Home on Jamie Thingelstad

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:40:49 -0500

The Radish Farm Stop opened a couple blocks from our house and it is great. Glad to see they are doing well. It made me think of SimCity when a new building is placed and the Sims start showing up. 🥳😂

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 13:22:18 -0500

Printed these post caps. Perfect fit. PETG for outside and water use.

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 08:32:46 -0500

Happy Father’s Day! Starting mine with a morning hot tub. 🔥💦

Sun, 24 May 2026 18:43:08 -0500

These plants are invasive but their flowers sure are pretty.

Tue, 12 May 2026 11:00:00 -0500

Bemis Well Drilling made quick work of digging down about 10 feet to fix our well issue. The electric, natural gas, and fiber connections are all right under the backhoe there. They did a great job and got us back “in water” only about a week after the issue.

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 13:30:00 -0500

A little early still for tulips but always a nice time to explore the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:55:14 -0500

Crisp morning with light snow. Perfect time for a soak. ❄️🔥💦

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 20:39:28 -0500

Candlelight vigil in our neighborhood. 🕯️

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 11:28:25 -0500

My happy place. Now add snow. ❄️🔥

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 17:49:30 -0500

Tammy led the way while we all helped and the shed is in better shape than it ever has been! I didn’t get a before picture — but you could not see any of the floor before.

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 16:22:30 -0500

Driveway markers are in. Let it snow! 😊

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:30:00 -0500

Friends of ours host a Marathon Party every year right around Mile 8 as the course goes along Minnehaha Creek. They put out a big speaker and play Jump Around on repeat for about an hour. It is awesome!

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 14:30:00 -0500

We walked over to the Linden Hills Fall Festival to check out the 50th annual event. It was a nice neighborhood event but the main thing that we noted was Cal Pflum playing on the stage. He is very young but has a really great voice!

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 15:00:00 -0500

We had the stucco redashed on our house which gave us an opportunity to put a new color on it. We wanted to lighten it up and I’m very happy with the result.

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 21:22:56 -0500

We are having the stucco redashed on our house and I decided it was a good time to say goodbye to the grape vine that the previous owners had planted. Now a blank slate for something different next year. And the new stucco will go on very easy. Before and after photo.

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 14:55:00 -0500

The roses at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum today were incredible.

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 14:19:31 -0500

Giant flower.

Fri, 30 May 2025 15:20:04 -0500

Entropy is definitely losing at our house today:

✅ Upstairs HVAC install complete
✅ Generator install completed
✅ Carpet replacement completed

🙌

Thu, 22 May 2025 22:03:35 -0500

We put a Phyn Plus in our home and I had to celebrate getting to do a firmware update. The unit is now inline and it is super interesting to see the data on water consumption. I’m really curious to see what this shows over time. Plus a solid discount on homeowners insurance for having it. 💧

Sun, 11 May 2025 10:55:32 -0500

Plant shopping at the Heart to Care Tanzania plant sale! If you are in the Twin Cities and want plants you can support a good cause at the same time. 🇹🇿

Sun, 04 May 2025 13:15:00 -0500

The tulips are blooming and looking amazing at the Arboretum.

Thu, 01 May 2025 18:58:55 -0500

Standard Water is putting drain tile into our basement to better manage ground water. What a crazy process and it shows how much this is going to help. There was a literal stream of water when they jackhammered the route. Wish I could have watched the action!

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 03:59:07 -0500

Replacing batteries in chirping smoke detectors at 2:30 am. 🪫😬

Would you like some help with the snow?

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 11:08:05 -0500

The doorbell rang this morning and I figured it was probably a delivery or the mail carrier. I looked out front and no trucks were around. I opened the door to find a young guy, I would guess in his early teens, finding opportunity in yesterday’s snowfall. Outside it was pretty and very bright with a fresh 3 or 4 inches of snow yesterday. “Would you like some help with the snow?” he asked. I declined. In fact, I had almost finished getting my stuff on to head outside and shovel the same snow he was asking if I wanted him to tend to. He looked a little bummed but that is how offering your services goes. You don’t close every deal. I closed the door and walked back toward the garage to get ready to go outside.

I had recognized this kid at the door. Last weekend we came home after a night away and there was a few inches of snow. I started shoveling right when we got home and was clearing the front sidewalk when this same kid asked if I needed any help. I was nearly done and said no. I was fine finishing it up. He continued on to the various houses.

Here he was again on the next weekend morning with fresh snow. Smart strategy and willing to do the work. This all made me think of neighborhood lemonade stands.

I love that we live in a neighborhood that still has young kids who run a lemonade stand in the summer. I decided a while ago that if you see some kids running a lemonade stand, your obligation as an adult in that community is to stop and get some lemonade. Not thirsty? So what. Lemonade doesn’t look that tasty? Don’t care. A glass of lemonade cost 75¢? Fine, pay twice that. The value has nothing to do with any of that lemonade. The value is in these kids doing a thing, in the community, and engaging with others. It should be rewarded and magnified. So buy that lemonade.

And then I thought here I am saying no to this kid that is doing exactly the right thing. Will others say yes and he’ll have a productive day? Sure, most likely. But can I be part of encouraging this kind of thing in my community? Absolutely.

I opened the door and he was at the end of the walk. I said I’d changed my mind and yes, it would be great if he could shovel the front. He did a great job.

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:28:03 -0500

I have multiple UniFi G4 Instant cameras mounted outside and this cold snap is the coldest they have experienced. Well below the -4° F specification. So far they are holding in there.

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 16:36:58 -0500

Nice winter afternoon for the Magic Pines Sit & Soak. This is my new happy place. 🔥💧

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 11:38:26 -0500

Santa brought me an ornament to go with the hot tub! 🎄🎅

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 19:23:53 -0500

I spent some time this morning doing analysis of our electricity usage. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy XcelEnergy makes it to retrieve your historical data at frequencies as low as every 15 minutes! Related — we use a lot of electricity… ⚡️

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 09:28:09 -0500

When I decided to get a hot tub one of my buying criteria was making sure I can monitor and control the spa from my phone. Yesterday I got the Bullfrog X8 connected. The app itself isn’t fancy but does the things you need it to do including changing modes and locking the controls.

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 17:01:33 -0500

Did some work today with my new EGO Power+ 18" chain saw and thought it was awesome. Electric is so much easier for this, and it sliced through logs with no issues at all. Good weight and felt super comfortable to work with.

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:17:00 -0500

Added the Bullfrog X8 hot tub to pair with the NorthUp Sauna. Happened to get it installed on the 10th anniversary of signing the purchase agreement for Magic Pines. Looking forward to some delightful time this winter! 🌨️ Now to get everything ready to use!

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 21:00:00 -0500

The NorthUp Sauna was delivered today! Darin and crew did a great job. It fits in the spot just right. I love how bright it is inside. Can’t wait to fire this up and have a good sweat soon! 😅 🔥

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 15:16:23 -0500

Waited until it was cold enough before swapping this light out. New light should prohibit access by hornets attempting to build nests again.

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 16:36:00 -0500

Raking! 🍂

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 20:03:56 -0500

October roses at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 20:02:04 -0500

There were a lot of fall displays at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum today.

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 14:36:52 -0500

Ten minutes with items from the recycling bin and I made a DIY “ramp” to place in our mail slot! Envelopes kept getting mangled and jammed when they caught on the bottom edge as our mail carrier shoved them through. Even worse, it left the mail slot open with winter air streaming in! Fixed!

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 20:08:46 -0500

Our neighborhood. 52nd Street, Lynnhurst.

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 20:07:23 -0500

In our neighborhood the Taschler’s host an annual Fry Party. What is that? They fire up multiple fryers and the guests bring fun things to fry. We brought Twinkies. Fried Dill Pickles were popular. I tried a Fried Peppermint Patty. It was a fun evening and Tyler and Mazie got to help the hosts!

See also 2012 Fry Party.

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:39:50 -0500

My Mom and Mazie (I chipped in too) decided it was time to reclaim the completely wild garden plot at the cabin. It took a couple of hours but is restored! We even caged volunteer tomatoes on the paths and put down straw for winter. First picture shows the before situation. 👩‍🌾

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 21:12:35 -0500

Gorgeous evening for National Night Out!

Walking Canoe Bay's Gardens

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 15:07:53 -0500

The gardens at Canoe Bay were a highlight of our stay there. I tried to capture it a bit with this 7 minute video walk around the path.

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 09:30:00 -0500

The gardens at Canoe Bay were filled with incredible flowers.

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 08:44:05 -0500

Delightful meditation garden at Canoe Bay.

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 21:00:00 -0500

50th Street is closed at France Ave this summer and it is fun to see the area embracing a temporary pedestrian mall! I’ve suggested in the past this area should be permanently car free so it is a fun experiment.

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 16:53:17 -0500

I find it incredible that Pump 1 in our sump pump system has run 324,989 times. Pump 2 has only run 15,179 times. It also indicates that Pump 1 flow rate is 59 GPM and Pump 2 is 81 GPM. I would guess the extra 309,810 times it has run has reduced its rate a little.

Raccoons v Webcam

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 21:54:17 -0500

With Cannon Lake flooded I had repositioned one of the UniFi G4 Instant cameras so it was pointing right at the boat.

I’ve also been battling with raccoons at our place. This summer I had 6 of them trapped and taken away. But there are still more.

And on the very first night of having this camera in position the raccoons decided to play with it.

Thankfully later in the day the lawn care folks showed up and amazingly one of them put the camera back in place for me. Thank you! We’ll see if the raccoons leave it alone.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 19:50:45 -0500

On our walk around Lake Harriet today we took a stroll through the Rose Garden as well. There were many roses out in full bloom but it seemed like they had either been battered heavily in the rain or were maybe a bit past their prime. Probably a bit of both.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 11:31:50 -0500

The grapes in our backyard are coming along. 🍇

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 16:36:51 -0500

Got home after two weeks in Ireland to our sump pump system being in alarm mode making a very loud alert — thankfully still working okay! It is handling 15 gallons per minute right now! 😬 Also a smoke detector giving a low battery chirp. There were three power outages while we were gone.

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 16:08:56 -0500

The gardens around Muckross House were amazing.

Sat, 18 May 2024 17:44:05 -0500

While we were at Theodore Wirth we also stopped by the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary and walked through the loop. It was really pretty. We’ll be back for sure.

Sun, 12 May 2024 11:48:29 -0500

Seeing Purple Lilacs in bloom always reminds me of my Grandma Rose. They were her favorite. They smell lovely too. 💜

Sat, 11 May 2024 15:42:31 -0500

Very bright and showy Parrot Tulips at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

Sat, 11 May 2024 15:11:33 -0500

Happy (early) Mother’s Day to my Mom! She joined us for an afternoon jaunt to the Minnesota Arboretum to see the tulips blooming and many other pretty flowers.

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 15:04:23 -0500

We had a delightful afternoon at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Tulips are blooming! 🌷

Milwaukee Domes

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 09:45:00 -0500

We made a last minute final stop at the Milwaukee Domes before we left town. The tropical and desert domes were relaxing and pretty to experience.

Part of the Milwaukee Spring Break collection.

Home Electric Upgrade

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 18:27:24 -0500

We’ve had a crew from Advantage Electric at our house for the last couple days and hopefully we’ll be wrapped up tomorrow. A wide variety of improvements. They put a number of the Lutron Caseta switches in today and I’m already realizing how nice it is when all the lighting is in that system. I’m excited about all of these things. ⚡️

Hang 7 replacement light fixtures.
~~Replace halogen puck light with LED.~~
Install recessed electric receptacle for TV.
Replace 2 under-cabinet halogen lights with LED.
Replace 4 under-cabinet halogen lights with LED.
Replace 6 fluorescent lights with LED.
Replace 3 fluorescent closet lights with LED.
Replace 2 fluorescent utility lights with LED.
Remediate 2 dangerous electric receptacles.
Replace exhaust fan that doesn’t shut off.
Install 5 electric receptacles with USB C power.
Modernize electric receptacles on main floor and basement.
Install Lutron Caseta light switches on main floor and basement.
Remount electric meter to exterior wall, add emergency disconnect.
Replace main electric panel, add whole home surge protection.

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:41:15 -0500

We’ve lived in this house for over a year and I’m now ready to tackle figuring out what uses so much electricity. Usage is far higher than I would expect and is higher in the winter than in the summer! Looking for some answers with Advantage Electric on it. ⚡️

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 12:17:47 -0500

Trying a Roomba for the first time and have it on a mapping run. I find myself talking to it:

“No, don’t go there.”

“Avoid that shag rug! You got stuck there before.”

“Nice job on that turn.”

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:14:34 -0500

Another proof point that smoke detector low battery “chirps” always start when you are trying to sleep.

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 17:40:10 -0500

I assumed this project wouldn’t get done until spring but with nicer weather and no snow Mazie and I assembled the new Blackstone Flattop Grill! 34 steps and about 2.5 hours.

We are now a Ridwell house!

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 20:30:44 -0500

A few months ago while walking our neighborhood I noticed some of these white boxes in front of houses with a Ridwell logo on them. Tammy was far ahead of me and knew that it was a service to help you properly recycle and dispose of a bunch of household things that typically end up in the trash — particularly plastic but many other things too. Tammy is much more sensible about our environmental impact and I assumed that at some point we would have one of these too, and that time has come.

I got to see it all new when it showed up. Ridwell gave us a number of canvas sacks to put different products in. We place it all in the box and they will come on the next trip around and properly dispose or recycle the items. It seems like a pretty good service and certainly a smart idea. Tammy is particularly excited that they take styrofoam. They also handle a ton of other plastics that you cannot otherwise recycle. Combining recycling, organics, and Ridwell we think we’ll be able to reduce our landfill output to a very minimal amount.

If you want to sign up this invite link will give you a month free.

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 15:46:46 -0500

Tyler’s Christmas Twinkle Lights had a break in the wiring. Gave me the opportunity to get the soldering iron out. Working now! 💡

UniFi Protect First Impressions

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 13:08:04 -0500

I’ve used Ubiquiti UniFi networking at home for about five years. I’ve been very impressed with it, and when I heard that we were getting fiber installed at our cabin, I decided it was time to ditch the Eero network I had there and put in a UniFi network as well.

Since we’ve gotten our cabin, I’ve had a Dropcam, then a Nest camera, and then part of Google since they bought it all. I like seeing the driveway, the yard, the dock, and the boat. Particularly when there are storms. I’ve wanted to ditch the Nest cameras for a long time. I tried using a HomeKit solution, and that was abysmal.

Now, with the UniFi network in place and the Dream Router, which can run both the UniFi Network and UniFi Protect, I had an off-ramp from the Nest setup. I ordered three G4 Instant cameras and installed them this weekend.

My initial impression of UniFi Protect is very positive. Adopting each of the cameras was incredibly easy; they automatically updated themselves, and configuration was a breeze. I installed the UniFi Protect app on my iPhone and iPad to run alongside the UniFi network app. I was immediately happy with basic usability features like seeing all the cameras in a grid, controlling with more detail how each one behaved, and setting global defaults like I wanted them.

My initial setup was to place these on window sills, which is how I’ve used the Nest cameras for years. However, these cameras have a straightforward mounting system, including everything you need, even a sticker template to guide your drilling. It only took a few minutes, and I mounted this one on the shed.

It is a “weatherproof” device but not specifically rated for a Minnesota winter. I’m going to leave it out and see how it does. Many people online have said they have them mounted outside, and work fine. This is also slightly protected under the eve. The camera is just to the upper left of the door.

It didn’t take long to know this would be a far superior setup to the Nest cameras. I went ahead and pulled that system out entirely. Does anyone want some Nest cameras?

With this setup, I’m intrigued to figure out better mounts for the other two cameras and will likely add two more to have a full view of the property. However, the Dream Router only minimally supports UniFi Protect. It can get overloaded with just two cameras; I already have three connected. I need to figure out the best option to support a few cameras instead and get the network video recording option more robust.

Overall, if you need this type of setup, UniFi Protect is a great option.

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 20:23:18 -0500

Impressive balloon display at The Depot. Are balloon displays a thing?

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 19:59:07 -0500

We got our Hoist 3-Tier Dumbbell Rack put together tonight. We ran out of room on the vertical rack, and the heavier dumbbells never fit right on that one. Nice to have easy access to everything. 💪

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 16:16:24 -0500

Switched things up with the 89 °F unusually hot day to get one last afternoon in the pool! 💦

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 08:59:00 -0500

Thanks to Paul’s Fireplace Wood I’m ready for fall and winter fires! I love that they have the domain firewood.com. 🔥

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 19:53:21 -0500

First fire of the fall and first time using the Solo Stove Yukon. 🔥

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 19:38:05 -0500

Experiencing first power outage since moving into current house which has generator. Everything went off for about 2-3 seconds and then generator fired up and most of the main floor came back online. Generator stuttered briefly when AC compressor came back online.

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 15:09:19 -0500

It is that time of year when our neighborhood has this delicious Gem Tomato stand run by our neighbors and friends the Millers. We brought home several to eat fresh.

This is the same tomato stand that is in our Land of Things puzzle.

Sun, 14 May 2023 12:50:47 -0500

Magnolia trees are starting to bloom. Such beautiful trees.

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 18:47:40 -0500

Garden status as fall is here: We are still pulling off lots of tomatoes. I had no idea a basil plant can get so big. The strawberries are very full and getting ready for next year. The zinnias are still bright and full.

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 15:25:55 -0500

Got cutting-discs on the Dremel and trimmed a dozen or so drawer pull bolts to proper lengths. Tammy filed them down after.

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 15:22:20 -0500

Installed these cool modern sconces from Dutton Brown made right here in Minneapolis. I’m not very handy, but I have an unqualified confidence with light electric work. ⚡️💡

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 15:54:23 -0500

Zinnias in bloom.

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 15:52:59 -0500

My Mom is helping Mazie get the Tomatoes under control. Only 4 plants but they have all gone MASSIVE! 🍅

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 15:40:01 -0500

Need to declare war on these horrible Beatles going to town on our strawberries! 😲

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 17:20:07 -0500

Something went terribly wrong with the carrots in the garden. Carrot Ball? Carrot Swarm? Eek. 🥕

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 20:56:18 -0500

Awesome to have fiber directly into the house. Well done US Internet! 👏

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 23:02:15 -0500

Putting Lutron Coséta switches in new house. Have wanted to try these out for a while. Starting with all switches on main floor, and will do rest of house later. First items arrived today.

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 07:42:59 -0500

Moving day has begun…

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 17:52:49 -0500

Our move is in full swing now. 📦

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 11:04:19 -0500

I love majestic tall prairie grasses, particularly Big Bluestem. They are my favorite landscaping feature.

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 07:36:27 -0500

Damselfly resting on Big Bluestem in the morning sun.

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 09:41:44 -0500

Zucchini have arrived!

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 08:27:55 -0500

First time renting a Fluid Truck. Moving some things to the new house.

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 23:16:42 -0500

Just as I finally figured out the multiple programs, zones, durations and start times of our digital irrigation controller — I’m confronted with what appears to be a completely analog irrigation controller. 😬

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 10:28:00 -0500

Discovering all sorts of unusual devices while getting new house ready. RCA jacks, mini plug, Ethernet?

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:09:31 -0500

Moving into a new home presents many puzzles. Currently working out this one:

29 Cat 5e twisted pair runs
8 RG6 Coax runs
B&O MasterLink network
Random one off cables

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 22:14:12 -0500

Today we closed on our new home! We weren’t looking but a truly unique and special property came on the market and we made the leap! We move back to the Lynnhurst neighborhood in a couple weeks. 📦

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 19:41:34 -0500

First strawberries from the garden. So delicious. 🍓 We need to put straw down to keep them off the dirt.

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 22:40:20 -0500

I can now declare some level of basic competency with the irrigation controller and its various programs, schedules, start times, durations, and zones. ⭐️

I successfully have three programs running complementary and differing start times and durations. 💦

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 10:23:01 -0500

Strawberries are coming in the garden! Fresh picked strawberries are a family favorite. 🍓

Sat, 21 May 2022 13:52:08 -0500

Mazie is planting the garden She loves to garden and commune with the plants. The strawberries and blueberries did well over the winter.

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 18:51:07 -0500

We had a big exterior project done this fall that finished in the winter. With the snow gone, I offered the kids a bounty to find nails in the yard. They decided to donate the bounty to charity. Proud parent moment.

Market Value up 12.4%

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 08:01:06 -0500

Our city shared this update on the assessed market value of property.

2022 Assessment Report
The 2022 Assessment Report is in. Edina’s total Estimated Market Value rose from $13.76 billion in 2021 to $15.45 billion in 2022. Overall, that’s a 12.4 percent growth in value from January 2021 to January 2022. Total percentage growth in 2022 exceeds total percentage growth for 2019, 2020 and 2021 combined.

That much growth in one year doesn’t make sense. Is the market catching up? Or getting ahead? Inflation?

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 17:17:07 -0500

Tammy’s grandparent’s cuckoo clock is ticking again at our cabin thanks to Blackstone Manor Clock Repair.

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 20:25:43 -0500

It has only been a week since the last update on the siding and window project but things are progressing nicely. The weather is getting very cold now which may put a pause on some things. We’ll see! 🤞

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 17:31:55 -0500

All of my deep knowledge of technology, software, networks, WiFi… it all comes crumbling apart when there is no hot water and the water heater won’t work. 🙁

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 16:49:31 -0500

We are in full swing on the residing and window replacement project with Keyprime. All the windows have been replaced, most of the old cedar siding off, and the new LP going on. Big and messy project.

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 16:22:09 -0500

Firewood delivery moved and stacked. 🔥

Punk Rock Candle

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 21:47:55 -0500

When we make candles we measure out all the wax and scent, and then measure again as you pour into the various vessels. There is usually a little bit of wax left in the melting pot on each batch and we usually pour that into a potpourri candle, little bits at a time.

We were making candles recently and I had no jars to fill, but we still had the leftover bits of wax from each batch. We also had a bunch of wood wick trimmings laying around. So I decided to embrace the Punk Rock ethos and make a Punk Rock Candle. 🤘

Vessel? I have tinfoil. Wicks? I have these trimmings from other candles. Scent? Whatever. Came out about 8” wide with three 3/4” wood wicks.

I kind of dig it. Burns well too! 🤩

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 18:19:42 -0500

Our first year with the garden was a good success. We learned a lot and had successes and misses. Tammy and Mazie reset everything so we are ready to plant in the spring. We are giving one box just to strawberries.

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 22:31:43 -0500

Our garden at the cabin has gone a bit wild on us. We haven’t been around enough to keep it well managed. The tomato plants are seemingly everywhere. I had no idea what broccoli does when you let it seed out. There was some giant stuff. We did get one of the beds cleared of everything except strawberries and the runners are going crazy. We are hoping for a big bounty of strawberries next year. We also got the blueberries with room to grow. The squash and tomatoes we are letting run free for now.

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:03:48 -0500

Had my mini studio setup today to present at the MnTech CIO Forum: Straight talk on emerging technologies event. Green screen, mic, key light improve things a lot!

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 09:19:29 -0500

Our garden at the lake has gone wild! The tomatoes have pulled their cages out of the dirt! The tomatoes and squash are escaping to take over the yard. The strawberries are sending advanced troops out of the beds. Order must be restored. 🚨

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 20:47:13 -0500

I dig this FLÎKR Fire that we got in Vermont. Great ambiance! 🔥

Connected Device Disclosures for Rental Properties

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 07:24:56 -0500

We’ve been staying almost exclusively in Airbnb properties for a while now. We enjoy the unique accommodations and the ability to stay in locations that are not served by traditional hotels.

As connected smart home devices like cameras and sensors get more popular it is common to find them in rental properties. I understand why owners want to have connected devices. It almost certainly helps them manage the property. We have some cameras at our cabin so I can keep tabs on the property when we are not there.

Given the frequent appearance of connected devices I’d like to see properties disclose what is in use and why. The disclosure could list:

Device type: camera, thermostat, speaker, sensor.
Manufacturer: who makes the device.
Model: what is the specific device.
Location: where in the property is the device located.
Access: list every entity (person, management company, service provider) that has access to the device and what they can do remotely.

A disclosure would help give peace of mind to the people staying in the property while still providing the benefits to the owner. It would help answer questions when you see a device that is clearly online and is unclear what it is there for.

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 17:47:54 -0500

The Magic Pines garden is really revving up now! I think we may have planted a bit much. The tomatoes are like a wild rave gone out of control, the zucchini are sprouting like crazy, and the pole beans are out competing the corn!

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 14:31:45 -0500

Damselfly (I think?) hanging out on the Big Blue Stem.

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 10:39:25 -0500

Cherry tomatoes. Corn. Zucchini. The garden is coming along quiet nicely!

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 20:24:36 -0500

Mazie harvested lettuce from the garden today. I have no idea what we will do with this many greens! 🥬 😳

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 20:18:51 -0500

Bees Balm is fully in bloom.

Sat, 26 Jun 2021 11:04:15 -0500

I love the look of native tall grasses. Plus they provide great support for birds and other animals.

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 20:23:11 -0500

Our garden has taken off with enthusiasm! Strawberries sending shoots. Ears of corn starting. Zucchini overload. Tomato plants flourishing. Blueberries are only thing struggling a bit.

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 19:52:11 -0500

We walked through the Lyndale Park Rose Garden on our way around Lake Harriet today. The flowers were beautiful.

Sat, 12 Jun 2021 08:04:05 -0500

I’m so happy to have our Andrew Carson wind sculpture back up after being in storage a couple of years. It is one of my favorite pieces of art. It is the centerpiece of the raised garden beds.

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 07:10:59 -0500

Our garden is in and hoping all the plants enjoy their new home. Tomatoes, squash, carrots, Brussels, blueberries, lettuce, beans, and more. 🌱

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 21:38:33 -0500

Our raised garden beds are mostly in. We’ll be preparing the soil and planting shortly. Final step will be placing our Andrew Carson wind sculpture in the middle.

Mon, 31 May 2021 12:12:40 -0500

Weather recovered for Memorial Day! Sun is out! ☀️🕶

Sat, 22 May 2021 13:52:58 -0500

Opening the pool for the summer!

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 19:35:03 -0500

We hung The Frame by Samsung today and I am impressed with it. It is discrete. The picture quality is good. It is fun to have different art on it and with the press of a button you can watch a show.

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 21:06:52 -0500

Got my Elgato Key Light added to my setup. Having it attach to the desk is key for the standing position. It is also nice to be able to control color and brightness from the Stream Deck. It can get very bright too. 😎

Pileated Woodpecker

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 22:19:17 -0500

I’ve been fighting a Pileated Woodpecker, and losing. This woodpecker has been visiting our house every morning. It usually shows up between 7-9am. It is the biggest woodpecker I’ve ever seen, and it’s done a number.

We have someone coming tomorrow to put a metal plate up, and then we are going put in Hardie Board. The rest of the house has Hardie Board already, but its regular lumber in the gable.

I’ve been pounding on the wall, but it has gotten less scared of that. Now I’ve started running outside and yelling at it which sends it away. If the image of Bill Murray going after the Gopher in Caddyshack is coming to mind, that is about right.

New Desk and Chair

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 22:15:00 -0500

After way too much deliberation I decided to head to Podany’s today and come home with a new chair and a sit-stand desk. I should have done this months ago. This is a great upgrade from my previous setup.

Desert Botanical Garden

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 23:06:00 -0500

Wanting to experience even more desert plant life we visited the Desert Botanical Garden today and it was incredible. Everywhere you looked there were great displays. It was a great day to walk around and take in the great scenery and learn more about various cactus and plants.

*A dense field of various cactus.* *I loved the red needles on these cactus.* *Saguaro cactus with Cholla cactus in the foreground.* *At first we thought these giants were Saguaro but they are actually [Cardon cactus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachycereus_pringlei) that grow even bigger. They are less resilient to cold so they do not grow native in Arizona.* *Very rare [Crested Saguaro](https://www.nps.gov/sagu/learn/nature/why_crested.htm) cactus.* *These [Chihuly](https://www.chihuly.com) glass sculptures were incredible.*

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 16:53:05 -0500

Day 24 of the February Photoblogging Challenge: Baby

Baby Saguaro cactus! 🌵

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 22:45:33 -0500

Day 19 of the February Photoblogging Challenge: Alive

Blooming flowers on their way to be fruit.

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 19:54:45 -0500

We visited the Boyce Thompson Arboretum today and had a great time walking the loop around the arboretum. On the way back we went up on the hillside and hiked on the upper trail. It was a gorgeous visit with an incredible variety of things to see.

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 22:05:49 -0500

This is my workstation setup for our February stay in Mesa, AZ. The mStand is critical to getting the screen and camera at a good height. The 12.9” iPad Pro does great double duty as a second display using Sidecar.

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:56:00 -0500

I love geeking out on all the AV gear when recording. This setup was great!

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 18:40:18 -0500

Nice day for a campfire. 🔥

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 21:27:27 -0500

Hygge.

Sat, 28 Nov 2020 14:07:46 -0500

I’m not sure what happened with our bandwidth usage this month but it was way up from any previous month and we just used our one “free" excess usage month from Xfinity. This would have cost $60 extra this month. I will have to keep an eye on usage and consider adding unlimited data for $30 a month. We didn’t make any notable changes in devices or usage so I’m not sure what drove the jump.

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 22:57:31 -0500

I love our outdoor patio space at night. A warm November day bonus with no bugs! The Yellow Table is a recent addition. I hung the yellow Herrnhuter today. We should add some blue to make the Swedish connection. 🇸🇪

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 21:57:14 -0500

I upgraded the video conferencing setup in my home office. Setup a studio light that I’ve had for photography. Got an Audio-Technica AT2005USB microphone on a mini-boom. The audio is incredibly better. The light is a big help early in the morning.

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 16:23:50 -0500

Finished a much needed organizing and upgrading of my home office setup. This is working much better on every dimension.

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 20:04:15 -0500

Delicious plate of tomatoes grown by our old neighbor. 🍅

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 19:40:13 -0500

Updating firmware is one of my favorite things. 🤓 Updating the new IntelliConnect.

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 22:34:14 -0500

The final thing we needed to do for our pool project was replace the septic system at our cabin. I think it’s good that I wasn’t there when they did it and cut through gas and water lines, irrigation lines, and even low voltage lines. I just checked in at times on the NestCams. Hard to dig a giant hole out and put a big thing in it without disturbing a bunch of stuff.

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 20:29:55 -0500

Last night as we were getting ready to go to sleep I noticed that a helicopter had been circling overhead for a while. It was circling large swaths around Highway 62 and France Ave, just a few blocks from our house. Tammy found out via NextDoor what as up, and we quickly heard what turned out to be a mugging attempt that turned into a shooting at Fairview Southdale. We later learned the victim survived despite a gunshot to the head, but the suspect fled on foot and was “at large”. The helicopter was searching. The police asked everyone to leave their exterior lights on which we did. They didn’t catch the suspect, and still haven’t.

EDINA: CONFIRMED SHOOTING outside Southdale Medical Center, 6545 France Ave. S. - A male victim was shot in the head while in the west ramp, on the 2nd level. The hospital is in lockdown and several roads around the hospital have been shut down. pic.twitter.com/SkseYZKHrw
— MN CRIME (@MN_CRIME) September 15, 2020

Links to local news coverage:

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 20:25:44 -0500

Discovered the Planters Nutmobile in our neighborhood on our evening walk tonight! Will be curious to see how this story evolves! 🥜

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 20:23:28 -0500

Mazie’s garden is thriving, and now it has an official placard. She has a real knack for gardening, and seems to enjoy it a lot.

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 12:56:49 -0500

This is one of the oddest places I’ve had to deal with a hornets nest. 😬

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 21:19:13 -0500

My fire table got hooked up to the gas line today. I love it! 🔥🤩

Jim Crow of the North

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 22:15:50 -0500

Tammy and I watched Minnesota Experience: Jim Crow of the North tonight. It was incredibly eye opening to one form of systemic racism that I have been surrounded by for over two decades and was not aware of.

Racist real estate covenants were pervasive in Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs. In fact, the last house that we lived in on Morgan Avenue includes one.

no person or persons other than of the white race shall be permitted to occupy said premises or any part thereof

You can see the relatively small enclave of these racist covenants right off of Minnehaha Creek. Then a huge grid of them further south.

I was curious about our current home on the East side of Pamela Park in Edina. Somewhat surprisingly, none of the properties on the East have covenants, but the Western side of Pamela Park is littered with them.

If you are curious you can spend some time exploring yourself at Mapping Prejudice. Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, one of the co-founders of the project, also did a TEDx Minneapolis talk on these racist covenants.

I’m left with the data that 75% of White families in Minneapolis own their own homes, and only 25% of Black families own their home. The generations of wealth built and restricted from so many families has massive impact still today.

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 18:59:00 -0500

I was in Google Street View today and was surprised to see that it had a picture of our house before it was completely rebuilt. It is fun to see what was here before.

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 22:24:25 -0500

I’m not very handy, so I get disproportionately excited when I do complete little home projects. New drier vent with guard installed! Last winter the squirrels put over 20 pine cones in the vent!

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 22:39:35 -0500

Mazie is growing some peppers, Brussels, herbs, and other food in a raised garden bed this summer. She loves to tend to the plants and even likes weeding. She’s trying this out with an eye towards a full garden in the future.

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 20:13:36 -0500

We had BarrkArt Fencing come and fence in our back yard so Lucky can have a space to run around. They did a great job matching the fence in with the existing segments and connecting to some difficult terrain. They even put a small privacy fence in to hide our trash bins. Great company. Would absolutely recommend working with them!

Sat, 30 May 2020 08:24:45 -0500

There are a lot of complicated things that I understand very well, however the impact holidays have on garbage collection schedules is not one of them. 🤷‍♂️

Sun, 24 May 2020 17:01:00 -0500

Working through my first pool “issue”. The Saltwater Chlorine Generator was set too low (6%) while we were gone and the chlorine level dropped to near nil. Water was cloudy, but no color. I got HTH® Super Shock! Treatment and added 6.9 lbs to the pool. The water turned green right after adding the granules. Now waiting and hoping it all works out okay. 🤞💧

Added another 2.3 lbs of Super Shock! Treatment later in the evening. Can smell chlorine now, before there was no pool chlorine smell. Did a water test and the Total Chlorine was around 10 ppm, but Free Chlorine is still near 0.

Next morning the water is much less green, but still very green. The cloudy seems to be gone. Water test shows total chlorine around 5 ppm but free chlorine at 0. I thought I didn’t add enough chlorine so added 4.16 lbs HTH Shock Treatment. We had to take off so I left the Chlorine Generator in Boost Mode, it will go back to 20% after the boost. I also added about 2/3 gallon of muriatic acid since the pH level was very high.

Thu, 14 May 2020 20:58:00 -0500

We made the jump to an electric lawn mover tonight. We bought the 21" Self-Propelled EGO Power+ from Home Depot. Initial impression is amazing. Much lighter, powerful, easy to use, pretty quiet. Won’t miss pulling on that cord to get it started!

Sun, 03 May 2020 07:47:08 -0500

The Tetris Shower that we did over a decade ago is still one of my favorite home projects we’ve done. 🤓

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 19:14:56 -0500

We weren’t able to get our backyard fencing completed before we got Lucky, so we have erected this barrier that is so far holding her in. Fence company is hoping to get here in a week or two. 🤞

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 17:19:05 -0500

Sitting in our covered porch listening to it rain and thunder is one of my favorite things about spring.

Sun, 27 Oct 2019 15:20:00 -0500

Preparing the leaf pile. 🍂

Twenty six bags! 🍂😬

Sat, 26 Oct 2019 13:10:27 -0500

I’ve gotten pretty expert at replacing the thermopile in this gas fireplace. 🔥🛠

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 08:22:35 -0500

Sitting in the porch.
Steady rain in the background.
Porch heaters keeping it warm.
Premier league match on.
Tyler and I hanging out.
Pretty awesome. 🤩

Infratech Heaters

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 16:06:24 -0500

Had two Infratech heating units installed in porch to make Fall Baseball ⚾️ and Premier League ⚽️ mornings not so cold. 🤩

Sun, 04 Aug 2019 19:49:40 -0500

I need to find a good name for the Dolphin S300i pool robot. Oddly mesmerizing to watch it work around.

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 18:18:29 -0500

Embarrassingly, for over three years our foosball table was setup totally wrong! I fixed it today, and now it makes sense. That’s what I get for having some random dude set it up via Amazon installation. 😬

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 21:53:11 -0500

Pool project is moving along. Tammy and Mazie stood in the deepest part for scale. Cover mechanism in, plumbing largely done.

Sat, 29 Jun 2019 21:45:57 -0500

The pool project has gotten off to a quick start! This was after just two days. On Thursday there were two large pine trees in this spot. Wow! 👷‍♂️

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 22:43:40 -0500

As if on some kind of strange reality TV show, our family has decided to see how far into the summer we can go before turning on the AC. Still haven’t done it…

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 22:43:56 -0500

Burned through a big pile of scrub today. A lot of pine tree branches! 🔥🔥🔥

Wed, 29 May 2019 19:05:06 -0500

That first time starting the lawn mower each year is such a pain. Just start already! 😤

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 17:34:43 -0500

Happy with fire pit setup. 🔥

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 16:31:31 -0500

I took the day off for Tammy’s birthday and we rented a U-Haul to get a bunch of post-move errands done. 👍🏻

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 19:54:33 -0500

Mazie and I got to play Civil Engineer tonight, creating routes in the snow/slush to route water out of our yard. So much water! 😬💦

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 23:54:31 -0500

I’ve used an Airport Express (Gen 1) with an auto-switching amp to get AirPlay audio. The Airport Express is discontinued now. Sonos Amp does what I want, but is 3 times the cost. Recommendations on better solutions?

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 20:17:05 -0500

Closed on the sale of our old house. Now done with the moving stuff. Time to get settled into the new house. 🙌

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 20:15:45 -0500

Got a 2nd HomePod and am trying out a stereo pair. They sound incredibly good for the size.

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 20:14:09 -0500

Is there anything useful to do with 1,500+ CDs and 200+ DVDs? Going thru stuff after move and filtering. Is there an option better than garbage?

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 07:44:32 -0500

Today is moving day! 📦🚛🏠🥳

Internet service up and running at the new house! 🥳

Moving Day

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Today the movers will be showing up to move all the big things to our new house! It’s been nearly 9 years since we last moved. It is the first time that our kids are part of the moving process, making it a completely new experience for them.

We have really loved this house and the neighborhood. It’s been a great 9 years, without any reservations.

Tammy and I have watched a couple of episodes of Tidying Up on Netflix. Marie Kondo takes a moment in the beginning of each episode to introduce herself to the house. It’s humorous to see the homeowners in each episode react to her meditatively sitting on the floor doing this. It seems both odd and entirely fitting to communicate with the house.

In my own way, I would like to send a message to our home for the last nine years on Morgan Ave. “Thank you. You have been a great place for our family to grow, have fun, and be happy together.”

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 17:42:01 -0500

Family selfie from our new house. We don’t move until January, but are exploring today!

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 18:59:58 -0500

Know someone wanting to move to South Minneapolis? Our house is for sale! We have loved living here. It is an amazing house and neighborhood!

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 18:19:10 -0500

Our new deck is done and I put up the pergola lighting today. 💡 I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 17:19:20 -0500

Our deck project is progressing — and big!

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 19:31:46 -0500

What a nice evening! 👍🏻

Sat, 18 Aug 2018 16:39:24 -0500

Very happy with the new stone steps down to our dock! 🤩

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 19:32:05 -0500

First clematis flower of the year.

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 19:06:18 -0500

Got a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Extend today. I am very impressed with how easy setup was. Easily paired it with Plex on my Synology for DVR. 👍🏻

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 20:25:00 -0500

Idyllic evening on Morgan Avenue.

Sun, 03 Jun 2018 14:05:14 -0500

Took advantage of cool weather this morning and spent 2 hours clearing brush from the lakeshore. Nice before/after from the Dropcam.

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 07:13:26 -0500

Beautiful collection of roses. 🌹

Sun, 14 Jan 2018 12:18:57 -0500

New light hung! 💡 This is about the extent of my handyman skills. 👷🏻‍♂️

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 12:39:05 -0500

I want to be an energy efficient household but this monthly report from XcelEnergy does nothing to help me. Just makes me feel bad. Showing min/max/avg by day and hour would at least give some data to work with.

Sun, 03 Dec 2017 15:26:43 -0500

Hung these shelves in Tyler’s room. They look great but what a pain to hang! 😤

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 19:27:23 -0500

Fun to have this Erik Sletten painting back up after years! Just fits!

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 16:42:12 -0500

Being able to raise your wrist and say “Hey Siri, turn espresso on” a few miles from home on a cold bike ride is so great! 👍🏻☕️⌚️

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 20:30:45 -0500

US Internet put the conduit from our boulevard to the house. Only a couple more weeks to gig!

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 21:22:19 -0500

We got a new desk at home and I’m stunned by how much it has improved my keyboard experience! 😲

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 16:50:40 -0500

Tree person says our 100+ year old elm tree has “structural failure”. Haven’t come to terms with taking it down yet. ☹️

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 16:43:32 -0500

Next time I’ll have this view I’ll be standing on ice. 🙂

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 16:51:51 -0500

Signed up for the Xcel Energy Smart Thermostat program.

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 18:03:11 -0500

My brother Isaiah came to town to help me rebuild the kids playset. Mission accomplished! 👍🏻

Sat, 09 Sep 2017 13:28:43 -0500

Our neighbor raises tomatoes and it’s a delight every year to have fresh heirlooms to enjoy. Yum! 🍅

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 19:10:51 -0500

Just now trying some HomeKit things and am really impressed.

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 15:42:16 -0500

Tomatoes doing very well. 🍅🍅🍅

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 15:39:44 -0500

My Uncle Tim’s hops are doing very well! Posts are 16’ high. 🍺

Look up — at hops!

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 06:47:51 -0500

Placed my US Internet order for 1G fiber! Plan to be in my neighborhood this fall! Help is on they way! 🚑

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 19:51:20 -0500

Oh no, my wife has started to obsessively look at new houses. There is no way to stop this train! 😲

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:16:56 -0500

Cool ice cream social 🍦 at Fuller Park!

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 19:32:56 -0500

Nice evening in the neighborhood.

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 19:17:04 -0500

Beautiful Clematis flowers in our back yard.

Horseshoe Pits Completed!

Wed, 17 May 2017 21:30:04 -0500

Last weekend we finished putting in the horseshoe pits at the cabin and I’m very pleased with the result!

We have a lot of yard games at the cabin and I though it would be a lot of fun to add horseshoes to the mix. I honestly didn’t think that much about it and put a horseshoe set on my wishlist for Christmas. After getting the set I realized I had bit off more than I realized.

I found a great site for horseshoe plans. My brother-in-law helped me get the wood and cutting done and unfortunately the winter came before I got it all done. We finished digging the pits into the ground this spring after the ground thawed.

I really like the throwing platforms and the backboard. This is a more complex pit than you absolutely have to have, but it’s really nice to play on. Now I just have to work on my game!

Sat, 13 May 2017 14:49:56 -0500

One of our trees didn’t make it through the winter. 😔

Fri, 12 May 2017 18:59:34 -0500

Oh no! The dandelions have taken over the yard!

Thu, 04 May 2017 06:03:30 -0500

This weekend I resumed my horseshoe project and got the platform dug in for one end. Looks great. I’m glad I went with the backboard and throwing platforms. Still need to do the other end and get the sand in.

Sun, 11 Dec 2016 17:54:27 -0500

I love our neighborhood. Snow hill across the creek from our house. Laughter, squeals of joy, snow; beautiful.

Sat, 05 Nov 2016 22:24:00 -0500

Tools.

Sat, 03 Sep 2016 17:41:25 -0500

Progress on horseshoe pits! Still to do: putting them in the ground, sand, and throwing platform decks on.

Sun, 14 Aug 2016 13:04:47 -0500

Horseshoe pit backboards built!

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 20:35:39 -0500

Really frustrating how great the Dropcam software was that Nest is “upgrading” with less features and degraded UI.

Tue, 24 May 2016 22:15:00 -0500

Hope this rumor of an Echo-like device from Apple that uses Siri is true. I liked the Echo, but without iOS connectivity to my calendar, messages and other apps it had limited use.

Sat, 12 Mar 2016 11:56:07 -0500

Trying different spots to put in horseshoe pits.

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:21:48 -0500

How to Build Backyard Horseshoe Pits ← “First rule of building backyard horseshoe pits — they are backyard horseshoe pits, chill out.” Ha! 😆

Sat, 27 Feb 2016 23:39:11 -0500

X marks the spot?

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 14:45:58 -0500

Woodpeckers! 😠

Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:48:48 -0500

Trying to pick IP camera to try with my Synology and there are too many options. Paradox of choice.

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 08:48:41 -0500

Pretty sure I figured this out that you can install Cloud Station Client on a 2nd DS416 and sync folder by folder.

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:12:22 -0500

So far, the out-of-the-box experience with the Synology DS416 is pretty great!

Sun, 20 Dec 2015 11:04:19 -0500

Ordered Synology DS416 and four drives from Amazon. Synology arrives Monday. Drives on Tuesday. Buzzkill for Monday night.

Diving into NAS with Synology DS416

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 01:00:00 -0500

I’ve been debating my home storage options for a long time now. I’ve had a LaCie 4big Quadra RAID for many years now with 6TB usable space. It’s very old now, I can only use it with Firewire 800 which is quickly disappearing from the world. It recently failed a drive and I decided it was time to make an upgrade.

I’ve ben hesitant about SANs because of their added complexity, but the Synology gets rave reviews and has some pretty great capabilities. The drive will get here along with four 4TB WD “Red” NAS drives.

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 21:08:37 -0500

I’m still debating buying a Synology NAS. Need to just pull the trigger already.

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 17:49:30 -0500

My weekend project: cleaning and discarding on large scale.

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 18:11:47 -0500

This is way outside of my normal tooling.

Digging.

Step 1 of basketball hoop project done!

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 20:20:00 -0500

Bought a Canon PIXMA MG7520 today and am pretty impressed with it. Finally have AirPrint in the house.

Wanted: Dropcam Window Mount

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 01:00:00 -0500

I’ve had a Dropcam now for several months and I really like the device. It is super simple to setup, has a very small and manageable form factor and it is one of those things that “just works”. I have it setup in our house pointing at the garage and alley with 7-day continuous video recording and motion detection. We live in South Minneapolis and garage theft is a common occurrence. The Dropcam keeps an eye 24x7 on activity around our garage and through our alley.

The biggest challenge I had was figuring out where to mount it. It has a really nice metal stand that provides a lot of options, but we have it placed in a bay window and there just wasn’t any place I really had an option to screw the mount into. I finally decided to use some double-stick tape and attach it to the window.

Once I did this it really struck me how nice it would be if Dropcam made a proper window mount for the camera. The camera itself is relatively light and fairly thin. It is like a small hockey puck that sits in the metal stand. It could easily be set directly onto a window.

I have to think a lot of Dropcam units end up pointing at the outside through a window. This mount I did works okay, but has some real shortcomings that a proper mount would remove.

Dropcam Window Mount

Here is what I wish I could exchange US currency with Dropcam to have.

A circular mount that attaches to a window with suction cups (probably 4 or 6 suction cups). Imagine something that is shaped like a ring flash and holds the Dropcam in the middle.
The mount should allow a degree of swivel to the Dropcam itself so that it can be mounted directly on the glass, but still allow pointing the Dropcam a number of degrees one way of the other.
A little cable management to route the USB power cable in a way that limits the impact of a tug on the cable on the direction the camera is pointed.
It should shield against ambient light in the room. This is the biggest issue with my mount. Since there is about 1" of space between the glass and the camera, at night when the lights are turned on in the room a reflection bounces off the glass and into the camera which messes up the picture but more importantly the camera detects it as motion so you get a false positive of motion.

That is easily a $20 to $30 add-on that would be a “no brainer” for many installations.

Einstein Cabinet

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 19:23:00 -0500

Tammy got this custom made Einstein cabinet by artist Paul Carbo this week. I love it. I think this might be the coolest piece of furniture we have.

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 17:47:27 -0500

Yard is ready for snow with 15 minutes of daylight to spare.

Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0500

This seems like the best use possible for this book.

Our Neighborhood in 1938

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0500

My friend Garrick shared this link to the Minnesota Historical Aerial Photographs Online site. It is a pretty cool site where you can see aerial photos all over Minnesota going back as far as 1920. I immediately went and looked where we live and they currently only have one photo from 1938. I’ve highlighted our lot in yellow.

It was surprising to me that the tennis courts were in place back then. In fact, the entire Minnehaha Creek West Park seems to be pretty much as it is now with the same walking bridges and everything.

Our street doesn’t exist yet. The entire row of houses that we live in are not there but the other side of the block has been developed. Our house was built the following year, in 1939.

I also pulled up our previous house in Minnetonka in 1937 and it was entirely farmland. Was still farmland in 1956. The transformation there is amazing.

Fri, 23 May 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Neighborhood Badminton. 🏸

Fri, 16 May 2014 19:00:00 -0500

Want to live down the street from me? Nice S Mpls home for sale!

Dropcam Tabs

Wed, 07 May 2014 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve become quiet the fan of my Dropcam. I decided to go ahead and pre-order two of the new Dropcam Tabs. Excited to play with them. Wish they were shipping sooner!

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 19:50:27 -0500

Timelapse of the April 8" snow in my backyard. Happily wasn’t home for this. 😊 Via Dropcam.

The time-lapse dropcam video may not exist anymore.

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 16:47:45 -0500

How long until Google Ad Sense can target households based on interior temperature? People who are home during the day?

Putting a Google connected collection of sensors in my house doesn’t thrill me.

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 17:03:13 -0500

Just turned my espresso machine at home on while out running errands. The internet is amazing.

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 16:22:00 -0500

Going through old stuff and throwing things away.

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:06:00 -0500

Morgan-Logan neighborhood Halloween block party.

First time experimenting with leaving a bowl of candy out with “take 2” sign results on all candy gone after 1 hour.

Time to collect my override on all this candy.

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 22:49:00 -0500

Real label from our utility room. Awesome.

Sat, 19 Oct 2013 21:23:12 -0500

In other news, we got “Booed” tonight. Love our neighborhood.

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 11:48:53 -0500

The neighborhood is doing the Children’s World Marathon Challenge today. Love where we live.

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 07:54:57 -0500

Lynnhurst garage sales today. Lots of activity in the neighborhood! Tammy has a table at a neighbors place.

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 18:13:37 -0500

Want to be my neighbor? House is for sale

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 19:34:25 -0500

Just discovered a ground hornets nest right in our backyard. Luckily nobody bitten.

Sat, 27 Jul 2013 15:59:46 -0500

Spent a solid 4 hours cleaning the garage with Tammy. Looks great.

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 13:56:17 -0500

So awesome to be able to be outside getting the yard ready, fire going and just having a nice time. Yeah for spring!

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:08:14 -0500

So predictable how LARGE BANK Co. “forgets” how to pay my homeowners insurance out of escrow nearly every year. It seems too obvious to me that they are just trying to hold the deposits as long as possible. Frustrating.

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:55:36 -0500

9 yards of mulch distributed. Will push it around tomorrow.

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:57:00 -0500

Second wood project started. Oooph. 😊

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:14:32 -0500

First wood project of the day done.

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:48:30 -0500

9 yards of mulch and a third cord of firewood coming tomorrow. I’ll be sweating and dirty.

Morgan Remodel Final Pictures

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:00:00 -0500

For 18 weeks I wrote a weekly update on the progress of our remodel project. At the end the work was really small items, just working through a punch list and we were starting to live in the space. Now that everything is in place and we have been fully using the space for a few weeks I wanted to post a final photo walk through. The whole family is delighted with the addition and the new spaces have dramatically changed how we use our space. It’s been great.

As a comparison before looking at all these pictures, you may want to look at the pictures from the start of the project first. Or visit week 4 when it all looked like a disaster zone.

The back door of the house from the garage hasn’t changed much from the final photos at the end of the project. All the exterior work was done well before winter was (supposed to) arrive.

The new location for the grills is great. Before they were under the windows in the left hand side of the photo and were a little in the way as you approached the house. Also, having the lights there helps when you do some evening grilling in the winter.

Take note of the window on the left next to the smaller window. In the future that will likely get taken out and a door put in. The wood on top of the mudroom roof is cedar decking and it is ready for use as a walk-out deck. The railing is 36" and there is a set of outdoor speakers up there. I think a couple of chairs would work well out there and the access would be from the hallway upstairs so it could be used by the whole family.

One of the nicest changes is the spacious built-in as you enter the mudroom.

We have plenty of room for everyone’s coats, shoes and all the other items we want ready access to. I even have a compartment just for my camera so it can be safe but still easily accessed. At the end of the mudroom we put a desk and shelving and that is where I spent more focused computer time, and where I’m writing this blog post from.

I wasn’t sure about this space at first, but I’ve grown to really like it. The floor is heated in the mudroom which is nice, and I love having all the windows on the right.

The entry to the office is open, except for when Tyler closes the pocket doors.

Tammy found a small couch that works perfect in this room and is also a fold-out bed for a visitor, in a pinch.

We also have a very small corner desk in this room which is where Tammy tends to spend computer time, although she also uses the desk in the mudroom as well.

The couch was the last item to arrive but it’s already proven to be a hit. Mazie likes to read books there and it’s got a nice feel to just relax in a spot that is away from the main traffic areas of the house. The view through the doorway out to the deck is really nice and insures we are “connected” to the outdoor spaces.

In the summer I look forward to having all the windows open and being able to hear the kids as they run around and play as well as keeping a close eye on the Big Green Egg.

The stairs down to the family room work out really well and even though it is a high traffic area we rarely get jammed up there.

The cutouts into the kitchen really help it to feel bigger than it really is. It’s also nice that you can see from the kitchen all the way into the family room.

The family room was the main focus of the basement work and we love how it came out. This is as you come down the stairs.

The carpet is super soft and everything came together really nice. The couch is massive.

We figure as the kids get older you could easily have a ton of kids hanging out watching a movie, having a sleep over. We went for maximal comfort and I can say with significant experience now that this is a great spot to watch a movie. The built-in for the TV came out great as well.

The drawers on the bottom hold fun stuff for the kids and the cabinets on the left are plenty big for any gear. The three speakers above are very discrete, as are the rear channels on the window.

See the subwoofer? There is actually a pretty awesome sub hidden in the wall underneath the window there. It fires directly into the couch which insures maximum impact for loud explosions. :-)

This is where we spend most of our time in this room and we are very pleased with it all. The other side of the family room has a small table with chairs that works well for a laptop or a relatively small project.

Hidden behind that door is the electric room which houses the digital nerves for the house. One of the project objectives I wanted to achieve was to have an older house but have modern infrastructure. I now have wiring infrastructure that will serve the entire house for the foreseeable future.

That entire cabinet swings out for easy maintenance. Check out the detail on the wiring.

All coaxial and network jacks home run into that one panel. It is a delight to maintain.

Here is the view going back toward the stairs. You can see here the distinct level of the new basement floor. This side was lowered 7" in the remodel and we are really happy that we did it. Half of the family room has a lower ceiling to accommodate ventilation and lowering the floor made a huge difference. The landing to the utility and fitness rooms is the shortest height in the room at about 6’ 3".

Turning left on the landing you head into the fitness room.

On this side we left the basement windows as they were with the glass block and the floor was not lowered. The exercise room ceiling was on the side of the basement that had no ventilation ducts so the room is still plenty tall, just short of 7’. We put a little extra lighting in this room because I like it to be bright when working out. The floor is cork and looks really nice.

Tammy did a great job (as always) getting the art right. We had a minor snafu with paint and ended up reverting back to a very neutral look which was my preference.

The view from the treadmill. The TV is mounted on the wall and there are in-wall speakers in here as well. An AppleTV provides the content and the amplifier is in the cabinet for the family room on the other side of the wall. It is all automatic, so you just turn on the TV and start playing something. That is important at 6:00 am when you are very much wishing you were in bed.

Our new fitness room has actually inspired me to get back on this spin bike and sweat a bit. It’s been really fun and there is a good vibe to the whole layout.

The basement extended out over our entryway upstairs so that little alcove was turned into very useful storage space.

It even has a fancy switch to turn the light on and off when you open the door.

I didn’t take any photos of the utility room because, well, it’s a utility room. Imagine a cramped room with a furnace, water heater, freezer, utility sink and more stuff than it should have in it. You get the idea.

Some things I didn’t cover above:

Since we were sealing off the basement we took the opportunity to put a doorbell in. The original, wired, doorbell had been removed some years ago and I really dislike the wireless ones. We now have a proper chime and lit doorbell buttons on the front and back doors.
We replaced the railings and surround on our front door and it looks really great. The old surround was rotting out, it was a bad choice of wood. It now matches the railing in the back.

We all really love the new space. I’m a little surprised how much the kids love going down there and tumbling around on the carpet. Since the rest of the house is hardwood it’s a nice option for them to goof around and tumble.

We also have nothing but good things to say about Quartersawn, the contractor we used. Jeff put together a great plan and design, exploring a lot of options with us. He worked with Tammy directly on the cabinetry and came up with things that we all loved. Mike was on the job nearly every day and stayed on top of everything with amazing detail. Weekly meetings kept things running smoothly and any changes in plans we knew about right away. I’ve heard horror stories of remodels but have none to share myself.

Looking back on the project we’ve wondered what we would change, if anything. There are a couple of things.

This would have been a great time for me to do some better lighting above my espresso area in the kitchen. The electrician could have easily put another can in and it would have been really helpful. Once I realized I wanted it, it was way too late.
Also in lighting, we don’t think we did enough lighting in the stairwell to the family room. We have really nice stair lighting that is discreet and looks very classy. But some nice lighting in the ceiling above would have made that space more interesting.

This got pretty long but I thought it would be fun to give a virtual tour of our new space. Tammy also wrote about the new space on Smaller Than a Redwood with her take on the new space.

All these photos were taken with my Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L ultra wide so there is a little skewing in the corners, even after Lightroom applying lens corrections. I wanted to capture as much of the space as I could.

Garage Reclaimed

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:00:00 -0500

While doing our remodel we lost the use of our garage. We used it for storage and the contractors had a big dumpster in the driveway. For most of the summer there was also a small lumber yard in the driveway and a portable toilet. So we parked on the street all summer. Best time to do it but an inconvenience.

This last weekend we got the garage cleared back out and I was irrationally excited to park both cars in there again.

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:42:00 -0500

I don’t think our new family room could have come out any better. Starting a movie tonight. “Margin Call”. 🎬

Beautiful Jacks

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Homelink Entertainment is doing all the low voltage work in our remodel. One of my goals in the project has been to have cutting edge infrastructure in a 1920’s house. Thanks to the meticulous detail of Ben from Homelink, it is happening. Look at this plate! Labeled Cat 5 runs down to the rack, proper speaker terminations, coax in a separate coax patch field. Awesome.

Remodel Update Week 18

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

There are still a number of things on our punch list, but, the remodel is done! When we started the project it was expected to take 16 to 20 weeks, and we ended it right at 18. This week the flooring was installed, the electrical was finished, the network and other low voltage infrastructure got punched in and the security system was turned back up. The carpet was an amazing transformation. In one day the space went from a construction zone to a place you walk around in bare feet and goof around with the kids in.

We love everything about the new spaces we created. We wouldn’t change a thing. We’ve moved a bunch of our stuff back in and the rest of it will come together in the next couple of weeks. This will be the last set of weekly photos I post. I will do another final wrap up post when all the furniture is in place to show what it looks like when completely done.

I’m posting more photos than normal for the final recap. You can see there is still another day of painting to be done this coming week, and the AV guy will be out to install the in-wall speakers and put TV’s in place.

Remodel Update Week 17

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This was a big week for the project! The painting is mostly done now. The final colors are on all the walls, the tape is off, the trim is all painted. The railing is finished above the mudroom and I’m really excited about the space up there. I’m completely sold on putting a door in next year. The utility and electric rooms are complete enough that we were able to move a bunch of stuff back in. I was super excited to get the network and low voltage systems coming back together. Both built-ins were completed as well. The fence was installed around the egress window wells. One of the carpenters even came on Sunday and finished the railing on the front door and the new surround around the front door.

The coming week should be the last big week. The final electrical work is starting on Monday. The cork flooring is installed in the exercise room on Wednesday, and carpet is the next day. The theatre and network wiring should be all done as well. We’ve now taken down the plastic barrier in the kitchen so we can now get into the new space without going outside. Just a bit more now!

LoFerno Fire Pit

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Last weekend I bought my last fire pit. A number of years ago I saw Jeff Lohaus LoFerno fire pits at Art Attack in the Northrup King Building. I instantly admired the quality and design. However, I had just bought a chiminea. And not just any chiminea. I had bought the Big Green Egg Chiminea and I love my Big Green Egg products. A LoFerno and a chiminea seemed excessive, especially at the same time so I didn’t get it. Additionally, at our old house I had a proper fire pit in the far back yard so I could always have fires there.

Since moving to our new place I don’t have a large yard with a fire pit and I’ve been stuck with just the chiminea. The chiminea is fine, but you don’t get that sense that you are having a real fire. I started searching for a good fire pit. I knew I didn’t want something made of thin metal. I wanted something with weight and thick steel. The LoFerno is 120 pounds and made of 1/4" steel. Check!

The cool thing about the LoFerno is the fire tower. That’s a big part of the weight too. The bowl is 70 pounds and the tower is another 50 pounds. The tower allows you to be pretty sloppy with getting your fire started, and the logs burn in a vertical position and seem to start a lot easier that way. The pattern in the tower is interesting to watch as flames weave around it. The tower just sits in place, so remove it to move the unit or clean and your ready to go again. It would be pretty easy to put a grill grid on the tower and cook over the fire if you wanted, but I haven’t tried this yet.

The best thing about the LoFerno is that you really feel like your sitting around a fire. It’s stable and heavy so you know everything is safe. It’s made of ridiculous steel that will last longer than any of us will. And it’s made by a local artist who seems like a cool guy making some great stuff. I highly recommend one if you’re looking for something to enjoy the fall nights with.

Family Room Built-in

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The fancy built-in cabinetry was put in today for the family room. It looks really great. There is still one part to add, the floating granite shelf that goes a few inches above the white drawers on the bottom (the dark line in the picture is the inset for it). The TV will get mounted in place along with the in-wall speakers for surround sound very soon.

32 Plants Planted

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The landscapers were here this week and got the yard looking a lot better. We decided to do the planting ourselves though and took advantage of 50% off sales in September at Wagners. We left with 32 plants and got them all in today. I did most of the digging and Tammy and Mazie put them in the ground. It looks great and the plants should have plenty of good weather to get established before winter.

Remodel Update Week 16

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This week was the 16th week of the remodel. In the very first project plan we would be done now. Remodeling, like any other complex project has changes. We have about two more weeks in front of us and then I’m sure there will be small things after that.

This week the built-in cabinetry for the mudroom was installed. The earlier empty space is now as it will be going forward. The painters have been busy painting trim with some serious paint that seems stronger than typical latex paint, and smells it as well. Outside the carpenter got the deck built on top of the mudroom and the railing is ready to be put in this week. I got to go up there this weekend (through the window) and put a set of outdoor speakers up. I really like the space and if I weren’t done with project stuff for now I’d want to have the door put in up there.

Outside we also got our landscaping done this week. The rutted tracks from the excavation equipment are gone, and so is our entire lawn. I decided to have the entire yard re-graded and seeded with shade specific grass. All of our hardscaping is back now as well, so things are feeling really close and it’s nice to get fall in our backyard again.

This week the family room built-in is coming and the walls are getting painted. Electrical work will get back underway and the network will come back to life with a new telco rack and everything getting punched back down. We’ll actually move some stuff back into the utility room next weekend.

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:26:37 -0500

Landscapers blew me away with how fast they finished. 2 days and done.

Remodel Update Week 15

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

More finish work continued this week. The exterior of the new mudroom got painted. The real door arrived and will be put in after painting. The bannister got installed in the family room as well as the hand railing and the utility and electrical rooms are being finished so we can start moving some stuff back in!

This week is more painting, finish work, cabinetry and landscaping is starting to restore the yard.

Remodel Update Week 14

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This week was all about finish carpentry. Happily the tile floor in the mudroom got installed and it does look really nice. The finish carpenters showed up and put the doors in, got trim up, installed the pocket doors and generally “finished” things. They are doing an excellent job and have one more day of work next week.

Next week the outdoor railing on top of the mudroom and the front entrance gets put on, and the painters arrive on Wednesday to do the final painting. It’s pretty straight forward stuff now through the finish of the project and only a few more decisions to make. Having the two built-in cabinets delivered and installed will probably be the biggest remaining changes to the space itself.

Remodel Update Week 13

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I think week 13 of the project will go down as the least exciting week for me. The only thing to get worked on was the mudroom tile floor. That was out of necessity, the mudroom is the access point to the basement and in the laborious process of putting in the tile floor access to the basement was cut off. The process takes days so it felt like a really slow week.

On the positive side, this marks the start of “finish work” to the project. The floor is really nice and on Friday the doors for the basement and all the finish materials were delivered. We’ve also received the exterior lights and on Tuesday (after Labor Day) the finish carpenters show up to start that work. The tile will also be finished this week. 😀

I was curious about the yellow box on the wall that said Loud Mouth on it. The electrician hooked that up to the in floor heat before the tile guy did his work. It monitors the integrity of the circuit, and if anything goes wrong during tiling it starts making noise immediately. Pretty smart to have.

Mazie's 2011

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today was the 2011 So Long Summer show! Our neighbors the Miller’s host this every year for five years running now. It’s the last Sunday before school and a ton of kids in the neighborhood do performances. It’s awesome on so many levels.

This year Mazie sang a song from her now favorite movie, Annie. She sang “It’s a Hard Knock” life and knocked it out of the park!

I was so proud of her — great job! The crappy focusing is my poor performance on my camera.

Add video.

Remodel Update Week 12

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

We are entering the home stretch on the remodeling project. The work now is no longer about structure and wire. We are dealing with drywall mud, paint and finish work. This week all of the drywall got primer and the ceilings were all painted. The siding on the exterior of the house is being put back together, which is more complicated than it appears. The front of our house is pretty as we are replacing the trim. The trim was pine and was rotting out. Also the railing is being replaced to match the railing on the back. Lastly the temporary wall in our kitchen was removed. It was a bit shocking how large the kitchen felt now that we don’t have that plastic wall up anymore.

This week the tile is going to be installed in the mudroom and more finish work. We are still really excited about the project and can’t wait to start living in the new spaces!

Impromptu S'mores

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Our neighbors down the street, the Conley’s, hosted an unplanned S’mores evening last night. Mazie loved staying up to 11:30 pm! 🔥🍫

Playhouse for the Kids

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Tammy had noted that Mazie and Tyler really like to play in playhouses when we visit people. Our yard is a standard city lot, so we don’t have much space but she figured out a good spot in the yard and a playhouse that would work there.

The playhouse didn’t have a floor so we made a trip to Home Depot and got the stuff to build a simple deck that would sit on the ground with cedar deck boards. Mazie helped me build the platform and Tammy prepared the ground and got the playhouse ready to assemble. It was a fun afternoon of building and assembling and the kids like the end result.

Remodel Update Week 11

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This week the remodeling was all about drywall mudding and taping. Tape, mud, repeat. Repeat. Repeat some more. We were out of town which was a nice thing. It was fun to see the walls looking so nice and smooth when we got back. It feels like we are entering the home stretch now.

Remodel Update Week 10

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I’m posting this weeks update a little early, the progress is so fun to see. The theme for this week is drywall! The framing is gone, and in it’s place is grey drywall everywhere you look. I was amazed that one guy did it all. The result of these huge 54" by 12 foot sheets of drywall and one guy over two days was impressive. The new space feels like it will when it’s done now. We continue to be really excited for the project!

Next there is buckets and buckets of joint compound.

Majestic Trees

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

One of my favorite things about living in our neighborhood is walking around with the old, majestic trees overhead. Conversely, I get very sad when I see an orange ring spray painted around a tree indicating it has to be cut down. When I was walking to the bus this morning the crew was getting ready.

On my way home…

We have a huge ash in our yard that we have on a every program that Rainbow Treecare recommends. I hope we never lose it to invading pests.

Remodel Update Week 9

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The remodel continues to go well. This week carpentry was mostly outside. The new mudroom got the exterior finished. The roof needs to be finished and then they will put the railing on top. Not much more before the outside will look done, minus some paint and the real door.

The inside work was wires and pipes. The electrician finished nearly everything with just a couple small things left, including my precious doorbell. The electrical inspection is done. The low voltage guys drug a bunch of Category 5E cable for me and almost as much speaker cable. The radon system got installed as well. We tested our basement and the radon levels weren’t bad, but we went ahead with it to make the radon even less of an issue and to make the air in the basement feel fresher.

Insulation gets put in this week and the sheet rock starts going up as well!

Remodel Update Week 8

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The remodel is continuing along really well. This week all the framing was completed. There were some ceiling parts left from last week. We did the electrical walk through on Monday of this week and the electrician got right to it. The pre-wiring for more security system stuff was done. The ducts for the furnace also got put in. Another temporary wall was put up in the kitchen so that the door could be taken out and the wall cut out above the espresso bar. The window in the upstairs bathroom was removed. The deck was also put back together which helps the yard feel more normal.

The week ahead is mostly about wires and pipes. Electrical inspection will happen this week and hopefully the low voltage work will get completed as well. I’m dragging new Ethernet and coax to a bunch of spots. The outside will also be restored further with our fencing put back in place and possibly the beginning of the siding work.

Electrician named Sparky

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The last two build-outs that I’ve worked through at the office have had the same electrician and everyone always calls him Sparky. It is his nickname. I’ve always thought it was a fun nickname, or concerning since sparks aren’t what you want with electricity.

Today at our remodel I overheard the framers talking about Sparky being done in this area or still working over there. Is Sparky just a nickname for all electricians on job sites?

Remodel Update Week 7

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The update last week felt really significant with the new floors in and all. This week felt like an even bigger advance! All of the walls in the basement are now framed in and the windows are in the mudroom and the family room. We can now see just how the light will be in the family room and get a sense for how the flow will be in the main level with the mudroom there. We also got most of our side lawn back this week. Tammy and I are both feeling really good about the layout.

The week the project also broke into the rest of the house. A temporary barrier is in place in the office to keep dust out and the exterior wall has already been taken out to make room for the new pocket doors.

This week we do the electrical walk-through as well as mapping out all the low voltage work. We are right around the half-way point now.

The pictures of all the framing are probably hard to make out without an idea of what direction things are.

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:08:57 -0500

Trying to buy a doorbell online. Surprising that very few websites let you listen to the chime. 🙁

Perceived Project Progress

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Our remodeling project is scheduled for 12 weeks. I’m very familiar with project execution, that is a big part of what I do for a living. Watching the progress of our remodel I’ve been thinking about real versus perceived project progress. The chart below reflects the relationship.

When we build software there is a decent amount of time getting groundwork put in. You have to get the build process working right, get your integration tests working, get version control working the way you want it. You probably need to use some framework code. It is a lot of stuff that doesn’t really feel like progress to a non-technical person.

Then you start framing out the software. Big swaths go in place, but mostly just stubs. Everything looks like it is coming together really fast, but it is largely a façade. Things are just in place to make sure it all comes together right.

At the end, it feels like the thing is so close to done but it just keeps dragging on. The edge cases have to be handled, error handling needs improvement. You need to log things. Not to mention that final design of the visual elements. This is where people get frustrated.

I fully expect the same thing to happen with this remodel. It seemed like a long time to get the structural stuff rolling. This week it seemed like a lot started to happen, and with the framing right around the corner it will feel like we are almost there. Then, things will take a very long time to get the light switches all wired up right and all the final punch list items completed.

While I ride the Perceived Progress line I’m going to try to keep a good grounding on the Actual Progress line. It is the only one that matters after all.

Remodel Update Week 6

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Week six was a big one! The difference between last week and now is really fun. Last week we had a dirt floor in the basement, now there is cement. Last week you had to take a ladder down the last half of the steps, now there are now steps. Last week they framed the mudroom, now it is enclosed (sort of).

The old exterior wall was knocked out in the new mudroom which gave us the first sense for what that intersection will be like. We think it will be great.
The egress windows are framed in and the windows will be installed this week! We will be able to see what the light will be like in the family room.
Holes have been knocked in the cinder block on the basement wall and rebar put in that goes down the entire length. This week they will pour cement in those channels for additional wall strength.
We got our air conditioning working again with the new furnace and condenser on Friday! Just in time for a miserably hot spell!

I’ve been amazed at all the structural engineering that has gone into lowering the floor. The extra 7" will be worth it though. This week windows get put in and most of the framing happens.

Concrete Trucks

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today was a big day for our project. This morning a bunch of guys showed up between 6:45 and 7:00am. Two big, blue concrete trucks showed up and parked right out front. One truck had the concrete mixing, and then it was pouring it into the pumping truck.

The concrete pumped through this hose and poured into the basement for the new floor.

Tyler was digging the big trucks. I would have stood there and watched too but I had to get to work!

Remodel Update Week 5

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This last week was short with the 4th of July holiday, but there was still some nice progress. The mudroom is now framed in and you can really see what will be. The basement got the steel reinforcement plates put in and the dirt leveled and prepared for pouring the new concrete. The original plan had the concrete getting poured this week but they got backed up on another job so that will happen at the beginning of this week.

Looking ahead we should have a floor and most likely windows in place in the basement by the end of next week. We are also hoping that we can get the air conditioning hooked up again for the main floor. We’ve been without it since the digging started and since that is done the new condenser should be able to get back in. We have our fingers crossed. It has been pretty hot lately. Luckily we still have air conditioning upstairs in the bedrooms.

We are also preparing for the project to start invading the rest of the house more. Walls will soon be getting knocked down and we’ll have to accommodate some additional disruption on the main floor.

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today the reinforcing steel arrived to insure that the basement walls never slide in over time. Modern foundations have rebar connecting the footings and walls. Older houses just had the walls built on the footings and the basement floor kept them from pushing in. Since we are lowering the floor these steel plates will make sure everything stays put.

First Week of Standing Desk

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today I started my second week of using my makeshift standing desk. My initial observations are:

I’ve struggled with some lower back pain and I was hoping it would get better not sitting as much. On the contrary, my lower back pain is worse now.
My feet hurt. Plain and simple. I need to wear a better pair of shoes than I have the first week. Going to switch tomorrow.
I get the sense that I’m more likely to move about during the day. More walking around and more interactions with the rest of the team at the office.
It’s harder for people to meet in my office. Since I’m standing, people don’t come in and sit down to chat. This makes conversations shorter, which is good and bad. It makes it notably harder to have a one-on-one conversation though. A small desk to meet at would be helpful.

My makeshift standing desk is far from ideal. I know my keyboard is about 6" too low. My monitor is as high as it goes but at an angle so I look down at it. Looking down is kind of nice in one way, but I think it would be ergonomically better to have it much higher and looking straight on.

People keep asking me how long I’m going to keep this up. I don’t know. It’s possible my setup is deficient and it won’t be better. I’m hopeful that I hit a turning point this week and my feet feel better and my lower back hurts less. I’ve started stretching occasionally through the day which I hope helps as well.

All in I like it, contrary to the probable tone of this note. I feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Remodel Update Week 4

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The destruction in the yard slowed in week four and the destruction in the basement accelerated. Outside we got our new egress window wells poured and the dirt around them is mostly filled back in. The foundation for the new mudroom is in place as well. The yard is still a muddy, rutted mess but at least we don’t have six-foot deep holes that people can fall in. I also can now take the lawnmower from the garage to the front of the house without walking through the alley and around the block on the sidewalk. It’s the little things!

The basement is a disaster zone however. The stairs got cut off half way down. I put a ladder at the end so I could get down and take pictures. The half of the floor being lowered has been broken up, hauled out and the dirt dug down. The half that isn’t being lowered has been cut out for the drain tile installation around the basement wall. The plumbers were here for two days rerouting plumbing to accommodate the various changes.

Next week framing starts and the new floor in the basement gets poured. I’m thinking this is maybe the ugliest it will look. 😀

Dirt Conveyor

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

If you need to take seven inches of dirt out of a basement floor, it is best to have a cool portable conveyor belt.

You can see this laying on the floor in yesterdays shot of the basement.

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:17:13 -0500

Day 2 of standing desk: my feet hurt.

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:14:39 -0500

Who has people hammering outside their house at 7:12 AM? Oh yeah, me. Sorry neighbors!

Basement Destruction

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today the heavy equipment came inside and made a bunch of noise while tearing out the basement floor.

Concrete Poured

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Last week we had a lot of digging in the remodel project. It was exciting to come home today to concrete forms poured and the new egress window openings in place as well as the foundation for the mudroom. It’s great to see the forms in place!

Remodel Update Week 3

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Week three of the remodel project has been substantial. Arriving home to heavy equipment in the yard is the first clue. Most of this weeks pictures are large holes dug around our house. It’s proven to be a big inconvenience as we cannot walk from the front yard to the backyard easily now. This leaves Chase incredibly confused about where he’s supposed to do his business in the yard.

The week ahead starts some of the framing work and the excavation of the floor in the basement. The next shots from the basement should be interesting! I love how the light comes in from outside in the basement already. I’m also pretty excited about the large windows we’ll have in the basement. I think the space will feel really nice.

We lost about 3 days this week due to rain. Everyone agreed we didn’t want large holes in the yard filled with three feet of rainwater.

Standing Desk Trial

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I’m taking a trial run at a standing desk. If I like it I’ll see about something more nicer than a box of paper and an upside down recycling container.

Construction Excavation

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I came home tonight and was excited to see the first significant work on the excavation around the house.

This digger was in the front yard getting its work done.

We have two really big holes that will have forms put in them for the concrete around the egress windows.

It isn’t often that you get to check out the exterior wall of your basement.

The toys are parked in the yard for the night.

I couldn’t help myself. 😀

Saving Plants

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

My Mom came to the rescue of more plants. This week the excavation starts on the remodel and the side of the house is going to get dug up. A lot of Hostas and others had to be moved or destroyed. Mazie helped loading the rescued plants into Grandma’s car.

Remodel Update Week 2

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The I-beam is in place! This week the project has gotten dirty and more serious. I would say that the project has really started now with a decent amount of hammering, smashing and banging. Notable events this week include installation of the new furnace (not hooked up), the pouring of new footings for some central supports and pulling the central foundation support that has been in place since 1939 and replacing it with a super strong steel beam. Thank you for your 72 years of service large wooden beam.

Nothing much happened outside this week, but that will change this week. The excavation crew arrives Monday to start digging.

Windsource Savings

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

We have been enrolled in the Windsource program for years now, ever since it was first started. Windsource is a program that XcelEnergy provides that you can opt-in to buy renewable energy to offset your energy use. While the actual watts going to your house are not necessarily “wind watts”, XcelEnergy is then purchasing that much wind energy to offset your usage. It’s a good program, relatively cheap and allows me as a customer to express my wish for renewable energy without installing it myself, which isn’t really feasible.

I found this blog post on The Deets that highlighted a benefit I didn’t even realize though about Windsource. Since the energy I’m buying is renewable, I don’t have to pay the Fuel Cost Charge. I didn’t even realize there were credits you got if you opted into Windsource.

The first thing I noticed is that we sure use a lot more electricity then The Deets does. We paid $29.30 on our most recent bill for Windsource. So just $29.30 went to XcelEnergy to then go on the renewable energy market and buy 830 kWh of power. I would have paid $23.48 in Fuel Cost Charge, but wait, wind energy doesn’t have that. So I get a $23.48 credit for that. That nets out to $5.82 net increase in cost to use renewable energy. There were 32 days in the billing period, so it netted out to $0.18 per day.

Join me and The Deets and sign up now.

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:41:47 -0500

Remodeling — bunch of guys are sliding an I-beam into our basement.

Remodel Update Week 1

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The first week of the project really just focused on getting things ready for real work. The deck was tore apart so that the new mudroom foundation could be put in. The first part of the work on the support structure of the house started. We are removing a central support post in the basement to open the space up for the family room.

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Our remodel meant that a pretty sizable Azalea bush in our yard had to go. My Mom couldn’t stand to see it get discarded so she came over in 100 °F heat and we dug it up to go live at her house. She’s a true tree hugger!

Remodel Project Starts

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This week we started the remodeling project on our house. I plan on taking photos of the process. It’s a decent sized project. We are lowering the floor in the basement, putting in two egress windows, installing a new furnace and air conditioning unit and adding a mud room to the back of the house. It’ll be just a little under four months. They start demolishing the floor in the basement this week.

Here is what it looks like now.

Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 -0500

We just hired Quartersawn as the general contractor to do a house project. Upon signing the agreement every friend of mine feels compelled to share every horror story they’ve ever heard about how horrible general contractors and home remodeling projects can be. Thanks! 😀

Backyard Lights

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

We have done a number of things in our backyard to make it more of an outdoor living space. We decided to put some LED tree lights in to make the backyard more of a place to hang out at night. I had Custom Christmas Lighting do it so it would look nicer. They did a very nice job.

Pot Rack

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

After much searching Tammy found a pot rack that works in our kitchen. It was a bit of a bear to mount but it looks nice and seems very functional. I can tell you that the studs in that wall are not 16 inches on center.

I’ve struggled with the kitchen in our new house. I think this is going to make it much more pleasant to cook in.

My New Espresso Bar

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

We had a new cabinet installed recently and the countertop and plumbing were finished today. I now have a nice spot for my espresso machine an it’s even plumbed in so no more filling up the reservoir in the unit. Just need some pulls for the doors now.

Improved Workspace with Monitor Arm

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

My friend Garrick recently posted about an ergonomic improvement to his workspace. He got a monitor arm to get his display up where it worked better for him. Recently I’ve felt a lot of back fatigue and aching and I feel a lot better when I sit up straight. My monitor is typically to low for this though, so inspired by Garrick I ordered a duplicate of his rig. I got the Ergotron LX LCD Arm along with an adapter for the Apple Cinema display.

I have a 30" cinema display that I mounted this on. I had to adjust the tension a lot to hold the big monitor, but my first reaction is that it is way better. Plus, I got a lot of desk space back and flexibility to collaborate with others that come into my office.

I like it enough I may need to get one for home too! (For comparison, that is an 11" MacBook Air next to the display.)

I’m not in love with the cable management, but it works well enough. I could do better with some extra zip ties in a cleanup session.

What plants for our backyard?

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Last year we had some hardscaping done in our backyard. We created a little planting area next to the garage. This year I’d like to plant it but am not sure what to plant.

The area is almost always in the shade, so we need plants that do well with low light. We only want native plants and have a strong bias for perennials. I could see a couple of annuals if they really added to it. I like tall native grasses but I’m guessing the constant shade will be a problem.

Any suggestions from Minnesotan “green thumbs” reading? Here is a photo of the planting bed alongside the garage.

Driveway Avalanche

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 01:00:00 -0500

Our driveway provides almost no opportunity for me to get snow out of the way. I blow a lot of it over the fence into the backyard, but also blow a lot of it against my neighbors garage. There is a limit to how high you can go though.

I’ve debated next fall creating a series of wood shelves to set next to the neighbors garage. I could then blow the snow vertically into the shelves and I could get it 10 or 12 feet in the air. It would work as a form of snow fence.

Double Big Green Egg Table

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 01:00:00 -0500

When I got my Big Green Egg I got the large table to go with it. It seemed okay, not great. I knew I wanted to have a good work surface for my Egg and I didn’t think the simple fold out “wing” tables would work at all. I know a lot of Eggheads make their own tables. There are some wonderful plans online that help out. But I don’t have even the basic woodworking skills, or patience, to do that. So I just went with the table from the store.

It was okay but pretty quickly I was disappointed with it. The build quality wasn’t great. It was stapled together instead of using screws. But it worked so that is what I used for the first year.

I’m glad I did because it allowed me to really figure out what I wanted in a custom table for my Egg. After a lot of searching I found a carpenter to work with and after a design session with some sketches I now have my dream Egg table.

It’s a double Egg table to house both the Large Big Green Egg as well as the small. I also have a second prep table. There were a number of specific things that I wanted in the setup.

Space

If your just grilling some burgers you really don’t need much prep space around your grill. But when you’re doing full day smokes and preparing entire meals on the grill I found that I wanted ample space. I wanted my table deeper than the stock table by about 4 inches.

I thought for a long time about how I wanted to accommodate two Eggs. I considered having them in two separate tables, which would be convenient for times when I wanted to just use one or maybe even take it somewhere with me. After consulting my friend and kitchen expert Mike he suggested that I consider a hot/cold setup, like a professional kitchen. I decided I liked that and put both Eggs in one large table and then have a completely separate prep table. More on the prep table later.

Hot Rack

One of the issues I have found when using my Egg is dealing with hot tools or grill parts, as well as dirty grids and such. I asked the carpenter if he could design something that slid out on the bottom of the table that could deal with this. He hit it out of the park!

This shelf is just great. It’s all metal, so I can put a hot plate setter on it and not worry. Since it slides underneath I can then store those things out-of-the-way and not worry about kids bumping into a 500 degree ceramic piece.

You may notice in the picture above one other minor thing that I did around the bottom vents of the Eggs. I found that you inevitably spill ash when cleaning it out, and that ash if left on the wood caused staining. I mentioned this to the guy that build the table and he just got a couple of squares of metal and mounted them under the vents. Now the ash just falls on the metal and can be cleaned up easily.

Granite Inserts

I copied (stole) the idea of the granite inserts from a friend who bought an Egg and built his own table. I thought it was a brilliant idea and had to do it as well. In the center of both the hot and cold (prep) tables I have a removable slab of granite.

I found that my Egg table got pretty dirty over time. You have various sauces and rubs out there and it makes a mess. The granite gives me a place to not worry about grease, sauces or even hot items that might burn the wood.

I can pop the granite out and pressure wash it easily enough. I have also found these to be great places to put a single portable burner when I want to simmer some sauce or cook something that way outside as well. I have a nice induction burner for this purpose. It works great!

Prep Table

The prep table was an indulgence. It serves a lot of purposes. First, I get a bunch of shelves to put my tools in. I now even have room to house a spice bin outside so there is less running around. I have another bin just with fire starting stuff. The room is nice.

I also like that the table is very mobile. If you need to shuck some corn, or prep food for the grill and have someone helping they can take the table wherever it is convenient for them. I also made the table “double-sided” so two people can work on either side easily. I also slapped some hooks on it so I can keep tools there, as well as hang a trash bag on the side if you have a lot of prep work to do.

Finish

The entire table is covered in outdoor varnish. It should last a very long time with basic upkeep. I’ve grilled with this setup now for about six months and have yet to find anything I would change.

Feel free to riff off of any of these ideas. If you live in Minnesota and would like to reach out to the carpenter that built this amazing table just contact me and I can send his info along. He doesn’t have a website to link to.

Huge Snowman

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 01:00:00 -0500

Some people in our neighborhood build a huge snowman in the park every winter. Mazie stood next to it for scale. The nose is a traffic cone. Awesome!

You can see this for yourself if you drive down Penn Ave at night and look east as you cross over Minnehaha Creek. They light it up at night so it stands out really well. I’m going to go and photograph it some evening.

Brilliant: Swivel Tree Stand

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 01:00:00 -0500

Last year I decided I had enough of our old tree stand and got rid of it. We decided to pick up our Christmas tree after Thanksgiving but I needed to get a new tree stand.

We made a quick stop at Settergren’s Ace Hardware and I asked the guys there what they recommended. The guy I was talking to said he loved this Swivel Tree Stand. I decided to get it. It wasn’t the cheapest, but it looked really nice and easy.

We went to Wagner’s and got a tree, and then headed home to get it in the stand. After putting the tree up I won’t use one of the old tree stands ever again. This thing was amazing. You put part of the base on outside, with the tree in an easy place to put part of the base on. No laying on the floor trying to get everything put in place. Simple, easy.

You then walk it inside, set it in the stand, press the swivel lever down with your foot. At this point the tree moves anyway you want it. Get it perfect, let the lever release and your done! Wow. Great!

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:06:39 -0500

Really pleased with how our landscaping project came out. Functional, efficient and relaxing.

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:46:33 -0500

Guys doing our landscaping just fired up the stone cutter at 7:45am. Good morning neighbors! 😬

Swing Set on the Way!

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500

We are redoing a lot of the outdoor space in the backyard of our new house. We’ve wanted to put in a swing set for Mazie but it was a real challenge to find something that would fit in our standard city lot. It took a lot of creative thinking but we finally figured out a way to make it work and Tammy found a swing set that would fit in the space.

Tammy ordered the unit from CedarWorks. They send a rendered model of the swing set when you order it. Pretty cool.

Garage Tunnels

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Why isn’t it common to have a tunnel from your detached garage to the basement of your house?

Big Move Started

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Yesterday we started the big move. There have been many preparations but yesterday with the help of many family members we moved the majority of the art to the new house. “You’re moving you say?” Yes! I haven’t been writing much lately but we bought a house and closed on it on March 1st. The last three weeks we’ve had every room painted in the new house, new carpet installed and some small projects. All stuff that is great to get done when nobody is living there.

Our new house is at 53rd and Morgan in Minneapolis. Tomorrow the moving company is coming to get everything packed and ready, and on Tuesday we make the move. We’ll be in the new house after that.

We are all really excited about the new place! We are also sad to move away from a great house and friends.

Dinner in New House

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:00:00 -0500

Today we closed on our new house. It was an exciting day filled with activity and signing many, many sheets of paper. To celebrate the closing we moved a handful of things into the new house including Mazie’s play table and decided to have dinner at the new place from Broder’s Deli.

We don’t actually move in for a little bit after painting and some new carpet.

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:34:16 -0500

Preparing for another open house today. 🤞

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:24:27 -0500

Just got a call to confirm our first showing for the house. Nice!

Then mad dash to get house prepared for first showing done. Drenched in sweat from shoveling out the firepit.

Deck Resurfaced

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes I get really excited by projects we have done around the house (garage shelves, rain gutters. Right now I’m really excited about the new decking boards that we had put on our deck. Our deck surface was original with the house, now 20 years old. The boards were rotting out in places and the nails constantly were coming loose. This weekend Terry Owens, the awesome owner of Como Lake Carpentry, pulled off all the old wood and replaced it with brand new cedar.

Now we’ve got great new wood with a wonderful neutral stain. Here are some more shots of the new deck.

Goodbye Blue Dog Mural

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

This week we said goodbye to one of the most distinctive art features of our house. In January of 2003 Tammy’s longtime friend Liane McMeen painted a great mural in our living room that surrounded a piece of art that we got in Denver featuring a dog positioned in a Volkswagen Bug door. For over 6 years when people have come into our house and turned the corner to enter the main living area, they’ve been greeted by a very large mural that put a smile on their face and welcomed them to our house. It set the tone of our house: fun, lighthearted, happy.

As much as we liked the mural, we decided that it was time for a change, and that the mural should be retired. We celebrated with a dinner at our house with Liane and her husband Chris. Just this week the actual paint went up and the mural is gone. Some wonderful new pieces of art have gone up in the spot.

In memory of this great gift, I decided to do a new version of the original time-lapse video I did when the mural was put up, with some new photos on the end.

I put in the post 6 years ago that “We live with all of our art, but this is part of every day.” That couldn’t be more true. Thanks again to Liane! We still have the Blue Dog sculpture but it has been moved to a different spot in the house.

Water Lily

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

We were having a nice afternoon at Como Park today and the Water Lily area was just breathtaking. Sometimes the subject is so amazing that you just need to point the camera and shoot. Minus a slight crop, this is straight off the Canon 5D Mark II sensor through the 70-200mm f/2.8L.

Sun, 17 May 2009 01:00:00 -0500

Tulips.

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:19:06 -0500

Dreading having to empty the basement to have new carpet installed tomorrow. 🙁

Debating with Tammy about why she is vacuuming carpet that is going to be torn out tomorrow morning.

Tetris Shower

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500

A couple of months ago we decided to re-tile our downstairs bathroom shower. After 20 years the house had settled enough that there were notable cracks that we didn’t feel we could just caulk over. We pondered what to do with the tiling and considered a number of designs. Our friend that was helping Tammy with the design did a Tetris® concept and I loved it right away!

Making the pattern was both harder and easier than you would think. It was critical to me that the tile pattern be correct. I wanted all the game tiles in their normal, whole, shape. This meant that no line in the pattern could be completed, since it would be removed in the game. Making sure the tiles were logically correct was causing some challenges until I just decided to play several games of Quinn, a tetromino game for the Mac, and capture a number of boards. After I adjusted my head to playing Tetris specifically to not complete rows we got a few screenshots and put them together.

The completed bathroom tiles are logically correct. If you look closely you can see that there are empty tiles in all the rows. The top rows are all empty since the game is in progress, and there is a single tile in the process of falling.

The tiling was done by Terry Owens of Como Lake Carpentry, who also did our new garage shelves and a bunch of other projects for us. He’s awesome. We really dig the look of it, and it’s fun to have a colorful tile pattern that appears fairly random but is really a game.

PS: See the dust speck on my DSLR sensor? 😬

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:31:14 -0500

I’m really struggling to get the hang of the Goldtouch Ergo keyboard. The command key is hard to adjust to. The CTRL key is horribly placed.

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:09:53 -0500

My Apple TV’s work insanely better if I don’t sync any content to them. Just connect to iTunes and never transfer things. Otherwise, CRASH!

Spring in Minnesota

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Today, at 11:45 am the temperature at our house went over 70 °F for the first time in many, many months.

This is the cause of much joy and elation in our wonderful part of the world. I love winter, but more than almost anything else I love the transition into summer.

My robot even caught this special event.

70.025 °F indeed.

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:23:32 -0500

Just ordered a Goldtouch Split Ergonomic Keyboard for my Mac. Wrist pain has returned. Too much laptop.

My Robot Returns

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

I missed the 2 year birthday of my Twitter robot, Thinglesbot. He turned 2 on March 11. He was limping along though having lost connections to various sensors in the house and became a bit uninteresting. I finally took a little time tonight to get him wired up again.

Happily he now breaths Ruby with the Twitter4R library instead of Bash scripts and Curl. So much nicer to read. He still keeps everyone updated about the temperatures outside and inside the house. However, he now has a couple of new features that are just for fun. If you follow him you may get picked as his favorite follower some day, and he likes to share a favorite number, color or letter each day.

Thinglesbot’s followers fell off a lot when he went silent for months. We’ll see if they pick up again. He currently has 18 followers.

Welcome back!

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:00:00 -0500

My home office is ready for the hardwood floor installation tomorrow!

DirecTV Canceled

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I finally pulled the plug on DirecTV! I wrote about the comparison I did between DirecTV and iTunes before, and we decided to jump ship on satellite television. I’ve rewired the cables in the house so the three televisions we have now get over-the-air (OTA) channels with their internal ATSC tuners and the ChannelMaster 4221 antennae on the roof. Each TV has had an Apple TV on it for a while, now with their expanded 250 GB hard drives.

Canceling

I’ve been a customer of DirecTV for 10 years so they tried really hard to save me. If you are looking to save a little money and are a customer, call up and they will likely give you a discounted rate as well as freebies for the next 12 months. They offered the kitchen sink to keep me around. Unfortunately for them my issue wasn’t just cost, but the technical inferiority of their solutions. The lure of synchronized content, no more IR repeaters, etc. was a lot more than just the cost savings.

While canceling though I got a little surprise, an early-termination fee.

How to make your customers unhappy

This summer we were getting hounded by DirecTV. They were robo-calling pretty much every day regarding our equipment, apparently it needed an upgrade. We had original TiVO DirecTV units and they were the MPEG-2 machines. I knew DirecTV was moving to MPEG-4, but also knew that was the end of the TiVo I so liked so I put it off. Finally I got back to them and they told me that I had a mandatory, and free, upgrade coming to move to MPEG-4 and relinquish the TiVo units I had.

I finally agreed, but knowing I was considering canceling in the future, I asked and made sure that this would not extend my term. I was told it wouldn’t, and the upgrade was free, so fine. This turned out to be wrong.

For all of DirecTV’s fawning over me for being a customer of 10 years I was all of a sudden a brand new customer that they had to recoup equipment costs out of. In the end, I ended up having to pay hundreds of dollars in early cancellation fees just to get rid of this equipment that was supposed to be free, and wasn’t supposed to extend my term. It was a very frustrating experience.

Perhaps most frustrating of all was when I asked to escalate this matter to a manager. The person on the phone said they had raised the issue and I should hear back soon. I waited, and after a week and not hearing I called back. They then informed me the escalation had occurred and been denied. I was confused since I never spoke to anyone. It turns out you cannot speak to them. Escalation is a black box that the customer has no visibility into. I handed them over their fees and bid them farewell.

Related: Read Steve Borsch's cancelation story as well.

Hello Television

We now have two venues to get television content. Watch it just like people have for decades over-the-air with the ATSC tuner or get it via iTunes. So far we do watch less TV because we no longer have a buffet to graze on, but I tend to think that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Bamboo Hardwood Floors Installed in Bedroom

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

Our house was a complete disaster zone this week. We’ve had a number of projects done recently and are about midway through the list. Countertops. Paint. This week we converted our bedroom from carpet to a new hardwood floor.

We went to Natural Built Home to look at some different options they had. Our house had some existing hardwood floors that were all maple. We weren’t able to find an exact match to those floors that met the environmental criteria that we desired. We started looking more into bamboo as an option. Bamboo is a very strong product, and has the great benefit of re-growing in 6 years, rather than 60 or more years.

We really like the look of the floor. I’m still getting used to walking on it. It seems my mind still thinks I should be walking on carpet in that room. In a couple weeks my office will also be converted from carpet to bamboo as well. That is something I’ve wanted to do ever since we bought the house.

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

Hardwood floor installation has begun!

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:10:01 -0500

Time to start a slow drip of water in our shower to avoid a nearly certain frozen pipe overnight.

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

Aerogarden Progress: Everything is going except parsley, but that takes the longest.

Upgraded Apple TV Hard Drives

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

I’ve been really pleased with the newest releases of the Apple TV software. Notably, the incorporation of AirTunes has resulted in me using them a lot more for stand-alone music playback. Contrary to what I’ve said many times in the past, I started to wish that I had more content local on the Apple TV units themselves. Why? A couple of reasons.

I have noticed that video playback, particularly pausing and fast-forwarding, works better on content that is on the local hard drive.
As crazy as this sounds, I’ve occasionally bottle necked my iTunes ‘server’. If you are pulling multiple audio streams, multiple video streams and another device starts a large sync you can get some stutter. This is not typical, and is a by product of my large deployment. The bottleneck ends up being I/O at the iTunes Library, in my best guess of the situation.
More local content makes me less dependent on the iTunes ‘server’ being on all the time. I’ve had a couple of situations where I’ve had it powered down or cut a network for repair and caused problems with media playback.

I decided to take the plunge and do the upgrade. I had read about the procedure and it seemed pretty simple. Certainly way easier than hacking an Xbox. No soldering required here. If you are curious about doing this yourself, I followed the Engadget article on upgrading your Apple TV hard drive. I’ll add some of my own comments on the process below.

First thing, you need some drives. I ordered three of the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250GB 2.5" PATA drives from NewEgg.

With the drives in hand, it was time to rip open one of the Apple TV’s and give it some bigger storage. This is really the only tricky part of the upgrade, since the Apple TV is not meant to be opened by the end-user.

The process is pretty painless, but I will highlight a couple of things not found in all the How To articles.

I found that removing the bottom rubber pad was much easier to do when the unit was hot. I highly recommend having the Apple TV on for several hours and doing the removal when the unit is still hot. I had no issues removing the bottom pad on the two I did warm, but the third I did cold and I ended up with a couple of tears in the bottom rubber. Nothing significant, but annoying.
You’ll need two Torx screwdrivers. The case screws are T-10, which you probably have if you have any Torx sets (my set was T-10, T-15 and T-20). But the hard drives is held in with T-8’s. I had to make a trip to the hardware store for a T-8 bit.

After doing the first one, the process was really simple and didn’t take long at all. After getting the drive out you have to duplicate the image from the factory installed drive to the new drive. You do this with [dd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)). You’ll need to be able to easily connect the drive to a computer. I had a USB adapter that can be connected to a bare drive already so this was easy. The dd step takes a while. It took 2 hours for me to read the drive and make the image, and another two hours to write the image onto the new drive.

Note, some of the write-ups suggest modifying the writing to not write the media files. I just did the entire image. Saving time here was not a priority for me, I wanted the drive exactly the same.

I wimped out and used iPartition to resize the Media partition. That turned a dozen commands into a click of the mouse and a few seconds of drive spinning. I figure I can use iPartition for other things too. After the repartition you just put it all back together and plug it in again.

Just like that I had a ton of available storage, and let iTunes spend another few hours filling it up with content.

I have noticed that iTunes synchronizes things in a specific way when you have a big drive. All of my music is stored locally on each Apple TV, I like that. But priority seems to be given to unwatched TV Shows. There seems to be a rule in the sync that always wants those local if there is space. Probably makes sense, but it does mean that after TV and Music most movies are streaming. I wish there was a way to do something between automatic and custom sync. I’d like to do an automatic sync, but be able to pin a number of things to be local all the time. This would be really great for Mazie’s stuff that she watches repeatedly.

So far everything is great. I did find a bug in the Apple TV software while testing offline use of the Apple TV related to AirTunes. I think having more local content will make the user experience all that better. Plus, I dig the idea of leaving for a trip and just yanking an Apple TV to take along and having so much content with us in a small package.

AirTunes Bug in Apple TV 2.3

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

I was doing some work on my Apple TV’s today, swapping out hard drives, and at the same time we’ve had some painting going on so my 802.11n network has been offline. I got done upgrading the Apple TV and plugged it into ethernet to do an initial sync. Afterwards I put it upstairs where it normally sits on an 802.11n wireless network, but today it’s not connected to anything. That was fine since I wanted to test playing local content.

Mazie wanted to watch a quick show so I fired that up and it worked great, no issues. I decided then to play some music and hit a wall. The Apple TV refused to play any music or audiobooks. At first I thought it was something with FairPlay, even though that made no sense, but I couldn’t even play MP3 files I had ripped off of my own CD’s. Something was amiss.

It hit me then that this Apple TV typically connects to the AirTunes destination for the Living Room, and that with no network connection it wouldn’t be able to see that. Bug! I tested it out and verified that this is indeed a bug in Apple TV 2.3.

If you have your Apple TV set to play through an AirTunes destination, and you then take the Apple TV off of all networks, it will fail on playback of content that it would typically send to AirTunes (video will work fine since that never goes to AirTunes). Now, what really kills about this bug is that since there is no network the menus have no options to deselect an AirTunes destination. It seemed the only way to get rid of this issue would have been to do a reset, or get it back on a network and deselect the remote speaker destination. Ugly.

I chose to just get it online and deselect the speaker set. Resetting settings would cause me to have to change other things as well. I filed a bug report with Apple, #6484963. Hopefully they will clean this up. It’s not a likely scenario, but I could see it happening particularly if you took an Apple TV to a cabin for the weekend and then wanted to listen to music without a network connection.

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:44:00 -0500

Midway through upgrading one of my Apple TV’s from 40G to 250G. Easy so far.

The dd steps on Apple TV hard drive upgrades take a long time.

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:39:27 -0500

Finished tearing up bedroom getting ready for painters to arrive. Just started the ball rolling on two hardwood floor installations. Bedroom painting did not finish today. Tammy and I are on the hide-a-bed tonight. Oi!

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0500

Tetris Tiles ← Very cool tiles to do Tetris inspired layouts in your home!

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:26:00 -0500

Created an Apple TV patchstick. Let’s see how this works out!

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0500

That’s a lot of AirTunes!

Needed: AirFoil SDK for iPhone

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0500

This should exist. Background apps are still not an option, but it would be so great if AirFoil was available as an SDK option for the iPhone. It would be awesome to fire up Pandora on the iPhone and send the music to AirTunes speakers!

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0500

AeroGarden getting started.

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0500

Got three AirTunes setups in the house with independent amps and speakers. This is really great. Will do a more thorough blog post on it later.

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:47:31 -0500

Subscribing to Pandora (after lapsing) due to Airfoil’s magic. Will use Pandora 100x more than before. Wish Pandora had a standalone app tho

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:43:45 -0500

Mosaic installation on the fireplace is starting. Pretty cool.

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 10:03:47 -0500

Trying to thaw a frozen pipe.

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:07:00 -0500

AirTunes FTW in a big way – blog post to come in the future. Happy camper this morning.

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:08:38 -0500

Getting 5 (!) countertops replaced today. Process starting now.

Guys are here taking large mirrors off the walls to facilitate counter replacements. Hoping to not hear any large crashes.

The 9 1/2’ by 4 1/2’ mirror, with three outlet holes, came down safely. Yeah!

Mirrors all removed from the walls. Counter installer here now to start the replacement. Everyone on time and no hiccups thus far. Great!

The sawsall is going upstairs. Best for me to stay downstairs and not worry.

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:37:06 -0500

Have had the fireplace going for four hours. Birch, oak. Love fires.

Mir:ror - RFID for the Home

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0500

I’ve been wondering when these little RFID gadgets will start to make a presence in the home. Big companies have done pretty amazing things with their supply chains using RFID, but what use will a geeky household be able to make of RFID. There hasn’t been much.

I was interested to see an email this morning from Violet, the makers of the Nabaztag. This company is definitely “out there”. I’ve tried explaining the Nabaztag to visitors and they just look funny when you tell them “it is a WiFi Rabbit”. Then it starts talking and moving its ears and they really wonder. Both Violet and Ambient Devices, makers of the Ambient Orb, are doing some really interesting things bringing the web into the real world.

Mir:ror is Violet’s newest product. This video explains it best.

It’s interesting. In essence the stamps are just RFID tags and they have made a consumer friendly RFID reader (the mirror). I can think of a couple of neat things to do with this, particularly if you keyed it with home automation. For example, take your keys and swipe them on the mirror to turn off all the lights in the house when you leave. I would love that.

It will be interesting to see what kind of applications people think of for RFID in the home. This is a cool first step.

Update: My friend John Riedl just posted about this on his blog as well.

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:48:46 -0500

Installing Boxee to try it out.
Hmm.. On first launch Boxee hard crashed my MacBook Pro. Not good.
Boxee people - anyone know why it’s an installer? Why no drag-n-drop. (Hate installers and their voodoo.)

DirecTV v. iTunes & Apple TV

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0500

I recently was doing a review of some of our monthly expenses. With the economy in the toilet I think this is a pretty common activity. Mainly I wanted to look for things that we weren’t necessarily using, or didn’t think we needed anymore. The trick to doing this exercise is to annualize all the expenses. $50 a month doesn’t sound nearly as expensive as $600 a year.

Mostly everything was fine, but one number jumped out at me in a very big way – DirecTV satellite TV service.

$1,079.88

That is the annualized cost of our DirecTV service. When looking at that number Tammy and I didn’t feel like we got anywhere close to $1,000 of value out of the service. What to do?

What do you want?

To be clear, none of this is stuff that you really need but is instead something we want. So I started by looking at what we actually use the $1,000 of service for.

We are in essence only DVR users. We don’t really ever watch live TV, instead grabbing season passes for the shows that we have decided to watch and then skipping the commercials. This makes it really easy to explore options as our usage is pretty simple. Our TV usage could be broken down as follows:

Shows that we season pass and watch on our schedule.
Political coverage, breaking news and occasional sporting events – these are all watched in realtime.
European sports coverage: professional cycling and Formula 1.
Rarely we might watch a movie via pay-per-view.

That is really it. To be fair, that $1,000 buys more than just that, but I don’t care since I don’t use it. We use DVR extensively, but almost never to “pause live TV,” instead just to time-shift content. That is an important distinction for us as it removes a key need of DVR that some people have.

Solution: Season Pass Shows

We have three TV’s in the house, they are all Sharp LCD panels, and each one has an Apple TV on it connected to a central iTunes repository. iTunes now offers a decent variety of content so I took the shows that we had season passes for and did a comparison on iTunes. We season pass a total of 13 shows and all but 2 of them were available. The two that were not were both HGTV shows and they have very little on iTunes, and the content was really optional for us.

I then added up the season pass cost for iTunes for each of these shows, calculating it at the cost for the high definition versions of the show (interesting note, you could save even more money by opting out of HD for some shows that you may not care about the quality difference for). The total was:

$647.76

Wow! For our first need I could replace everything that we get now with the same content from iTunes and in the process I can save $432.12. Not only do I save over $400 a year, but I don’t even have to skip commercials since there are none to skip. And there is more. Once the content is in iTunes I can now time shift it like we always do, but I can easily place shift it with my iPhone or iPod. Lastly, I get a better service because the way our house is wired up now I only get HD content downstairs, and with this solution I get HD content for all of these shows.

The story doesn’t end there though. I found that this analysis totally changed the way I was looking at these shows. With DirecTV I have to pay that $1,000 to get into the buffet and then it’s all you can eat from there. Moving to an iTunes solution I was making the decisions independent of a service package or even the network it was on. I found some interesting variances. For example, one of the shows we watch occasionally is Heroes. But Heroes costs $64.99 for the season. I compared that to a show we really like to watch, Boston Legal at $24.99. I would be happy to pay even more for Boston Legal, but there is no way I would pay over $30 for a season of Heroes. Heroes gets cut out. By doing this, the cost of our programming drops another $150-$200 dollars further.

The other big change is how a show like The Daily Show weighs in. You don’t buy a season of The Daily Show, you buy a pack of episodes. The impact of this is that if you stop watching for a month you pay nothing. If they go to reruns for a week you pay nothing. So how do you calculate the cost? I just assumed the worst case of every episode, with all episodes being new every day, all year. If that happened (which it never would), it would cost $119.88 a year for the Daily Show.

On first blush that seems really high, but when I thought about it the real costs would likely be around $80 since there are many rerun periods, and we tend to watch for a while and then not watch for a while. Even then that seems high, but, if I considered what content we watch with what frequency you can justify that it should be the most expensive thing we subscribe to given its daily frequency.

Anyway, my expectation of the real world cost of getting this programming is that it would come in somewhere around

$420.00

That’s right, we would cut our cost by 50%.

Solution: Live Programming

So the next thing I needed to figure out is live programming. This is mostly an occasional football game or election coverage every couple of years. For us this programming is almost all on a major broadcast network, and they all send out wonderful HD broadcasts that I pick up with my ChannelMaster 4221 antenna. I already have that coming into the house on coax and going to the DirecTV satellite tuner.

It turns out that it is very easy for me to get this everywhere in the house. I can just reuse the coax that is already going to each TV and hook the antennae up to it and then plug it into the ATSC tuners on all the TV’s.

This solution actually proves to be superior than our current solution in a few ways:

The quality of the picture is amazing. DirecTV takes the 1080i signal from the broadcaster and re-encodes it typically at a lower bitrate and then sends it over the satellite. The picture quality is noticeably better using a direct OTA ATSC tuner.
Simpler and easier to use since you are watching TV just like watching TV. You aren’t controlling a DVR through an IR repeater that actually lives in the lower level. When people babysit Mazie and want to watch TV it’s always so complicated. Not so in this model.

Now, I don’t have any way to get CNN live for breaking news of that nature, but that is why I have a broadband connection and computers all over the house.

Solution: Cycling and Formula 1

This one is the hard one. There is no solution. Nothing. I’m willing to forego Formula 1 in its entirety, but I really want to watch the grand tours. My best option would be to subscribe to a web site and watch it over the web. You can do that, and in many ways the coverage is better and more thorough. Versus (formerly OLN) continues to have weaker coverage, although I expect with Lance racing again this year it will be better.

Solution: Pay-per-view

This is a simple swap. Instead of pay-per-view bound to time we can just rent on-demand via the Apple TV. The experience is way better than anything pay-per-view offered.

Next Steps

I’m currently battling with DirecTV to move forward with this. I’ve been a customer for about 12 years and they are trying to make the case that I just renewed my contract due to their requirement to swap in MPEG4 receivers for me and take my TiVo (MPEG2 only) boxes away.

It is very clear to me that I will save money and have a better service. I’ll save a lot of money in fact, and have a way better service. I also like that it will get rid of the occasional channel surfing that could be better spent reading a book. But with that said I’ve also felt some hesitation to pull the cord on this. I likely just need to do it and not look back, we’ll see. Saving $600 a year sounds great!

But what about DRM?

You can’t look at this option without addressing DRM. I have a couple of different thoughts on this.

First, DirecTV and its satellite based DVR system is a DRM world that is even more locked up than iTunes and Fairplay. At least with Fairplay I can use it anywhere in the iTunes ecosystem. The DirecTV environment I can’t even get something from one DVR to another, much less to my phone or media player. So, here I’m saying we already have DRM and iTunes is a “more open” DRM.

Second, this is TV content and after I’ve watched it I may not even keep it around. With DirecTV I watch an episode and delete. With the iTunes solution I own (with DRM) the content and can keep it forever (as long as Fairplay works). But I don’t really care about keeping it forever. It’s not a movie or music that I own, it’s a show I watch and then move on.

Lastly, I do think that DRM is going to fade away at some point, and when it does I would only want to be on a DRM system that the majority of “the herd” is on. I find it hard to believe that Fairplay could ever stop working. Even if Apple went out of business and died a horrid death, Fairplay would have to be addressed. There is simply too much content (#1 music reseller is iTunes?) for it to not exist, or be purchased away and made free the same way that iTunes Plus works now. So, there is a clear technical path to phase it out that could be put into effect pretty quickly.

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:38:00 -0500

Having 200+ DVD’s ripped into iTunes + ubiquitous Apple TV is proving pretty cool. 1TB+ of content + Apple TV = Watching Return of the Jedi in the background just for fun.

Eco-Friendly Painting, Safecoat

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500

Tammy has wanted to change some colors in our house for a while. If you’ve been to our place you know we are not afraid of color in any way. Our living room is orange, yellow and red.

There are a couple of rooms that she wanted to change and keeping with the green theme she searched hard to find a No VOC paint option that would work. What is VOC? Volatile Organic Compounds. I really don’t know much about this world, but as I understand from her the fumes from VOC’s in paint are really bad for you. And it’s not just the fumes from when you are painting, those chemicals continue to be present for a while and leech into the air in your house.

After much searching she found Safecoat. Safecoat is a No VOC paint, but it goes even further and contains nothing bad. You see, some No VOC paint is only that by label, in that it contains some chemicals that are not good for you but aren’t labeled as a VOC so they can still have the label. Safecoat is pristine in it’s health and eco credentials.

Over the last three days the kitchen has received new paint on the walls and ceiling. Using the Safecoat product was an eye-opener. We didn’t have any windows open while the painting was going on, and there was absolutely no smell in the house. If you didn’t see the paint, there is no way you would know painting was going on. It was really amazing.

If you’re going to do some painting do yourself and your family a favor and use Safecoat. In the Minneapolis area head over to Natural Built Home to get it.

Joining M4V Files is Painful

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500

I’ve been processing my entire DVD library in the background on my Mac Pro using Handbrake, moving all the content into iTunes so that it is accessible from the three Apple TV’s that are connected to each TV in the house. I’ve now hit a some of the videos that are on two discs due to length, and joining M4V files is a bigger pain that it really should be.

One of the easiest ways to do it is with QuickTime Pro, and since I’ve got the Pro version I figured I’d use that. A simple copy/paste of one video to the end of the other followed by an Export to Apple TV creates the combined M4V file. With one big problem.

Huh? 205 hours and 44 minutes? Did someone forget to hit the “turbo” button in QuickTime Pro? What’s really crazy is the two source files are M4V H264 files already! Recoding is not necessary, but it seems determined to recode anyway. I guess I’ll just see what happens, but I’m worried the joined file will be poor quality due to recoding.

Any better options?

Refill Products, Reduce Plastic Waste

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500

Tammy drives a lot of our green decisions in the house. For a long time she’s been using all natural cleaning products. She doesn’t want the chemicals in typical cleaning products in the house, and we all benefit from it. Nearly all of our cleaning products are from Restore Products. I wasn’t even aware of one of the most impressive things that Restore Products does until a recent trip to Lakewinds, our co-op.

Walking down the aisle with household products Restore Products has put a refill station there. We took the three containers that we had of various cleaners and put them into the refill station. It spins the container and when it finds the bar code it knows what product this is and what size. It then lowers a filling tube into the container and you’ve got new product and no plastic waste.

I love this. First, the system is fool proof using the bar code system. A side benefit of using the bar codes is that if you do insert your product and they don’t provide refills for it (happened with one of our bottles) they can collect that information and add it if there is enough demand. Mostly I just love that we can now get dozens, or hundreds, of uses out of the one plastic bottle. We’ve worked hard to minimize our plastic waste and this helps out greatly.

It’s great to see the co-op as more of a refilling station than a typical store. Bring your empty container for cleaning products, oatmeal, flower, sugar and just top them off from the various bins. Reduce waste and keep costs low.

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:59:48 -0500

Upgraded to Handbrake 0.9.3 in the middle of my big DVD ripping project. Presets are all different, hopefully better.

Garage Shelves, Awesome

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500

One of the earliest posts on this blog was a celebration of the installation of 6 inch rain gutters on our house. By the way, those rain gutters have rocked. It seems only fitting that I should comment on the very small project that we had done in our garage that made me just giddy yesterday.

We had a row of shelves installed on the back wall of our garage. In a period of 6 hours, including moving stuff, having the shelves built, and then putting everything back away the garage was transformed from a disaster scene to a soothing zen experience.

If you come to my house in the next couple of weeks, expect to get a tour of my garage shelves. 🙂

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:13:12 -0500

Any suggestions on what to do with a bunch of old laserdiscs? I’m not going to hook up the player, and capturing them to iTunes is painful.

Apple TV 2.2 Upgrade

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:04:00 -0500

Upgrade morning. All three Apple TV’s up to 2.2 and iTunes up to 8.0.1.

Genius on Apple TV is, genius. Will get much more use on TV than in iTunes.

Suspect Apple TV 2.2 has a bug. I keep starting videos and the audio plays but video is black. Hit menu and restart the video and it works. 😕

Anyone know if Apple TV 2.2 “Standby” menu is anything more than what you’ve always been able to do by pressing play for 5 seconds?

Foreclosure Alley

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This is an incredibly depressing video of the reality of home foreclosures in southern California.

Amazed to see the guy who paints lawns green.

Via my friend Raanan’s blog.*

Stacking Wood, Exhausted

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Today I turned this “fireplace cord” that I got the “special” delivery of the day, about 20% more than I ordered from Firewood.com.

Into this, 5 feet in the air and there are two rows deep:

And this, for the Big Green Egg Chiminea that is on the way, and maybe to try cooking with some wood in the Big Green Egg:

And this, for ample fires over the next few months:

Whew, tired out!

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:16:28 -0500

Just ordered a log hoop for the upcoming Big Green Egg chiminea.

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:30:39 -0500

Reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and wishing I had a spot in the yard for a garden.

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:06:00 -0500

Wishing my Big Green Egg chiminea wasn’t 3 weeks away. 😕 Rearranged the deck for it, great spot and nice layout now. Zen.

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:26:09 -0500

Got the fountain running for the first time in 3 years. Now it’s setup outside. Much corosion to clean in the pump, but got it going!

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:31:00 -0500

Great, but brief, visit to the Kew Botanical Gardens. Great place. This mornings coffee and scone there. Back into city for lunch.

iPhone App - SleepOver

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I haven’t posted anything about the release of iPhone 2.0, but the approximately 20 applications that I’ve installed on my phone show that I’ve been pretty immersed in it. Developers are still figuring the platform out and there is some cool stuff, as well as some really lame stuff, out now. SleepOver is a cool little utility that I think is a great idea for the iPhone. SleepOver is a simple paid application ($2.99) that has one function, waking up other computers. I’ve spent some effort to reduce electricity usage and my computers are big offenders. To help, I’ve set them to go to sleep when they can. This is great for energy saving, but inevitably you will need to access it over the network and find that it is asleep. You may be accessing it from your Apple TV and need to wake up iTunes. SleepOver provides a nice iPhone interface to send the “magic” Wake-on-LAN packet that will bring the other machine out of its slumber.

Just a couple of days ago SleepOver combined with the Remote application allowed me to switch on my Mac Pro, start playing a playlist on it, and tell it to use the Apple TV upstairs as remote speakers – all while standing at the stove. Pretty cool!

This is a great example of a small, purposeful and useful application that makes great sense to have in your pocket all the time.

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:37:22 -0500

Found the hornet nest Chase got too close to yesterday. Need RAID.

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:44:57 -0500

2 hours of yard work… nicely done.

Electric Outlet Debugging

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

A few months ago I took the plunge back into aquariums. I got a small, mini-reef setup and put it in the basement. We were trying to figure out where to put it and considering a lot of things including shade from natural light, viewing options, cleaning clearance and very importantly proximity to electricity. Relative to the last item we placed it conveniently 1-foot from an outlet. It is important to note that up to this point, we had never had an occasion to use this outlet.

We put the tank in place, filled it with water and salt, and went to start it up but nothing worked. We quickly figured out the electric outlet wasn’t working. Noting that we have dozens and dozens of switched outlets (however only the top plugs) we tried a bunch of stuff and nothing worked. There was no electricity there. Needing to get the tank running I ran the cord in front of some stairs and plugged it in a few feet away to deal with later.

Today my father-in-law, Don Olson, came over and lead the charge dealing with this. I’m more than happy to dive head first into the most complex of networks and spiders web of 10Base-T cables, but when it comes to 110v AC I haven’t got a clue. Don on the other hand is the reverse and feels totally at ease with these odd white and black wires.

We spent 2 hours flipping switches and breakers and trying to reverse engineer what the three sets of wires were that came into this box. We found out it was switched, but the whole outlet was switched, and the switch was upstairs while the outlet was downstairs. We needed that to change but had to first figure out what everything did. After ruminating about future legislative requirements to leave an electrical blueprint of a house after construction, Don was able to reconstruct what was going on.

Drawing that picture and putting the right 1’s, 2’s, 3’s and 4’s next to each thing took a little over 2 hours. Getting it working the way we needed it to work took about 10 minutes. Reminded me of debugging a network problem. Same sort of ratios.

Anyway, I now no longer have an extension cord running across the stairs and the tank looks better, at least the outside of it does. It’s still a mess inside the water. Big thanks to Don! Great to have handy father-in-laws!

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:01:19 -0500

Having people look at our garage and propose new cabinet and shelving systems for better organization. Hmmm…

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:16:54 -0500

Furnace technician says I have a faulty furnace board. Luckily under warranty.

Cup Plants Flowering

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The cup plants have decided to pop open their flowers. In a week there will be a couple hundred of these yellow flowers in the yard, along with a fleet of bees harvesting pollen.

The image originally associated with this post was lost when I deleted my Flickr account. I've searched but I do not have a copy of the photo in any of my archives. I believe I took it with the Flickr app on my iPhone and it didn’t save a copy to the Camera Roll. I deleted my Flickr account when Yahoo! bought them and didn’t realize I was "hot linking" some of those photos on my blog. My last hope was Internet Archive, but the Wayback Machine excluded Flickr photos from archival. 😞

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:39:30 -0500

Alarms that have false positives are pointless.

Driveway Paved

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

A few days ago the driveway was removed and prepared for a brand new asphalt driveway. I had charged my camera to get a good time-elapsed movie of the asphalt being put in. It’s a pretty cool thing to watch. Okay, the video is a bit long…

Driveway Removal

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This past Thursday the contractor got started with our driveway removal. I was watching, and realized it was a great time-lapse opportunity!

Changing Primary Workstations

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

As I get ready to leave Dow Jones I’ve been working to get my home office setup more streamlined for work. I think I’ve succeeded, and am in store for a big upgrade actually! Here is my current workstation at the office, where I spend most of my computer time.

Find and upload Office Workstation farm4.static.flickr.com/3053/2440404104_c8cc6fd4d2.jpg

And this is what I’ll be using at home.

Find and upload Home Workstation farm3.static.flickr.com/2308/2439579081_df7b9a4c2c.jpg

Yeah, that will work. 🙂

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Totally ecstatic about the warranty repair job on my Aeron chair today. Like new!

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Just found out my broken Aeron chair is still under warranty! Free repair. 😊

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Wow - if you “Restore to Factory Defaults” an original Apple TV you are left with v 1.0 on it. Eek…

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Continued refining and thinning of household “junk”. So much more to do. Simplify.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Updating three Apple TV’s to 2.0.1.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Installing drivers for my ancient HP ScanJet 5500c.
Scanner heading to be recycled. Drivers are PowerPC only. Ugh.
New scanner ordered — and a new amplifier to make the audio happier.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Just spent 90 minutes rerouting cables, moving peripherals and optimizing my desk.

Five more hours to go before it’s all nice.

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Getting a fire going in the fireplace. Nice contrast to the frigid cold outside.

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Upgrading third and final Apple TV to 2.0. So far I’m really impressed with the new features. I especially love the Flickr integration!

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:00:00 -0500

Holy crap! Apple TV’s now show up as AirTunes remote speakers. How cool! Just had 3 systems all playing the same music from my desktop.

One of the tweets highlighted in my MarketWatch Farewell Video.

Apple TV Take 2 Initial Impressions

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:00:00 -0500

Today brought the Apple TV faithful a big win with the release of Apple TV Take 2, or more appropriately the Apple TV 2.0 Software. Being the proud owner of three Apple TV’s I was eager to get this update applied.

I was a bit surprised at how quickly it installed. I guess I was expecting a good 30 to 45 minute install but it only took about 10 minutes even with all the reboots. The install was painless and simple with no issues.

On reboot you are greeted to a new introduction movie that has a Leopard feel to it and immediately you are dropped on a screen with a bunch of movies in the background. My reaction is that the new Apple TV does a dramatically better job at highlighting the nature of the unit – watching and listening to media.

The basic result of the upgrade is that Apple TV is now a 1st class citizen on your network. It no longer is just an appendage to your iTunes library, but can now purchase music and other content directly. I’m very happy with the upgrade and expect it will increase Apple TV usage significantly in our household.

I’ll leave an in-depth review to a professional reviewer. Let me just say that I’m particularly happy with the Flickr integration. I’m all of a sudden wishing that more of my friends really used Flickr so I could see their photos in my living room. It’s really great and just makes me wish even more that Flickr was natively on my iPhone. Patience.

The other thing that I was completely surprised by was that the Apple TV now support AirTunes. I didn’t hear anything about this prior to the release today and its pretty cool. I was able to have my computer pipe the same music to three Apple TV’s in the house, totally synchronized. Great party feature or just when you want to listen to music while wandering all over the house. Really happy with this new feature! Might even get me to buy an AirTunes unit or two to extend to the last couple of places in the house.

Now if someone would just make a decent, small set of speakers to go with it!

Shaving Green

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:00:00 -0500

Our house keeps getting greener and greener. Tammy has done an awesome job of finding alternative products for us to use that are better for the planet and us. This process started in the kitchen and has slowly spread, now reaching the bathroom.

Green products and the bathroom are a struggle. We’ve all gotten so used to the various products that we have available that switching is challenging. Natural soaps are easy. Even natural toothpaste is a breeze. Tom’s of Maine toothpaste is great, and after using it for a while you will think regular toothpaste is overly sweet and nasty.

Shaving however was filled with canned gels in nasty packaging with nasty ingredients made in nasty processes, not to mention huge marketing budgets. Tammy pushed me to get off of those things and switch and I eagerly jumped in. There are only two options at the co-op for shaving and luckily the 2nd one is great.

Alba Botanical makes this shave cream that works like a charm. It is actually one of those great examples of a green product that you prefer over the previous product after you get used to it (like the toothpaste). It’s not all foamy so you don’t get to see big lines of white foam come off of your face as you shave (note photo for this post). You have to keep track on your own where you left off. It’s incredibly smooth and I find much more refreshing than the other gels and foams I’ve used over the years. It also defies our American approach of some being good, so a lot must be better. You apply this stuff sparsely and it’s great. If you slather it all over, it doesn’t work as well.

As a bonus, it’s just a lotion so you can easily put some in a small container and take it on a plane without the need for special packaging. I know some guys that actually just shave with handsoap now to avoid taking shaving cream containers on planes. You should really consider some of this lotion instead.

Go ahead and start greening up your bathroom with your morning shave.

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:00:00 -0500

I thought about naming this post “I have a dream” but I figured the SEO impacts would be all wrong. The idea though would be spot on. I decided to go with this title and its gambling reference because I’m quite positive that I am gambling a little. I just bought my third Apple TV and set it up last week.

Yes, I read a bunch of different blogs and I do not have my head in the sand. You don’t have to go very far to read an article about how the Apple TV has already failed and is doomed to sit next to the Newton on the shelf of shame at Apple HQ. In fact, simply buying an Apple TV doesn’t give you a lot of assurance the product is doing well. The unit I just bought and installed still had the 1.0 software on it. The 1.1 release was made a long time ago so you know this unit was sitting on the shelf for a while.

However, I find the allure of these little boxes to be too strong. The promise is great. Integration with the iTunes ecosystem. Great user experience. By far the best “ten foot” user experience I’ve ever seen. The integration is great. You can watch part of a movie on a plane, come home and sync your iPhone and then sit down on the couch and the Apple TV will offer to resume where you left off. For music, it’s a great device with nearly no issues (please add rating from the Apple TV!). It falls down in video, and that is really where the entire iTunes world falls down.

I’ve decided to continue betting all the way to three of these units for a few reasons. First, as part of the iTunes world it is not easy for Apple to just shove it aside. I don’t expect that there will be a breaking change that will cause them to stop working for a long time, if ever. Additionally, I really like the form factor and it’s complete lack of noise (although it’s hotter than nearly any device I’ve ever owned). If it really got ugly, I also feel comfortable that I can hack the thing wide open and do some of the stuff that Apple should be doing for me already on it.

Now, I’m just hoping these rumors of significant Apple TV enhancements at WWDC in January come true!

iTunes Ecosystem

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:00:00 -0500

I mentioned in another post how much I’ve been enjoying iTunes. A few weeks ago I extended my Apple TV coverage to the family room and it just hit me as I was looking at my iTunes window how fully evolved the iTunes ecosystem has become. From one application I have all of my music, podcasts, home videos and soon all my DVD’s available on iPods, iPhones and couches. This convergence has been promised for so long, and it’s great to see it finally delivered.

The ecosystem is not without warts. iTunes needs to get much better at sharing my library with friends and family ala the Social Edition I wrote about earlier. I also think that the entire ecosystem does a very bad job with video. It makes no sense that I would subscribe to an “Apple TV version” of a podcast, and separately to an “iPod version”. C’mon guys! Figure out a way to put multiple bit rates and file sizes in one package. It’s akin to putting Intel and PowerPC, 32-bit and 64-bit applications in one package. Do this for my videos in iTunes and then just put whatever version makes sense for that device on it.

I expect there will soon be a 3rd Apple TV in this world, and hopefully something for my car too. Once movie rentals are added to this and I finish my massive winter DVD ripping project it should be almost entirely complete. Oh, and I need Lightroom to automatically expose collections of photos to iTunes please. :-)

2007 Block Pumpkin Carving

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:15:27 -0500

The annual block gathering to carve up some Halloween pumpkins. We got a great one this year!

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Finished cleaning and rearranging the garage. Time for afternoon espresso.

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Just took some time to actually look at the flowers and plants in the backyard. It’s pretty amazing.

Randy's Sanitation does Organics

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

We got an announcement in the mail a while ago from Randy’s Sanitation. We have been Waste Management customers since we moved to our current house, and know Randy’s Sanitation as a locally owned company that probably services 10% (my guess from the Tuesday trash can displays) of our extended neighborhood.

Randy’s has launched an Organics Recycling program (PDF) for Minnetonka. We have wanted to compost for a long time now, but our yard doesn’t have any good options for a compost location outside of the front-yard, and I just couldn’t see that working.Randy’s now provides this as an add-on service for customers. You get a second container and put your organics in there. Regular trash stays in the other container. These organics are then composted and broken down in a facility that Randy’s operates, and then used throughout the city. Also, since they do this on a larger scale you can compost some things that you wouldn’t be able to at home, like pizza boxes.

We’ve now switched to Randy’s and will be participating in the organics program starting August 1st. If you live in Minnetonka, you should check it out. Sadly, it’s not available in other cities yet. Congratulations to Randy’s for doing something innovative to help reduce waste.

Solatube Installed

Sun, 27 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

A few weeks ago I was flipping through a recent issue of Home Power magazine and I stumbled upon an article abut solar tubes. (Sorry, I would provide a link to the article but they don’t make it available online.) Solar tubes are not new technology, but there has been some pretty amazing improvements in recent years. The author of the article had installed a Solatube in his office and was very pleased with it.

Shortly after this we ran into Solar Midwest while we were at the Living Green Expo. They had the Solatube units on display and I got to ask a ton of questions. Shortly after that I got a quote and decided to get one installed.

The basic principle of the Solatube is exremely simple. You mount a light collector on your roof. You then run a 10" or 14" tube that is exceptionally reflective to a room in your house. There are three main areas of technical focus. Making the collector dome as efficient as possible, losing as little light as possible in the tube, and distributing in the room in an even way. This diagram from Solatube’s website sums it up well.

The advancements in the collector dome and the efficiency of the pipe are incredible. It can collect light all day, picking up even dull light on a cloudy day. There is no need for direct sunlight. The tube itself is extremely efficient and loses very little light.

Let me skip to the after shot. Here is the room with the Solatube.

The effect is shocking. This room was one of the more poorly lit areas in our upstairs, and now it is as bright and enjoyable as the most windowed areas in the house. Note the relative sizing of the Solatube versus the cans next to it. This is the 14" unit and it delivers a whopping amount of light. Tammy and I are both very pleased with it and are thinking we will likely have two more installed at some point in the future.

Some FAQ items to share with everyone, in no particular order:

Does heat transfer through it?

Surprisingly no. The Solatube itself is just sending the light. The heat part doesn’t make it down.

What about storms?

I felt the dome, and it’s impressively thick. I’m not sure exactly what would take it out, but I’m very confident the roof around it would have issues before the dome itself cracked.

Is it ugly?

It’s another thing on your roof, so you may not like that. We were able to install it in a location that is completely invisible.

Due to this great placement you cannot even see the dome from the street. I don’t think it would be an issue even if you could see it.

Does it save energy?

Well, it depends. If you have rooms that you use lights during the day it definitely would. Our situation was more of a luxury since we like a lot of light and this room was just dimly lit. We didn’t use lights there that much during the day, but it was drab. Now it’s bright and full of light.

Great locations for this technology would be a windowless bathroom, or a closet. Those are the locations we are considering for a future use. Or frankly anywhere you want nice, full-spectrum sunlight.

Would you recomment Solar Midwest?

Yes, they did a great job through the whole project. As a bonus, all the pre-sales activity was via email which I appreciated.

What about basements?

To me the killer utility of solar tubes is in the basement of a house. This is easily done in a new build, but nearly impossible in an existing house due to the tubing required. I can only dream of the day when I pipe a bunch of natural light into the lower level of a new house.

Can you see moonlight?

Yes. There is a cool bluish glow on a full moon.

Thu, 10 May 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Just scheduled installation of a SolarTube for our house.

Apple TV in the house

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Yesterday I got one of the first shipment of Apple TV units to arrive at the local Apple Store. The simplest way to think of the Apple TV is to think of it like an iPod for your living room. It lives seamlessly in the iTunes universe, has a 40G local hard drive and interfaces painlessly via HDMI with your high definition television.

Setting up the Apple TV was simple and straightforward. It’s amazingly quiet. I am confused though why Apple put a relatively short power cable in the box. Seems to only be around 5 feet long, which seems rather short for a device like this.

The interface is simple and elegant. Easy to find and play the media that you want. I’ve been enjoying it for music, and am now starting to play with it a bit more for photos and movies. My first attempt at encoding a DVD for playback on Apple TV was a mess - the audio was out of sync and the picture looked pretty bad. Need to figure out the right magic to make that work.

Introducing my Robot

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:00:00 -0500

A couple of months ago I heard about Twitter for the first time. I logged onto it, created an account, and pretty much instantly decided that it served no purpose. Honestly, I just didn’t get it at all. A friend of mine, mostly on a lark, decided that he was not going to let Twitter die so easily and started using it. This slight encouragement got me to the point where I finally “got it”. Now I find that I really have fun with Twitter and am using it fairly regularly (who knows for how long). We even have a Twitter use case at work, where we make all of the MarketWatch breaking news bulletins available to Twitter users.

About a month ago I had an idea for an additional use of Twitter. I have a lot of things at home that I use a variety of scripts to monitor, or use tools like cacti to graph them. The problem with these is that they are typically never looked at after a while, and have no way of reaching me other than email. Thus my robot was born. Through Twitter, I created another account for thinglesBot. This account is the personification of my robot.

Initially my robot was obsessed with temperatures. Four times a day he provided the temperature outside the house. He also provided updates on the internal temperatures in the house, including the attic and very popular utility room. (Said friend above monitors the temperature in my utility room with glee.)

I’ve now made him a bit smarter, adding more event-based things. He now tells me when our solar panels turn on and off, provided there is enough sun to get them going. This is a great feature for me, and helps me feel better about all the investment into alternative energy. He’s also dipped ever so lightly into my office giving an update on how many emails I have in my inbox at the end of each day.

In reality my robot only exists via Twitter. He is nothing more than a collection of scripts that run on a handful of computers and post messages via curl. However, Twitter allows him to exist as “him”, and be friends with me, and oddly, other people as well. Two people that I’ve never met, and don’t even live in the same state as I do, have made friends with my robot. Why they care to know the temperature outside my house is beside me, but cool nonetheless.

Welcome to the world, my robot.

PS - As an interesting aside, and a possible extension of my robot into the physical world it would be fun to have a Nabaztag WiFi rabbit as my robot’s familiar. He could speak through the Nabaztag. Hmm….

Updated with new robot icon and current features.

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Of course my UPnP media server failed right before leaving. Fixing it so there is music in the house before leaving. Reboot and pray!

The Water Tastes Different

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 01:00:00 -0500

My wife thinks I’m loosing my mind.

We recently ordered new drinking glasses for home. The ones we had before were fine, but we had broken a handful of them leaving only a few left with the resulting problem of running out of glasses too quickly. The glasses we had were clear glass with a pattern and “bubbles” in the glass. They were fine glasses, nothing all that notable about them.

Here are the new glasses.

There is nothing all that notable about these either, except that they are red, and the water tastes funny.

It’s that last part that is the problem. I swear that water tastes funny out of these glasses. Tammy doesn’t notice any change, but I do.

I tested my theory tonight and put the same water in the old, clear glass and the new red glasses. It tastes fine out of the old ones, and odd out of the new glasses. I can only tell two differences: the color and the glass on the new glasses is smoother.

Is there some rare scientific research that can back me up on this? Does the color of a glass change the perceived taste of a liquid? Or have I truly just gone over the edge of insanity now?

Wii Component Cables

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:00:00 -0500

My component cables arrived for the Wii today. I finally was able to move off the incredibly lame composite connection and 480i to a nice crisp component connection and 480p. I know that this is a much better setup, and I eagerly plugged it in and decided to get my camera out and do some before/after comparisons. While I can tell the difference, it’s not as striking as I expected. These shots are all taken from the Wii menu screen. I took photos of the “disc” channel and of the Mii channel. I also took a photo of the Wii settings button on the lower left corner of the screen. See what you think.

480i composite of Wii logo in the Disc Channel

480p component of Wii logo in the Disc Channel

You can tell that the progressive scan smooths out the fonts a bit.

480i composite of Mii Channel

480p component of Mii Channel

Great example that when you are not “super-zoomed” into the image, you can’t really tell much of a difference.

480i composite of lower-left Wii settings button

480p component of lower-left Wii settings button

This extreme zoom shows the best the differences between the two settings.

There are other write-ups about the component cables that show the differences.

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 01:00:00 -0500

The last three weeks have been a backyard fire extravaganza! We’ve had three great evenings burning stuff with a variety of friends on late fall evenings. The air is brisk, and the fire is toasty. The best of all worlds.

Sore Thumbs!

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500

I am a frequent “CrackBerry” user. That’s the slang term for a BlackBerry for those that are not “in the know”. In recent months though I’ve started to look angrily at my CrackBerry. I’m starting to get pain in my thumbs on a pretty regular basis.

Any of you that have seen my various computers know that I have an eye to ergonomics. I use a trackball instead of a mouse because it eases my wrists. I have a split keyboard so that I’m more comfortable. I had a mild bout with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in the early 90’s that woke me up to these issues and I’ve taken them seriously ever since. I’ve not had any hand pain issues since then, until the BlackBerry entered the scene.

A quick search on Google for blackberry thumb pain results in dozens of articles on the topic. It’s obvious that there is a problem here. The thumb wasn’t intended to type! I’ve found recently that even spinning the scroll wheel up and down is a problem. I’ve resorted to reading the shortcut tips to reduce my keystrokes and simplify things. However, I think the real solution is to just use the thing less.

Thats the rub! The CrackBerry is named that for a reason – it’s addictive. On top of that, people at work have expectations that you have it with you. I’m going to manage it and pay close attention to the pain in my thumbs.

Looking for Land

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Tammy and I have been talking for a couple years now about getting some land that we could eventually (10+ years) build a house on and maybe live on when Mazie (and any other potential, future kids – settle down Grandma’s, no news here) have moved out, etc. I’ve been thinking that we shouldn’t bother waiting to get the land until then – prices are likely to be higher and we could use it right now as a getaway on weekends.

This Friday we did our first road trip to tour some options and looked at 6 properties in the Red Wing, Zumbrota area of Minnesota and in Wisconsin on the other side of the river. Mazie was with her grandparents so driving 240 miles in the country was actually pretty fun. We are looking at property between 15 and 25 acres. We want something within one to two hours from the Twin Cities. We want something fairly wooded, with a good building site. Electric service is not needed.

It was really good to look at these properties because it helped clarify how we would use the land and what qualities are important for us. There is a lot that we want to do.

First, a small living option is necessary right away. Tammy did a bunch of research and found this great option for us called the miniHome. As soon as you own the land, you need a place to stay on it and the idea of camping every time you visit wasn’t that appealing to either of us.

The miniHome is a near ideal solution for this. It’s rated as a mobile home so it can be brought to a site without any special police escort. It’s designed to be ecologically friendly and self-contained. They have an option that puts solar electric and a wind turbine with it for complete off-grid usage. It has reservoirs for water and waste. In short, this is a one-stop solution to having 350 square feet of comfortable, heated space with all the conveniences you would expect. The only thing lacking is air conditioning, which you could add if you wanted. (Note: it even has an ethernet network!) We would plan on leaving this on the land to be used as a guest option as well.

The other structure that we would need right away would be some sort of utility building. This essentially would be a 2-car garage. This would be where the solar array and wind turbines would come together with a battery bank to store electricity. The utility building would house all of this and also provide storage for a car and other tools. I would probably need an ATV with a trailer that could be parked in there as well.

Obviously we need to identify a good spot for an eventual home. There are a lot of structural issues to consider for this. However, we would add other issues as well since we want it to be efficient and integrated with the location. Correct sun alignment would be important for passive solar heat, for example.

All of these locations would require access by large machinery. Everything else would be fine just being accessible by ATV.

I would want to have a nice, big firepit on the property. Ideally this would allow 10-15 people to enjoy a fire, and include an option for open pit cooking as well. Preferably this would be in an area with a lot of trees.

For the evenings, and since we’d have the dark sky for it, I would want to put up a dome for my telescope with a permanent mount. This would be wonderful and make it so much easier to take in the night sky. This would ideally be in a fairly open area, on the highest point possible to get the best view to the horizon. Electricity is necessary but can be easily provided by a small solar PV module and an isolated battery. I would need to extend the network to it as well, most likely using some sort of wireless option.

It would be a shame to have a bunch of land without a good spot for a garden. Tammy and I are far from green thumbs, but we definitely want this option. And last but not least we want to have a cool walking path that would snake through the land and connect everything up. This would allow for nice, evening strolls or just serve the utility of getting to various places.

We also learned that the approach to the land was important for us. We didn’t like land that was right next to a busy road. We liked it much more when you left the highway, then took a smaller road with may eventually meander to a gravel road for access. Also of importance is what is around you. We really liked one property but didn’t like that there was a big campground a couple of miles down the same road.

There is much more research to do, much to learn about this, and we aren’t in a rush. However, it is pretty exciting to think about the potential!

Save Some Birds

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Over this past weekend I applied some bird protection to our house. We live in an area with a lot of birds, and we have large parts of our house where we have a lot of windows. On top of that, I like to feed birds and with the landscaping work that we’ve done over the last three years we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of songbirds that frequent our yard.

However, we’ve also seen a huge increase in “bird strikes”. Almost everyday birds would hit our windows, and sometimes the hit would be fatal. I searched for a while to find a solution to this problem and finally found Window Alert.

I’ve applied these decals to the major windows where we were having problems and so far it’s been great. No hits that we’ve heard since then. They don’t ruin the view – and while you can see them they are not annoying. They work by reflecting ultraviolet light which birds can see, but we cannot. If you have a problem with “bird strikes” you should give these a try.

Solar Panels Started

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Our solar heat project completed today! Just before 2:00 pm today Innovative Power Systems turned on the collectors and started to bring heat down to the storage tank. I’m monitoring the system and collecting data with Cacti. Below is a graph showing the temperature of the water that is coming back from the panels (this is one of several data points I’m monitoring on the system). The water coming back reached a maximum of 138 degrees and the panels themselves were about 145 degrees.

I’m really excited to have this project done. Not least of which is that it’s been 8 months since we made the decision to do it. I’ve been really surprised (but pleased!) at how many people have asked me about this project so I am going to write-up a thorough post about “My Solar Experience” and post it in the coming days. I’m very encouraged that some of you may consider to start tapping into renewable energy as well.

I have to go check my graphs again. 🙂

Xcel Energy Cheating Customers

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500

I’m mad.

I’m a big supporter of alternative energy. For the last 3 years I’ve voluntarily paid a surcharge to Xcel Energy to fund the purchase of wind power equal to the amount of electricity I consume. This program is called Windsource. I pay $2.00 per 100 kWh of electricity, and I buy 16 units of this to account for our total electrical consumption. Every month I tack on $32 to my electricity bill and have been happy in the knowledge that our entire house is powered by renewable energy.

In addition to the WindSource program that I just mentioned, Xcel also collects a “curtailment payment” from all customers to fund wind-generated electricity. This is not an optional payment. If you are a customer, you are paying it. Then the Star Tribune broke this article on June 1st, Public Paid for idled wind farms.

It turns out that in 2004 Xcel paid wind farms to idle their turbines because Xcel could not transfer the power. Xcel doesn’t have the transmission lines to accept the power. By the way, they aren’t doing much about it either as you can read in the article.

When I signed up for WindSource I asked the person “How can I insure that my money is going to wind power?”. Turns out there really isn’t a good solution for the individual consumer. Relying on the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission seems like the only real option, but they may be part of the problem.

Xcel Energy customers should be mad. We should be mad for being sold a bill of goods that wasn’t true. And we should also be mad because Xcel isn’t being a responsible corporation.

See also: KARE11 Article, WCCO, Minutes of MnPUC (page 2)

Safety Stairs

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500

I’m a super-excited Dad! I’ve been on the search for a long time for a gate that we could put on the stairs in our house and was having no luck. And now that Mazie is mobile, the lack of a child gate was elevating my blood pressure significantly. The problem? One of the sides that the gate must connect to is relatively short.

The left side in this picture is only 30.5" high. This turns out to be a major problem with most child gates. I was lucky to find this one at USA Baby that turned out to be a perfect fit for the space. If you have a challenging spot this is a wonderful gate.

I can now relax a bit while Mazie runs all over the top level of the house.

Solar Project Update #3

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500

In the last couple of weeks we’ve had a lot of progress with our solar project. The work on the roof and in the attic is essentially done now. This leaves the compicated plumbing work in the utility room the remaining items. This Wednesday the contractor is supposed to be out with the whole team to turn the system up.

In the last weeks we’ve pulled out the existing two gas water heaters and inserted a new Takagi TK-2 tankless hot water heater. Right now that is providing all of the hot water since the solar system isn’t up and running yet. I’ve been happy with it (it is the square unit on the wall in the picture).

I’ll post a detailed write-up once the system is up and running. Many of you have asked me about the project and I’ve certainly learned a lot having it done. One big lesson learned is added alternative energy and high-efficiency energy to an existing house is not trivial!

Solar Project Update #2

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 21:23:00 -0500

After much consideration and a meeting with our contractor I’ve decided to change the location and configuration of our solar array. I posted previously about our solar project and mentioned I had concerns about how the panel array looked.

We are going to change from the eight 4 x 6.5 foot panels that we have now to five 4 x 8 foot panels instead. The panels will be relocated to the front roof of the house, to the left of the skylights when facing the front of the house. We’ll be dropping our panel footage from 208 to 160 square feet in the process, but will still get a lot of heat collection.

The new location will make the panels only visible from the front of the house, and will not disturb the outline of the house as they will be completely on the roof face.

This will result in a 4 week delay to the project to get the new panels, but considering this is something that will be in place for years I want it to be right.

Solar Project Update

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:00:00 -0500

I’ve referenced our solar project on this site a couple of times, and this last week marked the most visible part of the project. The collectors were put up on the roof on Thursday.

The collectors are mounted on the north side of the roof, but peeking over so they have a full southern exposure. There is still a lot of work to be done inside the house. The integration with the hot water and heating system are coming up next.

I’ve got some mixed feelings on how the collectors turned out and am going to discuss some alternatives with the contractor. It’s not exactly how I had expected it to look. Hard to imagine without seeing it. Not positive anything will change but am going to explore it. I’m not terribly pleased with the view from the deck.

Roof Replacement

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 01:00:00 -0500

About three months ago I decided to have a new roof put on our house. We are in the process of putting solar heat on our house and our shingles needed replacement before we put the panels up. I contacted a couple of contractors and ultimately decided to go with Minnesota Statewide Roofing & Remodeling. Their estimator was prompt to come out and give an estimate, and they provided a good price. I told them the timeline I was looking at and that I needed to coordinate the installation with some other work. Everything was fine.

They were scheduled to start the job on Thursday, November 10th. I took the day off so that I could be at home when they got started, and to be there for a couple of other contractors that were visiting for some smaller projects. I expected a roofing crew to show up early and get going on the roof. Statewide had told me the job should take a full day with a half-day for finishing work.

At around 9am a vehicle pulled up. I was working with one of the other contractors who was on time and saw that one person got out of the vehicle and looked around. After I got done showing the other contractor in, the vehicle that I thought was the roofing crew, was gone. At 10am, with nobody here still, I tried to contact Statewide.

This started the most frustrating part of my entire interaction with Statewide. They were simply impossible to reach. I had cellular numbers for everyone but they never answered their phones. I would leave several messages and would be lucky to get a call back from them. This frustrated me beyond belief. In retrospect, I think if they would have simply been reachable, attentive to my calls and honest with me, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated.

Back to the installation. They never showed up on Thursday but Statewide assured me that they would be their first thing on Friday, November 11th. I didn’t stay home that day but called home at 10am and nobody had shown up yet. I left messages for Statewide but got no call. At noon nobody had shown up still and I placed more calls into Statewide. Finally in the early afternoon Statewide called me and told me a crew was driving to my house to begin the job. I went home early that day so I could be there and they never showed.

At this point I felt I was simply being lied to, flat out. How could someone be driving to my house and never show up. It just didn’t make any sense. I was infuriated and still unable to reach anyone at Statewide. That night they contacted me and said that they would be there tomorrow. I just couldn’t believe how poorly they seemed to be running this engagement.

That Saturday, November 12th at 11:00am a roofing crew finally showed up at my house. It was clear that rain was coming soon. They got on the roof and ripped off a bunch of shingles, and then left after 3 hours when it started to rain. I have no idea why they even felt like starting. They put down some tarps and left. That night a huge windstorm came in blew all the tarps off of the house.

To Statewide’s credit, they did get over to my house on that Sunday and nailed down the tarps and then 5 days passed before they started working on the roof again. In the meantime nothing was done. On the next weekend they came out, starting at 10am everyday and finished the job. If they would have started earlier they could have finished a day earlier, and the job took 3 and 1/2 days, more than twice the time they told me it would take. However, their materials and dumpster were at our house for nearly 3 weeks.

After the job was finished I was so frustrated I didn’t even want to talk to them. They never called to see how the job finished. We saw Statewide at our house one day looking at the roof but they never even bothered to speak to us or ask if everything was okay. Over a month later they finally sent a bill however the roof hadn’t passed inspection. I told them I wouldn’t pay until it did, and they promptly resolved the inspection.

I’m sure many have had worse roofing projects. Our roof did get done after all. However, the lack of prompt communication and professional service should be noted. I chose to write this note so others would have a reference. They had several reference letters about how great they are, and it should be balanced with other experiences. I’ve filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau as well.

Construction Zone

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:00:00 -0500

Our house has been a construction zone this last week, and will hopefully start to wind down after this next week. We scheduled a number of projects to occur right now.

We are completing the 3rd phase of our landscaping project and they are installing a stone path with stairs in the back. This is totally smooth and hardly impacts us at all since it’s outside. They should finish this coming week and so far it looks great!
On Tuesday we had a new furnace and air conditioner installed. Our old one was going and we wanted to put in a higher efficiency unit. This went well and is now done after a couple of follow-up visits to make sure everything was done. We have a 96.2% efficient furnace and a 15+ SEER air conditioner now.
We had new shower doors put in the master bathroom. We now have the glass-style doors like nicer hotels have. This is a nice upgrade and completed on time.
We are having a new roof put on as well. This one started out very poorly with bad communication with this contractor and the crew not showing up for the first two days. Things are turning better though as of today. More communication and it looks like they should (weather permitting) finish by Wednesday. I really underestimated what a headache this one would be, it’s a huge mess.
The roof is in preparation for the installation of solar heat next. We wanted to get the roof redone before doing the solar projects (we are also considering solar electric) so we wouldn’t have to redo it all in a couple of years when it will be a lot harder. The solar heat will go on in mid-December but they are prepping the roof now with the appropriate pipes and moving things around.

I don’t know how people put up with remodeling their entire house. I’d be a basket case.

Music Everywhere!

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 01:00:00 -0500

A few months ago I bought the Roku M1000 MP3 player for Mazie’s room. I really liked it, even wrote on here about how great it was. Well, I liked it so much I decided to buy two more. Not the M1000, but the cheaper M500. Roku was running a sale, I think moving them out to make room for new models. I picked up two to put the whole music collection in the bedroom and a yet-to-be-determined location.

Install was easy as can be. Hardest part was finding a power outlet for it. (Note to self, need to redo power in bedroom!) Still like these units, even though I’m ultimately left a little frustrated with UPnP servers.

Just Typing

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes I just feel like typing something on this here website. I guess that’s the advantage of being the site operator, author, editor, publisher and everything else.

This has been a busy week. I’ve been completely absorbed with this project at work. We finally got it launched today and I really think it’s one of the, if not the, most amazing thing we’ve done. If you are curious, go to MarketWatch when the market is open (M-F 9:30a to 4:00p ET) and look at news stories, quotes, etc. You’ll see the quotes are streaming at you. We did this ourselves, and it was a massively challenging and fun project. I was literally unable to sleep, waking at 4:00a most days, my mind whirring with ideas. I’ve gotta take some time this weekend and decompress a bit. I put some especially peaceful music on my iPod so when I wake up in the middle of the night I can try to listen to that to help me sleep.

I sort of took today off, even though Mazie and I went into the office for a couple of hours and I was email for a couple more hours at home. We had furnace contractors, roofing contractors and our landscaper over today to discuss projects. I pulled the trigger on the furnace one so that is going forward. I need to decide on the roofing project soon so that I can let the solar guys (we are also looking at solar heat and electric) know what is going on.

We are starting phase 3 of our landscaping project. First phase was the front yard, 2nd was some hardscaping in the back yard, and this final phase is the conversion back to native plantings for the undeveloped area in our backlot. It was completely filled with invasive plants, and we are now getting ready to transform it. It will be perhaps the most challenging and interesting of the projects, but the least visible, at least from the curb as it were.

I’m debating the whole solar thing. I’m not sure what I think about having 4’x6’ black panels sticking up off the top of the house for heat. The solar electric stuff is much less obtrusive, but has a lot higher cost.

We are heading to Wisconsin for a family weekend with Tammy’s side of the family. I expect it to be a blast. May pack up the telescope since we’ll be in darker skies. I feel a little bad that I haven’t given that the time it deserves. I really do have too many hobbies. It’s just that everything is so interesting! 🙂

Purple HDMI TiVo

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0500

I thought I had dodged this bullet, but this morning when I turned on my HD DirecTV TiVo I got “purple haze”. Although, this was different than I’d seen it before. Usually if I just hit the ratio button on the HR 10-250 it would correct after a couple of times, but this is pervasive. It seems that all true blacks are showing up as purple.

This setup has been working since I got it in January! But today it decides to give up the ghost. I called up DirecTV and after 33 minutes of support discussion, and having the support person tell me “the HDMI port just doesn’t work on these, it’s a known problem, you need to use component video instead” I got them to send me a replacement unit. We’ll see if it solves my problem.

This is a very common problem.

Jamie v. Racoons

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A few weeks ago we had some sod put down in our backyard. The first two weeks went as they should, I watered it everyday, all was great. I had even started to mow it. Then, the racoons came.

These little buggers figured out they could get in the seams of the sod and roll it around revealing a triumph of worms and grubs. I put everything back in place and hoped they would just move along.

Like racoons would move along. They returned night after night. I tried staking down the grass with tent stakes. I didn’t have enough stakes and they still made it through. I put more in and they decided to just rip the sod in the middle. I called our landscaper and they suggested using “lawn staples”. I got fifty (yes, fifty!) of them and the racoons simply pulled them out.

I decided the cavalry needed to come in so the landscapers came out and replaced some of the sod, since it had been damaged too badly, and laid down a fence that they use with deer on the sod to keep it in place. The next morning I called them to let them know the racoons had been in there again. The battle continues…

Weekend Geekfest

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0500

I spent a bit of time this weekend on my home network. I had a “security incident” about 10 days ago that I had to both clean-up and prevent from happening again. No damage of any significance was done. I had setout on segmenting my network and replacing my ZyWall with a full-blown firewall. I did not end up there as it just turned out to be way too much work to get going. Instead I reinstated all my firewalls on every machine and pruned down the ports. I also put in place blocking rules on my LAN to WAN connection to block certain traffic that should never originate from my LAN, like IRC for example. This is a nice step-up, although not as robust as my plans were.

I also reformatted and reinstalled my Linux boxes (victims of said “security incident”) with Fedora Core 4. This time I left SELinux enabled and clamped down the firewall more.

I’ve also been working on reducing my electrical load in the house so I’ve made all the desktops go to sleep with inactivity. I was able to setup all of my backup scripts to use Wake-on LAN functionality to turn on in the middle of the night, do their housework, and then go back to sleep and stop spinning the electric dial so much. Of course my servers still have to stay on all the time, but this cuts in half the number of machines powered on at times.

Landscaping Wonders

Sun, 07 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Last year we had the landscaping in front of our house redone completely. We used a small, native landscaping firm called Go Native. Native landscaping means that you only work with plants that are native to your area. The great thing about this, other than being ecologically “correct” is that you end up with landscaping that is lower maintenance. We’ve been loving it, and we know this year will be the “worst” year, if you can call it that. The first year all these native plants spend the majority of work establishing their root systems. Next year, they should all come up very strong. We’ve already had a multitude of flowers. It’s been fun to watch everything come up and develop.

Before, our landscaping was boring and dull. When we sat down with our landscaper she said that with our native plantings we would get a lot of birds and butterflies visiting us. We certainly haven’t been let down. We’ve got a constant array of visitors gracing us with their presence. I love it. See photos with bees harvesting pollen, a great yellow bird that visits us often and a huge monarch butterfly that stopped by.

Mowing the Lawn

Sun, 17 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0500

This is a rather pointless post but I wanted to share that I think Ihave found the best music for mowing the lawn, ever. Every weekend I have to plod outside and fire up the lawn mower. My iPod is a dear, dear friend during this one hour trek in endless circles around the lawn. I used to listen to a variet of things, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no finer album to mow the lawn with than Chronicles I by Credence Clearwater Revival.

Next time you find yourself sweating behind the lawn mower, give this CD a go, and you’ll be markedly happier.

Roku M1000

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Today we go straight from the PhatBox MP3 player in the car to the Roku M1000 for the baby’s room. I decided a couple of weeks ago that we needed to get music in there, the idea is both for us, the parents, and for the kid.

For the last year we’ve been in music nirvana with every bit of music we own stored digitally on our server. Obviously I didn’t want to start dragging out CDs to listen to in the kids room so I went looking for a stand-alone, WiFi music player. There are a lot of options and I’ve even played with some in the past (like this one that I thought was horrible). I decided to go for a high-end unit and ordered the Roku M1000.

This unit is simply amazing. I unboxed it, turned it on and put in my WiFi WEP key and instantly it was on my network. After a few clicks I was listening to streaming music. If only every product worked this well. I clicked a few more buttons and had upgraded the firmware in about 30 seconds. Seriously, I’d rate this one of the best products I’ve ever purchased. I’m tempted to rip out my Audiotron and replace it with one of these.

We can now put childrens music on infinite repeat in the babies room at the drop of a hat and every now and then we can play some music or podcasts for ourselves when feeding or rocking the baby.

Living Green Expo

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Tammy and I went to the Living Green Expo today. This is the 3rd year that we have went to it and the 4th year for the event. It was particularly great this year. In previous years it has been held in smaller buildings on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, but this year they moved it into the grandstand and expanded it substantially. Attendance was also stellar. All the exhibitors were commenting on how busy it was, many were out of materials due to overwhelming traffic. It’s great to see such attendance for a great event like this.

Intranet for Home

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I deployed my first intranet application for home. If your not familiar, an intranet application is just a website that you cannot get to generally on the web unless you have specific credentials. I was combing through my documents one afternoon and realized that I had a ton of little text files with notes on them. Things like information on my cable modem and home network to reminders about trips I'd like to take.

It dawned on me that this is just screaming for a Wiki. So I deployed OpenWiki in a restricted website that is only accessible in our house with the right authentication. I was able to better organize information and move a lot of other information onto it, like what is our contract number with the plumbing people.

Pretty fun. I named the site Spiral. The idea being that it is a big spiral notebook for all in the house to share.

Forget-me-not

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

I’m horrible at remembering certain things. At the top of the list is remembering to change the filters in the heater. I have no idea when I did it last, none. Finally it hit me that I can easily have my computers help me out. In about 5 minutes I created a quick Scheduled Task that will send me a reminder every month! I’m using blat.exe to send the email via a command prompt.

(If you just see a big blank space below this you are using Internet Explorer and have a fairly narrow window, make your browser wider. Not sure why the style sheet does this.)

I am sharing this immensely obvious solution since I think others may find this worthwhile as well.

Gettin' Jiggy With Power

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 01:00:00 -0500

Our power service is horrible (example, another). There is just no way around it. We seem to get regular under-voltage events and the occasional power cycle on a regular basis. Every once in a while for fun we get thrown a multi-hour outage as well. What a blast! For a computer geek like myself, this is nerve racking. I had some new UPS units on my Amazon wish list for a long time but it seems nobody thinks that is a fun present.

I hadn’t “right-sized” my UPS for my server for years. During that time I went from a simple tower with a couple of drives to my terabyte server with 10 platters spinning at all times. The Back-UPS Pro 650 I had on it was completely inadequate and to make it even better a couple months ago the battery had given up the ghost so there was NO battery power at all. I issued a self-test one day on accident which resulted in an immediate reboot!

I upgraded my server setup to a Smart-UPS 1500VA RM model. I chose the rack-mount model because I plan in the coming weeks to buy a half-rack for my server gear in the laundry room to get it all organized and setup nice. Great UPS. Got a little nervous first time I plugged it in. This thing has much more robust circuitry than any other UPS I have so it makes a lot of “electrical noises”.

I also solved the problem for my home theatre PC and the two TiVos. Now we will not miss our favorite satellite content even if the power is down for a bit! 🙂 I got a Back-UPS RS 1000VA for this stuff. My only disappointment here is that it seems that the Back-UPS RS line only works with PowerChute Personal Edition so I cannot tie it into the main PowerChute Console and manage everything from one place. Maybe they will change that in a future release of the software.

I got a new battery for my old Back-UPS Pro 650VA and that is now running my office and moved the absolutely lame Back-UPS 350VA that I had here to my iMac G5. Every computer is now on its own UPS. Yeah!

I Don't Play a Plumber on TV

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 01:00:00 -0500

I like to think that I’m not a helpless guy around the house. I try to fix things here and there. I’ve got the tools to do basic repairs and maintenance. Sometimes I get in over my head and I usually have a pretty good sense of when it’s time to stop and call in professional help before causing more problems than we started with. In reality I’m probably not all that “handy” at all, but I sure like to think that I am. Probably a “guy thing”. So, when prompted with the opportunity to prove that “handiness” I don’t hesitate to dive in and see what I can do.

Last night I got home about an hour before we were expecting dinner guests. Nothing big, only one couple coming over, not a big party or anything. Anyway, when I got home Tammy informed me that the kitchen sink was stopped up. There was water standing in both basins and she had tried running the disposal more thinking it would agitate things out but it did no good. I decided to take a look into the situation and see if I could help.

First thing I did was unplug the garbage disposal. Tammy’s constantly shoving her hand in there and fidgeting with things without unplugging it. This makes my spine tingle for very irrational reasons. Before I shove my hand in that “beast of destruction” it’s getting unplugged and I’m testing that it doesn’t turn on with the switch. I felt around and nothing was amiss. We ran it and this time it shot water a good foot out of the sink. Water that was also laced with little bits of carrots and potatoes, the last things to go through the disposal.

I started poking on the other basin and trying to see through even more carrot and potato bits floating in a few inches of water. Deciding that it just had to be clogged with too much debris from the disposal I put a clothes hangar (this is one of the “professional tools”) down the drain and I could feel a lot of blockage and muck, or whatever word plumbers use to describe the junk that keeps water from going down in your drain.

I decided that if I could just put a plumbers snake down this thing I could probably clear it. I retrieved our miniature snake that is used primarily for getting hair out of shower drains from the garage and tried to run it down, but the drain openings were just too small. And this is where things went from relatively harmless to a complete mess.

I felt the drain through the water and the bottom “bolt thing” (another professional term) was loose so I started to remove it. My thinking here was this was just a bolt to hold this drain cover on. I could remove it and voila, I would have all the room I would need to run the snake. It turns out this bolt is actually much more substantial than just holding any old cover on. It turns out in fact, as I’m sure anybody that knows really anything about plumbing knows, which I obviously do not, that this bolt holds the drain onto the sink!

I was able to remove the bolt with no problems, but then as soon as I started to fidget with the drain I heard a gushing sound as the water that was in the basin started to rush onto the floor! I’m not talking about a little bit of water by the way. I was doing all this work through about 4-5 inches of standing water, a few gallons of water! After about 10 seconds of water gushing we had a small lake of carrot-y, potato-y water on the floor and about 15 minutes until our guests would be arriving for dinner.

Here is the point in my story where I really must thank Tammy. She could have read me the riot act for not turning on my brain or trying to do this minutes before guests arrived, but she just laughed. It was a huge mess. After the water drained on the floor I put things back the way they were, we got things cleaned up and other than the fact that we couldn’t use the sink the night proceeded as normal. That is until a couple hours later when we went downstairs and realized the water had came through the floor and poured itself all over my desk downstairs! Luckily no computers were damaged, however my iPod has a nasty dishwater residue all over it. I’m now groaning over the potential for the ceiling drywall to be damaged. Hopefully we’ll be spared.

A plumber is on the way today. I should have skipped my little adventure and just fixed this with a phone call to begin with. But hey, now I know what that bolt thing is for in the middle of the drain!

HD Antennae Comparison

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 01:00:00 -0500

Warning, this is a really geeky post. Reading about comparing the performance of two HD TV over-the-air (OTA) UHF antennas may be hazardous to your health.

When I got my HD DirecTV TiVo (HR10-250) two weeks ago I needed a decent outdoor antennae to pick up local HD channels. It was a Saturday and I decided to just pick up the Terk HDTVs Antennae at Best Buy along with my TiVo unit. The unit was extraordinarilly overpriced at $150 but I knew I could return it. I slapped it on a cable and threw it on my deck (no aiming at all) and got pretty good signals. Last week I received my real antennae, the ChannelMaster 4221 (the ChannelMaster 3021 is the same unit FYI). This new antennae was a mere $35 with shipping from a good online retailer. The 4221 looks like a real antennae. Four separate bowties, lots of metal, etc.

I took new signal readings off my receiver with the Terk right before doing this to avoid any comparison to previous readings that could have different atmospheric things going on. I allowed the receiver to tune into the station for five seconds and then I recorded the maximum signal strength received to that point. After getting fresh readings for the Terk I plugged in the ChannelMaster and was ready to be stunned. However, on the first read everything was horrible. Lesson number one is the CM4221 is much more directional than the Terk. I went up and pointed it towards the direction of downtown and got much better readings.

In the end I was stunned with the performance of the Terk more than the CM4221. The Terk did as good as the CM4221 and even better than it on the weak signals. Given the price difference I did stay with the CM4221 and returned the Terk, but I was surprised by the differences. Here are the signal strength measurements. (Note: I included the reading from tuner A and B.)

Station	Freq	Terk HDTVs	CM 4221
KMWB	22	62/62	48/40
WFTC	21	92/95	92/92
KPXM	40	57/60	28/22
KARE	35	88/88	90/90
KTCA	34	90/90	95/92
KTCI	16	88/85	90/90
KSTC	44	90/90	92/92
WCCO	32	90/90	92/92
KMSP	26	92/92	92/92
KSTP	50	90/90	90/90

If you are reading this looking for HD antennae advice these tests were done in the Minneapolis area by highways 494 and 62. One disclaimer I need to add here is that I did not spend a lot of time tuning the direction and the CM4221 is just sitting on my balcony pointed toward downtown. Notably, it is about 1 foot behind the metal railings of my patio and I’m not sure if that causes interference. I intend to have it properly mounted on the roof when I have my DirecTV satellite upgraded to a triple-LNB unit.

Now in High-Definition!

Sun, 09 Jan 2005 01:00:00 -0500

If you are a regular reader of my site you may be thinking I’m on a consumer electronics binge at the moment. In truth, I sort of am. I fully expect that in a couple of months everything is going to be baby, baby and more baby! I’m looking forward to that and in preparation am trying to get things like a new TV and HDTV programming out of the way. I figure some time with a new video camera before baby arrives is a good thing.

On Friday I received our new television. We ordered a Sharp Aquos LC-45GD4U. The TV was easy to unpack, a little surprising given it’s size. We are using it purely as a display so didn’t need to bother with putting the detachable speakers on it. I had it up and running in a few minutes. The picture is absolutely stunning. The TV has a native resolution of 1920x1080 and the LCD panel gives crisp detail. I was able to plug my PC into the DVI port and had my home theater PC working quickly as well (however, I’m battling some problems with HDCP and the like so I’m still limited to 1280x1024).

After getting the TV up and running and admiring the detail it was pretty clear that I needed to make a follow-on purchase and really dive into HD programming. I’m a TiVo junkie and can’t stand watching live TV except for sporting events. So, I took the plunge and got the DirecTV HD TiVo unit. At this point I had a rewire project for my theater cabinet so I decided to do it right this time and put in some cable management and rerouted everything. This took a couple hours but I’m very pleased with the results. I also decided to retire my VHS and LaserDisc player. See ya guys, it was nice having you around.

The HD content over DirecTV is simple, it just shows up. But I needed an antennae and the one recommended to me by my friend Chris wasn’t available on the weekend. I’m impulsive and seek immediate gratification so I purchased a high-end Terk HTDVs outdoor antennae for too much money so I could have it right away that another friend Chad had read good things about. I ran a 50’ RG6 cable out of the house and just set the antennae on the balcony upstairs. I’ll mount it for real when winter is gone. So far though I’ve got great results. Here are the signal strengths I’m getting for local OTA (over the air) HD channels. (The strength measurement is done using the antenna test utility in the DVR.)

Station	Freq	Strength
KMWB	22	50
WFTC	21	90
KPXM	40	65
KARE	35	90
KTCA	34	92
KTCI	16	85
KSTC	44	90
WCCO	32	88
KMSP	26	85
KSTP	50	90

I’m all set now to enjoy the Vikings/Packers game in full HD! Thepicture is amazing.

New Vacuum

Sat, 02 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Having your own website is pretty fun. You get to be your own editor and can decide what things you feel are important and want to share with people. Sometimes things happen that really don’t seem that big. For example, you may get rain gutters installed on your house. Why would you ever put that up on a web site? Who else would ever care about that? Probably nobody.

You may think that getting a new vacuum cleaner would be the pinnacle example of such trivial nonsense that has no place being shared with others around the world. It’s just a vacuum cleaner! Who cares!? Really. Get over it.

Well, I’m telling you, this is not just a vacuum cleaner. This is a miracle machine. It sucks dirt and cat hair with an efficiency that brings a tear to your eye. It leaves a visibly cleaner and more enticing carpet in it’s trail. It is the Dyson DC07 Animal.

First off, how cool is it that the vacuum is called Animal. Really, they’ve figured out how to get a man to actually care about what the vacuum is. Animal! Grrr! The thing is big, tough looking and purple. A manly purple, none of this lilac business. It could be in the shop, but it’s meant for your house.

The real sweetness is tasted when you fire this thing up after reading the instructions. You really have to read them, it’s a bit complicated. This is a turbine vacuum. No bags for this baby. And it’s got this super cool clear turbine thingamajig where all the dirt and most notably cat hair spins around like it’s in a little tornado. We ran this thing three times in a row in one room and took a half-gallon milk jug stuffed full of cat hair off the floor. There was more there, but we stopped for now.

When you take the dirt tornado thingamajig off it’s like this Ghost Busters contraption that you take over to your trash can, pull a trigger, and the bottom flips off and the junk falls out. Yeah baby!

If you have a pets, you need an Animal. This thing will suck the eyeballs out of a frog through the patio door. Amazing. I’ll be sleeping on the carpet tonight.. it’s that good. 🙂

Mother's Kitchen Demolition

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Tammy and I went and helped my mom today with the demolition of her kitchen. She’s been working on her new house for the last year and this is the start of probably the biggest project, but also the one with the most impact, a new kitchen. We went over to help her gut the room to the studs and got plenty dirty in the process.

Music Nirvana Achieved!

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Anybody that has talked to me about music recently knows that I’ve been working on a huge project to move all of our music to a home media server in MP3 format. A couple of months ago I completed ripping and tagging all of our CDs to the recently built Teraserver (home server with a total of 1.4 terabytes of disk). That was a huge milestone as it involved going through nearly 1,000 CDs.

However, still in front of me was my (relatively small) collection of records – good ole’ vinyl. Well I just completed ripping, splitting into tracks and tagging all my vinyl as well to the media server so I have now completed my project. :-)

Power Blip

Sun, 20 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Our power, which is horrible and goes out on a regular basis blipped today. This was a very short blip. Some devices didn’t reset. The UPS on all the system that have them kicked in and more sensitive systems did reset.

I’m logging this mainly for my own purposes with XcelEnergy.

Rain Gutters Installed

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0500

It seems lately that nearly every day there is something happening on our house. We don’t have any major remodel going on, but the combination of a lot of small and medium projects has everything in a state of flux.

Today we got our rain gutters installed and I’m very pleased with them. I worried a great deal about this since our house was designed without any overhang and like all houses from the late 1980s didn’t have any rain gutters put on it. When I thought about the gutters being put on it I really thought they would ruin the modern look of the house but I’m pleased to say that I think they look fine. In fact, I told Tammy that it’s possible that they actually are a nice addition.

We got the 6 inch gutters which I think was the right call. The smaller ones could have looked odd on the house. I’m now eagerly awaiting a good rain so that I can see them in action. This will definitely keep the moisture away from the house.

House Painted

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Our house is finally done getting painted. Everything is back where it belongs. Yeah!

House Painting nearly complete

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0500

At this very moment the painters are removing the plastic covering from all the windows in our house. We can see again! It’s amazing how odd your house feels when all of a sudden the windows are all opaque and you cannot see out. It’s like living in a sensory deprivation chamber (okay, it’s not that bad but it was annoying).

For some reason the garage door is having a terrible time opening. It is behaving like it weighs a thousand pounds more than it did before.

Blue Dog Mural

Sat, 11 Jan 2003 01:00:00 -0500

When we were on our honeymoon in Denver, Tammy saw this piece of art in a gallery and instantly fell in love with it. The artist did a series of hanging sculptures around car doors from old VW bugs. She then had a variety of dogs in the windows. One in particularly had a blue dog that she really loved. It is in some way a nod to George Rodrigue’s work, however actually affordable for mere mortals like us.

When she saw this piece she knew instantly what she wanted done. Here is Tammy’s friend Liane painting the mural.

Here is the sketch that the mural was painted from. This sketch was scanned, blown-up and then projected onto the wall to provide a guide.

We absolutely love this. We live with all of our art, but this is part of every day.