The Kenzers Family Blog

Wendy Boswell at LifeHacker has a great post describing her home life with her kids and husband. I can totally relate from the husband point of view and I’m sure Amy can from Wendy’s point of view.

Read it here!

Technorati : Busy, Life Hacker, Relationship

My 2005 Suzuki Aerio SX had 13,000 miles on it. I wasn’t too happy with it since the day I got it. It had a ton of bells and whistles like all wheel drive, 6 disc CD changer, lots of leg and head room but it just felt cheap. Plus I hated the fact that the dealership was way over in Sparks (as far out of my way as possible). So I went into our Saturn dealership last Friday.

We have purchased two Saturns from this dealership and each time it was super easy. I went in an told them I wanted the same low payment and asked what they could do for me. I spent about thirty minutes with Keith, the finance guy, who flipped through his list of available inventory. We came up with this 2005 Saturn Ion 3. Fully loaded with leather seats, 6 disc MP3 CD player, premium sound package, tinted windows…just about the only add on it didn’t have was the sun/moon roof. It has 19,500 miles and my payment went up about $10 a month. On the flip side, my insurance payment went down about $15 a month. It even still has 16,000 miles on the factory bumper to bumper warranty left. Ka-Chow!

Technorati : Aerio, Car, Ion, Saturn, Suzuki

If I said I was disappointed that Mayah chose Mickey Mouse for her birthday party theme, I would be lying. In a review of The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse I posted how I was worried that young kids would grow up completely unfamiliar with Mickey and his friends. Apart from Disneyland, Mickey had almost no visibility. Now because of this show, my soon to be three year daughter chose Mickey over Dora, JoJo’s Circus, the Princesses, My Little Pony and many others. I can’t wait.

Technorati : Birthday, Mickey Mouse

I am now online with picasaweb.google.com. You can see my first online photo album here. So here is a run down of the process and new features.

At about 6:00 AM PST this morning I signed up for the beta of picasaweb at picasaweb.google.com. At 4:21 PM I received my invite from google and by 4:40 PM I had my first album online. The link in the invite email took me to a picasa web page that asked me to download a new version of Picasa. I downloaded the EXE and installed it without issue. One new feature of Picasa is a new collection that contains all my starred photos. This appears to be a smart album - anytime I star a photo it is automatically added. You can also see it has a different icon and is a different font color.

I selected all pictures in this album and clicked on the Web Album icon in the bottom tray (see below).

Then I am presented with this screen:

After I clicked OK, this is the screen:

Thats it. You can see the results. I was hoping to also find a slew of new features added to Picasa with this upgrade. Here is what I found:

• You can turn on and off the button that display in the bottom tray (The Hello button in now gone too)
• Obviously you can upload web albums
• There is a new toolbar above your albums display on the left. In includes a drop down to filter and sort the albums, a left and right button to navigate forward and backwards among albums and a create new album button.
• In the upper right, my Gmail email is now display next to a web link for “Web Albums” and “Sign Out.”
• They changed the term keyword to the term tag.
• Where there use to be an option to add a label in the bottom tray, there is now an option to add to an album.
• Under Tools they now have an option for Upload Manager. This is the popup shown in the above screenshot.
• Under Tools they have added two new options. 1) Geotag and 2)Experimental
• • Geotag allows you to 1) Geotag with Google Earth, 2)View in Google Earth, 3) Clear Geotag and 4) Export to Google Earth File
  • Experimental has the following options:
  • • Publish via FTP
    • Show Duplicate Files
    • Search for -> a fly out menu of various colors
    • Upload to Google Video

That’s it for now. I will post more screenshots and descriptions in a bit.

Technorati : Google, Photo Sharing, Picasa, Picasaweb

I’ve posted 337 photos from Tyler’s party. Some are actually from the day before and when we went to see Cars the Saturday of. Tyler slept through just about the whole movie. It was a fun party and Tyler is still recovering - which means two really good nights of sleep for Amy and me.

Including Tyler’s actual birthday (not his birthday party).

Click here to see them

Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday dear Tyler Brown.
Happy Birthday to you.

Its hard to imagine that its been a year but it has. If you go to this page and scroll the to bottom (its in reverse chronological order), you will see the flurry of photos I posted from the hospital using my Camera Phone. Its hard to remember either kid that small.

Technorati : Birthday

Way back when I read an article in OMMA magazine about bzzAgent.com. bzzAgent is a word of mouth marketing company. On their site you create a profile about yourself and from time to time they have a client whose product fits your profile. They will send you out samples of the product to use and then you are rewarded by talking about that product to others. The rewards come in the way of points that you can redeem for merchandise like noise cancelling headphones, MP3 players and portable gaming systems.

The first - and so far only - bzz campaign that I was able to participate in came in the way of Nivea for Men. They offer a line of face care products. I was sent out a box that contained samples of their face lotion (including a full size bottle) and one bottle of their aftershave lotion. The box also contained coupons for their products.

bzzAgent asked that I use the product for a week and then if I was happy with it, to share the samples, the coupons and the word of mouth with my friends, relatives and co-workers. After each experience, I am to go to the bzzAgent website, login, and post about my activities. Based off the quality of the activity, I would be rewarded points - I even plan to post about this blog entry. They do not require that you speak positively about the product or hide the fact that it is part of a buzz marketing campaign. Simply, if you like the product, tell others about it.

So how is the face lotion? Its OK. I don’t feel different and my face doesn’t necessarily feel softer. But on the flip side, my face doesn’t usually feel dry or overly oily. I really do like the aftershave lotion. It has a nice scent that is not overpowering and it doesn’t burn like a typical aftershave would. Anyway, if you are interested in one of the samples or coupons, drop me a line at jkenzer@gmail.com.

Technorati : bzzagent, womma, word of mouth

We are going to have a birthday party for Tyler this Saturday the 10th at 3:00 PM. If you can make it great. Email me or call to get directions.