LA or Bust! - The hump

Time to stretch your legs and take a break. (short!) Go grab something to drank and hit the restroom then head back here for some more.

LA or Bust - How to make $25,000 in 30 days days 1-10.
LA or Bust - The hump days 11-20
LA or Bust - Final Countdown! days 21-30.

I woke up this morning worried about lens ranks and remembering snippets of dreams as if they had been twitted on dreamers for others to share...

With virtually no traffic (10 visits on going to bed at 3:00 am) I was thinking that only 20 more days wouldn't take long at this rate, and I'd still be figuring out what on earth I was trying to do.

Fortunately, one lens on being somebody on Squidoo really put the pieces together for me. Not only is it short, simple, and easy to follow, but after reading it things just started to make sense. I tried what Susan52 directed and went off to bed.

In the morning was no surprise. One more friend that I had badgered to read my lens had done as they said they would (Thanks which ever you were!) Eleven visits, 11 days, not looking good. Although, my overall lens rank increased 4000 magically overnight. I must have done something right after all.

I kept reading all day, many of the same lenses I'd read before, but they made more sense now that I got what Squidoo is about and how to do it. I still have many more lenses to go (and such good ones - we're pretty good writers we are!) After while, I noticed that my inbox was full. Comments and duels and friends... oh my! Even Susan52 herself dropped by to comment on my lens AND add me as a friend on Facebook. (I only have 1 other friend on Facebook I've not met in person, and she's a Squidlebrity! It's a big deal to me!!!) She even featured me on her Squidoo Somebody of the day!

As directed, I went and - after spending half the day reading over many more fascinating lenses about SquidU - made my introduction. Surprise! More people showed up. I received over double the previous visits of all previous days total! WooHoo! I think I've gone and caught the squid flu!

Tonight's family night (minus Rachael - I can't wait til she returns Monday!) so I've got to rush off. Tomorrow I hope to get some actual cash status posted (I am making money - just not much off the Internet yet) some pictures, a few days caught up, the lens cleaned up enough to submit it for critique on SquidU and a new lens started as I rise up as a new Giant Squid.

Happy MayDay!

Finally got a good night sleep, feeling great from StemGevity I hopped out of bed. (I have to anyways, I left my shoes in the wrong place again.) No pain at all in my legs. I think they might become normal if I'm not careful. I'm pretty excited about the day, already planning the things I've already got planned and thinking I can tackle them all.

Until I see my email. The migration from yesterday didn't go well. Always read the fine print and double check everything! Seven hours later, that's sorted out. I'm drained of energy, haven't gotten a thing done that I want to. (I did take a break to fix the pool pump - I needed to get away from the computer bad!)

BBQ'd chicken and ribs for the family. Not to brag, but I do run a mean grill. The kids were quiet through the meal, so I must have done ok with dinner.

Finally getting back into the swing of working, I got on a conference call at 8:00 pm. It was running much longer than it should have for a short meeting. Around 9, Holly from ClearTech calls. She's really good about calling only when I'm really late on something, out of town, and avoiding her emails, so I figure it must be important. She's been migrating sites too (When will we learn?) and has a big problem. A couple hours later, after fixing the problems, I bid Holly a good evening and get all prepped to sit down and do a little Squidooing.

If the chair was still warm, I'll never know. Leo woke up and was calling for his bottle. I fell asleep finally around 2 am with Leo in my arms still, happily chugging at his bottle.

Today is Rachael's return. She arrives back in Tampa at 9:55 this evening.

As Leo decided to get up late and keep me company last night, I'm a few more days behind in lenscrafting. I was also very tired this morning. I only got through a couple more lenses on traffic and lens writing.

Our inbound traffic is slowing down a little, but we're climbing strong in lensrank. We got another affiliate signup for StemGevity!!! Money rolling in the door! (Thank you!)

Speaking of StemGevity, both Mom and I are feeling much better. She commented three or four times that her back is feeling much better. She's usually in pain for 2 to 3 days after a good chiropractic adjustment, and this afternoon she had already recovered. I'm noticing a general increase in energy, no gum bleeding when I brush and floss, and the thrush on my tongue is gone. (Yeah, You probably didn't need to know that, but if you are having those kind of problems, StemGevity looks like a pretty good solution. And we've only been using it for 5 days!

We made Google finally! We had 3 inbound searches. Two for StemGevity, and one for making money. I suppose I should get that caught up and reported to you as well. I've been so busy learning about all this that I've not been keeping close track on our progress. I know it isn't nearly what we need it to be at this point.

Wiebke and Dieter were excited about Mom's arrival, so we all spent the afternoon cleaning up the house. It wasn't too bad, except that we've managed to get more packed than we have room to put everything now. The house has been collecting packed boxes, mystery box items, and packing supplies in every available space. Where all this stuff keeps coming from, I'm not sure. I have a feeling we've got a physics law violation somewhere in the vicinity of the kids room.

The house is finally clean from top to bottom. There's a few spots that could use a little more TLC, but it's so nice and spacious and comfortable compared to normal. Leo stayed up late to enjoy this and at 9:30 when I left for the airport he was happily playing with Grandma.

Rachael arrived safely and we got her home, fed and off to bed early. She's happy to be home and shocked at how well we did at cleaning the house. We keep that up, she might come home more often.

Another fan, Ryan, pimps his car in support of our cause. Thanks Ryan! LA or Bust!

Woke up feeling remarkably refreshed for only getting 4 hours of sleep. StemGevity sure is working wonders in only a few days now.

Rachael however messed up her neck on the way to Phoenix - slept wrong on the plane. (Is there a right way?) I dragged her to the Chiropractor and she's doing much better. Neck still hurts a little, but she can move her head around now.

Traffic picked back up again after a few posts to various forums. Lensrank is still climbing but beginning to slow. I imagine that's because this lens is starting to get up into the real competition. No affiliate sign-ups, but lots more click-outs.

As suggested by Mike Moore and LakeErieArtists I've gone and snapped a bunch of pictures of the family. I still need to resize them and upload, so they should be in here soon. The older kids of course loved the opportunity to smile for the camera. Leo still isn't too sure about it. I even handed off the camera for a few rare shots of myself.

Leo hasn't been sleeping through the night the past 3 nights. Very unusual for him. He's always gotten 7-8 hours straight since he was about a month old. I'm going to wrap things up and end off tonight before he has a chance to interrupt and keep me up til 4 again. I'll be able to fall asleep with him and get more than 4 hours sleep. See you tomorrow where we realize it's really half over and need to find some coals to light or it's no LA just bust!

Fortunately, it's not as bad as it could be. As a programmer, most of my little critters are inside the computer. I spent most of the day helping Grant at Akiva Tech with some latent migration issues and a few programming snares he set up to trip me up.

Amidst the confusion I was also working on a really cool Flash application for Holly at ClearTech. I can't talk about it or promote it yet as they haven't launched the website. It's been a grueling process and has taken much longer than anyone budgeted for, but it's turned out to be a very useful, cool tool. I can't wait to share it with you.

Leo managed to stay asleep through the evening (so far) and I've been able to catch up on emails and read a few more lenses on promotion. Traffic's pretty slow today, but I did bust 100 for the lens category! WooHoo! Shooting for top 100 overall now! It's looking like it's going to be tough to get up there.

I've got a call with Trevor Eisenman of Richter 10.2 tomorrow to discuss promotion tactics and see if we can't get this bus rolling faster. It's good to have friends in the right places.

Rachael was kind enough to resize all the pictures I took yesterday, so be sure to scroll back up and take a peek at the family. She's busily working on new t-shirt designs (Yeah! My art department is back!) We'll be getting a Zazzle store probably tomorrow and getting at least a few items in stock. So you will have two choices for your LA or Bust gear. (Don't forget about our PrintFection Store: LA or Bust.)

I'm going to call it an early evening. It's just turned midnight. Earliest I've gone to bed since starting this adventure!

Today was a day much like every other day. I woke up feeling great. Thought about exercising. Fortunately, reason stepped in before I did anything too rash. Instead I opted for checking the morning email. When will I learn?

Grant was up before the birds and waiting for some much needed PHP assistance. He can dig himself a hole really well. Usually it doesn't take much to get him out of the hole either fortunately.

I made a couple calls to LA friends to prepare for our impending arrival. Jenn (Rachael's best friend) was particularly excited and promised to help put a fire under Rachael to keep going.

My much anticipated phone call with Trevor Eisenman of Richter 10.2 occurred early this afternoon. Tervor is a master of Social Media and had much advice regarding social media and particularly twitter. Two tools Trevor recommends are: HootSuite and TweetDeck. And relates social media as [paraphrased] what you would do at a coffee shop, on the computer.

I must admit that I got so excited about all this Twitter knowledge that I didn't get either application installed/loaded/downloaded/registered or whatever needs to be done with it. I immediately jumped into the TwitterVerse.

Preparing for the call, I read a lens 50 Ways To Use Twitter by bdkz and soon got wandering around the Internet reading article after article.

During my journey I found a curious page Twitter Grader (which I later noticed was on bdkz's lens) and found out that LA is the 2nd most Twitter active city in the world! TWooT! They even listed the top tweeters.

Thinking I was incredibly clever, I decided to follow the top 10 or so interesting people on the elite tweet list to see how the pros do it. There I met Calvin Lee of Mayhem Studios 'in person'. He was kind enough to follow me back and we started a discussion. He recommended a number of links (below) and was quite friendly. I kept it shorter that I would have liked, as Calvin was also having a convo with Guy Kawasaki at the same time. What a world! Six degrees of separation seems an awful lot when Guy Kawasaki is only 1 step away!

Here's the links:
Twitter For Beginners

All You Need To Know To Twitter

A Twitter guide for Marketers

And I'll leave you with one more fantastic treasure. It's what I'll be reading tonight before I drift off to sleep. Travelin' Local From Los Angeles to San Diego and everything in between. Even considering entering her contest to share about the new neighbors I've found here in the online community and particularly Squidoo!

Woke up early this morning! Its a rare occasion, but Ive been feeling exceptionally good since we started taking the stem cell mobilizer StemGevity. Mom is still in pain, but down to a 7 from her usual 10. She was even at 5.5 earlier in the day. She hasn't felt this little pain at the end of the day in at least 10 years.

Checking email and IM, no fires! Too good to be true! I dug into FaceBook and Twitter to discover that it is #FollowFriday. An interesting Twitter phenomena where people recommend their most interesting friends to the rest of their friends to follow. Being on of Calvin's friends, I got quickly swept into #FollowFriday. I soon met
@syedbalkhi, another cyberlebrity, and read his article
What Everybody Ought to Know about #FollowFriday. We got to DMing (Direct Message) a little bit. Real nice guy.

I found many more articles on #FollowFriday related to social media and twitter. List below.

Holly from ClearTech came through with 3 big rush jobs! I'll be able to get them finished up (as long as I can put Twitter down) in the time limit! Thanks Holly!

In the meantime, my friend James released another song. Check out The Wall at TheStudioBandHeadliner! (No relation real or imaginary to Pink Floyd)

As the universe had stopped (Twitter went offline at 2PM PST for maintence) and the water in the pool was finally near bathwater, I decided it was a good excuse to take the kids swimming. Leo, his first time in the pool, wasn't too sure at first. For a while, all he wanted to do was float in a natal position. Memories of his first home I suppose. He soon got comfortable and was kicking and splashing and laughing. Mom took him for a spin around the tub while I started in on dinner.

I'm off for the rest of the night to enjoy a bit of Sci Fi Friday with the kids. Have a great weekend!

Social Media and Twitter articles of interest:
The Bar Scene Teaches Us About Using Social Media The Right Way

Nine Twitter Tips for Business
Twitter Strategy to Increase Targeted Traffic
World Wide Rave (via @teisenman )

Today started out like every other day recently - fabulous! I woke up feeling great, hopped out of bed. (see above for gratuitous StemGevity affiliate link -- Every bottle you purchase helps us get to Los Angeles.) Nothing like having a mission! Even if that mission isn't looking quite so accomplishable.

I've managed to pull in about 4G's worth of work so far. I still have lots of work to do to GET some of that money, but that's been arranged. If I can deliver on schedule, I'll receive payment just in time to count. It's so awesome having people I work with playing along and trying to get me out of town! (hrmmm.....) I love you all, anyways! :)

Rachael's got another grand in, so we're at about $20,000 short for the move and 10 days to go.

I got on the phone with Grant from AkivaTech after I had thought all this through during my morning routine. We came up with a brilliant idea! Nothing that will generate 20 grand in only 10 days though. But it looks like we'll have another cool project that'll keep us busy when we get to Los Angeles. You'll probably see a lens about it soon.

Early in the afternoon, I went over to Camara Home Improvement, Inc. (CHI) and spoke with the owner, Denny Camara. (website coming soon) A couple years ago, I helped him grow his business from 3 people to 10 in the time I was there. He's now at 16 employees and still growing strong. When we get to Los Angeles, among the various #dessert sampling, we'll be starting up an LA branch of CHI. We got alot of the details laid out for after the move and how to quickly get the off-shoot profitable. We also discussed Denny's long term goals the company and what we can do with my software development skills to accomplish these goals.

Leo went for his second swim tonight. He took to the water much more readily tonight. We ended off the evening with he kids watching Legend of the Seeker then I snuck back here to lens the day.

Andrew Shim had some useful comments in Squidu and I've started adjusting things and moving modules around and such. Thanks Andrew!

Stats tipped down for the first time since this lens was created. I suppose I was spending too much time tweeting ineffectively and not nurturing my lens. :)

I'm off to bed - hope your weekend is fantastic!

We've got LA or Bust! t-shirts! Do you?

Proceeds of all t-shirt sales go towards moving our family to Los Angeles!

We'll have more soon. Our art department is understaffed, overpaid and often found stuck changing diapers, but we'll have some more original designs soon.

Also check out Cool Cat t-shirts by our own Andrew Shim. He's got some great designs that I'd be caught out in public wearing.

5,000 t-shirts to sell, 5,000 t-shirts to sell...
take one down, wear it around, 4,999 t-shirts to sell...

Time to stretch your legs and take a break. (short!) Go grab something to drank and hit the restroom then head back here for some more.

LA or Bust - How to make $25,000 in 30 days days 1-10.
LA or Bust - The hump days 11-20
LA or Bust - Final Countdown! days 21-30.