TORNADOES ARE SCARY

I went from a leak in the attic to hiding in the basement.

How to Fix a Leak in a Storm

I woke up yesterday when water splashed on my face. Going up the ladder into my rickety attic-- barely more than a crawl space, you can't even stand in the middle-- I saw a long leak coming in between two boards, collecting on a joist and coming down into the (wet) insulation over my head. I spread out the insulation to dry, put down a bucket on a cross-board, and went to work.

I knew the roof needed real work, but I can't fix it in a storm. So, to control the leak, I put two small screws in both sides of the joist above the bucket. Then I tied tight some old twine in place and strung it down into the bucket. A quick fix, but at least the water now all goes into the bucket until I can do some real roofwork.

I'm going to have to go up, tear off some shingles, lay down new tar paper and some new shingles. I want an adonized tin roof that collects water runoff, but that'll have to wait until I can afford the materials.

How to Cower Like a Little Baby During a Tornado

My house is on the edge of a forest, at the foot of a hill behind. We get a lot of wind, but mostly it blasts through our empty front yard. We have had tornadoes before, but this is an old house and still standing. Still, it sounds like all Tennessee got hit yesterday, and neighboring states besides, so I ended up in the basement-- the walls leak, I need to seal it-- with a flashlight, a weather radio, and a prayer.

The Red Cross has a great blog up about their relief efforts. Fortunately, all my damage is a couple of downed trees (soon to be lumber) and even less hair on my head. Also:

• Info on How to Prepare a Home Tornado Plan and Disaster Kit (also in Spanish)
  
• as a PDF (also in Spanish)
• And Insurance, too. I need to check out my plan and make sure I'm not sawing logs for a lean-to if it all gets blown away.
  

The tornadoes didn't pass until late. And I didn't sleep well. But I'm thankful we're all okay, and my prayers go out to those of us who were hit hard.

How My Cat Weathers the Storm

Honestly, I don't know. She's an outside cat. Animals are smarter than us about disaster, I think-- they can tell it's coming and take measures besides. She was meowing on the porch early today, glad to see we're both safe.

(We Interrupt This Blog...)

AUGH! The roof's leaking!

PF tip: money spent on maintenance is the best investment!

Now where's the ladder?

Get POOR Fast

How NOT to Monetize Your Cat: a Case Study.

Down the street lives Purrty Petey. He has a human named Anton he keeps with him, who's jumps from job to job, scheme to scheme.

The human tries to make money every which way. Rather than get DVDs from the library, he buys them, burns them for his collection, and then resells them used on eBay. Rather than invest in bonds or an index fund, he speculates on collectibles and eBay. (Mouldering Beanie Babies infest his rented storage unit.)

Worst of all, rather than invest in learning new skills for higher pay, he spends tons of time and money on Get Rich Quick schemes. You know them-- promising huge returns on real estate, Forex trading, options, or some "foolproof" product, they have infomercials and hotel conferences. Anton's been to a dozen of these things. He goes for the $1995! $995! $500! "free" seminar, but then they upsell books, CDs, home training courses and networking.

Dozens of these courses litter his apartment. Purry Petey uses them for litter. He has to. Anton's too busy chasing some other fake dream.

Worst of all, Purry Petey tries to tell him. He tears up the couch, he pukes in the undies drawer. (Once he was asleep in it, and Anton closed it on him. For a week after, he was a guilty "commando.") Anton won't sit down with himself long enough to see how he's wasting his time-- his life-- on some other empty promise. He could be monetizing his cat, building side streams of income, taking small steps to financial & feline freedom, but he doesn't read this blog.

Alas!

REVIEW: 4 Hour Work Week

So this guy says you only have to work FOUR HOURS a week.

Yeah, RIGHT! Good luck hopping off to Bora Bora when you've got a CAT to take care of! For God's sake, who changes the litter? Well, Zooey's an outdoor cat, so I guess there is no litter. What will the cat eat, Tim Ferris? Huh? Dirt? Floorboards? MICE? Or do you just outsource it to your neighbors? But then you have to draw up a 1099 for them, and they're just your freaking NEIGHBORS! And what if they're from some third-world country where they EAT cats? Did your "Muse" design ever think of THAT? New clause in muse design: "in case of the "help" eating Zooey, FREAK THE LIVING CRAP OUT AND THROW Mr. TIM FERRIS'S BOOK IN THE REACTOR CORE."

Oh, who am I kidding, I'll never have "help." Or even help.

The "Muse," by the way, is the online business Mr. Tim Ferris has designed so he doesn't have to work. The book has a lot of random stuff about not reading email and speaking Indonesian, but really it's about how he made an e-business selling herbal jujuberries to men who punch each other in the face for money. He had also punched men in the face as a hobby, so he had an "in."

It lets him disappear into the Third World for months at a time and still make money while having other people do all the work. I think he's NUTS. I think he got his ideas at the CIRCUS. I think his name is Mr. TIM FERRIS WHEEL. HA! How you like THOSE jujuberries? I guess this is the part of the review where I should attack his character just because he has a life I'd like to have. Well, Mr. WHEEL, I am not the first person to say that taking other people's work for money is evil. I think Karl Marx said it somewhere down the line!

Okay, to his credit, he makes his money selling "nutraceuticals," not investment systems or speeches about how great money is. So his recent turn as a entrepreneur selling entrepreneurship is not as foul as most of the other money/finance/work gurus out there. Even better, he puts it all in the book, not a three-day, $1995 $995 $495! limited time offer! workshop. And he seems smart, and earnest, though perhaps a little too pleased with himself.

And he has some good notions about designing the business, even if they're a little light on particulars. (While reading, I was like, "I can do this!" Afterwards, I'm not too sure.) And his language-learning pronouncements seem on the level. (I personally became fluent in Tabby only after creating an immersion environment, looping tapes of Zooey meowing until I was dreaming in Standard Cat first, then Tabby and Siamese.)

Meanwhile, I think Zooey has like a four-minute work week. She meows at the door when she wants feeding, but the rest of the time she's out doing her thing. I mean, it's not like Haggis, my friend Chevron's cat, who actually has to produce love and affection every now and then. Zooey never sleeps coiled up at my feet. Well, she was a stray. She had a hard life before we met. I guess I should just be happy she's willing to help out around the house: catching mice, being monetized, etc.

I wonder if Mr. Wheel has any pets. Does he hire people to love them? Do they hire other pets-- you know, scraggly pets nobody wants, like fat chihuahuas and echidnas and billygoats, to love the hired people back? What happens then, does everyone just sit around while all the love takes place everywhere else? What happens if we run out of pets who are less loved than the "New Rich" pets who don't feel any fear and so don't work for love?


Is love a renewable resource? I need to research this.

How This Book Made Me Feel Stupid and Lame, Which Seems to be Part of the Author's Purpose in Talking All the Time about How Great He Is and All the Cool Stuff He Did by the Age of 15 When I Still Had a Mullet:

• The Author left his six-figure job, which I never had in the first place, so now he can look down on me twice
  
• I'm not so convinced of my own abilities that I didn't write a book about The Four-Cat Work Week first
• I didn't get a BA from Princeton, or even Squireton. Can I still achieve something in the world, or should I just quit now?
  
• I didn't go to Stanford either. Neither did the author, but he has spoken there, and, being in Palo Alto, is kind of at the center of this "New Rich" world of venture capital and internet gazillionaires. I think part of the point of said institution is just looking down on people because your mascot is a tree named after a bird, and you can thereby spend the rest of your life in a state of reassuringly smug condescension when everyone in the sane world mistakes the word "Cardinal" for a cardinal. Also, you know you'll never really go deep in the NCAA's.

How This Book Made Me Feel Like Zooey When She Huffs a Bunch of Catnip:

• A lot of the eMarketing stuff seemed familiar, so I guess I'm doing something right
• I don't like to travel, so I don't mind spending EVERY WAKING MINUTE making CATpitalism! your one-spot stop for cat-related monetization
  
• I love my cat too much to outsource her
  

(Disclosure: Author owns Chevron [CVX] stock, but not very much.)

HSBC Online Is Going Modern Catty

After setting up my account with HSBC Online, I mailed in a check. Just over a week later, I received the password in the mail. They're obsessed with security, see-- what with the advent of keylogging malware and whatnot, it makes the most sense to stay secure.

So, in my email, my login ID. In my snail mail, my password. Both huge strings of numbers. Makes sense. Perhaps in response to old news about security threats, they also have a unique "security key" that you type in on a Flash keyboard with your mouse, which is used at every login. So I'm satisfied. Now I have a VERY secure account I can link to brick-&-mortar accounts, a (relatively) high interest rate, and a place to funnel Adsense/Affiliate/Other money. Perfect!

And my own online security ritual? I have two browsers installed. One I use for browsing, personal emailing, etc etc. The other I use only for business and personal finance. It is set up to remember NONE of my passwords, and to completely wipe its history, cookies, and pretty much everything every time I quit. That way Zooey can't realign my 401(k), and Mr. MacMuffin can't spam his relatives with ads for Cutco knives.

I also run virus scans regularly, using Leopard Cache Cleaner. I work on a Mac, which has no real viruses, but I don't want to infect friends. Besides, nobody likes the smug, especially that guy in those Mac commercials. Probably he never fixes his permissions or runs his maintenance scripts, and then his kernel pops and he has to spend three unpleasant hours getting poked at by a Mac Genius before meeting his boorish but lovable PC pal for an evening of girl drinks and sniping.

(P.S. My passwords are NOT cat-related. Suprised?)

Find of the day: Modern Cat. I'm a little too rustic & bumpkiny for this stuff, and Zooey's a little too outdoorsy, but perhaps those of us with the chic flair thing going on will find cat-products of value and interest.

This Long Tail is NOT hideous!

Fig. 4. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson,

interpretation Zooey.

So. I am now looking for a business design that will work for Zooey's freakishly long tail. Hopefully there are enough people out there who need to get all their business/economics/pet food information from the same source. Otherwise we may need a trip to the plastic veterinarisurgeon.

I'm not reading the book-- because the idea has transcended the book-- but Chris Anderson basically writes that, since the Internet offers unlimited "shelf" space, you can make a profit on ultra-niche products which would get crowded out by the "gigantic, bloated head" products, like non-cat-related business & finance books.

Apparently it works quite well for ultra-niche businesses, like role-playing game books and classical music. (Keep in mind that CATpitalism is no ultra-niche! It just hasn't taken off yet.)

The idea has been kind of epoch-making in e-business, and Zooey and I are going to see if we can get in on the action. It's been kind of slow here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. But, based on this Tail thing and the Cash Machine book reviewed yesterday, I think it's actually possible we could make some scratch from this kind of stuff. And, as always, we will do it out here in public, and let you know how it goes...

REVIEW: Cash Machine for Life

Loral Langemeier flips the proverbial bird at the average personal finance blogger. She writes,

If you want to sit around counting pennies and live a smaller, have-to life, then focus on your debt. In fact, I promise you that if you spend the next year focused on getting your debt down to nothing, you will have exactly that at the end of the year-- nothing. Focusing on debt is like dieting without exercise. It's an endless cycle of starvation and deprivation with no lasting results. (pg. 3)

And, since I'm one of the rare few who made it a point never to carry either school or credit card debt, I can kind of see where she's coming from. She continues:

A colleague of mine drinks three iced quad venti nonfat no-whip mochas a day. His monthly coffee habit is some people's car payment.

She neglects to mention his heart exploded from caffeine overload, and even the EMS crew left the scene buzzing, only to get run over by the Maserati-driving barrista who profited from his loss.

Anyway, Langemeier has written three (3) books with "Millionaire" in the title. How's that working for you, Loral? The latest one is about creating a "Cash Machine for Life." She outlines this with her proprietary (her word) Wealth Cycle (string of trademarks here), which is our first warning sign. Always beware authors , talking about money, who have clearly made that money by talking about making money (I include my cat in that group), or worse yet, selling a proprietary system that makes you money.

Langemeier does, as seminars and exclusive networking opportunities. They look better than those "Millionaire Cat" seminars, where you point at your cat and yell, "I HAVE A MILLIONAIRE CAT!" But they still leave me a little wary.

Fortunately, her book is useful, mainly for how it defines "Cash Machine." It is NOT a pie-in-the-sky great idea, like franchising MMA CATpitalism interactive scratching post sellers all through the world. It IS, however, a laundromat. Or a car wash. It has to make money NOW. And it should be related to what you already know, not what you want to know. So for me, it's not DOGpitalism-- no, I know cats, so I should focus my energies there. For instance, start a consulting business where I explain to cat owners how to realign their portfolios into cat-friendly equities.

To build a Cash Machine, she emphasizes the fast & the practical. Two ideas stand out: "Seven Weeks to Sales" and the necessity of NOT being a "Lone Ranger." I never watched Westerns, so I'm glad she explained that she meant to find a mentor, a model, and to get other people to cover your weaknesses. I, for instance, am bad with setting things on fire, so I would outsource that to a contractor. If my Cash Machine for Life involved setting things on fire. Which it doesn't.

The "Seven Weeks to Sales" walks through a process not just of coming up with a business, a plan, and a team, but a structure. You have to make it a legal entity. For her model, it's non-negotiable. That way, you can expand it, hire others to do the work, and-- most importantly-- sell it later.

She gives some web extras that deserve mention. One, a PDF of Cash Machine ideas, lists 25 pages' worth of every job known to humankind. A sample:

• Pick-up kids from school
• Tutoring
• Pet Psychic
• Advertising Coach
• Personal Assistant Service
• Mobile Coffee Truck
• House Sitting
• Pet Sitting
• Flower Shop
  

It is so encyclopedic as to be quite useless, and kind of thoughtless. I can't imagine she expects anyone will read it.

So, fair enough. Some other books cover similar ground, but not with her emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts. Business organization and legal structure are perhaps the most important part, but books like The Four Hour Work Week flit right past them. She gives them due attention. You'll still have to hire an accountant or a lawyer, but at least you'll know what to ask.

IN SUM:

How This Book Gave Me the Gout, a Misunderstood Disease Not Just for the Old Rich:

• The "proprietary" nonsense. It's a sound set of principles, but a "process" only so she can sell it-- so it's jargon-heavy. I can't stand jargon, and having not yet read her other two books, much of this book is rougher going than it has to be.
• The organization. She relies a lot on stuff from her Cash Machines Seminars, so the book can be needlessly hard to follow. In other words, should I just take the seminar? Well, I'm not interested in furthering your Cash Machine, because those kinds of things are always fluff. It's a good time management principle: AVOID MEETINGS. In my book, Seminar = Meeting.
• Learn to write better or spend more for your ghostwriter, whichever it is. If this book is a bestseller, it's because people want money, not because you can write your way out of a wet paper bag.
  

How This Book Fed My Cat Delicious Tunafish:

• Has a sense of the legal ramifications of business-- what other money-machine book talks about due diligence?
• She's right about getting rich. So many people have long-term plans to retire rich, but in the meantimes they bend over backwards to pinch pennies. Rather, building more income streams-- especially passive ones-- makes more sense.