I walk down to my stupid community mailbox to check my mail. The idiocy of these types of mailboxes strikes me, as it has every other time I’ve checked my mail. Bills. Magazines. Junk Mail. A package slip!

I couldn’t remember what I ordered, but that happens a lot. I start driving towards the post office, eager to get whatever gadget I’ve ordered this time. Stopped at a red light, I look more closely at the slip. It’s not a package, it’s a certified letter. And it’s from the IRS.

Crap.

I had assumed that I would eventually be audited. I pay my taxes and all that, but my record keeping department is less than exemplary. Actually, it’s nowhere near exemplary. This was inevitable.

I press on the accelerator, eager to get this over with.

There’s no one in line at the post office, so I go straight to the pickup window. The lady goes to the back to dig up my letter. Noticing my heart rate increasing, I try to lower it. “This is a great opportunity to practice remaining calm in anxiety laden situations”, I think. I take a few deep breaths and try to stop fidgeting.

My eyes lock with the post office employee’s for a second. The IRS. I’m getting audited. If I were a human, I’d be slightly embarassed. I sign for the letter and open it as I walk back to my car.

It’s a thick envelope, full of pages. I scan the pages as I flip through them quickly. Collections. Leins on property. Seizure of assets. This looks scary.

I get to the end of the packet and find no reference to what they want. I go through it again more slowly, and I find a bill.

I owe the IRS $125.

I used to have a bit of an obsession with Zero Halliburton luggage. Look familiar? That’s because bad guys in all the movies use the briefcases to hold their money and bombs. Over the years I kept buying these things, and usually traveled with a huge 26″ suitcase as well as a matching computer case.

I still really like my Zero Halliburton suitcases, but they’re somewhat unweildy. Two day trips don’t require a hectare of packing real estate.

Plus, there was the allure of the carry-on only passenger. I never really understood how it worked before. How do people carry everything in such small suitcases? Is it really that much more convenient? What’s so bad about checking bags? I was curious.

As it turns out I read an article about carry on bags on the way back from Vegas one day. None of the bags really stood out - except for one. The Eagle Creek Switchback Max ES 22, which sounds more like some sort of butterfly knife / machete hybrid than a bag. I read about it and was looking forward to going home to look it up.

See, when I buy anything, it’s a huge production. As I wrote about in a previous article, I always want to either buy the best or the cheapest. In this case, I was buying the best, so I read every review about it that I could find. No one had anything bad to say.

So what makes this bag so great?

It’s sneaky.

The typical problem with carry on luggage is that it’s too small for more than a weekend trip. If I’m spending $275 on a bag, I’d better be able to use it on long trips as well as short trips. The Switchback 22 gets around this by combining two bags. They took a suitcase that was the largest allowed by every airline, and then attached a good sized backpack to the front of it.

The backpack zippers on and also has tie down straps in case you have it packed with bricks or something. The two bags combined work perfectly as one. There are large wheels, a good retractable handle, and even ANOTHER backpack support system on the main suitcase. You unzip this compartment and a heavy duty harness thing comes out and lets you carry the whole contraption as a giant backpack. Whoa!

Once you get on the plane (or before if they give you crap for having too big of a bag), you just detach the backpack and put the suitcase in the overhead compartment.

The other great thing about the backpack is that now wherever you travel, you have a backpack that you can use for hikes, camping, going into the city, or staying at a friend’s place.

Both bags can hold their own independently. The suitcase part has a flat front pocket as well as the main compartment. Within the main compartment there is the usual mesh compartment on the opening flap as well as a compression webbing to press the air out of your clothes and maximize space.

The backpack has a main area that has a cool compartment for electronics right near the top. The inside is felt, so you don’t have to worry about things getting scratched. The way the main compartment opens is really cool, but hard to describe. It unzips all the way to give you full access, but has guards on the sides so that everything doesn’t fall out. It also has a smaller front compartment with all sorts of little pockets for keys, tickets, etc. It just happens to be the exact right size to hold my Libretto laptop. On the sides of the backpack are these neat zip out water bottle holders. I don’t really like bottled water, so I kept my MP3 player in one.

Anyway, I was totally sold on the bag, so I ordered one. As luck would have it, I ended up going to San Francisco for work the following week. Eagle creek has their own packing system that the bag is designed for, but I already had a cooler one from Flight 001 (see? That’s why I research to make sure I’m actually getting the best one). The Flight 001 one has two sides, one for clean clothes, and the other for dirty. I could write a whole other article about how great that is.

Anyway, I went on my trip, and the bag was fantastic. One thing I particularly liked was that even with the backpack attached and full of stuff, the bag could still easily stand up straight without tipping over. An older bag I had would always fall over with a computer bag attached to it.

In San Fran, Jlaix sensed that there was more to the bag than met the eye, and when I demonstrated, he declared, “Whoa. That’s some next level shit!”

Heading back, the bag was equally pleasant. I found out that the compartment where the shoulders straps for the backpack were stowed also doubled as a convenient magazine holder. My one complaint with the bag upon receiving it was that it didn’t come with an instruction manual. It seemed like it should have.

I grabbed a taxi to had back to the office where I had parked my car. I blissfully skipped to my car with the backpack on, marveling at how light it was and how easy it was to carry. I drove home, made sure my fish were still alive and well, and started replying to some e-mails.

After an hour or two of being home it hit me.

I left the suticase part of the bag in the taxi trunk.

That’s ok, I thought. I’ll just check my Amex statment and call up the cab company. Then I realized that I didn’t pay with my Amex. I paid with a handful of Jeffersons. In fact, I had no idea which cab company it was. I started calling all that I could find, but had no luck.

I did a quick survey of what I lost.

• Two of my favorite shirts
• Two pairs of my favorite pants
• Two pairs of underwear, which I can’t in my size anymore
• My electric toothbrush (luckily I didn’t have my crazy shaving gear with me [another story on that later])
• A lighter from Spain that Jlaix gave me.
• Two pillows from a booth at the conference that Shel convinced them to give to me because they had sequins on them like my hat
• My awesome packing things from Flight 001.

Damn. That was a lot of good stuff. It wasn’t the end of the world - I was wearing my favorite shirt and pants out of the three that I had brought. American Express Platinum cards have a really cool policy where they will replace anything you lose / break / get stolen within 90 days of purchasing. I’d already taken them up on the offer when I left my brand new $2000 laptop in the rain, so I was looking forward to getting a new bag for free. But still - it would have been better to not lose it.

A couple days later Jonah and I were walking downton to get some food when I saw a cab that looked like the one I had taken. We took down the number and I called.

“Dispatch! They’re everywhere. 51, What’s your status?”

“Umm… hello?” I replied.

I was confused.

“51! Where are you?”

“Umm. I’m not 51.”

She hung up on me. Odd.

I called again.

“Hello?”

“… Hello…” I answered timidly. “I left my bag in a cab on Friday and…”

“Yeah, I have it right here.”

Wow. No questions? Didn’t EVERYONE leave their bags in the cab? How did she know it was mine? I felt a little dumb.

“Where are you guys?”

“Let’s see… what’s the address here? 1135 Gunter Dr.”

“Cool. Can I get it now?”

“No, our office hours are 8am to 5pm”

It seemed odd to me that she wouldn’t let me come pick it up now when obviously she was in the office, but whatever.

A few days later I drove over to get my bag. On the way I saw a bunch of cops, which freaks me out. My car is all sorts of illegal at the moment (no need to get into that…), and every time I get pulled over I’m amazed that I don’t get a ticket or go to jail or something.

I pulled into the cab headquarters. It was a strange building with long narrow hallways. The walls were made of that weird pressed word interior siding stuff. I wandered down the halls with no signs posted to help me. They probably didn’t get many visitors here. Finally someone whose office I poked my head into directed me through another set of hallways to a large office with exactly one misplaced bag in it. Mine.

I gave the guy a tip to give to my driver for returning the bag and left, very happy to have my stuff back.

I put the suitcase in my trunk and began to drive off the property when I saw two official looking guys walking towards my car. Crap. Had they followed me?

One of them flashed a badge.

“I’m Detective Franklin with the Austin Police.”

Crap.

“I’m Tynan.”

“Do you drive here?”

For a detective he certainly wasn’t too great with grammar.

“Umm.. I did drive here, yes.”

“For how long?”

“Twenty minutes?”

This was a strange interrogation. I knew what I had done wrong - just not which he had noticed. My answer seemed to confuse him.

“You drove a taxi for twenty minutes?”

“No. I didn’t drive a taxi. I don’t drive taxis.”

“So you’ve NEVER driven a taxi here?”

“No.”

“NEVER?”

I was almost worried for a second. Had I driven a cab and forgotten about it or something?

“No…”

The two detectives looked at each other.

“Ok, you can go.”

As I drove off I heard them begin to question the manager, who had come outside by now. He seemed surprised that they were there. I wonder what they wanted.

Wow. I’ve been much busier than I thought, so I haven’t been able to write any updates for a while. Luckily I have a huge layover next week in Phoenix, so I’ll have plenty of time to crank out some stories.

Anyway, some friends and I recently switched our cell phone plans to the best plan ever. Here’s the breakdown :

500 Anytime minutes
Unlimited PCS-PCS minutes (mobile to mobile on Sprint)
Unlimited Nights and Weekends starting at 6pm
500 Text messages / month
EVDO (fast internet) service
Roaming on Verizon’s network
All for only $30/mo

EDIT: Will asked if there are other SERO plans. YES. You can upgrade the minutes to 1250 for an additional $20/mo (for a total of $50/mo). For $99/mo you can have 2500 minutes OR all free incoming and 1000 outgoing.

Plus, with a few other tricks you can knock off up to an additional $10/mo and cut your taxes by at least 50%. If you’ve been a Sprint customer you can get an additional 5-20% off sometimes. Not too shabby, huh?

Technically you’re supposed to know an employee at Sprint to get this plan. Luckily, a friend at work is good friends with a Sprint, so he let me use his name. However, several people who have called in to get the plan didn’t even know an employee. Most weren’t asked for an employee’s name, and a couple just found an employee’s name and e-mail address online and used that.

If you DON’T have a sprint plan already, then just go to www.sprint.com/sero and sign up there. Then, skip to step 5 (there’s also a referral program where you can tell them I referred you and we both get $25. E-mail me if you want to do that)

1. Call *2 and when prompted say “representative”
2. When you get a Sprint rep on the phone, say “I’d like to switch my plan to a SERO plan (pronounced like zero with an s). Are you familiar with that?”

   If they don’t know what you’re talking about HANG UP. Don’t give them your phone number. For some reason it is difficult for many reps to figure out how to get you on this plan. You are allowed to have it (my guy checked with his manager), so don’t get discouraged.

3. If they do know about it, then give them whatever information they need. Hopefully they will be able to get you on the plan.
4. If they try to transfer you or can’t help you, just hang up and start at 1 again.
5. Now that you’ve gotten your new SERO plan, it’s time to get some improvements added to it. The two main you want are 6pm Nights and Weekends and 500 Text messages / month

   Log in to your Sprint account online, click “contact us” and then the e-mail link.

6. Now you want to compose an e-mail that accomplishes a few things. First, you want to praise their good service. They really do have great service, especially compared to other carriers. Next you want to say that you love your new plan, but that you’re disappointed it has such late nights and weekends (9pm) or no texting. Then ask NICELY if they can add the requested service for free to your account.
7. It will probably take 2-5 requests for each addition you want, so just send them back to back

That’s all it takes! Now just wait for your next billing cycle to start, and enjoy your new cell phone plan.

Two more tricks you can do are :

• Change your billing to online billing and change your billing address to Nevada. They have lower taxes there, and you are billed taxes based on where your billing address is.
• Every time you have a dropped call, keep track of it. You can report up to 20 per billing cycle, and receive a 50 cent credit per call. To do this you just call *2 and say “dropped call”. It’s an automated process and can be done 4 times per call. I usually have 20 dropped calls per billing cycle, so that’s another $10 off my monthly bill.

So, doing these tricks you can have a great cell phone plan for about $23/mo including taxes (if you have a lot of dropped calls). If you’re a loyal sprint customer, you can also e-mail and ask for a percentage off your monthly bill. I got 10% for being with them for five years. Enjoy!

From my high horse of self employment, I have stepped into the mud to play with the employed commonfolk. I mentioned a couple times earlier that I was considering getting a real job, but I didn’t want to get into details until it actually happened.

It happened.

Quitting gambling came abruptly, so I didn’t have a solid backup plan in place. There’s the ebook I wrote and this blog, but neither makes close to enough to constitute a living. For a few months I wandered, considering different options, but didn’t find anything I love.

Actually, I take that back. I am working on a TV show that I am extremely excited about (casting soon!), but it’s not likely to put any Jeffersons in my pocket for months if not years. And a boy’s gotta eat.

A few weeks back a friend of mine (there’s an awful picture of me somewhere on that site) came into town for SXSW. I wasn’t particularly interested in going downtown, but I hadn’t seen him in at least a year, so I was glad to be able to meet up with him. During the course of a rather amusing evening, bouncing from one emo concert to the next, he introduced me to one of his friends named Steve. Steve is an impressive entrepreneur, who recently moved his latest company, Smiley Media, to Austin.

Later that week Steve and I had dinner and discussed business. Certain parts of the conversation felt like I was being interviewed, so I wasn’t surprised at the end when he suggested that I come to work for him. At first I didn’t seriously expect that I would take him up on his offer, but I was interested to listen anyway.

We had dinner again the next week and after digesting the idea a bit, I aired some of my concerns. I didn’t want to become a slave to the machine and have to be there at 9am every morning. I didn’t want to have to skip my trips to visit my family in the summer and winter, or have to give up my cruises. That isn’t to say that I don’t want to work hard - on my own projects I’ve worked basically 24 hours in a row before. Even today in the office I worked for at least 10 hours. I just don’t want to have to deal with a rigid framework.

Also, I don’t want to be limited by a salary. I’ve never had an income that wasn’t directly and proportionally tied to my results. Time counts for something, but results are what ultimately matter. Also, I want to make a lot of money. My goal isn’t to become upper class, it’s to be mega rich and buy a submarine, laser guns, and have endangered animals as pets. The truth is that if I had a job that wouldn’t make me rich, I’d just quit and start my own business again.

Steve listened to my concerns. I knew that I was bordering unreasonable, but that’s what I needed to be excited about working at his company. If I wasn’t excited about working there, I wouldn’t consider hiring me to be a good decision no matter what the price.

He had all the right answers, though. He works from home and rarely comes in before noon. I can work whatever hours I want, from wherever I want, as long as things are getting done properly. Good. That’s what matters.

What we ultimately decided on is that I would work for two months for a fixed salary. I don’t understand enough about the company to reasonably negotiate a commission or percentage yet. I’m not getting paid enough to buy my pet panda bear, but it’s enough for me to take the job seriously and to feel like spending the two months isn’t wasted.

After two months we will negotiate longer term compensation that will include performance based pay as well as free laser guns if I hit certain goals (right, Steve?). At that point Steve will have a good idea of what I will bring to the company, and how well I can work with the other employees, and I’ll have a good idea of what my role will be in the company and how well it’s doing. Further down the line I will probably become involved with an even more exciting venture in a bigger way.

So, Jeffersons and Jacksons aside, how is it? It’s pretty great, actually. Besides one guy who I plan on personally destroying, all of the other employees are really cool people. They all seem to like what they’re doing, are good at it, and they work hard. At the same time, they’re fun to have lunch with and joke around with as we pass in the hall. And actually there isn’t one guy I want to destroy - I just wrote that to freak them out if they happen to read the site. They’re all cool. Except Dan. Watch your back, buddy.

The office is downtown, directly over one of my favorite clubs from back when I was going out all the time. It’s fun to be able to walk to different places to eat. Actually, it’s just fun to walk outside. There’s really no reason to do that up in my area - you drive everywhere. Also, it’s cool having a parking spot downtown so I never have to deal with that hassle. Being downtown is a totally different experience than being in the suburbs of Austin. If I do keep working after two months, and I believe I will, I’m going to look into moving into a cool loft downtown.

I got a lot of choice over which area of the business I got to work on, and I was actually interested in all of the choices. I picked one, and after two days working I’ve already increased our profits by 15% or so. The truth is that the business is just so solid that even with inefficiencies it is very profitable, but I like optimizing things. I’m working with a guy named Beau who is really easy to get along with and work with and has some great ideas. Maybe it’s just the novelty of having a job, but I actually look forward to going to work. Today I worked at home for a couple hours, then stayed at the office until everyone else was gone. If I wasn’t waiting on things I probably would have stayed longer.

My plan is to work 7 days a week, since I’m used to doing that anyway, and work every night until I get bored. Then if I want to go on a trip, take a day off, or leave early, I will feel good about doing it. Plus a lot of times when I travel I have a few hours here and there with nothing to do, so I’ll fire up the laptop. When there are rules I always try to bend them as much as possible, but when I’m trusted to do something, I usually go overboard in favor of the person trusting me.

Oh, and a funny little tidbit - I found the BEST DEAL EVER for cell service. I’m paying $27/mo for 500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekend (starting at either 6pm or 7pm), free roaming on other networks, free high speed wireless internet, 500 text messages, and unlimited calls within the network. I evangelized the deal at work and I think at least 6 people have switched or are in the process of switching. I will try to post about it tomorrow so that all of you guys can get it too.

So, as I adjust to this new job I will probably not be able to post here as much. I will still try to get AT LEAST 3-5 good posts written per week, and once I get used to the new schedule, I will ramp it back up to the 7-10 it was in the days of yore. The good news is that I will probably have a lot of good fodder for stories. The next big one I have planned is the story of how I almost died exploring the longest cave in the US.

Working on a new song - the BetterThanYourBoyfriend.com theme song (try rhyming that). I have a really exciting guest artist who is going to do the last verse, but I figured it might take me a long time to get him to finish his part, so here it is for your listening pleasure : Better Than Your Boyfriend.

Feedback (negative and positive) is greatly appreciated. I listen to my songs so many times in a row that I can’t tell if they’re good, bad, and specifically what needs work. A few parts don’t have the best enunciation, but that will be fixed later, and the end trails off because I haven’t finished the verse.

This is from last Thursday when I was at the Motorola XE Launch party at Tao in the Venetian in Vegas. That seems like more description than necessary. I thought that I knew how to work the club scene until I met this guy David who works at google. There was a huge mob of people waiting to get into the club, but David seemed to know everyone and managed to get us in immediately. The only person who cut us was Ice Cube. Lil Jon and Nicky Hilton were there too, but I didn’t see them.

Wow. I try to keep things positive. I really do. But this is just unbelievable. The Luxor casino and hotel in Las Vegas, NV has the worst room service you can possibly imagine.

Now, I like a lot of other things about this casino. The restaurants are great. The casino hosts are fantastic. They send me things in the mail to give me free rooms, food, show tickets, and more. And then when I get here they put me in a cool room with a jacuzzi in the bedroom. So overall I really like the Luxor and will keep coming back.

“Ok, but it’s going to take an hour”

That’s what you hear when you order from room service. Even if you’re in the penthouse suite, you still have to wait an hour. That’s fine in itself - I know it takes a while to make food and bring it to me. What irks me is the way they say it. It’s almost like they’re trying to discourage you from ordering. Maybe it’s good advice.

The waiters are polite and helpful. They’re the only good part about room service. They will set up your table anywhere you want it and serve the water and stuff. Maybe it’s not really that above and beyond the expected, but in contrast to the otherwise horrendous operation, it’s like they’re offering you their firstborn kid.

When the time comes to dig in, you invariably realize that your order is totally messed up. EVERY SINGLE TIME. I’ve had breakfast in my room at least 7 times now, and every single one has been messed up.

“I only want tomatoes, spinach, and peppers in my omelet.”
“Ok, an omelet with only tomatoes, spinach, and peppers?”
“Yes. Only tomatoes, spinach, and peppers.”
“So no onions or mushrooms?”
“Definitely no onions or mushrooms. Please make sure because my order has been messed up the past 6 times”
“Ok sir. Are you sure you want to order? It will be an hour”
“Yes.”

This is the abridged version of my ordering conversation every morning. Then every time I get my order it has more onions and mushrooms in it than the entire produce department at the grocery store. I invariably try to pick around the mushrooms (they’re the true offenders - onions are fine), and give up hungry after a few minutes.

Then I call back and demand to have it taken off the bill, or get a new one if I have the time (which is usually screwed up as well).

The omelet fiasco is my rock. I know that with every order I will get a defective omelet. However, there are also some bonus disasters most meals. Every single breakfast comes with toast. It’s on the menu. I don’t really like toast, but I find it absolutely hilarious that sometimes they forget it. EVERY BREAKFAST COMES WITH IT. If you don’t see a bucket of toast on your cart, but you do see breakfast, GO BACK. More impressive was the substitution of RICE PUDDING for oatmeal. RICE PUDDING. Hilariously it was served with brown sugar and raisins just like the oatmeal is.

Oh, and I almost forgot! The other night we ordered two hot fudge sundaes with extra fudge and extra nuts. (Yeah, I don’t eat raw when I’m in traveling because it’s not practical, so I try to enjoy the violation). They brought us two pieces of chocolate cake with a bowl of fudge and a bowl of nuts on the side. WHO DOES THAT? I just can’t fathom anyone putting that on a cart and believing that they have the order right. Has anyone in the history of mankind actually ordered a bowl of chopped nuts to add to their cake?

I could go on and on, considering that they screw up 90% of the meals we order, but I think you get the point. I’m going to finish my smoothie now since it’s the only part of this order that I have any desire to eat.

Here’s a new song I made for my friend Kristen. She made me a CD of her favorite music and drew on it (she’s an artist). In an effort to convert her to the gangsta side, I made her a CD with rap on it. Since I can’t draw I made her a track for the intro. You can listen to it.

I think my rapping style is improving. I still want to take voice lessons to get my voice more in tune. In case you didn’t read the earlier post, the song references the rattlesnake incident.