Okay, I admit it. I’ve been back for a few days and I’ve been procrastinating about writing this blog. Burning Man was such an intense and different week for me that I know I’m either going to write this incredibly long blog about it, or give up entirely and fall over dead before I finish writing about it.

First of all, pictures are here. Have fun digging through them. I’ve tried to rotate them and add titles and descriptions wherever possible. Enjoy!

Where the heck do I begin? I carpooled up with Kristen, who is one of Andrew’s friends. We were running late and didn’t get there until Tuesday morning around 2:30AM. That night sucked, to put it mildly. I got blasted with a super soaker from some random crazy drunk guy; I couldn’t find the tent I was supposed to be borrowing from another camp member; I had a horrible fear of porta-potties; and I slept badly.

The next two days or so, I slowly adjusted to life without email, phones, toilets, money, air conditioning, or running water. The first day was by far my worst; I started coming out of my shell after that and getting more adapted to the environment. I walked around with Andrew and went to see tons of great art installations. The really cool thing about Burning Man is that all of the art installations are interactive. I found everything from a giant drum set to a big blue head with an entire room in the back of it to a bookmobile that roamed around the playa to a giant magnetic poetry wall to lots of tiny art installations that did something interesting and unique. In the meantime, I was also slowly adapting to the weather (hot during the day, really cold at night, and with random dust storms.)

Burning Man really is an indescribable experience. It’s about so much more than pooing in portapotties and living with little or no modern amenities. It’s even about more than just going around the playa and playing with huge interactive art pieces. The best way to explain it is simply that you have freedom to do absolutely whatever the hell you want to do (within the confines of the environment.) Want to walk around naked? Sure! Want to dress up like the opposite sex? Heck, you’ll look normal. Want to tell people you’re something you’re not? Have sex or make out with someone you normally wouldn’t? Take any kind of drug you’ve ever wanted to try? Go to a rave that lasts for 5 straight days? Yep, you can do that. At Burning Man, you can be whoever the heck you want; try on new personalities as others try on clothes, and take risks you probably wouldn’t take in everyday life. In short, it is true freedom.

Oh yeah, and you can play Dance Dance Immolation, a DDR clone that requires a flame-proof suit and an oxygen line, because you will be shot in the face with a huge flame if you miss more than 3 steps.

Pure insanity.

I actually wasn’t too daring at Burning Man; I didn’t go for the hard drugs and didn’t run around naked. I did meet someone I really like, though! I’ll name him R for the purposes of this blog… he is a total cutie, and he and I hit it off amazingly well, so I’ll definitely be writing more about him in the future! 😉 (Fortunately, like most of the people in our camp, he lives in the Bay Area, so at least there isn’t distance to contend with.) I also definitely have some highlights: I participated in a huge pillow fight; I was spun around on a platform while watching trippy visualizations (which was one of the best highs I have ever had without drugs being involved); and (one of my favorite parts of the trip) I listened to Paul Oakenfold spinning live through the night at an outdoor club, complete with shooting flames that erupted at climactic points in the music!

I had a really incredible time and I will be back next year, although for next year I’m going to get some sort of camper so I can sleep through the noise… I’m such a light sleeper that I got awakened many times throughout the night by thumping music or freezing cold temperatures.

For those of you curious about Burning Man, and since it’s nearly impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t been there, Morford sums it up pretty well. That column was written in 2001, but remains fairly accurate.

Back to the “real world”! Phew, I’m exhausted…

Oh man. I pretty much killed myself at BARCamp last weekend. And by “killed myself” I mean “killed off that pesky immune system.” That’s right; I’m sick. A cold is my body’s way of telling me “SLOW DOWN FOR A MINUTE AND GET SOME SLEEP, WOULDJA?!” I guess sleeping 4 hours Friday night and 6 hours Saturday (and that was a fragmented 6 hours; it was more like 4+1+1) was not enough, despite the fact that I slept most of Sunday to make up for it. I took yesterday almost completely off work as a “recovery day” and I took another half-day off today to take another nap, toss down some Sudafed, and relax a bit.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, vacation!!! Okay, so my silly friend Andrew (yes, Andrew, you are silly!) is a 9-year Burning Man veteran, and he told me such great stories about it that I just had to try it. Why Burning Man? Well, apart from the obvious why-NOT-Burning-Man-as-I-am-one-of-those-crazy-people-who-will-try-almost-anything-once, a lot of my friends have gone and really enjoyed it; I need a vacation; and I really need a vacation where I don’t have to be awakened by my cell phone. Since there are no cell towers in the desert, that problem is solved (thank God.) Brandon & Ben have agreed to hold down the office for a week while I am gone and report back to me with a “Erica, please hire someone with X, Y, and Z skills so we are not running around like crazy people when you decide to take a vacation” post-mortem when I get back.

So Andrew and I went to a Giants game last night, where we watched the Giants stomp the Phillies 5-0 and sat there talking about Burning Man the whole time. I bought my ticket today ($240; craigslist saved me about $18 over the list price!) and found a ride, a tent, and bought some weird/cool/funky clothes (the pics that come out of this are going to be freakin’ hilarious!) I still need to buy more clothes, and get together some “essentials” like dust masks and water before I go.

I am fabulously excited about Burning Man, as I already know it will be completely unlike anything I have ever experienced, and please God let there be some hottie guys there, cuz I need some’o’dat. I’ve put Forex training on hold for a couple of weeks (until I get back) so I can devote my full attention to making sure Burning Man rocks my freakin’ world. This week is already completely crammed full of stuff to do; I have something going on every single night, and conflicting engagements most of those nights! I have become a social butterfly and I am lovin’ every minute of it!

Until next time… I’m preparing to PARTY!!

I took a few days off from Forex and headed up to Sacramento to join N at the state fair on Saturday. It was pretty fun! I think the best part was the giant turkey leg N had for lunch. That was some turkey leg! Food and fat people galore…and lots of ways to spend money, though N and I got out relatively unscathed. Even though the fair was held in Sacramento, which is notorious for being really hot in the summer, it was a gorgeous day and wasn’t burning hot.

Last night, I dove back into Forex for my 1-week anniversary of trading. Last night felt to me like the first night where I had true confidence in my trading skills, and it showed… I made 14 pips in 2 trades!

There are many different styles of trading, from “day trading” (where you hold open a trade from 1 hour to 72 hours), to “momentum trading” (you “ride the wave” and try to get a lot of pips in a short time), to this goofy little offshoot of trading called “pip sniping”. Pip snipers are the hit-and-run gangsters of trading. Pip snipers “pick off” tiny movements in currency and get 2, 3, 5, or 10 pips in a trade… and they do it as many times a day as necessary to make a ton of money in trading.

After a few days of trading, you definitely find the trading style of the 3 above that you’re most in line with. Day traders will leave trades open overnight and set careful limits and stops to get what they want; momentum traders keep half an eye on the market all day (and often set up SMS alerts when a market hits a certain level); and pip snipers are always ready with the trigger finger, poised on that “buy” or “sell” button. Yeah, I’m a pip sniper! (Actually, I think most traders start out as pip snipers, and then progress to other forms of trading.) There’s something about the adrenaline rush of pip sniping that’s quite addictive. “It’s going up!” you crow excitedly (or in dismay, depending on how you just traded.) “Now it’s going down!” Since the market changes every few seconds, you always have something going on. This is when it’s helpful to have two monitors; you can keep the charts open on the secondary monitor and glance over every few minutes to make sure you have a good feel for what the market is doing.

I’ve pip-sniped 3 pips so far tonight, and I called the market right on the money! I’m going to put up some example charts on makemoneytradingcurrency.com just as soon as I have time to write about how I trade.

As a side note, I started with $5000 in my demo account (demo account = not real money), and I now have $5025. In my first week, I’ve made 17 trades, of which 10 have gained me pips. That’s a 58.8% average, which is pretty good for week #1! I’ll keep these statistics updated as I continue trading.

I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, so to speak… getting up early (early is defined as 9AM) and going to bed late (the Forex chat I attend is from 11PM-1AM, and I usually stay up trading until 2AM or so.) Combine that with a lot of work at Simpli and meetings after work, as well as trying to make some reasonable time for friends, and I am feeling pretty burned out from pushing myself so hard. Right now, nothing sounds better than a pile of sleep and less stress at Simpli, but since that’s not going to happen, I have to push on and do the best I can. I am feeling exhausted and grumpy right now, so I can tell that the lack of sleep is catching up with me.

I have been making several trades in the Forex market, mostly good. I am finding that it is definitely possible to make a consistent 10 pips a day. The chat rooms have proved helpful too; the 11PM moderated chat is a voice-capable chat, so it’s neat to be able to hear the excitement as the market starts moving.

The two classic emotions to avoid in Forex are fear (“I don’t know if I want to jump in yet”, even though the signals are telling you it’s a good time to get in), and greed (“I’m going to stay in a bit longer and try to grab some more pips”, even though the market signs are telling you to exit!) A classic example of greed showed up last night during the chat. The moderator advised us to get in on a buy. The market went up about 5 pips and then lost its momentum and couldn’t decide which direction it wanted to go. “That’s a warning sign,” the chat moderator said. “I would advise you to take your profits now” (which means close the trade.) No sooner had he said it than a chat participant jumped in and said “I think I’m going to hold my trade… I’m up 6 right now. I’ll sell if I get down to +3.” In the next minute, the market had gone down 12 pips, wiping out that guy’s profit and putting him in the negative. (Fortunately, I got out right before that happened since I took the moderator’s advice.)

The key thing to remember is that when the market is trending sideways; that is, it isn’t really moving up or down, that there is no science to predict where it’s going to go next. Since the Euro is in a general “up” trend right now, you’re more likely to guess right by buying currency rather than selling. But that’s a risky gamble — as I found out the hard way last night, when I put in a trade and lost about 14 pips because the market was trending sideways and I thought it was going to go up. Lesson learned: Wait for the indicators; don’t get impatient and try to guess where the market is going to go!

The good news is, although I’m down slightly from my $5000 start in my demo account, I’m not down much and I do seem to have the fundamentals of making a good trade. I just have to be patient! (If Forex actually teaches me how to be patient, that will be an amazing accomplishment. Heh!)

I’m going to set some goals for Forex. First of all, if I do double my money every 30 days by making 10 pips a day, I should have over $2 million after 1 year of trading. But I am going to set a much more conservative goal — that way, I don’t feel pressure if I’m not a millionaire on my 1-year Forex anniversary!

Here are the goals I’m setting:
1) Spend at least 30 days in the demo account. Make sure I’m making consistently good trades and am “up” (hopefully pretty far up) over my $5000 start (the $5000 isn’t real money, but you trade on the real market like it is) before even considering putting any of my money into the market.
2) Start with $1000 of my money once I’m really comfortable trading. Go for the 10 pips a day goal. But the real goal is just to have consistently more money in my account every day.
3) Once I’ve hit $5000, pull out money as needed to pay off debt, but continue to keep at least $5000 in my account.

The great thing about Forex is that having $5000 in your account does NOT mean that that $5000 is at risk all the time. In fact, on a single trade, you should only have 5% of your account at risk. That means that the most you’re risking at any given time is $250. By setting your stop losses correctly, you’ll never lose more than $100-$250 on a single trade… but you can make $300 or more on a single trade in a matter of minutes.

4) My goal, at the end of 12 months of real trading, is to have made at least $25,000 in the Forex market. How did I figure this out? Well, I spend about 8-10 hours a week on Forex trading. I could be spending that time doing consulting (programming, repairing computers, etc.) at $50/hour. $50/hr x 10 hours a week x 52 weeks = $26,000. So I figure if I make $25,000 in the Forex market, I’ll be doing at least as well as I would have by doing computer consulting, and Forex is way more interesting for me. Also, I think $1000->$25,000 in 12 months is a worthy investment.

There are my goals… I’ll keep updating as my trades progress and I learn more about the market!

It’s been a long week. It was one of those weeks that seems to be infinitely long and go by very quickly at the same time. I survived on little sleep and a lot of caffeine (hey, for me, half a Diet Dr. Pepper is a “lot” of caffeine!) I was out past midnight almost every night, including last night, when I got back from SuperHappyDevHouse at about 4:45AM.

To run it down quickly, I got back Monday, went to a Forex meeting on Tuesday (which was in San Rafael, which is over an hour away from my house, and ended at about 12:30AM), went to movie night on Wednesday (Sideways, which I didn’t like since I am not a 40-something going through a midlife crisis), went out with Bill Ayers to do a sales mentoring session in SF on Thursday night, went with D to Dave & Buster’s on Friday, and went to SuperHappyDevHouse on Saturday. Which brings us to today, and somehow I have survived the week. Leetle zoom has 1400 more miles on him (in 10 days!!) and has had an alignment problem fixed. He is also very dirty, and I have promised to show him some lovin’ by getting him a car wash next week.

Next week is already fully set to be a blur as well. Tomorrow I have my first Forex training. For those of you who don’t know what Forex is, it’s foreign currency (exchange) trading… kind of like day trading, but with currency instead of stocks. I have watched other people make a lot of money with this, and I am excited to embark on this as a hobby that will hopefully make me some money as well. The first training is 8 hours long and is a web class. Then I do some trades, get comfortable with the system, and take the advanced training, which is another 8 hours and which I will probably do next month.

My friends are split on whether I will make any money with foreign currency trading. On one hand, there’s DW, who is completely convinced I’m going to come up short on this, and feels my time could be better spent in other areas. On the opposite extreme, we have two guys (Reggie and Doug; Reggie’s the one in San Rafael and Doug is the one who signed me up) who do the foreign currency trading training, and they’re both multi-millionaires from it. (Ironically, though they are part of the same program, I met them at different times, they didn’t know each other until last weekend, and they have quite different strategies!) Either way, I’ve seen the numbers and I think I can pull this off. You are welcome to take bets on this as well; feel free to comment in this blog. My commitment to DW, and to you, is that I will be blogging all (or at least the vast majority) of my trades throughout time, so in 6 months or a year you all can look back on when I started trading and see exactly what worked and didn’t work. The good news about the online trading class is they give you a demo account, which you can use to trade on the real market but without losing any of your own money. They recommend you trade in the demo account for at least 30 days, but I will probably spend longer in it. As a footnote, Reggie showed me his demo account. With $10,000 invested (that’s $10K of your own money), he traded for 15 days and had $18,000+ at the end of the 15 days. The more interesting news is that he only guessed correctly on 43% of the trades (that is, he probably would have done better with a chart printout on a dartboard), yet still came out ahead.

I’ll be making a new “Forex” category on my blog so you can follow along and root for me (or laugh at me) as my time in Forex training progresses. My philosophy is: If people can spend 4 years in college learning how to make a salary for the rest of their lives, I’ll take 1-2 years and learn this and learn how to make money that will keep me from needing a salary for the rest of my life. Or not. We’ll see! 😉

Also, look for a large (and really good) announcement from Simpli in the next 14 days. I also have an investor presentation on Friday in Vegas to raise our first round of seed capital for our next stage, so wish me luck there. This is going to be a crazy week, but hopefully I will have some time to update before next weekend.