I've finished up a bunch of my consulting work and I'm a little lull time. I've got $35-$40K in savings (not including 401K/IRA/Home Equity/Kids Colllege Funds)  and a very affordable living situation.

There is a small micro market out there on Craigslist, Guru.com, and Rentacoder where I can find jobs between $20-$50 per hour doing programming work. My plan is to focus on the process of building a social network - RestorationThrowdown (revolves around car restorations and challenges of authenticity). I will primarily use Ruby on Rails and Pentaho with some PHP. I will use open source when available. I will possibly learn Flash if necessary.

As things materialize, I may bring in friends who would not be willing to get in at the idea stage.

I will also take on any and all side work. My goal is to timebox this for 6 months. The basic process is:

1. Get good at Ruby and Pentaho and MySQL - Possibly PHP too since a lot of open source packages are available in PHP.

2. Network - continue to lunch with friends and colleagues

3. Do side work and build a portfolio / reputation.

4. Keep an eye out for opportunities while trying to manufacture my own.

5. Research offshoring the work and process I create to the Philippines. I plan to spend the summer there and hope to have it all worked out by then. I have a nephew and a few relatives who could start it up.

I just need to make enough to slow down the bleeding of the $30/$40K in savings. I'm excited. Worst case scenario - I can get a lower pressure full time job for $80K and supplement that with the $20/$30K I make in part time work.

Sounds like a plan to me....