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how great is this! Remember the milk now has a firefox plugin that lets you have it integrated with your gmail. This is great because it adds outlook like functionality by letting you manage your information better. This really helps both apps out a lot in my opinion. Will this be making Google apps a little closer to becoming an outlook killer? Maybe just for consumers, but not for corporate I’m guessing, unless Google buys out Remember the Milk and just integrates it into Google Apps. Hmm, . . .

Well, either way, check out the screenshot and if you think it’s cool, take a hop from this link to do it as well.

I just got a blackberry curve from T-mobile. I previously had a Treo 680 on AT&T.

The question might be why the switch. Here is the answer:
1) I love the Favorite 5′s program.
2) Internet access and unlimited email is much much cheaper with T-mobile.
3) It’s an incredible looking phone with a great keypad and I really like the pearl wheel.
4) I’m finding that tons of people have blackberries now, so it’s great being able to find and share applications with everyone.
5) Things are incredibly well integrated together. I’ve really come to like it.

Treo 680, I do miss your touchscreen a little, but hey, no hard feelings. I still have much respect for you. I just had more internet needs and connectivity requirements that you were too high maintenence to meet. I don’t blame you, I blame the carrier family that you were a part of.

me: Valentines day
worst holiday ever
you don’t even get it off
Brandon: i know
it’s weak.
me: seriously, I sent Jessica flowers
but does she feel special
she might say she does
but does she really
no I’m sure she doesn’t, because I’m sure everyone else working with her or around her probably got flowers as well. Then it simply becomes this flower comparing contest.
Did I mean it when I sent those flowers. Sure, but does it matter. No.
the only people effected
are those who don’t get something
and those people go home
alone
and want to kill themselves
why?
all in the name of love
which is spelled
c o m m e r c i a l i s m
“oh what did you get?”
“I got flowers”
“oh I did too, how unoriginal of our boyfriends”
“oh what did you get?”
“I think my boyfriend forgot”
“oh well, he’s a jerk, you should dump him”
“oh, how about you, cindy?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend . . . ”
Brandon: HAHAHAHAHA
dude…BLOG this!
me: “wow that must really stink to be you, being such a lonely loser with no one wasting money on you for the sake of keeping with societal conventions”
if society were a person
I would fiercely maim him/her/whatever
Brandon: lol
me: for all of mankind
Brandon: i agree
i’d help
Sent at 3:10 PM on Thursday

I hope you are happy, FTD, 1800flowers, and all the rest of you thieves of joy and societal peace. Don’t worry, I’ll resume happier posts tomorrow. Till then I’ll be frustrated with the concept of Valentines day and the forcing of affectionate gestures diluting the value of genuine gestures once a year.

Stephen Covey brings up a really interesting point in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. He talks about how he studied over the 200 or so years of our US history and found that there was a pattern in the literature written about the topic of success. Over the last 50 years or so, there has been a pattern of books that have been written which he categorizes as books on “Personality Ethic”. Basically, books that help you manage your relationships better, but are somewhat superficial and just social band aids. This makes sense based on our microwave and drive through culture. His thoughts are that they appear to temporarily solve some problems but do not address underlying issues, which when not dealt with, only tend to fester and resurface.

He compares this to the literature found in the other 150 years of our US history. He classifies this as “Character Ethic”. The focus of those books tend to be on and I quote, “things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule.” Basically, it is centered around the understanding that there are bed rock foundations to success which are deep in who you are and not what you do. I think he says in it that “Who you are screams so much louder than what you say”.

This shift seemed to happen after World War I. Alright, lunch is about to end, so its time to hit the phones again, but I definitely wanted to get to share this before I forgot. Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this.

Last night I pulled out a question book I have and asked Jessica (my fiance) who she would visit in history if she could visit anyone and why. It was hard to narrow it down, so I said top 3 or top 5. Mine would be King David, because I’ve always been curious as to what he looked like, Paul the Apostle, because he was insanely intelligent, but probably still a lot of fun to talk to, Ghengis Khan, because that’s just been a childhood dream of horses and furs and swords and stuff, Benjamin Franklin, just because he was such a smart guy, yet very controversial, and hmmm, number 5, not sure. What about all of you? I’d love to hear your Top names of people. Let me know!

Here’s a few pictures from our engagement session. Sam Hassas was our photographer and I would recommend him to anyone. Here’s a link to his blog for some more pictures beyond these below.

Here’s a video with Warren Buffet laying down some wisdom regarding economics, investments and business savvy. This part 1:

Just wanted to write this quick. I sent out an email last night to let everyone know that I’m getting married and just catch people up on how I’m doing and asking to hear the same. Thanks for all the responses. I did get one or two “please don’t send this ever again”, but other than that I got a lot of great emails and it is awesome hearing how everyone is doing. Again, thanks, and I can’t wait to respond to everyone, once gmail allows me to send something again, because I think I got put in time out for sending so many emails at one time.

I’ll flesh this out some more maybe later this evening, but I wanted to put down that it is good to sometimes sit down, hopefully at least once a year and figure out some of the “ends” that you are trying to get to and then work backwords. If there is one thing I’ve learned while working at Planitax, it is to begin with the end in mind and to work backwards from your goals to figure out how to get there. Simple, I know, but when was the last time you sat down and wrote your 1 year, 5 year and long term goals down? I know for me I don’t do it half as much as I wish I would. I try to do this once a quarter and make quarterly goals for myself, from things like “skydive this summer” (which I did) to “learn to surf” (which I have yet to do). I lost my old “About Me” page so it is time to write a new one. I see this as a good thing and a time to rewrite and take inventory of who “me” is again. I love hearing other peoples goals because many of them end up being ones I had never thought of doing but would love to do too, so please comment with some goals you might have or write me in an email. You can use the “contact me” to do this if you would like. Thanks for the emails so far and response.

Ok, you caught me, I was stumped when it came to naming this post, but over the last 3 days I’ve probably shared this idea at least 3 or 4 times, with each time making me realize that this is good stuff that might be helpful to share. I’ll admit now that much of this came from talking with my incredible fiance, Jessica.

Here is my suggestion for a starting set of accounts that you should have as a foundation and why. You will want to open three separated accounts. Here is my set up.

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I place a direct deposit of my money into my checking account. My emergency fund has about 3 months worth of expenses in it. If you haven’t started one, then start small and put a little in per month. The savings account is good practice for yourself in budgeting and also as practice for marriage. This was brought to my attention by Jessica. Having a savings account that you put a little in every paycheck is a great way to avoid a few small fights during marriage over purchases that might seem silly to your spouse. So as a single person get used to splitting your money this way, so that when you get married, you have a shared checking account, but only use your own separate savings accounts as your discretionary money. Any purchase that needs more money than what is in the account would need to be discussed. Everything else is fair game. A question I’ve gotten is, “Why not just have your savings and checking at the same place?”, of which I would say that it is because by putting them in separate institutions will cause you to have a higher probability of spending less because of that extra little barrier of access. Out of sight, out of mind. Here are my suggestions for where you might want to open up the suggested accounts.

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
|    Schwab      |   |     ING     |    |     E*Trade   |
|    4.00% APY   |   |  4.10% APY  |    |    5.05% APY  |
------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I liked these accounts because each of them had very high return rates, but also had no minimums and free atm fee reimbursements. Feel free to comment and let me know if you have thoughts on this or would like to let me know about other accounts that might be better than my suggestions.