Jamie Thingelstad

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.

For my birthday this year Tammy surprised me with a new lens for my camera. She got me the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM ultra-wide zoom lens. I’ve wanted an ultra-wide lens for a while because I find wide, landscape photography to be so much fun.

Here is an example shot with both lenses. Note the toaster is in the center of both shots. The one of the left is taken with my EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens.

Add image 20060103-173300-4937.

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You can see how much wider the shot is right away. There is some distortion on the corners of the shot which is unavoidable with such a wide lens.

I can’t wait to give this a shot on some outdoor photography in the summer.

Continuing my trend of mentioning new restaurants that we really like I would be remiss without highlighting Yum Kitchen and Bakery mentioned at The Rake. Before you go looking for a website, it seems they do not have one yet. They are very new, but it"s a bit shocking to me that they do not have a website. Luckily though they have great food.

We tried it out today and it was very good. It’s a very interesting deli/bakery kind of setup. The inside is designed in an interesting way — you order food in one place, get beverages in another, pay in another. Now that I think of it, kind of like a cafeteria. Don"t let that worry you though!

We had the chicken chili and it was very good. I also have been on some odd trip to find really good macaroni and cheese. I’m pleased to say, theirs is very good. Last but not least, the desert counter is pretty amazing. Definitely worth a visit!

I recently got my after-Christmas Christmas present. What’s that? Well, if I had something on my list and I didn’t happen to get it, I thought I should clean up that list. We don’t want to have things sitting on their forever now right?!

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to get a pair of binoculars. The primary use is for looking at wildlife around our house, and checking out birds. I’m sure that every time I mention bird watching I lose 10% of the audience to this website. Anyway, it is fun. The last use is for astronomical viewing. When out with the telescope, it’s nice to have a pair of binoculars to do some viewing.

The binoc’s you want for birding are completely different than those you want for astronomy, so I compromised with more emphasis on wildlife. I decided to get the Canon 12x36 IS II, mainly for the image stabilization. I got them a few days ago and it is very impressive.

The image stabilization works wonders. I was testing them and I could easily read text on objects far away with the image stabilization engaged. Without it, it was just too jumpy. I also find that I don’t get queezy when looking through them as I often do with binoc’s.

They are small, compact, lightweight, have a great grippy feel. I’m very pleased thus far. They run on a pair of AA batteries.

Have you played Sudoku (Wikipedia: Sudoku) yet? My mother turned me onto it. She figured I would like it in part because I like math. Turns out there really isn’t any math to Sudoku, but there are a lot of numbers and that can be fun. Sudoku reminds me a lot of Minesweeper, but it’s a lot more fun, and you get several “A-ha” moments while playing.

I would play it more, but it just burns time in a big way (hint: great for flights!) and I’ve already got a huge backlog of stuff I need/want to do.

I may be in a minority of people running a web site and still creating content by typing into a web page. I’ve decided to get “with it” and try a desktop blogging client. I’m giving BlogJet and Post2Blog a run. They have some wonderful features, one of the key selling points being the ability for me to easily attach images and other binary objects and have it automatically uploaded to another hosting provider. The other big win is that I can write things offline and upload them later. We’ll see if I think it’s worth the (low) cost, but so far so good.

I also looked at w.bloggar, but it’s just not as slick as either of these two tools.

I have decided that as of 2006, I’m going to officially make the transition to shooting all digital photos in RAW instead of JPEG¹. I’ve been thinking about making this transition for a long while now, but I’ve always had reasons not to. I’ve decided I just need to “bite the bullet” and deal with the workflow, conversion and storage issues as they arise (and, boy do they arise fast!)

If you are asking yourself what is RAW, let me give you a two second overview. 99.9% of people shoot digital photos in JPEG. Think of JPEG as a developed photograph, and RAW as a negative. In practical terms, the majority of people with digital cameras are walking around with a digital equivalent of Polaroids. While Polaroids were fun in their time, they had limitations, and many of these limitations apply to JPEG files as well². With a RAW file you get an undeveloped version of the photo, that requires further processing on your computer. The upside of this is that you can make image corrections native in the photo. If the picture is underexposed, you can compensate. If white balance is off, you can fix it. The advantages are huge, but there are challenges.

It takes, using most programs, 80-90 seconds to convert just one RAW image to a JPEG or TIFF file. If you take a bunch of photos in a day, you can easily have your computer working for an hour or more to convert them. Additionally, with more knobs comes the opportunity to make your photo look worse. It takes good software and skill to make a great photo (this is similar to the chemical process used in the film world). Of course we have the storage problem, which will now start becoming worse, but I can play governmental politics and let a future administration deal with that. 🙂

So why go through the hassle? A number of reasons. Out of every 50 or so shots, I get a picture I really love. And a lot of times, unfortunately, the exposure or some other variable is just slightly off. Without the RAW file, I cannot deal with this easily. Additionally, there is a whole new breed of software being developed to do amazing things with RAW files. For example, software that simulates the effects of different specialty negatives. You have nearly limitless future potential. I particularly like the fact that I will be able to hand down to future generations not just a box of polaroids, but a box of perfectly kept negatives.

I’m now trying to find a good software solution for RAW processing. I’ve been a BreezeBrowser Pro user for years, and love it. It deals with RAW files well, but I think there are better options. I’m playing with RawShooter, CaptureOne and Bibble right now. If you know of others that should be investigated let me know. I’ve also made some hardware upgrades as a result of this. I’m moving to a FireWire based compact flash card reader (Lexar CompactFlash Firewire) and I’ve finally gotten an accelerated 2G CF card (Sandisk Extreme III 2G).

Tomorrow is my birthday, or more appropriately, in about an hour it"ll be my birthday. I’m turning 34 this year and there will be grand festivities for sure. I’m taking the day off of work and spending it with my wonderful wife and daughter. I never made that much of birthdays until I met Tammy. She really considers it a big deal, and likes to go all out for the day. If it’s your birthday, it is your day without exception.

This birthday has me thinking of the concept of set points. Not familiar? A set point is just a position that objects or systems target. You can nudge it, and it will swing back and forth, but eventually it will return to it"s set point. Your thermostat in your house is always working to achieve a set point. I think, that in a unique way, people have an age set point.

You see, I"ve always felt older than I was, at least once I got to a “real” age (i.e., past being a teenager). Throughout my 20s I looked upon every birthday as a marker to get to where I felt I should be. I’ve never looked back, always eager to move forward. I think I’m slowly approaching my “set point”, somewhere in the late 30s. I’m just a little less eager to see the this birthday click by than the past. Perhaps we can start to slow down a bit now.

My wife says her “set point” was 27. If I surveyed my friends I’m sure I would get a variety of responses from people that are still waiting to get to theirs and those that past it a dozen years ago. It"s not bad to be past this, but I think it is a life marker of some sort. I suppose you could just jumble this rambling in wife my Fractional Life theory.

Perhaps it’s just my first birthday as a father, which in odd ways that I cannot describe, is different. Happy Birthday to Me!

We recently were notified by the Hopkins School Board that our school district finished the year in statutory operating debt. I’m not sure if it is as bad as the newsletter made it seem, but I felt compelled to send them a letter on the proposal.

Hopkins School Board,

Last week we received the 2006-07 Proposed Budget newsletter. I will keep my comments brief and to-the-point.

Your communication portrayed an environment without adequate financial controls, and a lack of transparency and accountability. I appreciate the complexity of funding for a school makes this a complicated task. However, as a taxpayer, I think that I can appropriately expect that our dollars are being used knowingly.

I encourage you to remedy these problems and make sure that the appropriate controls exist. However, I’m concerned by a budget proposal that shows significant cuts in teachers, programs and other activities for students, and increased investment in information systems, audit and other administrative tasks. Let us not forget the critical role and mission that our schools provide to our children and our community!

As the father of a young daughter, and hoping for more in the future, the quality of public education in my community is of critical concern. I live where I live in part because of the quality of the schools, and the national renown that the Hopkins School District has maintained. I finished your newsletter concerned that the quality of education was being lessened in a meaningful way.

I realize that it’s not “something for nothing”, but please do everything in your power to make sure that our schools do not sacrifice the quality of education provided.

It stuns me that funding education properly, and fully, is a controversial topic. It is the single most important thing that we can do for our country, society and the well-being of our children.

We stopped by two new restaurants yesterday and were happy with both. We had lunch at Salut in Minneapolis, at the 50th and France area. Salut is a fairly new French bistro. Don’t let the French part scare you off – they have an extremely approachable menu. It’s owned by the same people that own Manny’s (my favorite steakhouse!), Chino Lationa, Good Earth, etc. so you can rest assured that it’s going to be at least passable.

We entered the restaurant and I was shocked by it’s size. Much bigger inside than I expected from the outside. The menu was very good. Tammy and I had a glass of the Riesling. Wine at lunch? Sure, we’re on vacation! It was great. I had the steak frites for my lunch and Tammy had the steak sandwich. My tenderloin was amazing, and the frites were equally impressive. Highly recommend this place.

We then had dinner with our friends Jim and Suzie at Ravello. We ended up here because of a recommendation from a friend at the office, and really liked it. It’s in Long Lake so a bit of a drive unless you live in the western suburbs. They have a nice wine menu, and the lamb shank was delicious.

Yesterday we had Brian Broughten, the founder and owner of Advanced Aquarium to our house to get started on a bid to build a custom aquarium. He was here for about 90 minutes of good geek fun regarding aquarium stuff. Those that have known me for a long time know that I had a saltwater tank for the first half of the 1990s. In fact, my “Early Days” site still has the web page about it. I really like aquariums but I stopped for two reasons. First, I was a (relatively) poor student and couldn’t afford to do it right. I never had good lighting, and everything was DIY. Nothing against DIY, but that also meant somewhat crappy solutions for many things. The second issue was that I got sick of lugging buckets of water all the time. Now that we live in a house, I could have it plumbed straight in and not have to worry about pals and hoses.

The funny thing about the visit from Advanced Aquarium was that I used to shop at Brian’s store all the time. Broughten used to run a store out of his basement. My friend Mike and I would make somewhat regular trips there for stuff, but mostly to pick Brian’s brain and admire new fish and other creatures. When he came over I confirmed that that was in fact the same guy, and he actually vaguely remembered me as well.

Anyway, in a couple of weeks I’ll get a quote for the tank we worked out. I started getting so excited just talking about it. It would be 8 feet long, 2 feet deep and 30 inches tall – a whopping 300 gallons! All filtration and reserve water systems would be in the utility room. Out of sight, and sound. It would have dual pumps moving 3,000 gallons per hour through the reef. And it would have those magnificent metal halide lights that I could never afford before.

I’m trying not to get too excited, but I’m eagerly awaiting the quote.

My friend Chris, who is constantly finding new things to get into and get everyone he knows excited in, recently decided to turn his OCD towards RC helicopters.

In recent years helicopters have gotten much more approachable. Battery technology has evolved and you can now get a simple, ready-to-fly electric helicopter for a reasonable price. I picked up a E-Sky Lama 2 just like his from eBay a couple of weeks ago and have been having a blast!

First off, this helicopter is a toy more than a true RC helicopter. It’s small, about a foot long, and isn’t strong enough to fly outside unless it’s absolutely still. It is best suited for a large open-area in your house. It also can only carry it’s own weight. The first question most people have asked is “Can you strap a camera on it?” It’s surprising to me how many people ask this. Secondly, no, you need a bigger bird to do that with. (Chris just ordered a T-Rex, which can carry cargo and so much more. We’ll see how long I can hold out before upgrading.)

Even though it is a toy, it is a tremendous amount of fun after you learn to fly it. It took me about three 10 minute sessions before I could really hover with stability and not run into a variety of stuff. Now, after a few more sessions I have good control and am starting to make some maneuvers. My hope is to get to the point where I can race my father-in-law (he got one of these for Christmas from yours truly).

I’ve had fun this week getting caught up on some hobbies, restarting others, and considering picking up some more. I revisited my telescope for the first time in a while this week. I’ve been wanting an equatorial wedge, so I got that and played around with the whole rig some more. The wedge will allow me to get into astrophotography. While I still don’t feel terribly comfortable with my scope (I always feel like I’m going to break something), I’m much more comfortable than I was before. I took it outside last night and played around with the fairly clear, but incredibly light polluted, sky from our driveway.

I’ve also gotten a little fascinated with binoculars. Canon makes these amazing image stabilized binocs that would be great for nights out with the telescope (particularly if someone comes along) and for checking out birds. I admit that I’ve developed this weird birding hobby. I can’t wait for next summer with the new bird “sanctuary” we got setup this fall. It’s going to be crazy.

Then there is shortwave radio. This has interested me for years, but I’ve never taken the plunge. The place in town that sells my telescope stuff sells shortwave stuff (it’s actually more of a radio star, called Radio City after all). I was playing with this Yaesu VR-5000 radio there and thinking that would be a lot of fun to learn about as well. I could put a big antennae on the roof and tune into Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Add all this to photography, anything and everything computer related, digital video – oh yeah, and stuff like cycling and hiking. I need more time in the day.

This past week I was in Radio Shack and saw they were running a great deal on the Linksys WRT54G wireless router (double rebates!). I’ve had a D-Link 624 for a long time and its worked without any issues. However, I’d read at length about the WRT54G and it’s open platform. Linksys built the WRT54G on a Linux platform and made the firmware available via open source. There is some debate wether that was intentional or not, but the GPL forced them to make it available. The result was awesome 3rd party firmware like Sveasoft and DD-WRT.

So, I picked up one of these cheap units at Radio Shack and today I sat down to play with it.

Then everything went south…

About 20 days ago Linksys (now owned by Cisco) started selling the WRT54G v5. All the previous versions of this ran Linux, but now they are using VxWorks. Unfortunately, this means no 3rd party firmware. This seems like such a bad idea, particularly since this router became the success it is because of 3rd party firmware. Luckily there is a new model, WRT54GL that is the v4 box with Linux.

Buyer beware if you are looking to get one of these.