A lot has kind of happened over the past month that I haven’t really bothered to sit down and write about.

I attended Defcon in Vegas which was a blast. Learned a lot of interesting new things and met some extremely smart people. I also learned how to lock pick there, which now has me sitting in front of the TV a few hours a week trying to pick locks. They’ve also been a huge hit with the friends that come over. It’s kind of disgusting how masterlock has the nerve to advertise their locks as bulletproof when even a new lockpicker can pick some masterlocks in 30 seconds.

I bailed on ASE last minute. Was just too tired from Vegas trip and didn’t really have a whole lot of reasons to show up at ASE late since I was going to miss all the good stuff anyway.

I went to the Search Engine Strategies Expo. The industry continues to disgust me how many people think they are SEO experts. I talked to someone at one of the conference parties who worked for an online lead generation company who told me they learned tons of stuff at SES. Although I didn’t actually attend the SES conferences I bet I can tell you what everyone talked about simply by viewing the session subjects. It continues to surprise me how many online firms end up at these conferences and learn a lot when I’m sitting there thinking to myself really? I knew this two years ago. Maybe that’s me being cocky but damn. I won’t be doing anymore conferences except for networking. They are all just a waste of time.

I found an Indian bookkeeper to manage my accounting nightmare. Trying to relearn Quickbooks every quarter was becoming a pain in the ass. UPDATE: I fired the Indian bookkeeper already for not having Quickbooks 2008 but instead only having Quickbooks 2007. If your a bookkeeper and use an old version of quickbooks obviously I’m not going to feel comfortable using your services. The guy wanted to use GoToMyPC to edit the books directly on my computer. Eff that. I ended up using an American woman on Odesk who did an outstanding job. My first success with Odesk.

I found my first decent online freelance programmer finally. UPDATE: was a good programmer, but got lazy on me, had to let em go.

I went to Chico, CA for floating on the Sacramento river for memorial day and got sunburnt pretty bad. Was definitely a fun trip and if you live anywhere near Chico I suggest you check it out next year.

Lastly, I’m planning my trip to Asia and I hope to have plane tickets within the next 15 days or so. I’m planning on visiting outsourcing companies in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and possibly a few other stops along the way.  Offshore outsourcing has been a big obsession of mine since taking some international business classes in college. I’m trying to start a company and I don’t quite have the money to start in the U.S. unless I get financial backing so I’ve been exploring alternative options before I decide which route to go.