When you register, you have to option of being matched up with someone in your own country, or someone from a different part of the world. I chose the worldwide option, and I sent my match a cool Hunger Games pocket watch that I purchased off a really nice seller on Etsy. I was excited to see what kind of fun and interesting gift I would receive, and wondered what part of the world it would be coming from.

I came home today to find a note on my door that I missed a delivery. I rushed off to the post office, grabbed the yellow box and was a bit puzzled when I shook it and heard a bunch of stuff rattling around inside. It came all the way from Austria, so maybe whatever’s inside broke during shipping, I thought. When I opened it up, I thought I got pranked or something. Here’s what was inside:

A bunch of crumpled up paper with some Austrian chocolates inside? Weird. Then I saw this:

It’s a letter from the Canada Border Services Agency, telling me that they confiscated my Secret Santa gift. Apparently the box contained two bottles of Austrian beer, and it’s illegal to import beer into Canada.

It was only then I noticed the package had been opened and resealed:

My Secret Santa filled out the customs form in full detail (even listing the 5 pieces of paper he used to wrap the beer, lol). There were 2 Wiselburger beers and 36 Mozartkugeln chocolates listed as the contents of the package.

If you’ll notice, there are only 26 chocolates in the box… The CBSA agent must have taken 10 chocolates to go with the beer.

Needless to say, I was a bit sad with the way this all turned out. At least the crooks at the CBSA didn’t steal all of my chocolates. And I’ll still be part of the record-breaking 58,504 people that participated in this year’s Reddit Gift Exchange.

I’d like to thank the nice man from Austria that took the time to send me some fine chocolates and beer. I’ll enjoy the chocolate, but I’m upset I won’t get to drink the beer.

The whole thing was unexpected and happened so fast. I heard about the position, sent in my resume and had an interview just a couple days later. The interview went very well, despite the fact I went in totally unprepared. I didn’t dress up, didn’t even shave that day, and basically just winged it. Surprisingly, it seemed like everything I said was the right thing to say. I left the interview with a feeling they would offer me the job, but also thinking they wouldn’t offer me the compensation I was looking for. I was surprised when they made a very competitive offer.

I had just one day to consider everything before giving them an answer. It was a really tough decision, but in the end I realized making the move would be in my best interest, so I accepted the offer and gave Sun Life my two weeks notice.

It’s a bit of a sad day, saying goodbye to all my friends and coworkers. But it’s the start of something new, and I’m looking forward to that.

The other night, I got floss stuck in my teeth. Like really stuck. I still don’t get it.

My 2012 resolution to floss every day got off to a rough start, but I’ve been flossing pretty regularly for the past few months. Even on the weekends when I stay up until 4am. Flossing before bed is now part of the routine. I’ve come to terms with it and now I spend the extra minute or two flossin’ it.

So anyway, the other night when I was flossing, the dental floss got stuck between two teeth. It was smooth sailing, then it suddenly jammed up. I kept pulling in every direction, but it hurt a bit and I swear I saw my tooth wiggle in the mirror.

I had a mini moment of panic, but then I realized it’s just a bit of nylon string, so I just let it hang there while I planned my next move. Off I went to my trusty internet machine and read a million stupid Yahoo Answers before I realized I should man up and just pull the damn thing out. So I checked my angles and was preparing for a mighty pull, and it just came right out. My theory is the floss compressed, or ever so slightly nudged my teeth apart, allowing it to slide right out. Or my teeth crushed the floss with their brute strength. Either way, it basically just fell out.

Moral of the story: if you ever get floss stuck in your teeth, don’t go reading Yahoo Answers to solve your problems. Just wait it out. 10 or 15 minutes, and it will practically fall right out.*

* Rob Maeder is not a dentist or dental health professional, although he endorses good dental hygiene, including flossing. Consult a dentist if you are unable to remove the floss yourself. Avoid using household tools and utensils in an attempt to remove stuck floss.

The Tour de France has various stages that are scheduled over a 21-day period. RAAM has one giant stage – ride across the country as fast as you can. Riders in the Race Across America are usually on their own, or in small packs. You don’t see huge pelotons, since riders are spaced out so much more.

RAAM is very underappreciated race. It doesn’t have the big sponsorship backing that most of the Tour de France teams have, so you see a lot of family, friends and volunteers supporting the cyclists across their ridiculous ride. People that complete RAAM are true endurance athletes. They ride for as much as 23 hours per day (!), so it’s as much a sleep deprivation contest as it is a bicycle race.

I watched a lot of the highlights this year, and it’s pretty inspiring to see people push themselves so hard to win a race that doesn’t even have a prize.

One of the games I started playing is Zynga’s CityVille. Everyone’s heard of FarmVille, and as far as I know, this is basically the same game, but it’s based on building a city instead of a farm. The game really is just Sim City, with some social networking stuff built in.

I used to make fun of all those people who were addicted to those games, so when I found myself going down that road, I got a little embarrassed. That didn’t stop me from playing though… using Facebook’s privacy settings, I was able to hide my addiction from most of my friends. Only a select few fellow CityVille players would get to see my requests.

However, after playing for some time, you reach a point where you can’t really proceed any further unless you either a) annoy the shit out of your friends with messages and requests or b) pay money. Once I got to that point, I figured I had reached my limit, and I slowly stopped caring about my city. Eventually the daily emails and requests stopped, and I haven’t even checked it out in months.

My experiment is over, and I realized a few things. It’s easy to get sucked into something as innocent as CityVille, and I finally understand how some people get addicted to these sorts of games. It’s an easy game to play, and you can pick it up and play for as little as a few minutes a week, or you can get right into it and play for hours a day.

He met his goal of being #1 on Amazon in several relevant categories (Business & Investing, Web Marketing, etc), and I saw his rank go as high as #48 overall in all books.

I think he achieved this success because he spent a lot of time marketing and connecting with people during his pre-launch. He also has a decent fanbase, and many people were in his corner helping him out to ensure launch day was a big success.

I’m not sure exactly how many copies were sold (or if Brad will release those details…), but I’m sure everyone would consider this a very successful launch, especially for his first “real” book. Also, he did it all himself. The book is self-published through CreateSpace, so he didn’t have the backing of a big publisher to help with advertising and promotions. This just goes to show how creative and effective Brad is at self-marketing and branding.

Congratulations, Brad on a successful book launch! If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, you definitely should.

As mentioned previously, Brad Gosse was nice enough to give my brother and I an advance copy of his new book Chronic Marketer, which comes out today.

I had a chance to read this book last week, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Brad’s writing style is very conversational… he doesn’t try to impress you with fancy words or complicated concepts, it’s more like he’s just talking to you, telling stories and offering insights. His no-nonsense approach is refreshing to read. It’s very informal and open, and he lays out his ideas in a straightforward manner, cutting through the bullshit. There’s ample discussion of his marijuana use, he talks about his work in the porn industry, the fact that he’s a proud yet productive stoner, and he isn’t afraid to toss out swear words to get his point across.

That’s really what the book is about – his story. How he got started, his approach to business, life and the world in general. It’s part biography, part how-to, and there are many things you can learn from a guy like Brad Gosse. He talks about how he got started (dropping out of school, working for his dad, etc), his beginnings in the porn industry, and how he got to where he is today.

Some of my favourite lessons from the book include:

• Asserting your value – making people pay you for your time and efforts
• Commanding respect – making people realize your worth
• Getting what you want out of life – how to change the rules to work to your advantage
• Intangible products – what they are, and how they can generate passive income
• Developing the right mindset – overcome fears, ignore negativity, and focus on success

Overall, the book is an interesting read, and well worth the $10. The book is as entertaining as it is both educational and inspiring. Chronic Marketer launches today, so pick up your copy and enjoy!

I decided to give it another go, and this time around it seemed to work a lot better. The slowness and errors were almost non-existent, and my overall website experience was considerably better. I guess I was a bit harsh on my other post…

However, it doesn’t really change my attitude on LinkedIn. I still think it’s mostly a waste of time, and I don’t see any reason why anyone would ever pay to use it. I’m not going to delete my profile quite yet. I’m going to stick around and see if there’s anything of value for me before I do something so drastic.

In the past month or so, I’ve been getting emails from LinkedIn, telling me I have “invitations” from people I might know. So I logged back in to LinkedIn, attempted to update my profile, attempted to accept a few requests, and then gave up on the whole thing.

LinkedIn is complete shit as far as websites go. Page loads are incredibly slow, everything is unresponsive, and I got about 20 of these in my first five minutes:

There was an error processing my request? Well shit. Clicking a link isn’t a complicated request, so I don’t understand what the problem is. I tried two different computers on two different ISPs… IE, Firefox, Chrome… nothing mattered – it sucked every which way.

Overall, I’m very unimpressed with LinkedIn, and I can’t imagine anyone would actually PAY to use a site this bad. Maybe on a good day, things work well and you can connect with colleagues and find jobs and all that amazing stuff. But based on my experience, I’m LinkedOUT.

My brother is on Brad Gosse‘s mailing list, and that’s where we heard about the event (and we got free tickets too!). Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the entire day, so we only got to see the first two speakers present. The good thing was Brad Gosse was the first speaker of the day, and he was the main reason we went to the event.

Brad Gosse speaking at the Toronto Action Summit

Brad is an entertaining guy to watch. He’s straightforward and real, and doesn’t come across as fake or contrived like many speakers do. His presentation contained swearing, cutting through the BS you hear other people talk about, and open discussions of his marijuana use…

My brothers made a parody video of one of Brad’s videos last year, and he loved it. That gave us an “in” that nobody else at the Summit had, so we spent a bit of extra time talking to him before we had to leave. He was really easygoing and he even gave us an advance copy of his book, Chronic Marketer. It was a review copy, and it even had pencil marks and edits in it!

Check us out:

Brad Gosse with Chris and Rob Maeder

Also, check out the infamous video: