I have always wondered what the 11-99 Foundation meant on the license plate frames all over the place. Well, I finally decided to Google it and found the answer. Check it out here.

Well I’m back from my 2 week whirlwind tour of Europe and I must say it was awesome. Started out in a city in the south of Germany called Freiburg then on to Berlin. Next we moved on to Rome and finally London. London was my favorite place of all because the City is very alive, like New York but with great history and sites to visit. I took a ton of pictures in all places. I had about 150 pictures of Freiburg and I accidentally deleted the entire memory card on the camera - oops. That was a huge bummer. I took a bunch more pictures in Berlin and posted them on Flickr here. We bought a new camera in Berlin and started using it in Rome. We took about 350 pictures in Rome and London and then the memory card on the new camera (Formel1 brand - piece of shit) went haywire and the camera kept saying “memory card error”. Shit. I took it to a computer store and was not able to get the computer to recognize the card. Shit. Then some guy tried it in some special machine and could not get it to register. Shit. Now the card resides at OC Data Recovery where I will have to pay several hundred dollars if they are successful in getting my pictures off the card. Shit. If they get the pictures, I’ll post them to Flickr too. I’m seriously thinking about buying a regular film camera - not really but at least I could not delete the photos or fuck up the memory card and loose everything. So I bought another SD card (SanDisk this time) in London and took a few more pictures there. I’ll post those tomorrow.

What is up with the comments? I have only got 2 comments on my blog so far and they are both fairly harsh. I think its pretty funny actually. Funny that someone is taking the time to read my blog and even funnier that they would take the time to post a comment. The most recent comment had a link attached to the post. You will be asked “Are you ready to get pumped?” If you click “Yes” you are in. If you click “No” you are redirected to Oprah.com. That is pretty funny actually. Are you kidding me? The Official Ninja Website? I did not realize that the ancient ways of the ninja promoted hosting internet sites. Times, they are a changing. It used to be that ninjas hovered in the shadows of the dark forests, only coming out to fight evil or whatever they do. Apparently, ninjas are up on web 2.0 tech and play video games too. Interesting. Here’s a little quote from his “about the author” page:

Robert Hamburger has a black belt in Street Fighter 2 and a second degree black belt in Mortal Kombat 1-3. He can kick or punch the wall without feeling pain. He has studied ninjas for several weeks and has watched a bunch of movies about them. Robert lives with a bunch of hot babes and porks them whenever he wants.

I can’t believe this guy of all people is giving me shit. Classic.

Update 8/14/07: This clown Robert Hamburger keeps posting comments on this blog. I think I’m getting harassed by a 12 year old kid. Again, classic. The internet at its core.

It sure has been a while since I wrote something here.  I spend so much time reading other people’s blogs that I don’t take the time to update my own.  Well, since my last post I have resumed my life full time in the real estate business.  I have two guys in the office training to be brokers and I have high hopes for their success.  They are both smart guys and seem to be working hard.  The hardest part is maintaining the time to focus on my own business opportunities.  I knew that training two agents and running an office would deplete my deal flow some but I need to obtain a better balance between business generation and business operations.  I do feel that I have gained some clarity on the short-term future of the business: direction and goals.  Two pretty big things in my book.  I think my vacation in Hawaii helped to clear my mind and allow me to refocus on the task at hand.

I have been staying up to date with the tech news lately.  Some interesting new companies coming up and some interesting deals have gone down lately.  Particularly interesting is Google’s acquisition of Grand Central.  It will be interesting to see where they can take it.  One phone number for the rest of your life + gmail + google calendar - Google is well on their way to be a one-stop shop for all of our communication (and information) needs.  Google will soon be in a position where they know more about each of us as individuals than our spouses do!  Also of particular interest is Brad Greenspan’s recent bid for a 25% stake in Dow Jones.  I’d love to see it happen because it will make for a good story and certainly be more interesting to follow that a Murdoch operated entity.  Not to mention a more tech-savvy operator with a strengthening Asian presence.

Okay - got my new (revised) header up. Changed “Win Something” to “Say Something” to go along with my mantra of “attempting to SAY SOMETHING that hasn’t already been said”. Hopefully you like some of the things I have to say and if you don’t, then post a comment and tell me I’m off my rocker. Many of my posts will pertain to the commercial real estate industry because that is my area of expertise but I will try to cover some of my thoughts on internet and mobile technology also because I love the space. I know nobody is reading this at this point so if you happen to find me on Technorati, stop by and say something. In the meantime, here is a cool video of The Wedge in Newport Beach on a big day! These dudes are crazy!

Hey - I’m just getting started on my blog again. I needed to clean up my hosting server and decided to trash all of my old files and start from scratch. Not sure if that was the best idea but I don’t have a choice at this point. Here is my standard internet picture so you know what I look like.