My Favoirte Things

Ok so I haven’t blogged in forever primarily because my life has been insane since March and because when I get out of the habit of doing something I get lazy. So here I am back on the wagon. There is so much that has happened that I want to document but I am just not ready yet so I am going to just give a few of my favorite Jack things.

Gentleman
“Here’s a flower Mommy” Whenever Jack passes flowers whether I am with him or not he always gets me flowers.

He is passionate about opening doors so I have taught him to hold it open for me.

Even when he is strongly disagrees with me he usually says “no thank you” now it is not always with a sweet tone and it rarely makes me change my mind but its pretty sweet.

Five
Five is Jacks favorite number. I know this because everything is “like five” for example how many of your friend do you think will be at the park “like five”; “play with me like five minutes”; lay down with me like five minutes; how much do I love you “like five” (he also answers that question so much).

Super Why
If you ask Jack he will inform you that he IS Super Why he will then go on to assign everyone around a part. I am always Wonder Red. Being Super Why is a big job this requires that he where’s his cape, jump off the coffee table, spin in circles (which he will proudly show you) and insist that I am in the room so when they get to the part in the show where you are suppose to put your “arms in” I am there to put my “arm in” with him. He loves Super Why so much that he had a Super Why Birthday Party (I will write more about this in another post).

Why
Jack has entered the “why” phase he is always asking why. This can be a bit trying because I don’t always know “why” so Jay suggested that I answer “You know why” Well the other day I asked Jack why and his reply (with a ornery grin)…”You know why”

Kind Heart
Jack has developed the sweetest little heart (now mind you he can turn on a dime and throw hug fits just ask Jay about the 2 a.m. “I WANT MY MOMMY” debacle) but he is so sweet I frequently get un-requested hugs and I love you’s and he is just enamored with all the little babies in our world but the following was a face book status a month ago and it is one of my favorite examples:

“It always makes me smile when kids can so easily get things that grown ups make so complicated: Jack while I am praying "why do you say sorry"; Me "because I need to ask for forgiveness" Jack "why" Me because the bible says so; Jack "why"; Me "because I believe in God and the bible Jack "God forgive me and help me Amen" such a simple prayer that says just what it needs too”

This is Jay’s
Jack “Daddy I’m sorry”
Jay “Why”
Jack “because I’m not sharing”



A List of Favorite Things and Sayings
Request to hold your hand
Tip toe running
Tag (former “get me”)
“When I get bigger….”
“Oh I like that”
“All the friends”
“Can we watch two Curious George’s” “no it’s night night” Can we watch one Curious George?”
”I do it myself!”

I needed to make cookies to take to some friends so I decided to let Jack help me. When we do things like this I am quickly reminded how big he is getting and what a great helper he is. We started by getting all of the ingredients out, he carefully would climb up and down from his stool and put them on the counter. I would scoop and he would pour and count. After we got all of the ingredients measured he put everything back in the cabinet for me and then I let him turn the blender on and off as we mixed the ingredients. While the cookies were baking I unloaded the dishwasher and he put a way the spoons and the Tupperware. Finally, as I was getting ready to put him down for his nap I stopped by the coffee table to put away some of the laundry that went in his room and noticed that he had already come and put away all of it except for one small pile. When I got to his rooms I checked the drawers and it was all in the right place, not perfectly folded, but what can I expect from a 2 ½ year old.

Wow, daily I am reminded how fast he is growing up and how I need to cherish each moment as they swiftly go by.

There's a Giraffe in the Shower!

Most mornings in the Kreusch household start the same way my sleepy little Jackman wonders into my room, he throws Louie on the bed, and then he crawls into bed. Depending what time this is we lay there and snuggle for a while, then we might sing songs, say bible verses, or go exploring (I keep a little flashlight next to the bed and Jack likes to take it and crawl under all of the covers and see what is in the deep recess of mommy’s bed.) This is might be my favorite time of the day. We get to spend such quality time together without worrying about chores, discipline, or the fact that we need to be somewhere and are once again are running late. I could stay in bed all day with the fun we have. Well today was no exception, Jack came in around 8:15 I was awake (but not out of bed) and talking to Jay on the phone. When I saw Jack come in I was sad for a second because I thought surely he is going to want me to quickly get up and get him breakfast and we are going to miss our playtime. Not only was I wrong but it was our best playtime ever. Jack talked to Jay on the phone a little bit and then we laid down and talked about what we were going to do today. Jack starts throwing Louie out of the bed and saying “poor Louie” and then promptly rescuing him. Well after one of Louie's rescues Jack crawls back into bed and says “mommy see the snake on the ground!” I thought that was odd and figured there must be a string or something so I looked over the side of the bed and Jack says “mommy look at the snake sssssssssssssssss.” I thought this is fun so we laid there and hissed at the snake together for a while. Jack proceeded to tell me all the places in the room the snake was going and then he said “mommy do you see the giraffe?” I was so excited we were absolutely playing make believe. I helped out by saying how tall the giraffe was and asked if Jack thought he might eat our curtains. Then Jack said “he’s eating the curtains, o no he’s eating the clock and the house” (we have large bird house in our bedroom).” After talking about all the things the giraffe was going to eat I asked Jack “where is the giraffe now?” His reply “he’s in the shower…silly giraffe”. We played like this for almost a whole hour. It was so much fun. What an amazing little boy I have who has the imagination to see a giraffe in the shower.

Snarfblack

Snarfblack is Jack's new word. I have determined it is a noun he uses it when he doesn't know what something is or just to be fun. Snarfblack can be silly, sad, and it can even be eaten “I have a snarfblack in my tummy”.

Snarfblack: I feel sure it will make the next edition of Websters dictionary.

Family Update

Ok, here I go, I am going to try to be one of the cool kids and start keeping a blog. The perfectionist in me wants to go back and retro blog Jack's life so I can have a journal of all the fun things that have happened in the last 2 ½ years. However, that is just so overwhelming that I will never get started so I am just going to give a quick update to catch people up if they don't know about my life and then start from today. One final business note is to let everyone know that I am not going to write the next great American novel anytime soon so I am sure that the thought process and the grammar of my blogs will be off from time to time but I figure if your reading this you probably love me or at least care for me and won't judge my thoughts nor my grammar. Ready, Set, Blog...........

My name is Caren Kreusch, formally Council, I have been married to my wonderful husband Jay for 6 ½ years. We met in New Orleans, had our first date on December 30, 1999, and haven't gone a day without talking since that date. We nurtured a long distance relationship for two years and on July 6, 2002 we got married. I still think we had the best wedding that I have ever been too (but I may be biased.) After we were married we moved to Dallas where I discovered that I should have been living in a big city my entire life. In 2003 we bought a house in Frisco which is a northern suburb of Dallas and settled into our lives. In 2006 we were blessed with our first son John Steven Kreusch (in his words “I'm just Jack”). When Jack was born I quit my job as a junior high history teacher and became a stay at home mom. I would have to say with confidence that I couldn't imaging doing anything else. I love hanging out all day with my little Jackman. In May 2008 Jay graduated from SMU with his MBA and we sold our house in the outer most darkness aka Frisco and moved back to Dallas. I love our house, our neighborhood, and the fact that we are only five minutes from Jay's work. It was a great move. In September we found out that we would be having another baby. This was a long awaited blessing and we cannot wait until May when we get to welcome James Bradley into our world.

So now you have been updated on the Kreusch family. See you next time.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

MS150

The best way to do something is to commit to it, tell everyone about it, and then have the towering wall of guilt and peer pressure force your hand. That's why I am posting this about the MS150. I have signed up and will participate in the two-day 150 mile bike ride from Frisco, TX to Fort Worth, TX.

I need your help, though. One keep asking me about it and how my training is going. Second, PONY UP! This is a charity event and I have quotas to meet!

you can donate online at http://MS150.kreusch.com. (Yes, I did the geeky thing and made my own link!)

Nothing to update

I haven't had much time to put into a blog. Sorry.

DVD's in the mail

On Monday, I sent out the 2007 year-end DVD that has all of the video clips of Jack that we took last year. Please keep an eye out for it. If you didn't get it or want a copy, please email me.

Despite my enormously busy schedule, I was able to do this because of the new computer I built for Christmas. I built a new one from scratch and it came out incredible. It was able to handle a virus scan, backup uploading, browsing the internet, and video editing all at the same time without breaking a sweat. All for about $300. Computers have become pretty cheap!

To answer a few questions about the DVD, here's what you need to know:

1. It is a DVD, not a computer disc. This is for playing on your TV.
2. It may work in your computer if you have a DVD drive and the right software.
3. If it doesn't work with your TV's DVD player, then your player can't read burned discs. I can't help much with that. I did test every disc I sent out, so I know that isn't the problem.
4. There is a bit more video of Jack, but it is on our DV camcorder and I haven't gotten it off yet. I need to get a capture card for the new computer first. I'll keep you posted.

Jack's Second Christmas

Well, we just got back from Ponca where we had a great time celebrating the Christmas miracle. Jack had a great time. It was also a time for reflection to notice how much he has grown in the past 19 months he has been alive. We were struck by the similarities of two pictures we took about a year apart:

Jack 2006

Jack 2007

Both pictures captured him perfectly at the time it was taken. The similarities are obvious. He has the same, expressive eyes, the same obvious joy and love for life, and the same basic face. The amazing thing are the differences. A year ago, getting Jack to smile was a simple endeavor, just about anything would get him going. Now it is a bit more of a challenge. Don't get me wrong, as kids go, he is about as happy as they come - constantly smiling and giggling. However, he no longer performs for the camera like an organ grinder's monkey. His face and eyes are definitely more expressive now. He has hair.

Anyway, Caren and I thought you might enjoy these pictures side-by-side.

For those who haven't noticed, I've uploaded over 150 pictures from Christmas, and 8+ videos are uploading as I write this. More pictures are to come when I get the film (yes, I wrote film) back. i also have a ton of video, but it is a chore to offload it from the camcorder right now, so that will have to wait until I have the technology, the time, and the effort to get it off and edit it.

New Videos and Pictures!!!

Yes, we've been slackers. Between work, school, and home we haven't thought much about posting pictures in a long time. For a few minutes, we also go ambitious and decided we would "clean up" the pictures before posting them by removing red-eye, cropping, and other small edits. Unfortunately, this ambition meant that we went even longer without posting.

On another note, my free video service decided it wouldn't be free anymore. The bad part about this is that now I have to pay. The good part about this is that I can now upload any file size and length, so the quality is a bit better than it was before (although not full resolution). I'm also better able to organize them, so look for dated folders on the video home page that will help you figure out if you've seen the latest videos.

I'll be adding all of our video in the higher resolution over the next few weeks because it takes a LONG time to upload. I'll be starting with the newest video and working my way backwards. To kick off this new video clip setup, here is a great video of Jack enjoying his new T-Ball set that his Nan got him. All of the videos are available by going to http://videos.kreusch.com.

After Christmas, I plan on building a new, more powerful home computer that will allow me to actually edit videos and burn DVDs a lot easier. As such, I am hoping to press a full-resolution DVD for use on your TV and sending it out to anyone who is interested. I'll keep you posted!

The Virtual Yard Sale is Open!!!

For no particular reason, Caren and I decided that this fall was a good time to take stock of our possessions and throw out the crap! Rather than just back the Explorer up to Goodwill and push everything out as we drive off with the tires squealing, we decided to hold a Yard Sale with some friends. Next Saturday (9/22/2007) we will be holding our Yard sale in Plano with our friends Ben and Elizabeth.

Sometimes one man's trash is another man's treasure. However, sometimes one man's trash is another man's, well, trash. With this understanding and a basic knowledge of microeconomics, we decided to take the stuff that wouldn't fetch a good price laid out on a sheet on a lawn and eBay it.

You can view our Virtual Yard Sale at http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjkreusc

If you want to visit the real one, it is on 9/22/2007 in Plano. Email me for the time and address.

Saved $500 in 7 hours

Caren's car had been making an odd sound on a single, particular on ramp in Dallas. It was worse when the brakes were put on, so we went to Just Brakes and had her brakes checked out. They said she needed new brakes and that her calipers needed to be rebuilt, so we ponied up the $550 to get them done.

Not wanting to let my brakes go to the point where I needed to "rebuild my calipers" I decided to have my brakes checked. Just Brakes told me the same story and wanted the same $500, so I had a second opinion done. The dealership said the calipers were fine and maybe needed some grease, but I would need new pads and maybe rotors due to wear. I also needed a two year brake fluid flush. They wanted $600 just for the pads and flush without even addressing the rotors. To add those was another $400.

So, I got to reading the internet. I found these articles:

I used the flushing procedure from:
http://www.taligentx.com/passat/maintenance/brakefluid/

and the brake job writeup from:
http://www.passatworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=179518

I decided to do them myself. Yesterday I took seven hours and did it all myself. It cost me about $350 in parts and tools. However, I now own the tools and know that I used quality parts. I don't know how Just Brakes could have done it for $500 unless they were using some really junky parts. I'm sure they would have been safe, but nevertheless, I'm going to check the Explorer for premature wear a little more frequently than otherwise now.

I had my difficulties, but I'm proud to say that I got it done, everything works and looks fine, and I didn't swear once!!!

Oh, and my calipers were fine. They just needed a little grease. Shocker.

I'm due for a coolant flush, so that may be a project for a couple of weeks from now. The dealer wants $100 for that and I can get it done for about $30 myself. I'll also learn more about my car which I plan to keep for another 15 years if I can. I may even attempt the timing belt, which is due at 100k miles, but according to most Passat sites should be done at around 65k miles due to a lot of failures that wind up costing you $2500 in damage.

If you're observant, you'll notice this posting is being written at 4:30AM on Mother's day. Let's just say that I'm a bit sore from working out and hunching over all day.

New email servers active!

This won't affect many of you, but it went so smoothly I just had to write about it. This morning, I migrated my mail servers to Google Apps and it was super easy.

My previous email hosting company everyone.net, finally caught on to the fact that I was using thier service for free. It wasn't anything underhand on my part that made it free, it was just a mistake in thier system. I signed up for thier service in 1999 when they offered a "personal" service for free. This was way back when most individuals didn't even know what a domain name was, much less how to buy one and get your own personal email address.

After the bubble burst, this company got rid of the free service and started charging for the personal accounts. I guess I was grand-fathered, because they never charged me or asked for money. Well, that changed.

However, Google to the rescue! They offered Google Apps, which is free Gmail hosting for your domain name. Each user gets 2GB of space and much more stable servers than I was using.

Google also allows me to create 100 email accounts for free, so if you want a kreusch.com email address, just let me know and I can hook you up.

Three big events

IMG_1343
Originally uploaded by Kreusch.

This past weekend was a perfect storm of three big events.

The first was obviously Easter. You can see us in our sunday finest on our pictures site. Unfortunately, Jack could only wear part of his Easter outfit. Dallas decided it was Boston for the weekend and our temperatures dipped into the 30's, so he couldn't wear the shorts Meme bought him to go with his vest and shirt. The service, titled "Easter: Deal with it" at our church was excellent. If you are in the mood, you can listen to it here.

The next was Caren's birthday! This was her last one in her 20's, and I hope she had fun with it. I got her a special cake from a local cake shop that was out of this world and we cooked up a steak dinner on the grill.

It also happened to be opening day weekend in arlington for the Rangers. They were playing the Red Sox. I was able to get some tickets to opening day as well as the next night. Opening day was in the high 40's and we asked a lot of Jack. The photo above shows the end result. He fell asleep in the hip hammock I was wearing while carrying him back to the car. This is the first time he has ever fallen asleep in a place other than his crib or our car, so that says something. The weather got even worse the next night and was in the mid 30's with snow all around (the game turned out to be the coldest on record for the Rangers), so we decided to forget the tickets we had to the game and go and have fun driving around town shopping instead. We kept warm and had fun, that's the important thing.

Well, keep posted. Papa John comes into town this weekend and will get to see the Jack Man for the first time. I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures and videos to post. I'm also hoping to press another DVD in the near future, right after his first birthday.

The Basics of Revenue Management

I'm taking this great class at SMU this semester called revenue management. It is a very math intensive class and involves a lot of statistical modeling in Excel. We are using a relatively new concept called Dynamic Programming which is a methodology to solve complex optimization problems over time.

While these theories aren't necessarily new, they do not have widespread adoption in the business world yet. There are only 3 MBA programs in the country teaching it right now, and only two of them teach it for credit. This class is mostly seen just at the PhD level right now, but that is going to change.

Here's how it works:

Lets say you are the Red Sox (I can always bring my examples back to baseball). You've just aquired a Japanese superstar pitcher and want to maximize your revenue generation opportunities with him. You already sell out your ballpark for the entire year, so selling new seats seem like it won't work for you. However, this isn't the case - you do have the choice to not sell out every game and instead hold back a number of seats to sell at the last minute when you know the superstar will be pitching. But how many do you hold back and how much do you charge?

Here's where Revenue Management comes in. It helps you decide how many seats you should hold back, potentially how much you should charge for them, and when you should sell them. See, the problem is not whether you should hold the seats back and soak the poor tourists who are willing to pay ungodly amounts of money at the last minute to see a particular pitcher. You know you should do that. The problem is how many and for how much. If you try to hold back too many, you risk the possibility that no one buys and you are stuck with a bunch of unsold seats that you could have sold to a million other people 3 months ago.

If this sounds eerily familiar, it should. This model has been used for about 20 years by the airline industry. We all know it as "three week advanced booking." The dirty little secret is that if 150 people show up for a 150 seat plane four week ahead of time, the airline will not sell it out and will hold the seats back for higher revenue customers at the last minute.

The dirtier secret is called over-booking. You might think that over-booking is caused by tickets being sold in multiple places and they just can't coordinate well enough and mistakes happen. On the contrary, overbooking is planned and encouraged. See, the airlines have figured out and have a lot of data on no-shows. They've computed the probabilities and are milking it for every dollar they can. They know that if too many passengers show up that they will have to give them compensation, but they've computed that into the overbooking equation as well.

My professor thinks, and I agree, that this mode of thinking will slowly invade every aspect of startegic thinking in companies over time. As the tools and concepts get easier to use, companies will leverage it.

A manufacturing plant in China that normally books capacity out months or years ahead of time will start holding back capacity for rush orders. More importantly, they will know how much capacity to hold and how much to charge.

Target will hold inventory of the new Elmo-super-duper-tickle-me-with-extreme-giggle-technology back until New Years' eve and charge a hefty premium for it.

You will see this everywhere.

All new website

Short Story:

My home server got trashed, I couldn’t reload it, and we’ve now got a new website. The good news is that you still only need to type in http://www.kreusch.com/. This site doesn’t allow me to have videos, but from what we could gather nobody was downloading them because of slowness anyway. So, I combined several web technologies that are out there in cyber-space. I'm now linking to a photo server on Flickr and a Video server on MotionBox. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you want to know some of the advanced, cooler features, skip past the “long story” and have a look at the “Flickr features” section.

Long story:

This past weekend was quite an adventure for me. I had a three day flex Friday weekend, and my primary goal was to reload our home server that was hosting our Kreusch.com website. I don't want to get all technical on you, but the reason I did this was because the server was loaded with Windows Server 2003 which did not allow me to do many things such as install antivirus software, an online backup service, and use my DVD burner. The latter of these concerned me more. All 1000+ of the pictures we have taken over the last year were subject to complete annihilation in the event of a hard drive crash or a fire.

So, I started my install of Windows XP. I fought the server and the server won. The website would simply not reload. In addition, the website installation script decided to delete our last two months of videos of Jack! Luckily, I have a very expensive program that I bought a number of years back that allows you to unerase deleted files, so I was able to recover the videos after a 13 hour hard drive scan and recovery process.

I learned a few things through this experience, so if you’d like some free computer advice, skip to the “Computer advice” section of this email.

Flickr Features

I decided to go with the premium Flickr service for a couple of reasons. The primary reason is that after you pay them $25 per year, you are allowed to upload as many full-resolution photos as you want. There also no download bandwidth restrictions or advertising, the servers are really fast, and since Yahoo! owns it, it should be pretty stable.

The basics: the home page that you are taken to when you type http://pictures.kreusch.com/ is a basic photo gallery. The latest photos to be uploaded will always be on this home page. Keep in mind that since I uploaded everything this weekend, the latest photos according to the system are honeymoon pictures. On the right side of the page you’ll see a light gray area that will show the last 10 uploaded photo sets. A photo set is basically a batch of photos I have uploaded. Browsing is pretty simple, and there is a great slideshow feature for looking at the photos.

Prints: This website allows you to order high-quality prints right from the site. You add them to your cart and check out. Note that this feature is only available if you log in using an email address I have entered into my contacts list. This is to prevent random people on the internet from printing photos.

Sets: If you look for a link called “Sets” you will go to a page that will show all photo galleries I have uploaded. There are well over 1000 pictures posted now, so dive in!

The Archive: If you look for a link called “Archives” you will be taken to a really cool feature that allows you to see photos organized by when they were taken. When you click on a month, it will show you a calendar with all of the pictures on it. This is VERY cool if you ask me.

Tags: If you look for a link called “Tags”, you will be taken to a page that shows all of the “tags” that I have added to pictures. Tags are simple keywords for pictures. This page is kind of strange in that it changes the font size and boldness based upon the frequency of the tag in relation to other tags. Therefore, obviously, the “jack” tag is huge compared to the rest.

Email upload: I have an email address that can be used to upload photos so that they will appear on our picture site moments later. So, if you have any pictures of the family or of Jack, please email them to me and I'll forward them to the site right away!!!

Geotags: There is a mapping feature which will show a map of the world and where each photo was taken. This is pretty cool and will help us remember where we took our photos ten years from now. You can zoom in real close. For example, if you zoom in to Ponca, I've labeled the Marland Mansion, Teris House, and First Baptist.

Computer Advice

This weekend was a trial of computer proportions. Here are some things that I highly recommend.

Create an online backup account!!! Go to the website http://www.mozy.com/ RIGHT NOW!!! They have a FREE online backup service that will allow you to store up to 2 GB of data on their secure servers. Basically, you point it at what you want to backup and it does so quietly in the background of your computer only when you are not using it. If you need more than 2GB it is only $5 per month for unlimited backup. This is insane not to take advantage of. Any fire, hard drive crash, or whatever would cause you photos, videos, or precious documents to go away. This service give you all you need to keep your data safe.
Stop paying for antivirus. One of the premier antivirus programs is called AVG antivirus and is free for home use. Download it at http://free.grisoft.com/.