Teachers

I love twitter. I follow about 15 people that regularly tweet links to cool stories and what not. Its a really simple way for me to stay up to date with the things I care about. But every once in awhile, they'll tweet normal stuff about their lives. Recently one of the guys that I follow tweeted this:

Great kindergarten e-mail: "Please remember to send your child to school tomorrow with a stuffed animal for a class project on measuring."

Marleah and I don't have kids yet, but when we do, I hope they have teachers that email us parents. I think it would be such a cool thing to get daily emails from my kids' teachers. Imagine how cool it would be if everyday they sent something like:

"Ask your child about the game we played with fish today. Everyone loved it!"

I think these quick emails would increase parent participation by a hundred percent. I think it would create more communication between parent and child, as well as create more interest from the parents in what they are learning at school.

I may be wrong, but I think it's a small thing that could create a huge change. That's Change I would believe in!!!!

Reading for the A.D.H.D

For those of you who know me, you know 2 things: 1. I'm Mexican. 2. I'm the poster boy for A.D.H.D. That being said, I love to read. I am constantly reading blogs, magazines and books. One thing that has always been difficult for me is to concentrate on things for a long period of time without being distracted. It takes all I have to focus on my scriptures to read even a chapter because my mind is always racing about one thing or the other. So, much to my joy and happiness, a new company has come out called Vook. Basically, they make books that are a combination of Text, Video Clips and links to other information on the web. You read them on your computer, or on your iPhone (and soon your iPad! ) I have read two of them already and I absolutely LOVE them. The combination of text and video clips makes for an absolutely immersive learning experience. Plus, whenever they are talking about a place, person or company, they always have a hyperlink to the web somewhere so you can see exactly what they are talking about. I friggin love it!!!!

The two that I have read so far are Unleashing the Super Ideavirus by Seth Godin (which right now is only $1) and Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck. Both are business books, but there are plenty of Vooks on the site that are fiction. The next one I'll buy will probably be the Sherlock Holmes vook.

My dream is to have a Vook of Mormon. I would just love to be able to read and have video clips of general authorities about a particular scripture or principle. That may not happen in my lifetime, but I'm certain there will be iPads in heaven, and a Vook of Mormon will come standard on each one of them.

Mechanics Suck! Except for...

 

This last week Marleah and I were put through the ringer with her car. We needed new brakes, but everywhere we took it, they said we needed different things. I was pissed! Some mechanics said we needed $700 worth of work, some said just brake pads, but they wanted to charge us $400. 

I hate mechanics. It's the same crap everytime. 

So, we decided to buy our own parts and hire someone that her Dad knew. While shopping at an Auto Parts store near our house, we were talking to one of the guys that worked there. He mentioned that he was a mobile mechanic and I asked him more about it. He said that he only works at the store part time and does this mobile mechanic thing the rest of the time. He then whipped out his appointment book and showed us how booked he was. And man, his entire book was friggin full. I thought, either this guy took a long time to fill in an entire book of fake names and numbers, or this guy is really really good. Turns out to be the latter. 

I am very pleased to announce that we have a mechanic that i will go to for the rest of my/his life.

He even bought the parts we needed, brought them with him and we paid for them and his time all at once. 

He came to our house. Worked on the car there. He showed us what he did. He made some recommendations of things we should look into in the next few months and gave us a receipt. He charged us $100 plus the $70 in parts. Done and done. Can you believe that? Compare that to the last time you took your car to Jiffy lube! 

I love honest people willing to do an honest job for honest pay. He was probably Republican. ;) 

Give him a call and tell him Chad sent you. He probably won't have any idea who you're talking about, but I've always wanted to say that.