Ups and Downs

What a week!

Being employed sucks. I kinda miss being unemployed last year, even though it was only for 3 weeks. Strangely liberating. Time to get back to that.

Just ran an analysis for a new real estate deal one of my partners ran by me. I need to learn some advanced Excel tricks. That might be the only good reason to get an MBA. My valuation model needs some work. I plan to sit down one day and sketch that out. Now if I can find a nice source of valuation information that has a programmable Web services API! That would be sweet. I think I may have found something similar, but I'll have to look at it a bit more. If you have any good resources for learning how to master the power that is Microsoft Excel, please share! I hate Microsoft, but I LOVE Microsoft Excel!

I like this house though. Its already rented and not far from another one we already own. (Our best deal to date, actually.) The numbers are very reasonable and it should be able to cash flow pretty well. My personal goal is to bring in 5 properties to the group this year. I need to ramp up the prospecting.

*sigh*

I know there are some folks out there who want to know more about "The Business". Well, things are coming together now. I FINALLY managed to get my certificate from VeriSign last Friday, 16 February. A better way to end what was generally a crappy week. Then I tried to install the cert, and everything fell apart. Seems for all the fighting I had done to push the thing through, I managed to generate the wrong kind of data for the wrong kind of cert. VeriSign sells Java code signing certs as well as the ubiquitous SSL web server certs. I had generated data for the latter, when what I needed for the former. Thankfully, after a call to VeriSign yesterday (which was returned within 2 hours although the voicemail message told me to expect 24 hour turnaround), I was able to get the confusion cleared up. I was also informed that I could replace the already-issued certificate with a new one for free, since I was still within 30 days of issuance.

Schweet!

So I have a new code signing cert application in and the process is moving, albeit a bit glacial for my tastes. I'll follow up with them after I call my cousin about legal services.

My partner is making GREAT headway it seems. She's too cool, man! Too fuggin' cool.

Anyway, my thoughts are very random and scattered right now. I'm still recovering from Friday night's festivities. As I said, since I couldn't get myself to Trinidad, I brought Trinidad to me (as much as possible). More on that in a later post.

Until next time...