Personal Blog of Mike Bowden

Life changes at a rapid pace. We never know when, where or how it will happen. Some of us go through life and are simply there. We are like the “sheep” you see on a daily basis, driving to work, working and then driving home. The same mundane tasks on a daily basis, over and over again. Most of us never have anything happen that changes the way we look at life, the way we live life or how we deal with life. But sometimes, things do happen that will alter the course of life.

Recently I received some news that did just that for me. I’ve been having back pain and neck pain for too long. Probably for the past few years. Over the the past 7 or 8 months I’ve noticed muscle growth in the lower right section of my back. Last week I decided to get some X-rays done and figure out what was going on down there. What I found changed things for me, probably forever.

The chiropractor that I visited to have this work done, explained to me that my spine had a slight curve to it (left to right, not front to back) and that if I didn’t start having regular adjustments and try to correct the problem, that it would most likely develop into multiple-sclerosis. This was a shock and a hard blow on life to me.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to look at life with a new “lease”. This just added more fuel to my life fire. I am now receiving regular adjustments and hopefully within time this problem will be corrected and I will not develop full-blown MS. However, I do not plan on waiting to find out. I will be living every day with a passion as if it were my last.

Recently I have changed my daily schedule to reflect some of the changes in life that I’ve wanted to take. Over the next few weeks I will be explaining my new routine, how it has helped and how to achieve the same results. I will also lay out my plans for this blog, life and my career as I see it.

Life is too short, we all put things off thinking it will get better tomorrow and if we simply put it off until then, it will get easier. This is incorrect, life is SHORT, start living it now. You will reap the benefits time and time again if you do so. Don’t hold back, do what you feel is right.

Has anything happened in your life that has changed the way you look at it? If so, share your stories here and give others some inspiration to fuel their life fires.

Recently I have been extremely swamped with my day job and haven’t had much time to get anything else done that I’d like. I have however started a new schedule that I hope will allow for more “spare” time to work on other passions in life. My current job is one that I’ve recently acquired, I have worked for myself for the past 4 – 5 years and this is the first time I’ve had a “9 – 5″, or more like 10 – 7 in this case. It’s new, it’s different, it’s fun and by all means it’s stressful.

When I say stressful, don’t take it the wrong way. A stressful job to mean just means that it’s real work, that requires real thinking and real effort, if it were any other way, it would be boring. So this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, personally I find it a plus. Currently I’m what you would call “Jack-of-all-trades” at this job, but the technical name for my position would be more along the lines of “VP of Operations” since every aspect of the projects I head, go through me first.

I can’t divulge too much information as to what projects I work on, but there is one that we recently launched that I can speak about and that’s Vino.com. This project has been extremely fun, complex and of course stressful. But all-in-all it was an outstanding experience and I learned a tremendous amount from it. There is still much to do with Vino and it will grow by leaps and bounds over the years. Check it out and if you enjoy wine, sign-up for a membership, I bet you’ll be surprised at the quality of wine you’ll receive.

I have a lot of plans for this blog and I’m still working out the finer details. Stick around for more to come, as there will be more to come! Just not sure when “come” will be or how often that entails. But… it will happen, I think!

The title of this entry is probably vague for most of you, unless you’ve heard of 10/GUI. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t, I just recently found out about it myself. But I must share it with my readers as I believe this to be the next level of computer interaction. We’ve already seen a lot of this same “type” of technology implemented in some of the devices we use on a daily basis, such as an iPhone of Microsoft’s Surface.

But I would have to say, this is by far the best “upgrade” if you will to computer interaction. Not only did this company seem to have solved something we’ve been using since computers became popular, the mouse. But they’ve also created a whole new GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the user on the desktop itself. I’ve included the video below, it’s eight and a half minutes so it isn’t too long.

Enjoy the video.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Do you feel this is the next stage in computer evolution? Or is this another fad that seems great, but probably won’t ever happen? Post your comments below, I’d love to hear what others think of this.

Recently I have gotten into the habit of listening to audio books on the way to work. The commute to the office is roughly around 45 minutes and sometimes can be well over an hour, depending on the traffic we hit. Currently I carpool with a co-worker and good friend Zach Coles.

I’ve had a book written by Dave Ramsey that I’ve really wanted to read for sometime. I spoke with Zach about it and asked if he would mind if we “read” it on the ride in to and from work. He was more than ok with the idea, mainly because he’s an avid reader as well and anything to progress knowledge, points of view and/or common sense is always a plus. So we started to listen to “The Total Money Makeover” written by Dave Ramsey

Now the reason for this article. I’m working on a personal budget for myself and my family. This budget is currently being written/designed/programmed in iWork’s Numbers. I’m a Mac guy and prefer Mac products, plus Numbers trumps Excel and all the rest hands down. Now with this said, Zach is a Linux guy and primarily uses OpenSource products. So once I’ve completed mine, I’ll send it over to him and see if he’s interested in porting it over to OpenOffice which in turn can be used with Excel and all the rest.

I’ll try my best while developing this budget to stick with Dave’s outline of baby steps. I’ll also work on including a few extras in it as well that will help with keeping up with these steps. I’m not exactly sure how long this will take. I planned to start Dave’s method in January, after the holidays. So I’ll most likely have something rough if not finished by that that time. That isn’t to say that Zach will have his version completed by then.

Some of the things that will be included in this will be:

• Sources of Income
  • Add as many sources as you have
  • Frequency of income
  • Tabulation
• Bills
  • List all bills
  • Frequency of bills
  • List bills into primary groups
  • Set budgets for each main group
  • Set budgets on the bill level
  • Tabulation
• Investments
  • List all investments
  • Input APY
  • Tabulation
• Summary
  • Summaries of everything listed above

I only have so many “investment” types. So I’ll try to cover what I can and/or make it as general as possible as to allow for different types of investments. If I’m missing something important or something that would be great to add, please let me know once it’s released and I’ll do my best to get it included. I’ll most likely be adding more than the listed above as I move along. I’ll update this entry if I do so.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I know we did. It was pretty tiring however, we went to a few different places to eat and see family on both sides. When we got home we decided to decorate for Christmas. We’re keeping things simple this year and being minimal on our decorating as well as our tree. While I was taking pictures I asked my wife to show me her belly just to get a progress shot and my son decided he needed to be in it as well.