Hi, I'm Sam.

I've found whenever I get stuck on something hard, notebooks help. There is something about writing stuff down in a notebook that really helps me think.

Whiteboards are fun and all, but I think they are a little more distracting than useful when you're working by yourself. All of the setup required to just put your thoughts down is a bit much most of the time. Once you're done at the whiteboard, then you have to figure out a way to save your thoughts so you can reference them later. Don't get me wrong, great when brainstorming in a group, but I've found they are way less productive than a notebook when working a lone.

My favorite notebook is the Behance Dot Grid Book (only $14). It's super high quality. I'm a big fan. (I also really like Moleskin too.) The Pilot G2 Pen is my all time favorite pen. I've used it exclusively (when possible) since 2007.

It's really great to flip through past notebooks and see cool things I designed or problems I struggled through that were once really hard that are now easy. Most of my doodles are abstract drawings, UI wireframes, or lists of elements of a problem. I've found I get to a solution fastest by simply listing all of the parts of the problem. It also really helps to simply list (in sentences even) what I will do to solve it.

For some reason, this is so much more effective to me than opening TextMate and doing the same thing. Anyway, I recommend trying this. It has helped me countless times over the years.

So someone just called me at 1:30am and woke me up. They were trying to order pizza from Pizza Shuttle in Norman, OK about 40 minutes from my apartment.

I get this all of the time. Whenever I get a call from a 405 number that I don't know I just assume they are trying to order pizza. I usually tell people you meant to dial 354-4440 instead of 365-4440 (my number). It's pretty annoying to say the least.

I've tried to mess with people and take orders before, but it never really works out. One time I tried it the girl said the driver locked her out of her house and she needed the phone number of his girlfriend or something like that. I just hung up.

So I'm 19 years old in case you didn't know. When I was 18, I moved across the country from Louisville, KY to Oklahoma City, OK for a sweet job. That was pretty crazy. I love my job at LifeChurch.tv on the Digerati Team. While I've been here I worked on some pretty amazing projects like the LifeChurch.tv website, One Prayer, and the YouVersion Bible App for the iPhone.

So along the way some pretty crappy stuff happened to me that I won't go into. If you remember, my tweets were real depressing for a bit around July. Anyway, life is good. I know there is some way better stuff for me in Oklahoma than what I have worked on so far.

The only thing is that I'm 19. Everyone I work with is way older than me and most of them are married with kids. Who does a 19 year old with a career hang out? I don't know any college kids because I don't go to college. Pretty frustrating right now.