When I wrote email tracking software about 7 years ago, I dropped the 1x1 pixel, because of spam filters tripping over them. I just used any image in the email to track you and assigned it an unique URL. How do you propose catching that one?
About $1m. Enough to buy a house and take care of emergencies/unemployment/travel. I would drive me insane not to be able to program, but it's nice to be picky about what programming you actually do.
I'm a consultant, have been working from my own LLC for about five years, of which I've spent about two and a half traveling across the world, working from time to time and longer times when I settled down somewhere for a while. I've worked from Laos, Jordan and am currently in Botswana.