Thank you for the article, Bryan!
It is well written and I see that for the most part we are using the same workflow. I too am using Spyder3 Elite for color calibration. I upgraded a couple of days ago to the latest version which has a better user interface and many new enhancements.
One question for you, Bryan:
Contrast adjustment using the left and right bar in the RAW tab of the tools palette is similar to setting the black and white point, right? That means in some situations where the scene is very bright/large dynamic range you can not use the bars for contrast adjustments without clipping the shadows or the highlights. What do you do then?