If any dentists read this, how often do they diagnose cavities too liberally? Really.
My bro and I went to the dentist today and we slapped us both with a return appointment. Bleh.
On a lighter note, we went sledding and it rocked! I wore some great waterproof outerwear and stayed high and dry, lotsa fun!
I got some board gear and am ready to hit the slopes. My bro and I went to Canyons already and we’re probably going to hit Sundance a few more times this winter because it’s only 20 min away.
This is with family on the sledding hill. Fun stuff sledding with nieces. Those girls are wicked cool.
My bro Eric turn-ed 22. Wow, that’s an old brother. I threw him a “supplies” party, it was great. I took him to see Invictus (sweet inspiring quotes but wayyy too long) the night before his B-day and we had a party that started at midnight! I had everyone get prepared with office supplies and they all said “supplies!!” when we walked through the door and turned on the light. Ha ha.
I also got him an icecream cake but we didn’t bust that out until everyone left (those things are expensive!). I wrote “Suppliz Eric” and it was good stuff. Here is me writing on the cake and then Eric and I after the party.
That’s a practice.
Happy Birthday!
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Even the airport agrees:
Turn that key; on that is, and be idle free!
Hello ya’ll readers of Being Happy, Living the Dream.
I’m back from vacation time and its on like Donkey Kong blogwise. Just got back to Provo and its time to kick-start a new year. I love govt. grants and interest-free student loans. Beautiful things.
I may abandon windows. XP is getting a little dated for me. I’m typing to you from Leopard a.k.a. OS X (operating system like windows, vista, etc.) from my macbook right now and its nice I must admit. I’m getting into the habit because when Adobe CS 5 comes out I’m going to install it on the Mac side of my computer.
CS stands for “creative suite” and it’s adobe’s bundle of design software. Rumor has it that the new Flash version can program iPhone apps right from the graphic interface so you don’t have to know the Objective-C programming language to make apps! Way way rad.
I’ll fill in some pictures from the break. Welcome back!
Ethan
I went to a choir concert Sunday night. It was a community choir that a few of my friends were in. I was surprised at the quality of performance considering they only practice once a week and they’re volunteers. One song, Carol of Joy was my favorite because we sang it when I was in Men’s Chorus.
Men’s Chorus was a big thing for me at the time. It’s an auditioned choir at BYU that practices five times a week for an hour and performs every month for usually two nights in a row. The time commitment was like a part-time job. It was so rewarding, though, because of the stellar attitude of the choir’s director, Rosalind Hall. She knows the power of positive thought and good works. She knows the influence a person can be on another’s life. And her Welsh accent is super sweet.
Sister Hall is definitely one of those people I stand in awe of. She has a command and mental discipline that I respect more than worldly accomplishments or position. Being in her choir was a big deal for me because I had never really sung in a choir before. To prepare for the audition I took a choir class and had my musical prodigy friends coach me. It helped and shockingly I was on the list for basses fall semester of 2007. Men’s Chorus changed my life.
That’s the logo from my sweater.
I was in a math class at ASU for about a week. The professor would talk about the online homework, or “web work” in his curious, idiosyncratic manner probably 5 times every class period. I dropped the class and tested out instead (mostly because it was at 8am). When I told the teacher, he asked: “was it the web work?” ha ha
Tonight and last night I’ve spent probably 8 hours doing web work. Website and blog web work, that is (waaaayyyy better than math!) Notice the new “Favicon” ?? Yeah! It looks like this: 
and can be found at the top of your browser to the left of the address bar. It’s kind of a pain to put up there, but so much cooler than just the 
you see on other web pages. 
So Parker Planners has a blog now. www.uselifewisely.com oh yeah. Can you believe we have 150 facebook fans? I hope a lot more people become fans so they can always be in touch with our inspirational messages 
This “social” aspect of business can be pretty confusing sometimes. I guess it’s important, though. Good ‘ole writing a post at 1:30 am. Later.
I may have mentioned Zinch in this blog before, but if not, they are a big inspiration for me as an entrepreneur. I was in one of the founder’s wards (geographic area of LDS church members) last summer, Brad Hagen. This last March I stumbled upon his younger brother’s blog; Mick Hagen. Since then I think I have read every post he wrote since 2006 and ate it all up.
He dropped out of Princeton to start this company and had no assurance that it would succeed other than faith and talent. There have been naysayers, but it will likely grow into something really big, multi-millions. He’s just someone who lives for the right reasons it seems to me, and he’s fearless. www.mickhagen.com is the blog.
So until recently Mick didn’t know I was blog-stalking him and we had never met. Since he’s opening an office in San Fransisco and moving away on Friday I decided to visit the office and meet him. Today Mick told me the gist of the Zinch story and answered some questions I had written down. Very cool and very intelligent young man (25!) as I expected him to be from reading about his life. We exchanged business cards.
Here is a “tweet” he wrote just a little while ago. Nice to be acknowledged by those you admire. I hope to be the same way when people approach me about business. Especially those with companies not as developed as mine (believe it or not that’s happened to me with my biz Parker Planners once or twice).
Love,
Ethan
When I got my Pre on Sept 2, 2009 there were 41 free apps. You couldn’t purchase any yet because the store wasn’t officially open. Today, Dec 9, 2009 there are 613 available for purchase and few have more than 50 reviews. Palm was touting the Pre as the iPhone killer; they’re gonna have to try harder.
The iPhone by contrast has 110,485 apps and well over 2 billion total downloads.
Here are some more cool mobile app facts: reference
Basically all this means is that I should have released the Parker Planner iPhone app a long time ago. In March 2009 I heard the CEO of Omniture say that the mobile app situation right now is just like the internet was in 1995. If that’s true, holy crapoli I need to get on the horse of innovation and bust it out.
The world needs a Parker Planner adapted to the iPhone!
I like the Pre and the service only costs about $50 a month. iPhones cost $100/mo. for full service but I’ll get an iPhone sooner or later I’m sure.
Its decided. I’m out of here. Time to get a BS in Accounting from BYU and let it all be over including overweight female vocal performance (ain’t over till the fat lady sings). I was going to get a Spanish minor and drag things out until June or July or who knows when. Nay. No Longer. I’m pumped to move on to the next step and focus my energies on new things.
Parker Planners or bust.
Fake snow, that is. It still felt great, though. We went up Provo Canyon to this cool place with tubing fun. The mentor program paid for it and there were probably 30 mentor pairs there! Here we are on the slopes!
Here’s Mike, his sister, and I being hoisted up the hill.
Felt great.
I got contacts!! Woa. They touch your eye. Then you have to touch your eye to get them out. Gross.
Wow, what a day! Today was wonderful on many levels. Temple was good, Benjie and I are going to take over the world, and I saw an ice sculpture. It was at a big cool thing called Freeze Fest put on by BYU. Totally rocked. Ice skating, hot choclate, broom hockey, and shaking your groove-thing. My groove thing shook.
Service, too. We made a stocking.
Here we are just after Andrew George scored the game-winning touchdown in overtime against the U of U. Everyone rushed the field and it was a good time. The most considerate mob I’ve ever been a part of.
The Eric and I ran (literally to beat the crowd) to Brick Oven for some pizza. Wow, I must say they have some quality stuff. Go go BO! And Cosmo the Friendly Cougar was there.
Today H. David Burton gave the devotional address to BYU. He said that it’s better to be a “learner” than to be “learned”. Don’t you love talking to people who live as though they don’t know everything and love to learn?
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant
Parker Planners