That all changed this week. Bangkok is dangerous, and it is only going to get worse. The two sides have their heels dug in and are both prepared to die for their cause. A Civil War is imminent, there is no way around it. Even if the Prime Minister were to step down, or worse, the Powers That Be would see to it that his replacement shared the same political ideology. Meanwhile there is a billionaire ‘terrorist’ hiding out all over the globe who will stop at nothing, spare no lives, to get his life back.

I’m not Thai. I never will be. No matter how much I wish I were. Unlike many of the foreign media covering this event, I’m willing to recognize the fact that even though I’ve been here for 5+ years and watched and lived this situation, I don’t know near enough to say which side is right or wrong. I am also keenly aware of the fact that it is not my place to have an opinion. I’m just happy for the Privilege of making Thailand my home.

That said, stay away! If you are in Thailand now, get out! If you are planning to come, don’t! This is not going to end anytime soon and it is going to get worse. Much, much worse. I won’t say how or why I know that – I’ll just say that I’d bet my life on it.

Feel free to repost all or part of this post or these photos anywhere, I would appreciate attribution, but it is not required. You can direct any questions to williamdean.franceschine [at] sasin.edu

Sorry for the formatting, I can’t be bothered:

Now I have been accepted to a very prestigious MBA program and bought a condo, both in Thailand – and I’m quite enjoying spending much less money than i do living out of hotels, I’m enjoying getting more work done, I’m enjoying sleeping in the same bed every night – I guess I’m just sick of traveling so much. I’m home.

My MBA program starts next Monday and will probably occupy most of my time for the next two years – outside of breaks. Other than the keeping a regular schedule part, I am really looking forward to it. It should be fantastic networking and a great education. As for what I’ll do with the degree, at most I will teach at the University level. Professionally it is hard to imagine myself working for somebody else.

In purchasing my condo I’ve erected a safety net for myself that I am very proud of. It’s not a mortgage as most people have when they claim to “own” their own home – I own it. Outright. Forever. So no matter what happens I will always have a home. My passive income from dividends, interest and long-term predictable AdSense websites is enough to support me if everything else falls apart – so for the first time I truly feel like I’ve made it. I could retire right now if I wanted to. That’s an excellent feeling.

So time to change gears, I’m going to slow the focus on amassing wealth and work on myself as a person. I think the MBA will be a good start.

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t already, add me on Facebook – I update my status there much more frequently.

Any news on this put it in the comments section and I’ll update this post, this is all I got right now.

Anyway, one of the first tips I was ever given in domaining was to look out for emerging technologies, markets or trends and register domains related to them. As 99.9% of the valuable domains are already registered, this is really the only way to spend $8 on a domain and have something worth tens, hundreds or even thousands of times more just a short while later.

I’ve dabbled in this a bit, but not with any success. I remember registering a bunch of domains with FIOS in them after Verizon announced that program. Bust, and probably a trademark infringement anyway. I started registering the domains of people who made final tables at WSOP, WPT or EPT events, in hopes that they’d win and I’d have a valuable domain. Then I learned that doing that is against the law and they could sue me for it. On and on, I have never caught a lucky break with this. Jumped on the bandwagon too late for 3D domains and missed out there etc.

Then today I am reading an article in the New York Times about changes being made to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) by the American Psychiatric Association. Changes to the DSM are rare (every 7-12 years or so) and extremely important in psychiatry. Particularly the part where they invent new disorders and name them. Imagine owning BipolarDisorder.com, AnxietyDisorder.com, EatingDisorder.com etc.

Today I registered the following domains. Now some of them might seem silly, but they are only $8 each. If any one of them turns into the next ADHD it will pay for all of them many, many, many times over. And the lesser disorders I can develop information sites on and rank highly in Google for with AdSense obviously paying very well as the ads will be pharmaceutical. 100 visitors a month to a site like that is worth more than 10,000 visitors a month to a news site, videos site etc.

So here are the domains, I bolded the ones I think are especially awesome. Again, these are all brand new disorders that Psychiatrists will be diagnosing:

PrimaryCentralSleepApnea.com
PrimaryAlveolarHypoventilation.com
RapidEyeMovementBehaviorDisorder.com
DisorderOfArousal.com
CircadiamRhythmSleepDisorder.com
ComplexSomaticSymptomDisorder.com
ParaphilicCoerciveDisorder.com
SexualInterestArousalDisorder.com
GenitoPelvicPainPenetrationdDisorder.com
OlfactoryReferenceSyndrome.com
SkinPickingDisorder.com
SubstanceUseDisorder.com
AlcoholUseDisorder.com
AmphetamineUseDisorder.com
CannabisUseDisorder.com
CocaineUseDisorder.com
HallucinogenUseDisorder.com
InhalantUseDisorder.com
NicotineUseDisorder.com
OpioidUseDisorder.com
PhencyclidineUseDisorder.com
PolySubstanceuseDisorder.com
MajorNeurocognitiveDisorder.org
MinorNeurocognitiveDisorder.org
TemperDysregulationDisorder.com – Temper Dysregulation Disorder was invented to give Psychiatrists an alternative to over-diagnosing kids as bipolar or ADHD, this one may be a household name in a year or two.
TemperDysregulationDisorder.org – I tried to buy the acronym for this from BuyDomains.com – TDD.org – and was quoted $10,088 (!)
TemperDysregulationDisorderWithDysphoria.com
TemperDysregulationDisorderWithDysphoria.org – This is the full name of Temper Dysregulation Disorder, but I just can’t see people constantly saying ‘Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria’ – doesn’t roll off the tongue as nice – but just in case, I also got the .com and .org acronyms of that, TDDWD.

Here is the NYT Article if you are interested.

Let me know what you think in the comments section – would also be glad to answer any questions on domaining.

Cheers

As of right now, 1:26am EST on January 27th, 2009 – this is what is appearing on the TechCrunch.com homepage:

Link to full-size image

The text at the top reads:

So Arrington, how much did all the media coverage yesterday brought you in trough the welcome.html ad you
forced
people to? What a fucking retarded move was that you twat. You should be thanking me and sucking on my fucking ballsack for not deleting everyone on the box and publishing the mysql, if that’s what you want O.K., I can do that. Also, you fucking
dickwads from sites like Yahoo!, BBC and plenty more, where the FUCK do you see adult content on
http://dupedb.com/
???????? I mean honestly, are you fucktards also in just for the money?!?!?!?!

Then it repeats the exact same thing, then you see the Tech Crunch homepage below. We’ll see how long it stays up, I suspect not long.

If you don’t have a Full Tilt Poker account yet, make sure you get rakeback when you set one up! I suggest RakeAid.com or Buildaroll.com – both pay out your rakeback weekly and offer the highest allowable percentage, 27%.

facebook.com/franceschine

So ya, Facebook is now the #2 site in the World behind Google, according to Alexa. Some people have been referring to it as ‘the other internet’ – I read that 25% of all pageviews in the USA are now on Facebook.com. Pretty insane growth. I’ve had an account since 2004 and in that time have probably used the website once a week or less – usually just replying to messages or friend requests. But in the last few months I’ve gotten hooked. A few of the major reasons:

-A ton of people I do not communicate with online (or regularly) are on Facebook now, and use it a lot – primarily older family members
-Status updates were an awesome feature for them to add – I much prefer using them to Twitter, though I haven’t played with Twitter much yet
-iPhone+Facebook=The nuts. The iPhone app is far better than using Facebook.com, i can take and upload a photo as a status update in less than a minute – and read messages, check status updates etc all with a super sleek user interface + no ads anywhere-and very fast.

In other news I’ve been in Thailand now for nearly six months straight without leaving the country. My longest run, by far, ever. I got an ED (education) visa for attending a Thai language school. I was told I could go to the school or not go and either way I’d be able to keep renewing my visa every three months without the need to leave the country – as every other visa requires you to leave the country every three months and return – this is very awesome. So after two months of attending my school I realized I wasn’t learning anything and the school sucks – so I stopped going. The school said I could keep renewing the visa for 10 years – and when I went to renew it last time they did not check my Thai, so I figured I’d have no issues.

Then this week I read on ThaiVisa.com that they are now cracking down and testing people from their second renewal (the one I have coming up). The questions people are reporting being asked were fairly basic and I think I’ll be able to pass the first test if I go to class a few times in the next month and ask some questions – but this is concerning. If they aren’t stupid (and you can never give the Thai’s credit for not being stupid) they will increase the difficulty of testing from the 2nd to 3rd to 15th renewal etc. Which means I’m going to now have to start going to classes again regularly – at my god awful school.

My other option is to look into another type of Visa – the investment visa pops out at me as a good possibility, though I read I need the US Embassy to certify I have a clean criminal record to qualify for this…yawn…

Other than my visa issues life is good. After my great European debacle earlier this year things have smoothed out nicely. Life gets a bit boring at times in Thailand but I never have any problems. Life is good.

Can’t promise I’ll blog again for awhile so again if you want add me on Facebook and you can catch my regular status updates – if anybody knows how to have those updates automatically post as Wordpress blog posts let me know, I’ll set that up…

Ciao

Dear Mr. Franceschine:

Thank you for writing to me regarding Internet gambling. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me on this important topic, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

There is no doubt that the Internet and related technologies have had a remarkable effect on the U.S. economy in recent years. The flow of commerce on the Internet has enhanced American industry’s ability to distribute goods economically and efficiently. The continuing development of this technology in California has provided hundreds of thousands of new, well-paying jobs, and I am committed to strengthening online commerce and preserving and expanding this vital job base.

While the advent of the Internet has its benefits, I believe the same cannot be said for Internet-based gambling. Internet gambling has become too easily accessible to minors, subject to fraud and criminal misuse, and too easily used as a tool to evade state gambling laws.

I understand your thoughts on internet gambling, and as you may be aware, I have supported legislation aimed at curbing Internet gambling during my tenure in the Senate. For example, I supported the SAFE Port Act, passed into law as Public Law 109-347, which included the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Please know that I have read your letter with interest and value your thoughts. While we do not necessarily agree on this particular topic, be assured that I will certainly keep your thoughts in mind should this issue come before me during the 111th Congress.

Again, thank you for your letter. I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. If you should have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator