Mind of a Young Undergrad Entrepreneur

Yes! Today, I finally got a chance to get back at companies that outsource their call centers.

I purchased Quickbooks Pro 2008 for my startup company - Influenza Media with the assumption that it will support multi-currencies just like ALL previous versions. Sadly, I found out that it only supports CDN currency when I got home.

I gave Quickbooks a call and asked about their “upgrade service”. Long story short, they asked for another $200 dollars to “upgrade” my Pro version to a Multicurrency version, which makes the total sum up to ~$400 dollars. That’s fine because they had told me that I could keep the Pro software…which means I can just return it back to Best Buy (where I bought the software) and get my full money back!

What costs $400 dollars - I got for $200 all from “upgrading” my software.

In your face India!

- Peter Kao

After exams were finished, I quickly scouted out activities that would relax me a bit. I’ve been getting some crazy pain down my lower back and thought I should take it easy for a few days (before my business starts).

My girlfriend just started doing something called Hot Yoga and after some thinking I decided to try it out for a week.

Hot yoga simply involves doing traditional yoga but in a very hot room. Kind of like a sauna but not that intense.

It was definitely tiring and the heat didn’t help either, but that’s the point. The activity helps your body detoxify the toxins that are in your pores while balancing the 3 attributes of your body: strength, flexibility and balance.

It helped in keeping me relaxed but it did little for my back-pain (which it’s suppose to help). In fact, it made the pain worse…

If you want a good workout and are in the Thornhill area - checkout Yoga Tree (http://www.yogatree.ca).

Cheers,

Peter Kao 

I’m 6 days late, but it’s not like anyone cares anyways!

Do a complete refresh of my website by holding down SHIFT + clicking refresh to see the changes (if you can’t already see them).

Also, I added a new page - http://peterkao.com/backgrounds. It’ll hold all the background images that I draw…yay!

- Peter Kao

When I was young, I read a lot. I mean A LOT. My mother made daily visits to the library when I was young, and naturally my brother and I would tag along. I’ve read all the books in the kid’s science section and half of the books in the adult’s science section. I love to learn, and books are just another method of doing so.

What does this have to do with this post? Well, when you learn about the mechanics of something that is intrinsically human (such as walking), it can really mess up those mechanics if you pay enough attention.

In my high school years, I took an interest in the mechanics of walking after watching an episode of Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel (my favorite channel btw). I learned about how we walk and the mechanics of walking. I also learned the roles that bones, muscles, tendons and joints play while you walk. I’ve even carefully studied a 15-sec video of a person walking for hours straight.

Soon enough, the mechanics of walking was constantly on my mind. It became so obsessive that I would analyze the movement of each step I took as I walked. And because I had thought that a reversed-pendulum (it’s the way you move your legs) was a funny concept , I began experimenting with different “ways of walking.” Just for kicks, an example would be to lift your legs with the heel of your foot and to land on your toes instead of lifting with your toes and landing on your heels.

After a while, I started walking abnormally because so much was going through my head as I walked. I had to consciously think about walking in order to walk without looking like an idiot. This lasted for about 3 years…

In a way, I overrided parts of my mind that should be so natural and intrinsic to a human-being that it shouldn’t take any thought to perform.

You can read more about the basics of walking here: http://www.rubberbug.com/walking.htm - just try not to think about it too much while you’re walking

- Peter Kao

I am looking around for a web designer right now to develop my online advertising corporate website (InfluenzaMedia.com), and have posted on popular freelance websites such as Elance.com or Guru.com.

I’ve gotten over 30+ bids for the projected - all with reasonable quotes. However, I have noticed that out of the 30 something companies I looked at, only about 2 or 3 produce decent websites. Most of them claim to be web designers, but I don’t see any design in their work. They all look like cookie-cutters to me…

Maybe Guru.com or Elance.com isn’t the right place to look for talent, despite so many articles proclaiming that they are the prime place to look for online services…

- Peter Kao