So I woke up this morning to a mountain of email (par for the course on a Monday morning).  I saw an email entitled "Important Notice from the Amazon Associates Program" which I promptly read.  This is what it said:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers.  The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules.  The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax.  Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway.  Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado.  We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way.  As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly.  The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly [ http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLICS2010A/csl.nsf/directory?openframeset= ]   and to Governor Ritter [ http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovRitter/GOVR/1177024890452 ], who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date.  Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule.  Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

I didn't make much money (currently) on my Amazon Associates account, but I made enough to go out to nice dinners with my wife every once in a while, etc.  Now that income is gone.  What's worse, though, is that I had a web site I was building that used that as the core of its income.  I had actually done numbers, etc. and figured out a business plan.  So much for that small business...

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I bought lemonade and a granola bar from a sidewalk lemonade stand yesterday. Yes, spring is here. This (hopefully) means less computery time and more outsidery time. Yes, I just made up the word "outsidery." Coining new words should be part of my curiosities this month...

As for actual things I want to explore:

• Jetpack - Last month I switched back to Firefox from Chrome because Chrome just didn't hack it for me as a web developer. One thing that Chrome had that I really liked was the extension mechanism. Basically. it was just some javascript. Jetpack is an extension that provides similar support for Firefox. After diving into Firefox extensions a few times and needing a lifeguard to get out, I thought I'd explore Jetpack to create simpler Firefox extensions.
• Android SDK - I offered to help a friend create an Android App. No pay was involved, but I have been provided a more recent Android phone to replace my Android Dev Phone, so I actually have something of an obligation to complete and app for Android as opposed to just poking around in it.

Last week, I was asked to meet with a family member for lunch. I went to venue only to find that the family member was joined by other people. Those other people wanted me to get involved in network marketing. People that aren't in network marketing often refer to network marketing as a "pyramid scheme." Yeah, one of those, you know, where you alienate your family and friends trying to get them to not only buy a product but to have them sell the product as well. I decided to decline the offer mostly because I'm a geek, not a salesman. I can't schmooze people; I'm direct and to the point.

On my bike ride home from that appointment though, I realized that I am a salesman, and I think I'm a pretty good one. The only difference is that I can only "sell" the things I truly believe in. One of those things is Free Software.

In 1999, I was a sophomore/junior in high school in a small podunk town. I don't remember a lot of my life then, but I do remember the computer lab high school. It had a T1 (lightning fast at the time) and hardly anyone at the school knew anything about computers. I guess you could say I was the man with one eye in the land of the blind.

With all that unused bandwidth, I had no choice but to start pirating software hand over fist. I stumbled over a piece of software called "Red Hat Linux" which sounded really geeky cool, and I had access to downloading all 8 cds (or whatever it was). I was such a pirate for downloading all those cds. Man, I was cool.

Installing it was a pain, eventually leading to me getting a book called "Linux for Dummies" before I really knew what to do. I played around a bit, but didn't really see the appeal of Linux over Windows. There was nothing like Visual Basic (a habit I'm ashamed to admit I developed during high school). I also wasn't a fan of the terminal.

2001 came and I found myself buying a copy of Mandrake 8.1 from Best Buy. It was sexier than Red Hat, and seemed to have everything I wanted. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my sound card to work, and every time I wanted to install something that wasn't an rpm from the cd, I had to go build all sorts of dependencies from source. It was hopeless, but I trudged on for the geek cred.

That same year, I discovered Debian because someone else I knew was using it. Debian was cool, because it had this apt-get thing that would help you install things magically. At this point, I took off. Installing things was so easy that I was always trying out new software. I was showing it to other people. I'd see people using a piece of Windows software and start talking about the Free version I got from apt, and how much better it was.

As time past, I started seeing the benefit of Free Software in everything. I started talking to people about how they needed to embrace this idea of Free Software. There was light in my eyes when I told people they didn't need to be slaves to software vendors; they had choice in how their computer worked.

Over the years, I've helped many people convert their lifestyles to use more Free Software in some capacity, whether it be through the use of OpenOffice, or the big jump to Linux. It's been rewarding and eductional for me, and it's even better when those that I've helped turn around to help others.

So, if I put this blog post to cheesy music on a DVD, sat you down and made you watch it, would you join the Free Software Pyramid Scheme? What if I promised you that if you worked as hard as I did, you would make as much money as I have convincing people to use Free Software?