Tag: Travel

I like the Bell Curve. It’s one of those universal principles that can be applied in millions of different ways throughout your life to help make sense of things. Along with the bell curve, I think there’s another graph we should all internalize and use to understand life: the jagged upwards line. Just as the…

Last Friday night, after two years of really hard work on SETT, we sent invite codes out to the four hundred people on the SETT waiting list, offering fifty spots. Whoever managed to snag a spot could either take a free basic account or buy a premium account and get 50% off for life. The…

A few people asked what I eat every day. I think that what I eat is of minor interest, but maybe the reasoning behind it might be more valuable. First the what. My friend Dick Talens suggested that I do intermittent fasting, which means that I eat during only an eight hour period each day.…

Something I wrestle with from time to time is whether to focus on my strengths or my weaknesses. On one hand, weaknesses often represent the lowest hanging fruit. If I’m really bad at, say, programming, a small amount of effort can radically increase my abilities. If I was excellent at programming, that same amount of…

It’s funny, this natural inclination we have for things to be easy. Everyone wants to work really hard, not for its own sake, but only so that they can stop working hard and go live on a beach. They’re willing to suffer through the ordeal of dating to find that perfect soulmate so that they…

First, the results. Since the World Series of Poker last year, I’ve played 174 hours of poker. I play limit hold’em, with almost all of my play at the $10/20 or $15/30 level. In that time I’ve made $7594, which is $43.70 per hour. I say that I’m a semi-professional, because obviously 5 hours of…

I was at a party earlier tonight, talking to a guy who had lived in rural China for a while. The girls there, he told me, were naturally very beautiful, but didn’t take care of their hair or skin. All I could think was what a huge opportunity existed for those girls: be the one…

I may have to add an asterisk to the saying that buying things can’t make you happy. I bought a motorcycle, and I’ll be damned if it hasn’t made me one percent happier than I used to be. Then again, we all know that spending money on experiences can make you happy. A motorcycle isn’t…

I love San Francisco so much that every time I return here from a trip, I resolve to stay for a while and enjoy the city. That never happens. Next week I’m going to Tahoe, then Vegas the following weekend, and then to Austin for SXSW the week after that. Cabo or Hawaii follows in…

“Like a stalker thing?” “No,” I replied, “You don’t get it. Her name is Tynan, too! That’s crazy!” “I guess.” Then I realized that my friend, Phil Jr. was sitting next to his father, Phil Sr.. Meeting someone with the same name wasn’t a big deal to him. But it was for me. Until yesterday…