Jamie Thingelstad

I created my very first custom GPT tonight — GTD Coach. This GPT is designed to help practitioners of GTD that use OmniFocus improve their practice and get advice. I started with more robust questions around different levels of planning and gave great suggestions.

It was a gorgeous afternoon for a walk in the Natural Lands at St. Olaf with Mazie.

We completed our annual candle sale and, in total, raised $5,755 for the four organizations we picked! That is around a 10% increase from 2022! A huge thank you to the 52 folks who made this possible by purchasing a handmade wooden wick candle!

As in previous years, we asked people which organizations they would like to support. People could pick any number or all of them. This year, we even have some folks request specific allocations versus dividing it equally.

Also see 2023 Fall Fundraiser Insights for more information.

A bit more about each organization…

Oceanites supported by Tyler
Oceanites is a non-profit that helps the entire Arctic peninsula, though penguins are their first priority. They are trying to help with the warming Arctic.

Food Recovery Network supported by Mazie
Food Recovery Network has spread to over 200 colleges in the United States after it was started by 5 college students who realized perfectly good cafeteria food was being thrown away and had the genius idea to actually do something about it! Volunteers at colleges (of which I am one!) pack up extras from their cafeterias and send them to community food shelves to feed hungry people in their communities. FRN directly funnels food to those who need it instead of the waste yard.

Heart to Care Tanzania supported by Tammy
Heart to Care was founded by a woman from the Twin Cities. I read an article about her in the StarTrib a few years ago. She was on a trip to Tanzania several years ago and had a chance encounter with a young man that led her to partner with him and others to start a school in a small Tanzanian village. She works tirelessly to improve the school, expand the school and make sure that all involved have everything they need.

American Prairie supported by Jamie
I grew up on the prairie and have always been fascinated with Bison and these ecosystems’ strengths. I love what this organization is doing to help maintain and grow a thriving prairie ecosystem.

See 2022 and 2021 results.

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.

Before the show at The Dakota.

reMarkable — you can do better than this? 😬 No, I’m not going to install Rosetta. I guess I’ll try to get along with using the web browser to import PDFs into my reMarkable.

Our team (table 40) had a great time at our Growth Summit 2024 Give Back event building a Piper Computer Kit with a Piper Make Rover. Team SPS made over 180 of these combos in partnership with Create MPLS to give to kids in school for STEM classes! 🧑‍🔬

We had an amazing Growth Summit 2024 with Team SPS today! We had our North American team in person with over 1,500 in the Minneapolis Convention Center. It was Chad Collins first Growth Summit as our new CEO, we got to celebrate our wins, and had a tremendous keynote from Mike Walsh. 👏

I voted! Just one election on the ballot so was fast. Minnesota does a great job running polling places. OmniFocus shirt seemed like a good tie in.

Candles are all set out for this weekends Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser!

Thirteen years ago today I added my 100th login to 1Password. It is amazing to me that I’ve been using 1Password for that long! I now have 937 logins and 303 other items across 8 vaults shared with 1Password for Families!

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

I’m giving micro.blog a post after moving from hugo 0.91 to 0.117. I’m confident that Tiny Theme 1.8.9 works with this, and am only using four other plugins: Search page, Surprise me!, Reply by email, and Conversation on Micro.blog. The first from @manton and the others from @sod. 🤞

Speaking on a panel at Minneapolis CIO Summit this afternoon — Generative AI: Will it Revolutionize Customer and Employee Experiences? Looking forward to sharing some of the wins we’ve seen.

Update: See LinkedIn post with photos of panel.

Yuri sent me this photo of Kyiv looking great at sunset. I miss my trips there to visit the team.

Ready for Halloween Trick-or-Treaters but suspect the 32 °F and dusting of snow is going to keep counts low. 🎃👻🥶

Snow isn’t a great way to start Halloween! 🎃 👻🥶