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Wind in Colorado -- Damage To My Home, and A Lesson in Client Communication

Roof DamageThis morning was an interesting one.  It was an extremely windy night last night in metro-Denver.  It was howling, the dog door was opening and closing on it's own.  The trees were creaking and branches from the shrubs were rubbing against the windows.  All in all, a little eerie and quite loud.

I got up this morning to all this noise and started the kettle for a cup of tea.  I sat down at my computer to check email, look at the weather, and read the headlines in the news.  Sitting here, I suddenly heard a cracking sound so loud that I nearly jumped out my skin--it was 7 am.  I was sure that a tree had hit the back of the house.  It was loud enough that my kid woke up yelling, my wife was up like a shot, and the dogs nearly had a conniption.

Outside, I started looking around and found a piece of flashing hanging off the side of the house. It was dangling from a single nail.  I kept looking around for the source of the noise when I looked up slowly and pointed at our roof to my wife.

The wind had peeled about 1/8th of the shingle from the roof and folded it over toward the centre of the roof exposing the underlayment.

We called the insurance company and got in touch with a roofer.  The insurance--at 8 am--assured us that an inspector would contact us by the end of the day.  The roofer said he would be here by afternoon to assess the damage.  The roofer arrived, but no insurance inspector.

Sprint and Insurance

Today I dropped my Treo 650 today at work. The display shattered leaving large grey areas oozing through out the front LCD. It is times like this that I am glad we bought insurance from our phones. We pay $3 per month (although I think it is going to raise up to $4 shortly) and it covers accidental damage to the phone. My Treo 600 died and they upgraded me for free to the 650. Now with a cracked screen, they had it repaired in an hour.

Given that I would have to upgrade to a 700 now and that a 700 runs $300, if I make use of the insurance ONCE in 75 months--or 6.25 years, the insurance has paid for itself. I have used it twice in the last two years.