Jamie Thingelstad

I left work late on Tuesday. I thought I would try to get home a little earlier and hopped into the MnPASS lane and hit the pedal. As I came out of downtown I was greeted by a cop holding a radar detector. He vigorously encouraged me to pull over and receive my due.

He clocked me doing 71 in a 55. Eek.

He had some generosity in his heart though. While there was no way I was going to get off without a ticket, he cited me for Unacceptable Acceleration instead of a full on speeding ticket.

That’s the first time I’ve been pulled over by a cop in probably 10 years.

Slow down.

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!

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.

My home network has been pathetic for the last few months. While doing our solar project and other work in the utility room I had to make some quick cable moves. The unfortunate downside of this was that for over 3 months my gigabit network has been nada, since I’ve got a 100 mbit link in between it and everything that matters.

I decided I’ve had enough of this and decided to redo the network – right this time. I’m not done, but this weekend I got most of the physical work hung.

I put a 2’ rack on the right and have all the network switches where I want them. I still have to move the ethernet runs in the house from the other side of the utility room to this side and put them in the patch panel. This will be a pain as it involves rewiring. And once that is all done, I’m going to setup a proper secure home network with color zones for protection. I expect this project will be a month or more before I finish it completely. I’ll tell more when I do, and put a picture up of the pretty wiring.

Two weekends ago Mazie really started to walk. She’d been able to take a step or two for a while, but while we were in Lanesboro on the Olson Family trip she “took off” and decided she was mobile. In the last two weeks she’s gotten pretty good at it and now pretty much demands on walking on her own. Here is a video of her walking at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. (Excuse the video quality, it was taken with my Canon S500 camera in movie mode, with a shaky hand.)

Add Video.

This last weekend I finally said “uncle” and took my T-Rex to Hobby Warehouse in Richfield to get some help from the experts there and get my helicopter flying. There was a guy there, Rudy, who was awesome. He’s been flying RC helicopters for 12 years and has a T-Rex as well. He spent about 2 hours on my machine and got it working great!

The picture above is the helicopter I have. The picture doesn’t have the electronics on it, just the base frame and mechanical parts. After two hours with the pros it was going and I headed home to try on my own. The first encounter was not very successful – I never got off the ground but also didn’t have any major crashes.

The next day, Sunday, I took it to my father-in-laws for Easter. He’s been obsessed with heli’s as well. He emptied the garage so I we could play without the wind. After about a minute I took a hard landing and broke the base plate where the battery was connected. After we rigged a clothes hangar so I could strap the battery on we were flying again. After a while I got to the point where I could fly outside with a decent amount of wind. Until I had a decent crash at the end.

I ended up with a hard crash and a slew of parts needed. I broke the gears in two of my servos (Hitec HS-65HB), bent the tail, cracked the bottom plate, shredded the canopy. I got parts and spent last night fixing.

Tonight I went out and I was flying great! Hovering like a pro, things were really in control, until the very end. I was running low on battery and I came down too hard. The blades came down too far and one of the blades sheared right through my new carbon tail! Ouch!

The damage looks worse than from the weekend, but it’s all in the tail. I’m still in the phase where every trip off the ground with the heli is followed by a trip to the hobby shop. I’ll have to replace the tail, stabilizer bars and a couple other things. I should be flying again this weekend.

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.

I got to try out my new Sony noise canceling headphones on my recent trip to New York. My impression is mixed, but overall I’m pleased with them. I haven’t tried other companies so I can’t comment on how they differ. Here are my key comments:

• Reviews will say that all noise cancelling headphones create a sense of “pressure” when activated. This is certainly true, and was more pronounced than I expected. On a plane your head is already all messed up from the cabin pressure so it isn’t as noticeable, but in other situations it is very noticeable.
• The noise canceling works best when the noise generation is perpendicular to you. I got some odd results when my head was rotated 45 degrees making the sound hit them at an angle. Interestingly, after a couple of seconds it goes away so I would guess it is just the noise cancelling process catching up to a slightly different pattern.
• The NC circuitry does impact the sound. If you are a purist, you need to trade off a lower noise floor with some impact to the music.
• I found them comfortable to wear for a couple of hours. My ears didn’t get overly hot.

It seems amazing that in only 3 more months Mazie will turn 1! She is doing great. She has recovered from her 2nd real cold with lots of coughing and sneezing, and most notably plenty of running nose. An almost never-ending amount actually. She’s decided she likes baby food and we think she has her 2nd set of teeth coming in since she’s been eating her hand pretty much constantly lately.

She’s turning into such a little kid now. She likes to babble at you for a while and will share some stories with you. They are pretty short still, but it’s just amazing to hear her voice and particularly to hear her giggle.

We had a trip to Ikea this weekend and Mazie and I had a great time while Tammy shopped with our friends Lisa and Eric who were in town for the weekend. All sorts of fun to be had at Ikea.

Mazie has chosen to stay fairly immobile thus far. She’s not crawling, and from the looks of things she is likely to just skip that whole process. She doesn’t like being on her belly at all. She does love it though if you hold her hands and let her walk around the house or around stores. She finds that to be a great old time. She can scoot around pretty well and can make it all over her play area.

I’m itching for spring to come and for us to be able to spend more time outside. We ordered a bike carrier/jogging stroller (Chariot Cougar 2 if you are interested, I’ll post impressions of it after we get it).

I put up a whole bunch of pictures from January and February. Don’t miss the pictures of her in the bowl.