Hope everyone had a safe and happy fourth of July. Here in silicon valley, we wandered out to see the fireworks at th Santa Clara central park and hung out with the neighbors watching other neighbors shoot off an impressive display of very illegal mortar rockets while waiting for the official show. Which didn’t disappoint.

My full set of pics from last night are now on flickr, and here is (I’m experimenting to see how this works!) a slideshow of them. First time I’ve shot using the Canon 7D like this and I have to say I was impressed with the results.

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Maybe it’s just me, but those tip jars mostly say “hey, we know you don’t care enough about that change to want to carry it around, we’ll take it!”

And honestly — I do tend to use it for that some of the time….

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With the weather having returned to winter weather and some much needed rain, I spent Saturday indoors, working on stuff, like cleaning up the photo library (lots of half-finished imports, etc) and tweaking the blog, and writing.

Today, the weather cleared up a bit, so I headed out to run a couple of errands, and while out, I decided I had to get out and go birding, just a bit. So I ended up at Calero Reservoir down in Coyote Valley, hoping maybe to find the bald eagle that’s been hanging out there (nope), or maybe the loon (nope). It’s interesting to track this area season to season — last winter we had good numbers of loons around the area, this winter, we have had close to zero, but large numbers of mergansers. Birds are so unreliable — sort of. While these kinds of variations happen every year, we also have birds that return, year after year, to the same location and many times the same tree.

I missed out on the main birds I was looking for, but heading back into Coyote Valley, I ran into an osprey with a fish.

It wasn’t exactly pleased at being watched, so it gave me two steps away from the car and flew up, grumping at me as it left. It ended up circling around me a bit, then coming down in the middle of a pasture out beyond the geese and staring at me while it ate until I left.

About that point it started raining, of course. But I saw a beautiful cloud formation across the pasture, so I grabbed my wide angle camera and started shooting. About that time I realized the rain was bouncing — it wasn’t raining, it was hailing. The things I do for you people to get interesting pictures…

By the way — geese do not like hail. Just saying.

But looking at that vista, taking those pictures, made me stop  and remember, just for a minute, how beautiful this area is and how many things we have going for us here when we stop being too busy to look and explore. Those of you living in sleeping bags under your desks don’t know what you’re missing. Hopefully you’ll figure it out before it’s too late…

Of course, after a minute, I realized it was still hailing, and decided warm and dry would win out over more photography for now, and got in the car, cranked up the heater, and came home to what the NHL All-Star game…

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Of course the Public Market will be a boon to McEnery and his partners. By investing $5 million to build a pedestrian mall, expand a parking garage, and help with the construction costs of several new structures near San Pedro Square, the City is in effect helping the private enterprise that McEnery and his partners have launched. But these investments will likely also benefit other Downtown businesses and the city as a whole. That’s how these public-private partnerships work. And as we have seen, they work.

We are hearing, in the weeks since the project was announced, from the doubters who can’t see a Public Market succeeding in San Jose. Others simply can’t get past the idea of tax dollars benefiting private businesses.

Count me as one of those people who’d love to see a thriving public market here in the south bay. Anyone who’s been to Pike Place Market in Seattle has some idea of what it can do and be — but I’m even more of a fan of Granville Island in Vancouver. Even London Quoy in North Vancouver, Granville’s smaller brother, is a neat spot for shopping and lunch.

The naysayers — mostly, they seem to not want to see McEnery benefit. If it makes financial sense for the city, we shouldn’t let the personalities involved stop it. Too bad the city of San Jose spent, what, $30 million trying to stop the county from building the theater on the fair grounds, especially since it looks like neither theater will ever get built, at least in my lifetime; it sure would be nice to have that money for projects like this.

I do, though, have questions about this public market; the area has tried this concept once before, in Mountain View at the Old Mill property, and it had this same kind of enthusiasm and it failed miserably. I’ve never seen a cogent explanation why — it wasn’t the greatest building, but was in a good area, good local population, good support, strong interest and good vendors early, lots of parking and nice access. And it failed.

So why is this proposal different and better? Why will it succeed where the Mountain View one didn’t? Before the city commits to this, I’d love to hear why this second run at the public market won’t end up like the first one, especially since, while I like the San Pedro Square area, access and parking aren’t going to be as good as the old Mountain View market had?

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he zeppelin was shipped by boat from Zeppelin AG in Germany to New Orleans and is right this moment flying toward San Francisco. She just crossed the Arizona/California border, as documented on their blog

$500 per ticket for a one-hour tour. $950 for two hours.

oh, really cool. But watch out for that three hour tour.

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This is what the roof of an Eichler should look like. Or, at least, an Eichler with a foam roof that is a couple of years away from needing recoating.

Aside: Eichler’s, by the way, were a mid century modern design by Joseph Eichler. Mostly post and beam (though not all) with an emphasis on an open floor pan facing the outside with an open to the air atrium in the middle. Sort of Levitt-with-style for the west coast. Eichler owners get Eichler specific spam and there is an entire network of web sites devoted to Eichlers.

Fairly smooth, unbroken, sea of off-whiteness. Reflective. Waterproof. A solid roof over our heads to keep us dry, out of the sun, and warm in the winter (sort of).

Of course, being an Eichler, the roof is much more than just a shelter over the house. Since there are no unbroken walls — just windows — between the walls, almost all electrical and any re-routed plumbing ends up on the roof.

Or, more specifically, in the roof.

I feel Bbum’s pain. We also live in an Eichler, a fairly early (1956) model. Great little houses, and we’ve taken pains to try to keep the thing in as close to original state as we can (pretty much everyone in our neighborhood has either added a peaked roof or closed in the beams with a drywall celling and insulation, we’ve done neither)

On the other hand, we had to reroof shortly after we bought it, and we went tar and gravel, and don’t regret it a bit. We ALSO added R14 insulation under the roof, which was a godsend at the time and even more now (and a good reason why we can leave the open beam ceilings). My one regret there was not insulating the garage roof, too. oh well.

But the one real chore with Eichlers is running the infrastructure. With a slab underneath and a flat roof above, getting wiring and piping from here to there is a massive pain; ultimately, you either chew up the slab, mess up the roof, or open up the walls. In our case, our house was redone in the 70s with copper plumbing, so that’s not an issue with us, but I’m not looking forward to the ultimate need to rewire some areas of the house…

But I know a lot of people who really love Eichlers, and I have no regrets owning one. Too many of them have been “remodeled” until they have no personality left…

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I started out heading to the lighthouse, which was fogged in with a heavy, consistent wind, so I changed my mind and headed off to the area near the rescue boathouse overlooking Drake’s bay. On the Bay were the  typical set of gulls, plus a couple of rafts (about 50 total) of mostly Surf Scoters — with a few other birds mixed in I finally resolved out to be Buffleheads and White-Winged scoters (lifer), all at great distance. Evaluating my photos later, I also found what looks to be a sea otter froclicking in amongst the scoters…

There were turkey vultures everywhere. I counted at least 30 individuals, and at one point, had eight in the sky at one time. I stopped off at one of the historic dairies to watch the vultures and a red-tailed hawk playing in the breezes and occasionally strafing cows.

After that, South beach, where I had a number of fly-overs by Brown Pelicans and Turkey Vultures, as well as one hunting Osprey.

Final stop was Drake’s Beach, where I had a pretty good smoked salmon, chipotle cream cheese and red-onion quesadilla at the cafe (good, but a bit pricey, also 45 minutes or so from the nearest deli; memo to self: pack lunch), where I got a different view of Drake’s Bay and got better views of the White-Winged Scoters. Also along the beach were two Common Loons

As well as various gulls (including a couple I think were Heerman’s but they kept their distance), and a couple of seals sitting offshore and watching the silly humans.

Laurie took one look at this photo and declared: see, loons are simply turtles with feathers, which is why they fly so badly…

The photos from the trip are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/sets/72157605125990295/

Species seen on the trip:

• California Quali
• Brown Pelican
• Osprey
• Marbled Godwit
• Long-Billed Curlew
• Scrub Jay
• Turkey Vulture
• Red-Winged Blackbird
• Surf Scoter
• Pigeon Guilllemot
• Various gulls
• Great Egret
• Great Blue Heron
• various swallows
• Red-Tailed hawk
• Double-crested cormorant
• White-crowned sparrow
• Song sparrow (heard)
• Chickadee (heard)
• Common Loon
• White-winged scoter (life)
• Bufflehead
• Raven
• American Crow

Also — over 30 deer, all hanging out in plain view in the middle of the day. there’s a big controversy about the deer population going on up there, and while I’m going to stay out of that, seeing so many deer along the road makes me think the population is pretty thick up there. Far too often in these cases the “bambi factor” starts kicking in.

Also seen — sea otter (probable — it MIGHT have been a seal, but I don’t think so), harbor seals, one or two dairy cows…

update: heard from a friend at the local audubon, who thought the white-winged scoters were early for migrants. He checked with the local expert up there, and he confirmed the ones I saw were overwintering, they had three there all summer.

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The House of Representatives on Tuesday drove a stake through President Bush’s proposal to study draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the storied place some thought could once again rival Yosemite Valley.

But in truth, the idea was dead on arrival several months ago.

In a multibillion-dollar Interior Department funding bill, lawmakers pointedly declined to include money needed to study the Hetch Hetchy proposal. Bush had sought $7 million to begin studying the idea of draining the reservoir and restoring the once-famous valley in Yosemite National Park.

Forget it, lawmakers said.

“This highly controversial proposal, with a potential cost of as much as $10 billion, was not well justified in the budget materials,” the House Appropriations Committee noted.

I’m happy to hear this, although I wish I could say it was done for the right reasons.

To me, this isn’t about whether or not the idea is a valid one, but a simple fact: the national parks are currently in a serious financial bind with woefully underfunded budgets and severe deferred maintenance issues. The hetch hetchy plan (if one could give it enough substance to call it a plan) is a long-term, high-risk, spend-decades-in-court-at-best idea that’s going to waste money on lawyers and bureaucrats that are better spent on fixing up parks and hiring rangers to watch over them.

I just can’t justify spending this money on someone’s fantasy dream when the reality is places like Yosemite and Glacier and Mt. Ranier and Olympic National Park all have severe needs for these dollars to fix up what already exists and is in use by people on a daily basis (or would be, if it wasn’t closed due to storm damage, lack of maintenance or no rangers to patrol).

Maybe someday. This isn’t a piece of land we need to buy to save from developers. this is a piece of land that was developed decades ago that maybe someday we CAN recover, but right now, our focus ought to be on taking care of what we already have that needs our attention.

This idea, frankly, isn’t about restoring hetch hetchy. It’s about keeping lawyers employed for the years it’d take for this to trudge through the courts and the various sides duke it out. And that’s a bad use of funds…

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“A small rockfall occurred at 2:53 am on Saturday, June 9 behind Curry Village. The release point for the rockfall was ~550 meters (1800 feet) above the Valley floor, at the top of Staircase Falls. A rock about 20 cubic meters in size (60 tons) fell down the path of Staircase Falls, sweeping additional debris down with it.

It’s easy to think of these things as simply entropy in action, until you realize you were there just a few weeks ago, and you know where this happened…

A not-so-quiet (to those there) reminder that Yosemite Valley isn’t tamed, merely occupied.

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Fortunately, this year, the wind was almost directly from the north, sending the fireworks smoke on the crowds in the park, rather than on us, so the pictures are very clear and, I think, much better than last year.

The full set is here.

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I’ve been focusing (ahem) so much on “big glass” photography lately I decided it was time for a change, so I loaded up the 17-85 onto the Canon, along with a 12mm extension tube, and went small. This was done in natural light, no flash, and I think it came out amazingly well.

More pictures from San Mateo Coastline, and my flickr set of flower pictures (soon to start expanding significantly)

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So, it’s my last working-day of freedom, and I didn’t want to face the crowds on the weekend, so I spent today out on the coast, driving to half-moon bay, and I ended up starting by heading up to Montara, which is about as far as you can go these days up Highway 1 because of the slide on Devil’s Slide (which they are still saying is months from opening, if it ever does, because they aren’t sure there’s any support left to rebuild the road on — and it’s still sliding).

Now, as you leave highway 280 to 92 to go to Half Moon bay, there are signs warning of the closure. there are signs on highway 92 as you go over the hill to the coast that it’s closed. It’s been in the news on and off for months, because of the inconvenience and business impact. And as you drive north on highway 1, there are multiple signs warning of the closure, most in bright highway orange with flashing lights. (yes, I’m leading you somewhere….)

So I’m at the point where the road closes, a parking area on Montara State Beach, taking pictures of the coast, and some of the flowers, experimenting with my macro lens and a 12mm extension.

And suddenly this moving van drives up. It sees the big “ROAD CLOSED” sign across the road and stops.

And I suddenly hear this voice yelling “Hey! Can I get through there?” at me.

I have to admit — all I did was shake my head, because if I’d opened my mouth, I’d have fallen over laughing — how could anyone have gotten there and not noticed ANY of the signs?

Um…. okay.

And, of course, Caltrans has been working on a solution to Devil’s Slide — and it has been held up in various forms by opposition over cost, over environmental impacts, etc, etc, etc.

Caltrans first recommended replacing Devil’s Slide with a new route in — get this — 1958. And now they’re piecing it back together again, since the final solution that was (more or less) agreed to (in 1996) won’t be ready until 2011.

The mind just refuses to accept how some things get bogged down in the political process. 38 years of fighting?

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So last night, a group of us grabbed our scopes and headed off looking for dark, clear skies. we ended up on the top of Mount Hamilton, pretty literally in the shadow of the Lick Observatory. I pulled out the etx-90 and a set of big binocs, my friend hauled out his Meade (my ETX would, basically, be his finder scope), and we spent some time celebrating our neighbor’s close visit.

Seeing was good. Despite the wind (which added a nasty jitter to the scopes), on my scope I was able to get a good disc, and make out some detail of the polar icecaps and some minor detail of the edging around Mons Olympus using a 12.5mm lens and an 80a filter (which gave me the best results). My friend’s sturdier and bigger scope allowed them to resolve out most of Olympus Mons and see some other surface detail.

Seeing survived about an hour, and then we had some moisture stream into the upper atmosphere and things degraded. We still experimented with filters and the like for a while, but the best views were the early ones.

We also had a great view of the brush fire in the easy bay hills, which was going great guns (unfortunately), and seemingly not at all knocked down for the evening. We were upwind of it and some ways away, but in the binocs, it was an amazing sight. And on top of that, the Milky Way was in full force, so we spent some time remembering what the sky looks like when you aren’t blinded by civilization around you…

All in all, an awesome, fun evening. After months of threatening, it was great to finally break out the scope, even if Mars isn’t the most dramatic planet, even when up close and personal. With a scope like the ETX, you don’t exactly get Hubble shots, something that can be a real disappointment to someone who doesn’t understand how this stuff really operates (my view of Mars was, more or less, about the size of the head of a match….).

So, when was the last time you saw the stars, anyway?

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The key thing to remember, I think, is that any time you are hiring a contractor to do something, whether it’s paint your house or replace a toilet or whatever needs done, is to understand enough of what’s happening to know whether or not the contractor is doing a good job. In this situation, you are your own general contractor hiring a sub-contractor, so you need to understand what you’re hiring out.

Most good contractors will take the time to explain things you don’t understand; take advantage of that, but be aware that if you already know you won’t be accepting a given contractor’s bid, you’re wasting his time. That’s part of the reality of bidding a job and contractors factor that into their pricing, but it’s no excuse to abuse the relationship. you’re better off going back to the contractor you ARE hiring to ask questions you still have. of course, if you honestly aren’t sure who to hire, or whether the job is being bidded properly, you should keep asking questions until you do.

My first thought: “everyone” tells you to get three bids. Well, life’s not that simple. I have accepted the first bid. I’ve accepted the seventh bid. What’s important is that you keep talking to contractors until you find one you’re convinced will do the job properly for a price you feel is fair.

For instance, three weeks after we closed on the house, the furnace went kerplooey. We contacted a number of companies, and ended up working with one that could deal with the problem quickly at a good price. That led to further work — we’ve completely replaced the HVAC system, including reducting the house, and have done a couple of thousand in plumbing to the place since we’ve arrived. We don’t bid any of this out now, we call these folks; they aren’t the cheapest, but they’re wonderfully reliable, their work is first class, their systems are quality, and I can trust them. It makes no sense to go bidding for what we need these days.

Or when we re-roofed. One company has done seven or eight of the roofs on the block — the Eichler is a bit of a specialty, being a flat roof, and residential tar and gravel isn’t exactly common. But to get a sanity check on the price, we brought in a second company to bid; it was 40% higher, without the roof insulation we’d gotten added into the bid. No brainer, we went with the first company, and the R14 under the tar and gravel has made a huge difference to the livability of the house (and our energy bills… we had to spec up the air conditioner significantly when it was replaced because of the heat gain from the roof. Now, the airco is pretty bored, except on really hot days…0

And in one case — our first run at patio and hardscaping, we just gave up and put it off. That was during the high point of the dot com stuff, though, when every subcontractor was booked eight months in advance (or worthless), and people wouldn’t even come out to look at smaller jobs, and if they did, priced them high enough to make sure you wouldn’t accept their bids. ugh. These days, it’s a lot easier to find good subs…

So my point is — get as many bids as you need to get the right guy. To do that, you need to know enough about the job to know what a good one is, right? If you don’t, the sub ought to help you understand what needs to be done, but don’t completely trust them to tell you the entire truth. Try to find an uninvolved third party to help you understand what’s going on and/or evaluate bids with you.

So, here’s how I found our painting contractor. For the last year or so, I’ve been keeping an eye on paint jobs I’ve seen in the area. Residential, commercial, it didn’t matter, I just watched for jobs I liked, and tried to find out who did them. Some contractors put signs up, many have signage on their trucks or vans. it’s usually pretty easy. I tend to think contractors that use trucks with no signage at all are hiding something, because why not advertise (in many cases, they’re either unlicensed, or they’re small groups that are hired out by bigger companies as sub-sub-contractors. more on that later).

I also asked around to find out from folks I knew who were getting paint jobs who they used. In a few cases, I did it to make sure that company got thrown OFF my list (for instance, a house across the street was being repainted so it could be sold. the painters came in and prepped one day, did the main coat the next — and it rained a little that night. Next morning, they came in and did the trim. IMHO, that house needed at least 48 hours to dry before it should have been painted again — and the trim is already peeling, less than a year later. A company I definitely wouldn’t hire…). Also, I throw out companies who’s company vehicles are in bad shape. A contractor’s truck is going to be used (and used hard), and going to show wear, but a there’s a difference between a truck that shows use and one that (in the case of a painter) looks like it’s rented out weekends for paintball contests. A sloppy truck is, to me, sign of a sloppy work ethic, and that is a short walk from a sloppy job. If a sub doesn’t care about how their trucks look — what will my place look like?

I specifically look for small to medium, family or individual owned contractors who use their own crews. With big companies, you can get lost in the noise, and it’s hard to find someone who stands up and will be responsible. Many times, those big companies will hire out smaller companies to actually od the work — they’re effectively brokers, not contractors. This isn’t necessarily bad, since we did the front door that way through Home Depot and I thought the sub did a great job, but you lose some control, and you’re depending on the company hiring subs that will live to the company’s standards. the busier a company, the more likely that won’t happen. Basically, I want to know who the owner is, and how well he’ll back up the work. The closer you get to the owner of the firm, the better.

Remember that most contracting work is subjective (paint, which deals so much with color, is exceptionally so). A technically good job where the colors are off isn’t a success any more than perfect colors put on badly. So don’t minimize the need to be sympatico with your contractor on colors. A good contractor will help you get the colors you need, not necessarily the ones you want.

As I was watching paint jobs, one company kept showing up. I swear half of the jobs I saw that I really liked were done by this one firm. So they got called first. The owner came out two days later, surveyed the house, and wrote up the bid. We spent about 20 minutes discussing the prep work needed (easily 10, maybe 15 years since the last paint job, stucco with some settling cracks, a few other joys), and then another 20 minutes on paint colors, especially on the porch, we’re I’m rebuilding into a (hopeful) focal point.

He brought up certain aspects of the prep that would need special focus, and explained why he felt they ought to be done. he suggested upgrading to an Elastomer paint (basically, it covers and fills micro-cracks in stucco, and then stretches so they don’t come back), and went into some detail of what the house needed. His company is medium sized, about 50 people, but all work is done by employees, and supervised by foremen who are promoted up through the company. Those are very important guarantees to me that what the bidder says will be done, will be done. And then everything he suggested to me verbally was writen into the bid as documentation for the foreman.

The downside: he was about $700 more than I’d hoped, and about $1000 more than I wanted. Oh, and his trades vans are impeccably clean. You don’t have to wash them weekly, but it doesn’t hurt..

The second company was similar to the first — I’d seen a few jobs I liked, they advertised on the jobs. About a 70 person company. I got a full-time bid writer, not the owner. To be fair, I give all bidders the same job; even if something comes up with an earlier bid I want to adopt, I don’t add it to later bids. I want to see if other subs will come up with the same (or similar, or better) ideas. If not, you can always have them adjust the bid later — they won’t mind, and it’s fairest to all.

The second bidder had pretty much the same prep work specced out, which gives me confidence that this is what the house really needs. His bid differs slightly in a few ways, and in one major way. He doesn’t propose the elastomer paint; instead, he bids priming the entire house.

The third company I called out I called cold out of the yellow pages. I enjoy a bit of randomness, to make sure I’m not pre-judging myself into a corner. Small group, four employees, one crew. He was a no-show for his appointment (which happens); he called two days later, and it was a root canal that went bad, and he was in the emergency room. Like I say, stuff happens, so we rescheduled (but don’t expect me to call and ask why you didn’t show up.. but a contractor that calls, I’ll talk to).

We talked over the job, given the same premise as the first two.

final bids:

Bid #1: 3,600

Bid #2: 4,900

Bid #3: 1,900

Same job: $3,000 difference. Makes you wonder, huh?

I really liked the third contractor — but I don’t believe he properly bid the amount of prep work this house needs, and I don’t think his crew is really up to doing it. So while he’s the low bid, I’ve eliminated him — but I’m recommending him to my neighbor, who wants her house painted, and which is in good shape bcause it’s been painted three times in the last five years (thanks to two sales…). She’s so tired of white on white, and that crew is perfect for her house. Just not mine.

The difference between bid 1 and bid 2? Once you sit down and break down the bids, bid #1 and bid #2 are exactly the same price — except bid #2 added a full prime coat to the house.

And both bid #1 and bid #2 have bid a job that’ll do what we need — get the exterior fixed up, and get a quality paint job on it.

But IMHO, I’m convinced #1 will do better prep, and is dealing with the house through prep and with a better paint, while #2 went with a lower quality paint and a more labor intensive solution. It’s not wrong, it’s a different philosophy. Either way, we’ll end up with a well-done house. But the 2nd bid is more profitable for his company than the first bid will be to his company.

Which is why you need to know what kind of job you’re having done, and how it ought to be done. There’s not a thing wrong with that second bid, except that it’s slanted more to the contractor’s benefit than mine. If you don’t know any better, it can cost you a couple of thousand dollars and you’ll be happy with the results…

Of course, before I fully commit to bid #1, I’m going to ask him his opinion of the full prime, and see what he says. I think I know what the answer will be…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Hiring a contractor….. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.