Kevin Kwak’s Blog

Don’t you hate it when you were supposed to do one thing but the other thing you chose to do led to another thing, and one after another you found yourself not being able to finish the one thing you were supposed to do. Yeah, it happened just now and it’s already midnight.

An adviser recommended that I order and start using the Palo Alto’s Business Plan Pro software. I really didn’t see the point of purchasing a business plan software (besides the fact that it should save time and mistakes) when I can simply download one of the Microsoft Word templates that had the layout already set and ready to go.

I searched several sites to find the lowest academic price and also visited the paloalto.com academic site for their discount info. Used the online instant messenger with one of their sales staff and got the answers I needed. But instead of buying the academic version of the Business Plan Pro 2007, I opted for the retail version and got one on eBay. The reason? Academic version is identical to the retail version in function and features with one exception, “Academic Version” watermark on every printed page. The price difference between the academic version and the retail version were not substantial plus you get the books (and e-books) and much more sample business plans with the retail version. Made more economic sense and a better investment down the road.

So after working with one of the plans, I picked up one of the book titled, “The Art of the Start.”
The book was written by Guy Kawasaki, a successful entrepreneur and currently the “managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm for high-technology companies.” I skimped through the Table of Contents and the ‘Read Me First’ section to get an jist of the book. It seems to be a very good book with quality information for businessmen.

Curiosity got the best of me during this hour so I visited the author’s website, his blog page (including the cover page contest), and even the company’s webpage. I’ve bookmarked Garage.com because of the useful reference section.

I didn’t stop there. I linked out from Kawasaki’s blog to his colleague’s blog page and one thing led to another, the final page prior to this blog was LinkedIn.com. Unlike MySpace.com or Blogger.com where the site is for general purpose, LinkedIn has a niche. Best of all, it is ad-free at the moment and simple to use. LinkedIn.com is to career professionals as FaceBook.com is to college students.

The caffeine from the cup of tea is keeping me up so I’ll extend this entry. Have you heard of the website MeetUp.com? MeetUp is not an actual social networking website but an online tool where you search for local meetings that best interests you. There are features that let you socialize on that site too. It is simple to use and the whole procedure from registration to searching your interest group is effortless. I ended up finding three groups in LA County and OC. Check it out!

Here’s a short blog for you: the month of November of 2006 will not a typical month. Lot has been going on in our nation, major political events sprung up here and there, and the decisions that were made will change and affect millions of Americans one way or another. I recommend that you visit the major news site to catch up if you haven’t done so.

God bless America and the veterans of the United States of America.

On Yahoo’s frontpage under the Featured tab, an article featured a smart looking Asian kid with a rubik’s cube in his hand. The caption was personally thought-provoking, “Tyson Mao is hoping to regain his title as blindfolded Rubik’s Cube world champion.”) I can’t even get near completion with a cheap $1 cube rolling somewhere in the car. Every time I got my hands on the cube, I tossed it back after an effortless attempt.

So the guy on the Yahoo’s photo is Tyson Mao and he can finish the cube in less than two minutes. Smart Cal Tech grad.

But if the Yahoo article written by Belinda Goldsmith is entirely true (they wouldn’t lie to us, would they?), I found hope. The rubik’s cube is not only for geniuses and nerds. You can find a great amount of sites teaching you the strategies to solving the puzzle. Thank goodness for online video broadcasting.

The Yahoo Time Capsule is impressive in all aspects; the use of Adobe Flash is outstanding and the concept in which was founded by Jonathan Harris is worth reading.
I took a minute and submitted a text version in the Now category. I am now part of the online history, I “have helped create a digital legacy of our times, a mosaic of revealing snapshots that will be sealed and entrusted to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings based in Washington D.C., officially taking its place in history.” Be right back, let me add one more to the Yahoo Time Capsule before the deadline (12 minutes 24 seconds as of this writing and counting down).

Submitted 2nd contribution in the Faith category.

A buddy asked long time ago why I write blogs. I gave him a smile but didn’t reply to his question.
When web logging was introduced, the web community flourished with thousands of new bloggers. The concept was brilliant so entrepreneurs established an improved technology and social networking was born. Now millions of people began to blog online with many purpose.

I began blogging with two purpose in mind: let my readers (friends and family and visitors) to know a little bit of what my interests and I wanted a diary. As cheesy as it may sound, diaries are actually fun and can be a rewarding activity.

Two, five, ten years from now, I would love to return back to the blogs I’ve typed in the past and try to recapture the particular time in which the blog entry was written. I like to ponder why I even wrote such story and blog publicly online, and even reminisce of the time and events. It would interesting to read on stuff about what and how I felt, experienced, thought, and liked during that time, an online diary.

Let me give you a good example. November 2004, I wrote a blog entry titled, “Kevin Is Most Thankful For…” The blog was written two years ago from now and after reading the entry, I can clearly recapture the event that took place just prior to the blog. We were having a potluck Thanksgiving dinner at Sarang college ministry and one of the sister had a clever idea to collect a thanksgiving note from everyone. She then kindly asked me to post it up on the ministry’s website and after doing so, I went over to my site’s blog and wrote that particular blog.

Another note I want to mention are the changes in me after reading the blog. I was very excited about God and both blog entries on November 2004 was about religion. It seems that I haven’t written a single blog about my faith quite recently and it is something I really missed these days.

Muhammad Yunus, Ph.D. of Bangladesh earned the highly acclaimed Nobel Peace Prize for developing and founding the ‘microfinance’ concept and the Grameen Bank.As I was in the process of redesigning my personal site, I thought why just go through a redesign, why don’t I redevelop the site from the ground up. The new design planning is complete but I haven’t figured out how to redevelop the purpose, the goal of the site. Kwak.org is currently used as a personal homepage but instead, share the site with other people with the same surname as I. But there is more. While I was brainstorming with such an idea, I thought to myself, “why not take a step further and redevelop the site to use it for an organization!”

A brilliant idea doesn’t just pop in your head. During the senior year in college, I wanted to create a non-profit organization to benefit a certain group of unprivileged people. I wasn’t worried about where to obtain the source of capital for the start-up or where to get find members with the same vision, I simply don’t know what kind of an organization I desire to start. For instance, a nationwide organizations like the LiveStrong, a Lance Armstrong Foundation (cancer) or the Michael J. Fox Foundation (Parkinson’s disease), both individuals experienced or are experiencing life threatening disease and have devoted their all to help everyone that are going through the same. Now that is passion. There are smaller non-profit organizations that concentrates on the local neighborhoods or victims of such and such, the overall purpose and mission statement is to unite the people to help each other to live a better life.

God bless.