Decisoes dificeis

--update: this post was an april fools joke---

(Eu estou escrevendo em Portugues porque eu nao posso falar essas coisas em Ingles, porque tem pessoas no trabalho que leem meu blog)

Lembram como eu falei que nos iamos procurar trabalho no Arizona? Comecei fazendo so de brincadeira, mas, eu acabei achando um otimo trabalho. Eu faria coisas parecidas como eu faco agora, mas com menos programacao, e mais gerenciando. Parece que eu vou ter um groupo de 8-10 pessoas abaixo de mim, e eles vao ser programadores tambem.

E uma decisao muito dificil porque nos gostamos muito da nossa casa e de nossos amigos em Utah mas parece que a decisao certa e aceitar este trabalho. Vamos ver, nos temos um tempinho para aceitar.

Peeps results!

Danica and Dad ended up taking 3rd place! and I got an honorable mention, so our displays did very well. Thanks for voting everyone!


In case you missed it, here is the final post.
http://www.heiselt.org/liz/blog/2008/03/results.html

Big Birthday!

Marcia's birthday was yesterday, and it was very excellent. I surprised her by taking the family to a nearby horse farm first thing in the morning. I had gone around earlier in the week and knocked on the doors of our neighbors who had horses running around in their yard, and asked if I could bring my wife by and let her ride. The people I talked to were nice, and the lady you see in the picture was super excited that we would even ask to ride her horse.


Marcia had no idea what the surprise was :) The first picture is her in a "perplexed and curious" mode, when she was worried what in the world I was getting her into.

When we arrived and Marcia realized that we were going to ride horses, she calmed down a bit. She rode a horse called LD, and then we got to feed the horses some treats. Sam loved it, and Marcia enjoyed it as well. Sam was making horse sounds the rest of the day.

After riding horses, we spent a few hours at the mall, looking for birthday clothes for Marcia. Sam rode the carousel, and wanted to be like mom, and ride a horse.

After the mall we went to my soccer game, and we won! It was 7-0, and very fun. It was a good close to our season.

After the soccer game, we went to dinner at Shoots with the Runyans. Mmmmm, lettuce wraps.

Finally when we rolled into our driveway late that night, we put Sam down and played DDR for a while.

It was a great day. Oh yeah, and Lucas smiled for the first time as a nice bday present for Marcia.

Peeps! and a great Easter weekend

Danica, Dave, Jesen, Tiger Lilly, and Dad all came into town for the easter weekend. It was a great time to get together. We did a big heroscape game, a couple of egg hunts, malt-o-meal, soccer game, and more than anything else, we make peep dioramas!

My buddy Micah is hosting the competition, and so we thought we'd give it a go. You can see my display as well as Danica's on their blog here.

Danica, Dave and Dad's is the "Lincoln's last peep show". And mine is "Don't fear the peeper (more cowbell)"


You might not get it... so if mine doesn't make sense, you are probably out of touch. To get in touch, just watch this video: , (in case you miss it, the name of the song is "Don't fear the reaper") and then you can see how this video has be come a cultural phenomena here. and here.

ps. you may recognize that pergo used for the floor, as scraps leftover from my last home project :)

A big week

This was an incredible week for us. My favorite family, The Villanuevas (Bobby, Francis, Ayana, and Amaris), from my mission, made the trip to SLC to get endowed and sealed. They were baptized just weeks before I went home, and I was very close to them. It was an amazing experience!

My favorite part was the actual sealing. It was different from all the others I've seen because there was only one person in the room who was "just watching". Everyone else was part of the ceremony. In other words, it was a very intimate setting. The sealer was great, and we all cried like babies.

We got to go out to eat with them a few times, play in the pool at the hotel, watch a scary movie, look at mission pics, and generally have a great time. Bobby became Sam's best friend immediately by showering him with Cars presents. Sam, and the rest of us were very sad to say goodbye.

Here are some pictures from their visit.

Its a weird feeling...

I just turned in my final final. The read deal. So unofficially, I am now done with, managerial economics, my MBA, and school. Period. Wow, its pretty hard to explain how that feels.

Hopefully I won't get in trouble for doing this, but here is a question off my final, from one of the topics that I enjoyed most in this class, game theory:

Suppose you are given the following information on a two-firm oligopoly (duopoly).

Firm A will earn $6,000 in profit if it charges a price of $10 and Firm B charges a price of $10, Firm B will earn $6,000 in profit.
Firm A will earn $1,000 in profit if it charges a price of $10 and Firm B charges a price of $7, Firm B will earn $8,000 in profit.
Firm A will earn $8,000 in profit if it charges a price of $7 and Firm B charges a price of $10, Firm B will earn $1,000 in profit.
Firm A will earn $2,000 in profit if it charges a price of $7 and Firm B charges a price of $7, Firm B will earn $2,000 in profit.

A. (10 points) Construct a game tree showing the decisions facing firms A and B with firm A in the lead position.


B. (5 points) Given the game tree above, what is Firm A’s dominant strategy?


C. (5 points) Given the game tree above, what is Firm B’s dominant strategy?


D. (5 points) What is the Nash equilibrium?

There was even a little calculus that I had to do for this class. That was challenging for me at first, since I hadn't done any math since I was a junior in high school. And I've never taken calculus.

Anyways, there it is! I'll let you know when it becomes official, and I get my diploma and everything.

New Floor

Thanks to a very nice Christmas bonus from mediaRAIN, We bought some laminate flooring for our living room. I've been excited about this for a while. In fact, ever since an unpleasant discovery just after we bought the house. We removed a sofa left by the old owners, strategically positions to cover a huge "stiff spot" in the carpet. (No wonder that sofa was positioned in an awkward place...)

We had lots of help, and we basically finished in one day. I love the way it looks, and hopefully it raises the value of our home a little as well...

The next big home investment: Granite counter tops. Come on uncle Sam, give us a beefy tax return!

Thanks everyone for your help!

Before:


During:



After:



If you are interested in doing pergo or similar laminate flooring, I recommend it. It was very easy to put in, and only cost $2 a sq foot. All in all the project was around $900. One big bonus is that you can slide really well with just socks on. When you come over you can try it.