This one’s organized by category!

Warning: the most important part of this whole post is at the bottom. It’s a video that describes with frightening accuracy (agony?) the feelings of my corazón. Oh man, it’s so hilarious.

Sports

I normally don’t get that excited about sports nor do I watch sports often. This BYU stuff as of late is pretty exciting though. I can’t wait until the game later today! BYU is in the sweet 16 (final 16 teams of the NCAA tourney) for the first time in 30 years! That’s 1981 folks! That’s when Danny Ainge took us there nearly single-handedly kinda like Jimmer is doing right now.

Ainge played in the NBA for a while and is now the owner of the Boston Celtics, so that’s what the Jimmer has to look forward to I guess. The game is on at 5:30 our time. MMmmmmm yes. We are playing Florida who we beat last year in the NCAA tournament in the first round. People are still talking about Jimmer all over. National news to the max. Magic Johnson said Jimmer was the real deal. Here’s a video about Jimmer that borrows music from another popular rap song.

Business

Another thing I’m excited about right now is the Parker Planner for iPhone. We’ve been working on it for a couple weeks now and it’s coming along. This thing’s got potential. Email me if you want to beta test, otherwise look for it in the iTunes store in about a month.

Well now that I’m not a full-time student any more I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my time. I do work most of the time. Whether I’m at the office or not there’s usually something to be done. I like that. The business is always on my mind and it’s great to always have something to be thinking about, caring about, and building. I’ve gathered up the 5 books I’ve started recently and have them in a stack on my desk. I’m going to finish them one at a time so I finally just do it.

They are: Think and Grow Rich for the 3rd time, MBA Admissions, Delivering Happiness, Outliers, and The World is Flat. All great books with high recommendations. For me so far Think and Grow Rich tops them all by a LARGE margin. It’s like doctrine reworded for those who may not be Christians. Besides the Standard Works of the LDS faith, it’s my favorite book.

My ward has a temple trip on Friday, we’re going up to Salt Lake and doing baptisms and sealings. It should be fun, I’m looking forward to it.

Music

Today I watched Google interview Lady Gaga. Yes, like an executive from Google interviewing her with the audience being google employees. It was really interesting. My favorite thing she said was about writing down your creative impulses right when they happen. She mentioned the night before that she had a great idea about a costume while lying in bed so she got up and wrote it all down and then went back to sleep. She said:

“

“If God calls, you pick up the damn phone!”

“

Nicely put I think. How many of us have great ideas and just let them pass us by? A lot I’d say. Way too many.

Love,

Ethan

PS Totally favorite song of the weekkk!!!!!

If I had a nickel for every time this has occurred in my life I’d be a rich man ha ha. “Oh, yeah. It didn’t work out. Turns out she was totally ugly and I didn’t even see it. Uh, yeah- and probably gay”. Ahhh the excuses we make when we get rejected.

Eric and I went hot-tubbing with some friends the other night and my car got towed. It was less-pleasant.

This weekend I saw two movies that were pretty great. Friday night a couple friends came over and we watched School of Rock. I love that movie! I remember when I first saw it that I thought it really revealed the secrets to creating rock music. Jack Black is a great actor and I love his style, really funny guy and I appreciate the antics. He’s passionate and animated. A neat fact about that movie is that the kids actually play their instruments so they really are kidrockers.

Last night we watched Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrel. Yes, he came. Ok not really but he was in the movie. It was pretty good, I liked it. Very different movie than your typical romantic comedy. I thought it was funny how strungout stressedout the author looked all the time. I like to write but I usually don’t stand on my desk and peer down at the ground or go to a hospital for inspiration. Maybe I should! I could write super bangin’ goodness! YaH!

I love performing and have always wanted to do voice acting. If you every hear about a gig do let me know, I’m all over it. Recently I recorded a few little bits into my computer for Parker Planners and want to put them on our new and improved website when we get a new one. Maybe I’ll make a little youtube video with a few of them mashed into it. Hmmmm. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Whats up yalls. Today was another worldwide leadership training by the LDS Church. It was pretty good. They talked about the new leadership manuals and how the changes made were more principle-based. It takes more spiritual maturity to apply a principle to a situation than to just follow the manual.

We had an intramural soccer game today that was way wicked fun. I loved it. I felt awesome, I’ve gotten into better shape pretty quick since I started going to the gym a few weeks ago. Yea I ran and was not weary. As always I slammed into people and scared them out of the ball rather than having real soccer finess, but that’s what you get when you take a defensive end and put shin guards on him. Sprinting at people is effective. We won 4-0.

BYU beat the U of U in basketball today, always a good day when the Utes go down. They put up a way better fight than last time, we only won by 13 whereas last game, a home game for the Utes, we won by like 35. Jimmermania still lives strong in Cougar hearts.

My ward had an etiquette dinner tonight that was pretty fun. They served ribs which I thought was hilarious. There are some way fun girls in my ward, our fancy evening degraded quickly into discreetly launching the tiny fake diamonds on our table at other tables. Yup.

Then it was game time at a friend’s place. A story about one homie at the gamestimes- I saw her at the gym the other day and we were running next to each other on the treadmill when the girl next to us seemed to be having trouble running. She tripped, and slipped, and slopped, and flopped madly like a sea-turtle on coke and finally ended up on the floor in a heap. Treadmill runners everywhere were in shock and wondered if she was seriously injured. The guy next to her shut off her machine and I hopped off of mine and went over there to see if she was ok. She was just fine but I felt like I wanted to offer some moral support so I tried to be reassuring as I could.

Well I hope most of you are asleep by now and your Sunday is filled with rest and good vibes.

Ethan

I haven’t posted videos in a little while. Here’s one I wanted to share with you.

We gah’ah go iKating! (spoken loudly and with passion)

Famous words from mine and Eric’s favorite neighbor. A former linebacker for Northern Arizona University. Dude was hilarious. He was an armed ATM filler-man; carried a gun but didn’t need it ’cause he was like 6′2″, 250lbs, and quite the ripped. For some reason he really loved ice skating and would always try to get us to go with him. “C’mon! we gotta go iKating!”

So why iKate? Because that’s what I put in my phone as the last name of a girl I took out last Friday. I don’t know her last name which makes it kind of fun because it’s hard to facebook stalk someone without knowing it. Don’t worry though, it’s pretty much common knowledge that people look at each other’s profiles on facebook prior to a date, etc.

Friday was one of the funnest dates I’ve ever been on. Hands down. To protect her identity I’ll just call her iKate. Like a mac product or something; but better looking.

iKate and I met speed dating early in January on campus at BYU- some friends and I crashed some other ward’s activity and it turned out to be pretty fun. I was determined not to be like the other guys and just ask every girl where she was from and what her major was. When iKate and I talked I got to the point right away and asked “so. what are you deeply deeply passionate about?” She said “Ice skating”. I was a little surprised, you don’t hear that one often.

Turns out she competed for like 8 years and still likes to practice her stuff. I suggested we go ice skating some time. Fast forward 3 weeks. I pick her up and we head to the rink. Same one they did Olympic sports at in 2002. She had her own skates so I thought that said something. We get out there and the girl is a pro. She can do that spin thing where the person is a blur they go so fast. She can go forward, backward, upside-down, and sideways and look good doing it. She taught me some stuff, too. I did some skating as a teen where you grind on things and do tricks at skate parks, etc. so I wasn’t too bad.

After the first hour they kicked us off so the Zamboni could Zambone.

Then they dimmed the lights, put on some music, and turned on the cool disco-ball effects. We decided that dancing would be fun and it totally was! I’m sure everyone thought we were practicing our routine for a couples skating competition (because of her of course, not me). Such a riot to be able to lead someone wherever you wanted and they just follow without falling down.

This is pretty much what we looked like:

Then we got some frozen yogurt and walked/jogged around the block by her house just for fun. Man it rocked. iKate’s a winner, for sure going to see her again.

There are a couple others on the radar at the moment, too, but I’d say she’s in the lead for now. Tonight I ran into Haunted Forest girl on campus randomly, she’s way awesome. Girls girls girls. I only need one though!

If you haven’t heard this name yet you may be living in a cave. A cave with wireless internet and a power outlet so you can read my blog and have now heard it.

I just got back from probably the most watched college basketball game in the nation. #4 San Diego State vs #9 BYU. Jimmer scored significantly more than 1/2 of BYU’s points. That’s 43 out of 71. The guy is a miracle worker. While the game is going on stuff happens and he does alright but then you look up 10 min later and he’s got like 30 points and no fouls. It’s amazing. BYU showed America they’re the best in the Mountain West Conference and a likely contender for the NCAA tourney coming in March.

I took Mike the 12-yr old stud who I mentor. It was his first BYU basketball game. We screamed our guts out and had a great time; BYU’s pre-game stuff is way way cool. They had giant white sheets that dropped down from the ceiling on all 4 corners of the jumbo-tron then projected video clips of BYU rocking it on the court. Loud music and great light effects. They know how to put on a show!

The national anthem by Vocal Point was way way good, too. So so talented. That’s the group I had sing to my girlfriend last summer Yeah good times. I’m single now, though and lookin’ for love. (here we go) Kinda weird to admit that but it’s about time, right? Have you ever heard about guys that are scared off when a girl is too confident? I think that’s crazy. Makes no sense to me. “Yeah, but I’d rather have a girl that can’t look people in the eye and second guesses everything she does and says”. Uhhhh, ok. Not me. I’ve heard it from multiple places that some girls don’t get asked about because they are too attractive, have a plan, and are applying themselves in school. Ludicrous. Show yourself! Send me an email, hunny, cause you don’t scare me.

They say if you don’t fall down on occasion you’re not running fast enough. Let’s just say I haven’t been aiming too low

Crazy as it sounds I don’t mind when a superstar girl says nay. It makes them decide. They don’t just get to ignore you and leave it at that; I get some kind of sick satisfaction out of making a really popular girl tell me she’s not interested strait up after she’s not called back or taken a long time responding to communication.

It’s not all rejection, though. When you win it’s heaven on earth. Guess I just haven’t found a real Yin to my Yang yet. I’d like a girl who understands stuff I say, is capable of disagreeing with me, and is smokin’ hot. That’s about it. Not too much to ask, right? So where do these goal-oriented creatures congregate?

Maybe they’re holding pom-poms at basketball games . . .

Yup, you heard right. This is a very interesting article about how a lot of people (even non-LDS) read blogs created by mormon housewives. It’s even a guilty pleasure that few can admit.

Read on:

Believe it or not

I think this is really cool. My sister gave a pretty accurate description and commentary on this topic as well, being herself a mormon mom with a blog.

Here’s probably the quintessential mega-hip mega-mom mormon blog. It’s called “rockstar diaries” and it’s by a couple in NY- he went to Columbia and she went to Julliard. They take pictures with (probably) a decent Canon SLR and make stuff look like it could be in a magazine.

Here are a couple pictures from their blog:

This “morning” I woke up and knew that I had a big meeting with a regional president of Zion’s Bank and hoped it wasn’t really Friday the 13th as my blurry morning vision could have suggested. You don’t want to have an important meeting on that day. So this meeting came about from the Utah Student 25 event that transpired back in November. I got a letter from the CEO of Zion’s Bank congratulating us on our performance and said to contact him personally if I ever needed anything. Hmmm. CEO of a bank offering his services? Yes, please.

I emailed him and he got back to me surprisingly quickly. The very next day. He then put me in contact with a guy who has a sweet office at their brand new very nice building here in Provo. The meeting went well and I got to tell the whole Parker Planners story. I was surprised at how interested he and the other guy in the meeting were to hear my story. It was a confidence booster for sure. I kept thinking “why do these guys care about a planner company?” but whateva, it was good times. They were very helpful in answering some questions and Zion’s may just help Parker Planners get to the next level.

I then hung out with Mike. It was awesome as usual. The last few times have been better than ever. It almost feels like he’s my son sometimes, kinda weird but fulfilling-weird. He’s so sharp and mature for a 12-year-old. We went to Denny’s and got hot chocolate and pancake puppies- fried donut holes made of pancake. These were blueberry with white chocolate chips and they came with warm syrup- yes, as good as it sounds!!

Their hot chocolate is re-fill-able and I think I had like 4.

Afterward we stopped by my office so we could pick up a planner. Mike wanted one because his school planner is too big and he likes Parker Planners. We agreed on a price of $0.50 and it was a fair deal. He was in luck because we just got some samples from China, brand new improved version!!

Guess I should have got a pic with he and the planner.

After that I rocked out with my new roomate Andrew and we ate some chili I made from scratch. It came out great. Chips and chili is what I make when I want to pretend I eat healthily. I like to eat it with white corn chips and lots of cheese, salsa and a little tobasco.

Then it was inner-tube water polo time!! It sounds a little crazy but it’s ridicu-fun. It’s an intramural team and I love it. Rocks. We unfortunately forfeited but got to play for-fun game anyway.

Then I went to a western-themed birthday party and it was a dandy. Night y’all.

Ethan

ps my sister sent me this link. Yes it’s a Miley Sirus song but you gotta give the guy credit for his talents. He’s got a few others that are very good, too.

Hey blog peeps! I’m back from what has been a delightful escape from P-town. Oh wow lots has transpired, where to start?

Well Saturday Dec 18 marks the day my older brother got married to the girl we thought was impossible to find. Terrin is the newest member of our family and a great sister-in-law already. She’s way cool and we are all so excited about the weddin’. My family went to the temple together the day before which was so great. The temple is a very special place for those of the LDS faith. We believe families can be together forever through how we worship in the temple.

Ammon and Terrin looked fabulous and we had a great time at the brunch. We were all very impressed at my brother Eric’s toast, he’s so articulate and did a great job speaking. He’ll make an excellent attorney. He talked about how Ammon is the guy you hear a story about that was told through a friend of a friend of a friend. He’s right!! Ammon has been in the special forces in the Army, ridden a live and very large and angry bull, ran a marathon, killed a quail in flight with a .22 rifle hip-shot ( I was there, no freaking joke people), won a real MMA cage fight, rebuilt numerous cars and motorcycles, and ridden the “dragon’s tail” (world famous twisty road for fast sport bikes). Mucho thanks to Eric for the sweet toast.

My brother in law Cooper got Ammon a really nice BBQ for his wedding and we put it on the top of our Pontiac Vibe. Lucky it didn’t fall off!!

The reception was fun, we messed with Ammon’s car pretty good (but not too much because it’s a 2005 BMW 545i :/) and I tied some empty soda cans to his muffler so they would make noise when they drove away. They went to Beliz after

We looked went to walmart for some crud to put on his car. We may have been the only people in tuxes in any walmart across the globe.

So the day after the wedding was Eric’s birthday so we celebrated and then drove to Phoenix! Yes! We stayed with my older sister and her family another sister of mine from Houston and her family came too!

Love,

Ethan

This post is a little on the -may offend people- side but it’s from the heart. Remember that organizations people start are sort of like their children.

“I’m so glad you’re you, but you should really be more like me.”

This is something we all do. We thinly congratulate others of their hard-earned success only to give them a sharp left hook to the jaw of how they could enjoy so much more happiness if they had just done things a little more like we would have, if given their same opportunities.

I forgive others of the crime because I do it myself, but it’s a pretty egotistical way of communicating any way you slice it. But hey, we’re all a little egotistical

Blessed and rare is the soul that can talk to someone without offering advice. It’s nearly impossible to do. Try it, I dare you.

I’m an entrepreneur; not the drop-out-of-school-all-guts-raging-success-or-death type, more the kind that gets a college degree from a good school while running a business as a student. The mostly-guts type that will give it a boy-scout try before assuming that succeeding with your own business is for the lucky or evil.

So because most people have not heard of Parker Planners but they have heard of BYU’s accounting program, it is everyone’s job to tell me that my business is “nice” but I should really use that accounting degree for something useful. Thanks everyone, but next time I want to silence my faith and crush my own dreams I’ll go read despair.com posters until I start to believe them.

Love,

Ethan

Today was easily one of the best days of my life. I just got back from a jam session with friends and it was magical. Nothing short of magical. Let me introduce you to the cast:

Emily Brown – Her “Song of an Insomniac” is easily A-list quality. I’m talking late night talk show, sold out stadium good. Say what you will I’m gonna support her on that with anything I can. This is a video from a BYU’s got talent show but I can’t wait until there is a professionally recorded version. When she performed it for us the room was dead silent and it was fabulous.

Emily Golightly – in a band called Bomb-Semble. This girl has soul. If you’ve never heard it (soul) go listen to some Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, or Seal. Serious good vibes coming from this girl.

Hannah Johnson – A good friend that wrote a song about her def TA. Hilarious and very good at piano/vocals.

Joel Adams – Dude had some funny stuff. Also in a band with 4 other people there, the Bombsemble.

There were many more I’d love to mention (and if you want mentioned I’ll throw you in here with a link to your stuff!) but suffice it to say that everyone there (and there were probably 15) was a great musician and we took turns listening to one another’s stuff rounded out by a group jam of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” and Miley Sirus’ “Party in the USA”. Played first as a classical song then rocked out to it’s fullest complete with guitar-body drums by Joel Adams (he’s really a drummer).

Man it really makes me want to find what type or part of music I can be the best in the world at and go for it like a toddler to dangerous yet indescribably interesting objects.

So earlier in the evening, and just before this we ate some delicious Pei Wei, we celebrated a day-early birthday with my dad up in Kaysville! We were out getting dinner and decided to get a cake and candles while out. After dinner Eric and I came in from the garage singing with cake in hand! I love surprises and surprising people so much. For a long time it was my deeply desired dream to have a real birthday surprise party and June 2009 it happened. For parties interested that’s what birthed this blog.

Oh yeah, and snowboarding at Brighton today was nothing short of the perfect ski day. Snow: powdery fresh and full of funk. Cost: $20 for all-day. Beat that! Crowdedness: not. With: brother and snow homie. Overall: win!

Here’s nature’s beauty of which we partook. I dig the fog.

Brighton’s cool history of snowboards wall.

We three snowpeople of Provo are . . .

Thanks and goodnight. This blogging stuff is fun but good golly it takes time. 2:20 am may we meet again when I’m involved in an activity that makes me money . . . legally . . . in purely wholesome ways.

Here’s a commercial I just finished for Parker Planners. I hope it can make a few people laugh, a few people join the facebook page, and a few more find a planner that is very useful for them.

Over thanksgiving break my friend went to Honduras to volunteer as a foot doctor (he’s been a podiatrist for 20 yrs) for those preparing to serve LDS missions. He asked me to write up a sheet about foot health and translate it to Spanish. It was fun, I made the format look just like Preach My Gospel and when Mac came back from his trip he said that the Church would likely reproduce the information for other missions. Good to hear they liked it

I had a thought so I drew a picture with my computer. Hee hee.

To LeBron’s credit they have been doing much better and just won their 5th straight game. I also appreciate how he changed his number from 23 to 6 to respect Jordan. Recently Jordan made a commercial slamming LeBron but I don’t think that’s necessary. Let the rings do the talking. I desperately hope for the sake of the kids that Lebron can live a more moral life than that of Kobe or Jordan.

Mick Hagen’s blog (used to be mickhagen.com now unwacky.com) inspired me to create a blog of my own. He co-founded Zinch.com which helps high schoolers navigate the mess that is college admissions. Here’s a quote from an old post of his that I really love:

“

“To fail while no one else attempted is in itself a success.”

Thanks, man. Not many people out there are fearless enough to pursue what they love.

I love great minds for their knowledge and warmth. I love small minds for their shining example of how not to be.

I really love to drive. I’ve thought many a time that I’d be a good race car driver or motorcycle racer. Those dreams will be fulfilled when I take one of those week-long driving courses they offer. Or maybe I’ll just rent a Ferrari.

This was while my older brother and I were in St. George for a little while replacing the engine in his BMW. Fun times. Aug 2010.

It might be the lateness talking but I’d like to re-emphasize a post a couple posts down in case you missed that posty McPost.

I’ve probably watched that video about 22 times now. Man, it rocks! Google “WIll.i.am seasame street” for yourself and pretend you found the video on your own and enjoy the electric plus-sign vibes running through ya.

Then skip the video to 1:28 and watch those muppets shake their heads all over. Yes ma’am.

Sesame Street rocks. This is a good one. It’s important to think positive. A great quote I read recently goes something like this: “A poor man is not he without cent, but he without vision”

Hey y’all! I found out through my iPhone correcting me that “yall” is spelled y’all instead of “ya’ll” like I always thought. It makes perfect sense now. I was so blind.

This week has been amazing! Wow, so much fun and adventure. The trip to the trade show was more intense than I thought. The first 5 hours to Boise weren’t too bad, just a little rain and I was running on beef jerky and a pomegranate ‘naked’ juice graciously given by the lenders of the car. I would have been fine driving the VW Jetta all the way to Washington but my parents offered to let me drive one of their cars so I took them up on it.

I ended up driving the 2006 325i which was very very nice all things considered. First of all, you can cruise at 100mph and it feels like you’re doing 55. We didn’t go that fast the whole time but ya know, it’s nice to have it if you need it. Second, it has some pretty nifty traction control that came in handy when Benjie and I got caught in a snow storm in Washington. We couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of the car. Intense it was. Sort of just crept up on us and I’m glad we made it out of there!

I picked up Benjie from work in downtown Boise, he works at Clearwater Analytics. It’s way cool, their office space is a floor of a taller building and they wear jeans and t-shirts to work. I’m so glad for that, I thought Benjie was getting all corporate-ed out and living under the tyranny of a no-fun boring-party poo-boss environment. Quite the contrary and that’s good for my homie.

For those new to Parker Planners, Benjie and I partnered in the summer of 2008 after Parker Planners was around for about a year. It was way fun to catch up and we had about 8 hours to do so on the way to Tacoma. Another super lucky (side story: see image below, yes, that is SUPER LUCKY ELEPHANT rice. I first saw it on my mission. Oh man that was good for many laughs) break was that our former employee Jackie Lau lives right in Tacoma now! She has a fancy marketing job with Kraft foods with company car and all that. She let us stay at her place which was super cool. We got there around midnight and left the next morning just after 6am. Quick visit indeed.

So we got the Hotel Murano (if you reverse the name like that it’s at least 14x more fancy than ‘Murano Hotel’) around 7am and it was mega artsy-fartsy. Loved it. Tacoma is a pretty cool city, lots of hills like San Fran and right by water like various other cool cities. Benjie and I set up our booth quickly and ate the free (ehh, kinda, we did pay hundreds of $ to be there) pastries and juice. People were busy body bees as they set up their stuff. It was fun to see. At 10am when the show was supposed to start we were primed and ready to talk about planners. The minutes felt like hours as an extremely slow trickle of potential buyers walked briskly, directly to the booths they needed to hit. Right past us. We then watched as a few more came and lovingly embraced employees at other booths. ? What? These people obviously have been doing this for years and already know each other. Can we be 20 years older and magically know all the college bookstore buyers, too? Huh? Who does this stuff anyway?

So after about 30 mins (2.2 eternities of stress and anguish) I thought we were doomed to be welcomed to a wonderful trade show and kick in the rear by a harsh reality that selling is harder still than I ever thought. Sigh.

THEN. Then a lady came up to us, she was younger, maybe late 20’s with some interesting piercings and tatoos. She was hip, funny, and seemed to like us a little. We talked to her for less than five minutes then she gave us a promising “I’ll take your info packet back to my boss and see what he thinks”. Oh good. Progress. Then after a few more comments from us she said “ok, I’ll do it, what do I need to fill out”.