So I am at a standstill with RideSearch. I have had my IDE open for weeks and have not even coded anything. I already have the vision, the plan and the tools. So what is missing? The drive. I know how hard it was to get 1.0 and 2.0 out the door. Remember me working on all of my breaks? I remember staying up and working 6 days a week at night on this thing and not seeing any payments for my efforts. I remember getting so tired when I finished 2.0 that I fell asleep at a funeral. The internal drive is what made it all possible. The will to finish it. I think after all that happened last year the will has gone bye bye. But it does hurt to think about quitting now. Not after $100,000 has been invested in this thing and I know just one more version and it could take off. I don't even have to spend any more money on it. I just have to code it. RideSearch was my best idea by far. It is still out there, getting a couple of people a day to sign up.

As I look back at the story of RideSearch I can say it was the wildest craziest thing I have ever done. I mean I was out there in LA evangelizing carpooling to people. I made a cable commercial. I was giving away t-shirts right and left. I got 40,000 business cards made. I was making announcements on the radio and tv and was in an article that was printed by the associated press across the US. The site was listed in Women's Health Magazine as a top site. Even Good Morning America had a link to my rideshare calculator. The day my site got linked to on the front page of Yahoo was a day I'll never forget. 300 people signed up in a matter of hours. The AP article got put on MSNBC and Forbes and CNN with a link to my site. I just recently got asked to be part of a board of rideshare site owners at MIT/Carnegie Melon but turned it down because I would have to pay for the flight and meals to Boston and take off work. The whole RideSearch experience is something I will tell my kids about. If success is based on things other than money than it was very successful. However, in business it leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it was a failure monetarily.

Sometimes it does deflate my ego to think about what could have been and what needs to be done. I just don't know if I have the drive right now. Right now I may just put it all on hold officially. I've got a second night job already lined up and may take it today or tomorrow. It actually pays and as in typical fashion they found me. It is working from home modifying an existing social network for lawyers. It is using the same engine I built RideSearch on. You know, I also got the job at the Boy Scouts based upon my RideSearch work, and I even got more experience here at Lockheed because of my RideSearch work, which made me an official senior developer. So, in a roundabout way, RideSearch did make me some money. Maybe that was the point all along. It wasn't the actual site that was valuable, it was the experience.