season I try to build up my spending account to at least a few hundred dollars, but this time I am trying something different.

I have opened up a 2nd spending account for big expenses such as Christmas gifts, big purchases and vacations. I will set an automatic, weekly transfer of money into this account like I do with all my other ancillary accounts.

I hate the idea of allocating more money towards spending during the holiday season, so I will start preparing now.

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I decided to go uber-cheap school shopping after an Entrepreneur Society meeting. Basically whenever I need to stock up on pens, pencils or notebooks, I simply go into some of the very large auditorium classrooms around campus and pick up the good pencils and pens that people leave behind. I walked through two adjacent auditoriums at about 9:00pm before they were cleaned, and picked up the following supplies:

Why buy when it’s free?

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The Dalai Lama speech was this past Tuesday. I wanted to take a picture with the Dalai Lama, but it didn’t quite happen. I had some appointments with professors right before the speech at 4:00pm, so I didn’t have the proper preparation time required. My attempt to gain press access was also not granted (and it turns out would have been useless). The speech filled the whole Erwin Events Center:

The security was not nearly tight as they claimed it would be, so I didn’t have many problems snapping a few pictures.

The speech wasn’t anything amazing, but he did have a sense of humor. Here is a funny picture of the Dalai Lama wearing his red visor to better see the audience!

I didn’t get a picture with him, so Operation Lama failed. Oh well.
Just as in business: You win some, you lose some.

Since I really want to take a picture with the Dalai Lama, I camped out to get tickets. I already applied for press access, but I’m uncertain if that’s going to be sufficient enough. I also need about 10 extra tickets to give to some non-UT friends.

I waited with friends in a gigantic line from 3:00am till 8:00am…..

….so I could get these two tickets:

It made me laugh when I saw the back of tickets say you CANNOT bring cameras. I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that, and bring my camera (which is also a video camera) anyway. This just adds more fun to the challenge!

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On another note…
I sold my holdings of ESLR today, the gain was over $480 in about two weeks. I expected to hold this stock long term, but the quick rise in price prompted me to sell. I will buy again when this ESLR mini-rally stops.

9-6-2005 holdings.

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Also, I saw a really creative way to advertise while partying on 6th Street this weekend:

This truck simply parks on 6th street before they barricade it off to accommodate the large party-going crowds. The truck then raises a large, rotating cylinder with advertisements on it. For relatively cheap they appeal to a young demographic in a heavy traffic area for hours at a time. Brilliant! However, I wonder if it violates any city advertising laws.

I want to buy an Aprilia Scarabeo 50. $3,400 new after tax, title, insurance. So I am looking to score a used one.

I placed a Want Ad on Craigslist and a guy Charles e-mailed me saying he had a blue 2001 Aprilia Scarabeo 50 for $1,000. He knew the scooter was jet-kitted to 70cc, but was very shady about other details.

Charles wanted to meet at 5:00pm today in a Chili’s Restaurant parking lot. That was shady also. 30 minutes before our meeting I went to the small shop he said he bought it from, just to ask them a few questions about what they sell, and I happened to see Charles there, riding the scooter and trying to fix it with a mechanic! I overheard him say, “Why the hell does it always smoke so much?” He didn’t know I was in the parking lot until I got out of my car.

I took the bike for a 5 minutes test drive, and everything worked OK, but the bike was smoking a lot. His response was, “Ohh, those two stroke bikes always smoke.”

He was trying to “patch up” the problems with the scooter before our meeting. He was also playing dumb on all the questions I asked, and I could tell something wasn’t right. I eventually found out the engine was rebuilt, it had 7,000 miles on it and it was used by motorcycle racers to get around the track.

After talking to him, I could easily spot he was hiding something. I don’t want an unreliable scooter, so I told him thanks for the test drive and I walked away. I will eventually buy one, but for more money and in better condition. The test drive however was fun! I took a short video clip before turning onto a main road:

It looks like I’ll have to wait for another opportunity to buy this scooter.

Oh yea, today was also the first day of my last semester here at UT.

As things get busier for me, my time has become more valuable. I currently work at the UT Law School in the 5th floor computer lab. I got the job to do precisely nothing, which allows me time to do homework, business etc.

It’s a do nothing job so long as I work night hours. You can see how empty the 5th floor gets at night in this video clip:

My evenings have become my primary time to run errands, meet people, get work done etc, so my work schedule is becoming an interference.

To solve this, I am quitting. On average I get a $250 paycheck every two weeks, less than a single, low maintenance business of mine brings in. It wasn’t bad pay, considering the most I’ve ever done at the job was this:

I will now have to live without that extra $500 per month, but I will make up for it with some upcoming businesses (One of which I missed the launch date of August 28th).

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In other news, I turned in the Dalai Lama Press Application in preparation for my attempt to take a picture with the Dalai Lama. I had a very busy morning, so I scribbled down some information using NevBlog and Weblogs Inc. as publishing editors. At the office, I told them I was a freelancer. I’m sure they will check this site out and see what is REALLY going on!

Also, my next personal business has a new launch date of September 9th, 2005. I am currently outsourcing some writing and doing the proper research to get it up and running.

I want a picture with the Dalai Lama.

He is coming to speak here at UT in September with an audience of approximately 13,000 people. Tickets are free to UT students, but with 13,000 people it will be difficult to meet Lama.

Why a picture? Because he’s the Dalai Lama. Enough said.

I’ve been working on business projects all day, everyday, so I haven’t had too many mini-adventures lately. My next plan is to disguise myself as a member of the press and get close enough to take a picture with the Dalai Lama.

Ticket information is available here…..
https://dalailama.union.utexas.edu/main.php
…..press access is my ticket to get close enough….hopefully.

I must fill out a form, get a background check from the U.S. State Department and receive press approval. I might have to remove this post when I submit my information, just in case they Google my name (I’ve got no clue how extensive their search will be).

I plan to either make up a fake publication or claim I am a freelancer for The Daily Texan, the largest college publication in the country which I used to write for. I may need to pull some strings to get editor-approval for this (J. McNamara, can I call in a favor??).

I might even make a bogus ID card to wear. I’m thinking something along the lines of:

I might also learn how to say “May I take a picture with you” in Tibetan.
This page has a few other Tibetan phrases I could learn.
https://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/9594/tibet.html

Who knows, it may not be that hard, or it may be impossible to snap a pic with the DL. September 20th will be show time.

I set a limit buy price of $6.00 on Evergreen Solar (ESLR) a few months ago, and just found out it triggered, buying 330 shares. This is the first buy in my Roth IRA account. Now I need something other than common stock in this account.

An even bigger surprise was the addition of Acco Brands (ABD) to my regular trading portfolio….because I’ve never heard of it. Apparently Fortune Brands spun off their office supplies division, so now I own 7 shares of Acco at around $26 per share.
I’m going to list this $183 as income.

I’ve got a new side business on the way, hopefully launching by my goal date of 8.28.2005. It will be a low maintenance operation once setup, but there is a lot of reading and researching to first be done on my part.

I won’t give away details just yet, but it has something to do with:

I am working on much larger projects with some business associates, making this one look like pennies. However, there is nothing wrong with having several small side incomes.

This will be the 3rd generation of Casio Exilim cameras I own. I love these cameras. Everything about them is good, and each subsequent model far surpasses the previous.

This was my old camera which recently broke after an 8 foot fall: The Casio Exilim EX-S3:

Here is my new toy, the Casio Exilim EX-S500 – Orange:

The camera takes great pictures, I’ve only had it for a short time, but here are some sample pics I took today. I’ve reduced the picture sizes to 1000px.

My FAVORITE feature however is the unlimited video capture. This thing is basically a video camera! It takes video camera quality movies, I keep it only on “normal” video resolution and it still looks amazing. I’ve included some sample videos I took today. The squirrel video was edited and converted to .wmv format. The in-car video was taken at normal video quality, and posted as taken by the camera.

The Exilims all have an extremely high “Wow” factor when you see them….more than any other gadget I’ve owned. This will be the 4th camera I’ve gone through. The Coolpix was immediately sold on Ebay when the Exilim first came out. My first Exilim was given away for free to a good friend, the 2nd Exilim served me well but is broken, and now I have a new, shiny orange camera.

I bought it on Ebay using “Buy It Now” for $393. That includes shipping, insurance and a 3-year warranty….not bad at all. The orange color will be available in the United States later this month.

I’m finally closing the book on the 2nd Bottled Water Experiment where I attempted to get a homeless guy to sell water on Riverside Drive while I was off doing other things.

I can make all the Excel charts I want showing how much profit should be made etc, but it just didn’t work out like that in real life.

I’ve learned a few things from this experience:

• Working with a homeless guy proved a bit difficult due to a lack of communication, which is much needed for coordinating.
• Ice proved to be the most expensive, yet shortest lasting commodity.
• You need A LOT of ice to keep 100+ bottles of water cold in 103 degree weather. Dry ice would probably be better.
• The amount of work required to pull this off was not worth the money. There were a lot more logistical problems than I first imagined.

The 1st Bottled Water Experiment showed that selling water by yourself can easily bring in a healthy profit, but delegating the work in this case did not.

Since the 1st and 2nd water experiments, I’ve setup Barry with water about 7 times. There are lots of problems which arise, especially schedule conflicts and weather. Weekdays are also surprisingly slow days for selling water, even if it’s hot. Tougher vagrancy laws now in effect also hamper the selling.

Funny thing is, whenever I approach a homeless person to see if they’re interested in selling bottled water, they ALL smile and say, “Ohh…so YOU’RE the bottled water guy!”
I’ve become a quasi-celebrity in the Austin homeless community!

Since this never materialized into a real money-maker, I see no need to further pursue it. I strongly believe it CAN be a money-maker, but with my ever-changing schedule and mounting work load, it’s not for me. At least I learned something new!

A business I started in high school and still have, (House Of Rave .com) focuses on light-up stuff. Over the years I’ve found that patrons of the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert like buying light-up stuff from the site because it gets extremely dark at night in the desert.

Naturally, I made a section geared towards these Burning Man patrons to help them find the most popular items for the event. The people who run Burning Man didn’t appreciate that.

Their lawyers, Gross & Belsky have already threatened me with legal action. Here is the PDF file they sent me via email:

*Update: The PDF file was taken down by request. I have replaced the .pdf file with a small snapshot of the original letter.

They demand I remove the words “Burning Man” and “Black Rock” from House Of Rave.
As much as I hate to admit it, they DO have legal jurisdiction over the commercialization of the “Burning Man” name….HOWEVER, how can they stop me from using “Black Rock Desert” as a keyword? Of course they can stop me from using “Black Rock City” (A temporary city created by Black Rock, LLC), but isn’t the Black Rock Desert simply a desert in Nevada? Oh well.

I did some research and read: The Federal Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1051 et seq, California’s Unfair Competition Law, California’s Business & Professions Code § 17200, and the False Advertising Law, and California’s Business & Professions Code § 17500.

While I found a couple of “maybe” loopholes here and there, they have me beat. I’ve got to pick my battles wisely, and there isn’t enough money at stake here to fight back. So I no longer have words “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City” mentioned anywhere on House Of Rave .com.

Also, just for giggles, I snuck a peak at who Gross & Belsky have represented. It appears they have been lawyers for: O.J. Simpson (Not the murder trial), Gianni Versace, Supercuts Inc. and THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA!! They should have just invited me over to California and we could have settled this over a couple of Cohiba’s!

Oye Ve.
-Nev

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