Sloe Times

Welcome to the maelstrom that kicks off August. It's a little annoying that the summer is winding down already and I haven't been able to get out for even nine holes of golf. I did get out to the driving range the other day and have come to the conclusion that a year without golf has seen me in some of the worst shape yet. My swing (for whatever it was before) is still there but I got tired just swinging clubs for 90 minutes. Imagine trying to walk and carry my clubs, I don't think I'd make it past the 3rd hole on my favorite course. Anyway, enough about my out of shape ass.

Continuing my education on real estate investing I'm following up on the suggestion of an earlier commenter and trying to understand the options available with REITs. I found this REIT Portal that seems pretty good. A couple of things that stand out in it for me is not only the information about the topic but also a search option to actually find REITs. Looks like I'll have to open up a brokerage account someplace to be able to invest in any of the publicly traded options but I'm not quite that far along yet. It's been a few months since the last budget exercise, it's about time to go through one again and fix some of the cracks that have surfaced. An important output from this will be to actually start building up the investing nest egg. For the short term I'll just throw it in a savings account while I try and figure out what kind of bankroll is required to actually start.

Speaking of bankrolls, I was able to parlay my $40 that was left over in my Party account into $100 relatively quickly playing $.50/$1. Made a stab at $1/$2 and after taking a beating and only being able to drag myself back up to a -$25 loss I went back to the $.50/$1 tables until I could run it up to $100 again which I was able to do last night. Back to $1/$2 today and walked away positive, though only slightly. Maybe it's just perception but I would swear that the $1/$2 players are worse than the $.50/$1 players. Or maybe the real issue is that I have an unrealistic expectation that players at the $1/$2 level would actually be better and so their bad plays are surprising me when they shouldn't. Regardless, the lesson here is to beware tangling with maniacs while working a short bankroll.

I had my interviews last week for a different position at work. On the upside I had worked with most of the interviewers in the past and had plenty of good experiences with them so was a 'known quantity' and the interviews were relatively straightforward events. The downside is that after getting glowing feedback from everyone and a verbal offer to join the team it turns out that their paperwork is lagging behind and they can't actually write me a formal offer yet. I'm confident that it will sort itself out, it's just a little annoying for the build up to occur only to trip over a speed bump just before the finish.

I'm getting more and more serious about wanting to move forward with my idea for an MMOG but I've run into a minor obstacle. The IP for the setting and theme I want to use is licensed to someone else. This other group already has at least two products in the MMOG space and is not planning to produce another one using the theme and setting that I want. I guess the trick now is either to find another way to move forward without the license (going a similar but different route) or trying to figure out a compelling proposal for a partnership with the company who currently owns the license. The tough part at this point is assembling the data needed for a VC treatment and presentation. I'm thinking that if I can put a proposal together that would get others as enthusiastic about the idea as me it would be a look getting the money to move forward with development. Which leads me to another area of study, what goes into a winning VC proposal?

posted by Andres Silva  # 8/01/2005 01:39:00 PM