Tom Morello. That’s my favorite guitarist. A while ago I bought a keyboard from Musician’s Friend and this month’s catalog has Tom Morello on the cover. Rolling Stone listed him as #26 out of the top 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Boom. Wow, that’s pretty good.

Tom has a very interesting story. He grew up in Chicago then went to Harvard to study political science. He had offers from Chicago bands to play full time but decided to finish his degree. Then a Harvard alum offered him a job with good pay from but Tom said “No I don’t want to do that. I want to do this”. He just needed a day job in the mailroom to get by! He never planned on using his degree for its typical purpose. When asked about a “plan B” he would just reply that he’s going to make this music thing work. In the Musician’s Friend interview Tom said that he feels like guitar chose him, he didn’t really choose guitar. Cool.

He started playing at age 17. No quite the story of basically ANY prominent classical musician or even rocker for that matter. Maybe that’s because he’s an artist. There’s a difference! A musician can play other people’s songs like mad, he/she can master the technical stuff. An artist finds their own sound and is brave enough to share.

And Morello has his own sound. Fo’ sho. Tom’s guitarings are very very unique in comparison to other artists. Each of his favorite guitars has a name, too. He has a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar named “Whatever it Takes”, a nifty custom electric called “Arm the Homeless” and a newer one called “Soul Power”. Soooo sweeet. Looks like he never riddled his guitars with stickers like a lot of punkers out there. I was the same way! I actually had a Rage Against the Machine sticker on my first acoustic for years and that was it. I kind of want to name my guitars now and write on them with a marker.

Them is some cool guitars.

And Tom Morello and comedian Stephen Jones look a lot alike.

Hey y’all I decided to deactivate facebook for a while. It’s driven me to work a little more and blog a little more. It had been a long time since I blogged that last post.

I was going to de-friend a bunch of people the other night and decided that if I wasn’t on facebook for a while it would be a lot easier to do.

We can learn from them. Sorta. On twitter I saw someone post this quote:

“

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

“

Love it. It’s very true, you see. As unique as we all are, humans share many, many tendencies.

Parker Planners works because there are a lot of people like me out there who aren’t satisfied by the current planners on the market. The Parker Planner app is going to kick some booty for the same reason. So many people who are extremely capable are afraid to share their innovations with the world because they think people won’t want their products. Man, just put it out there! Let the MARKET decide whether your product is useful, not you alone!! Crazy person! You’re not so unique that only you would like your work and you’re certainly not smart enough to know how many people will want to buy your invention.

It’s a humble and humbling thing to present your work to the world and give a solemn recommendation that they buy it. I’ve struggled with that from day 1. Still do. Most of the time I don’t want to release new products or designs for fear of what people will say and worry if it will sell. You just do it, though. That’s entrepreneurship. Anything else is ‘want’trepreneurship. You gotta spend your own money and get your stuff out there.

I’ve met with the BYU Cocoa Heads a couple times now and there are some seriously talented people that attend. Tonight I was paid a really kind compliment when someone said they were going to release their first app into the iTunes App Store because of something I said two weeks prior.

I’m really excited about the first release of the Parker Planner into the App Store. Mostly I just want to use it on my own personal phone.