… eventually.

Hey Josh, are you going to un-friend me now? hehehe!

The hot tub got installed today! Yay!

The hot tub requires 220v wiring, which I don’t have in the back yard! Doh!

I called this electrician guy I found on craigslist and he is going to come out tomorrow and install 220v wiring. Preliminary cost estimate: $225. Gotta love paying for upgrades to a rental house. But I doubt my landlord will cover it since it’s my hot tub. I am getting a pretty good deal on the rent anyway, and my landlord is cool, so it’s OK.

In other news, today was Conference Call Hell, but I got a lot done. We’re signing a contract for 10,000 email customers. Craziness! I also landed a fairly large dedicated server contract today, so at least things are humming along on the sales end. I am also getting lots of calls about our office space for rent. I have a feeling we might finally sublet the other half of our office in the next 30 days. That would be a godsend.

I have tickets to the Giants/Reds game tonight, so I’m headed out! I will have pics of the hot tub up once it’s actually functional and not just sitting there like a lump in my back yard. 😉

I had an interesting weekend. C moved out here to start a new job, so I spent a good part of the weekend with him. One of the highlights of my weekend was the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where I finally got to do the Tactile Dome. Wow!! If you live around here, go do the Tactile Dome. It’s this hilarious tunnel-like thing where you bump your way around passages completely in the dark and have to feel your way out. There are lots of fun textures all around — everything from animal fur to bubble wrap to the air mattress room — “You’ll know when you get there,” the guide told us. I ended up falling down a slide backwards: “waaaaagh! It’s a slide! Shiiiiit!” It was great. If any of you do the Tactile Dome, I fully expect you to call me first. I’ll go with you. 😀

I went to two very different parties this weekend. I really enjoyed one and I didn’t really enjoy the other one. The first one I went to was great fun! It was at a friend’s house in SF. He recently bought his own house (well, it’s part of a really big house) and he invited a bunch of his friends, including me, over. One of the things I liked most about the party is that, while I didn’t know anyone there, they were all really friendly people. I was equally impressed by my friend; he made an effort to introduce everyone and was a great party host. At the end of the night, there were a bunch of us sitting around in a circle in his living room talking politics and other fun stuff. I had a blast! Also, I noticed that the crowd was a bit older, which helped a lot. I really do tend to get along with older people (half of my friends are over 40) rather than people my age, a lot of whom seem to be intent on hitting on other people and “getting some” rather than enjoying the company of others, indulging in good conversation, and just having fun with friends.

The second party was less cohesive. First of all, there were more people (around 50), and it seemed cliquish. I invited 4 friends of mine to the party and we ended up hanging out together most of the night. There’s nothing really wrong with that; I enjoy their company, but I didn’t really feel like people there were interested in making new friends. There was a lot of “hooking up” going on — in fact, at one point, I went upstairs to get my car keys and stumbled upon two people making out on a futon. This is a total turnoff for me. I mean, people can make out at their own places. Why do it at a party?

I sat out by the pool for a while (it was freezing cold!) and listened to some conversations, but they all seemed to be the typical “OMG did you see that guy?!” conversations. Really bored, I declared I was leaving. We piled 5 friends in a compact car and drove off to IHOP for some food. IHOP was great and we had a great time making fun of our waitress, who couldn’t seem to get the hang of the word “marinara” (she kept saying “marinated”) and who gave me Dr. Pepper when I asked for root beer. We ate the very average food ($40 for 5 people?!) and went back to the party, which had already died down. We headed back to San Jose in 2 cars.

The biggest problem for me at the second party was that there was no effort made by the hosts to intermingle the groups. There were no board games, no cards, and not even much fun discussion (although there was a group of us in the kitchen who had a pretty good time.) Each person who lived at the house seemed to have invited their own group of friends, and each group didn’t really mix with the other groups. I know I don’t go to parties to hook up with other people; I go to have fun with my friends and meet other interesting people. Maybe I’m just not a “big party” sort of person…

At 6:20PM tonight, we posted the payment that pushed us past our goal (in fact, pushed us even past my extended goal) for June’s revenue target.

I spent some time adding up all of our expenses, and when I finally hit the AutoSum button in Excel, I was shocked to see a much lower number than I thought! We achieved our largest profitability margin yet for 2005, even with a ton of one-time expenses added in. We still aren’t quite out of the hole, as we have a lot of debt to pay off, but it looks like we should at least be meeting our monthly expenses from now on!

Whew.

Gotta love the end of the month. 🙂 The end of the month is when we do an all-out rush to meet our revenue targets. We’ll definitely make our target for this month, but to be profitable, we need to make a bit over that. To clear all the hurdles before midnight June 30, we’re going to need a lot of customers to pay. I think we’ll make it, but I’m going to have to make a lot of phone calls between now and then. 😉

Since my personal financial situation was bothering me, and since Simpli should free up some cash in the next month or two due to several cost-cutting measures (none of which will adversely affect our customers), I decided to give myself a raise starting 8/1. This will make Simpli less of a burden and more of a fun job. 🙂 Besides, as someone pointed out at the lunch meeting I went to yesterday, all my debt should be encapsulated at Simpli, so in case the company fails, I don’t have a lot of personal debt that I need to pay off as well. That’s a valid point; although I don’t see Simpli failing, I still shouldn’t strap myself into a lot of credit card debt, and the salary raise will help me pay off my personal credit card debt more quickly. With that and a new roommate, I should have ALL my credit card debt, including the stuff at very low interest rates, paid off before the end of the year. Then I can start accumulating money on the upside. That’d be nice. 😉