I’m writing this week’s blog entry as Marleah and I are driving to California, thanks to a little iPhone Hack courtesy of my super cool brother-in-law Sterling.... who happens to be with in NYC this week with my sister Sara (his wife) on their first vacation without kids. He showed me how to enable Internet Tethering on my phone, so now, anywhere I get cell coverage, I can plug it into my computer and have internet access. Life is Good!
Marleah's Brother Tomsen had his fairwell today. It was such a great talk! He really is so prepared for his mission to Goiania. He's been working so hard for the last few months to learn portuguese, read the entire standard works and learn as much as he could about Brazil. A little bit different from my last few months before my mission, which consisted mainly of dates with girls that wouldn't talk to me in high school and as much goofing off as possible.
My dad has surgery on his shoulder this week. It wasn’t too serious, but they were putting him out so he decided to send us kids an email the night before. It was his impromptu Will! As I read the six sentances he wrote us, that basically covered everything, I couldn’t help but get a little tear in my eye. I called him up and said “Dad, what the heck are you doing emailing us your will?” He just laughed and said he didn’t have one so just in case something happened, we’d know what to do. Luckily he survived the surgery and is doing just fine! I think I should probably hire an attorney for him... I’m guessing that an email isn’t exactly a legally binding way to pass on your inheritance. We love you Padre!
At work, for the last six months, I’ve been working on a brand new Online Auction Portal that we just launched last month. On the 15th, our first “totally online” auction ended. It was a rousing success and has literally changed the way we do business. In the 5 weeks the auction ran, we had over 6,000 people visit the site. 900 of them created an account. We received over 750 bids on the 20 properties. Yesterday, Eric and I drove around looking at the next 20 properties we’re auctioning off next month. We’re sooooo excited because not only are we able to sell these houses cheaper than we’ve ever been able to do before, it allows us to be so much more efficient than ever as well. It’s so awesome to have a project go so well.... especially since I’ve been working on this thing so hard for so long. Yay for the internet!
As you all know, I work on my computer a ton, but since I’m off the charts ADD, i usually jump from project to project. One thing I find incredibly helpful is to decide beforehand how long I want to spend on that project before I move onto the next. Or sometimes I just have a meeting in a certain amount of time that I don’t want to forget. So I started using an online timer. www.Online-stopwatch.com is a very handy little tool to keep you on task or remind you of something you need to do soon. I like it especially when I want to remember something that I don’t want to put into my calendar.
Lynda.com is definatley one of the coolest thing on the web. I love it! It is BY FAR the largest database of online video tutorials of software and computer related tasks. It’s brilliant. For instance, right now I’m watching the Excel for Mac videos. There are about 50 videos available... each one 3-10 minutes long, all sorted into topics. It’s the best way to learn how to use new software or just refresh your memory. Lynda.com is $25 a month or $250 a year, but there are tons of videos on each topic that are free (try before you buy style). Check it out... you're gonna love it!
This Week’s Read
Dan Brown’s long anticipated follow up to The DaVinci Code came out this week. I read it in a couple days and loved it. I still haven’t decided if I liked it more than Angels and Demons (which is my favorite of his 5 books) but it was definately a page turner. I’m not sure it has the same heart stopping action that A&D has, but it has a much better “moral of the story”. There were definately some great plot twists, really interesting concepts to think about and some very cool doctrinal truths that very few people understand. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t have at least one LDS scholar in his research team for this novel. (The Church was mentioned in the book, so it's definately a possibility).
Speaking of LDS in the media, check out this awesome audio slideshow of a Chinese born missionary in NYC that was in the NY Times this week.
The Boob Tube
For the last few weeks, my buddy Tod Bunker and I have been enjoying a show called Hard Knocks. It’s an HBO miniseries on the training camp of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. HBO just has a way of making incredible miniseries (John Adams is one of my favorites of all time). They do such an amazing job of showing the lives of these very engaging NFL stars. Last week the running theme they had (off the field) was the way the different players spend their money. It was hilarious to watch these multi-millionaires haggle sales ladies on things like the price of a bed. I guess old habits die hard. My favorite scene was when Chad OchoCinco (his name up until last season was Chad Johnson, but since his number is 85 he decided to legally change his name to OchoCinco) Anyways, he went to buy some new diamond earrings and where did he go? Ben Bridge, Jared’s, any jeweler? No he went to Claire’s, in the mall. Claire’s is a little store in the mall where teenage girls can get little accessories. (There’s nothing over $20). Anyways, Chad walks into this little girl’s store, picks up a $12 pair of diamond earrings, holds them up to his ears and says “No one can tell the difference!” How did he pay for those $12 earrings... his American Express Black Card, which has an unlimited spending limit. Hilarious! Tod and I follow a couple of the Bengals on Twitter. Chad’s tweets might be the funniest things you read all week.
