Category Archives: Buildipedia

Buildipedia, content writing, Suite 101, Writing

Writing writing writing

Leave a comment

Well, my third article is up at Buildipedia.com, the second in my five part series on construction contract administration. These are shorter articles and pay $100 each. I have also submitted my second feature article but they haven’t posted it yet. These are longer and pay $250 each. I’m quite pleased with the site, and hope they keep giving me assignments at a similar rate as now. I’m under contract to do three more contract admin articles, and one news article on the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

I’ve also been preparing a longer article pitch (or could be three feature articles), on asphalt solar collectors. Not sure how I came across this concept, but I’m intrigued by it. Use existing and new asphalt pavement as solar collectors, with required retrofit. Worcester Polytech (the university I was accepted to but couldn’t afford to attend) is doing some good research into this, though the data I found is about two years old. I hope to make this an interview article, as well as research and apply good old common sense and engineering judgment.

At work today I wrote also. Item 1 was to re-write a contract for a water transmission main relocation. We are already under contract for this, but since the Arkansas transportation department is paying the bill, we have to restructure our contract in accordance with how they want to see it. As I worked on that, I had to retype the whole thing because the electronic file mysteriously disappeared. And I found the description of the work to be performed very inadequate. Item 2 was also marketing related, a brief scope of work to go in a proposal for a major development in the Tulsa suburb of Catoosa. Naturally the developer wants to destroy a floodplain and wants us to assist him. I wrote the scope for the flood study portion of the project.

Ideas for articles for Suite101.com continue to flow into my head faster than I can capture them on paper. The Catoosa flood study has given me ideas for about three articles I could write—and that’s before we do the study! The flood zone we will be working in is a Zone A, which has the least degree of attention to establishing it of all the regulatory flood zones. Consequently it is least written about of all the flood zones. I have an excellent FEMA manual on these zones, but it’s a difficult read. I could see doing a Frequently Asked Questions type article, or the three I mentioned, and doing a real service to the regulated community, maybe even my wallet.

My other area of concentration at Suite is in stock trading articles. I have four or five planned, and maybe over the next week I can get a couple of them done. I feel good about these articles being better earners than my US history and Robert Frost poetry articles. The ads Google puts on the pages are all relevant and reasonably attractive. A couple of Suite veterans (I don’t consider myself a veteran there yet) have said I ought to write about 20 trading articles and see if that makes a difference in my revenue. Since I earn less than 50 cents a day there on average, a hub of 20 articles should tell me something.

We, I’d better run and do some of that. Those articles don’t get written when I practice Internet writing on this blog. Also better add the checkbook since I paid some bills tonight. And, St. Athanasius and a NatGeo issue are beckoning to me.

Buildipedia, holidays, reading, Suite 101

Working Hard at Doing Nothing

Leave a comment

I should go back and review the post I wrote on Friday, about looking forward to a holiday that was both productive and restful. I wonder exactly what I put down for the productive part. Whatever it was, I’m sure I didn’t accomplish it.

On Friday afternoon neighbors offered us their spare tickets to the Saturday afternoon Northwest Arkansas Naturals game. They are the AA farm club of the Kansas City Royals. The stadium is only 30 miles from our house, but we haven’t gone to a game in the few years they’ve been in the area. Part of that is busyness; part is hoarding of restricted recreational dollars; part is simply I’ve fallen out of love with baseball. That was the game of my early youth, till I played and became a fan of football. Then baseball progressively fell out of my favor as football’s star rose. The 1993-94 major league strike ended baseball for me, though I was just looking for an excuse. The later NFL strike didn’t impact my love of that game.

Don’t get me wrong; baseball is a great game. It’s just that football is a much better game for me, and so it gets my limited sports watching hours. But we decided that the diversion would be good, so we went. We had four tickets but had trouble finding anyone to go with us. Finally found one person. We both enjoyed the game. Fortunately our seats were just in the shade the whole game and we didn’t have to fight the sun. The Naturals lost to the Tulsa Drillers, mainly because of a stupid handling between the pitcher and first baseman of a foul ball. It would have ended the first inning. Instead the Drillers went on to score three unearned runs, and eventually won the game 5-2.

The rest of the weekend was marred by minor physical ailments. Last week I was fighting a mild summer cold. I thought it was pretty much over Friday night, but it came back Sunday. Spent most of that day and Monday just resting to try to knock it out. Also on Monday my rheumatoid arthritis flared up. Well, some of it may be osteo as well, in my wrists. Monday morning it was all I could do to crawl out of bed to my reading chair in the living room or to the sun porch. The only physical exercise I got was a ten minute walk down and up the hill and around the block Monday evening. However, by the end of the day I felt pretty good. Cold symptoms gone; rheumatoid gone; osteo better; energy level up.

I finished The Adams Chronicles on Monday and wrote my book review about it. Also on Sunday-Monday I wrote my next article on contract administration for buildipedia.com and sent it off. And I did research for and started writing my next stock trading article for suite101.com. I checked my reading pile for what I’m supposed to read next and decided I didn’t want to read that right now. Rather than re-shuffle the pile, and not feeling like tackling the magazines and newsletters that are piling up again, I decided to try reading Athanasius’ The Incarnation of the Word of God—in English of course. I got through a couple of chapters of it and kind of understand it. I’ll have to finish it when my powers of concentration are at their greatest and distractions at their least; and not necessarily in consecutive sittings.

Tonight I hope to finish and post that Suite 101 article, and maybe get through a couple of mags and/or newsletters. And I’ll take another look at my reading pile and see what looks good next.

Buildipedia, home improvements, reading, Suite 101, Writing

Reading, Writing, and…Demolition

Leave a comment

After a busy weekend last weekend, painting the walls in the family room and stripping wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom, I took it easy on the physical labor this past week. Did some light work in that bathroom, removing bits of paper we’d missed. Put some pictures back on the walls, and restored some other things in the family room. But I didn’t undertake anything major.

During the week we had the air conditioner man out to look and see if he could see what is causing the staining on the ceiling in our computer room and in the guest bedroom next to it. He said he couldn’t see anything with the limited view he had, and that we would need to tear out some of the fixed ceiling to tell anything. The restoration people said their meters detected wetness in the ceiling. Insurance wouldn’t cover what caused the problem, but after we fixed the problem they would restore everything, including ceiling that we had to tear out to find the problem.

So yesterday, after washing windows, screens, and window sills in the computer room, I began tearing out ceiling. The first piece comes out with the most difficulty, of course, as you pierce that nice finish and use the hole to begin the tear out. I started where the stain looked worst, and the first piece felt a little wet to me. But it was cold, being right near an AC duct, so maybe I was feeling the cold and thought it was wet.

I kept at it, removing enough so I could see what was up there. It’s a spaghetti mix of water pipe, AC duct, drain lines, and electric and telephone. All the ceiling board seemed dry, though staining on the back side sort of mimicked the stains visible below, except more extensive. Looking through the joists, into the ceiling above the bedroom, I could see that the hot and cold to the washing machine was right above the stains. But nothing looked wet.

So maybe the water came from two problems. A year (or maybe more) ago we had to replace the garbage disposal, a hole having been worn into the side of it. We figured this was the cause of the staining, as the kitchen if right above that part of the computer room (The Dungeon, as I fondly call it). But the staining in the bedroom showed up much later. Maybe it’s a leak associated with the washer. Or, the main house drainage line for the upstairs is right in that area too. Maybe it’s something to do with that.

It appears that we will have to run some appliances and watch and see if the area above the stains looks wet. That means everything will be torn up for a while, since we won’t have the new carpet put down (as a result of the hot water heater leaking) until we have the ceiling fixed, which won’t be till we find the leak.

In the meanwhile, I’ve got lots of reading done, not in a book, but in accumulated magazines. I finished the latest edition of Poets and Writers today, finished an old (2008) National Geographic yesterday, and got some good information about a sci fi subject I was thinking of. Have about finished reading the latest Quadangles, the URI alumni mag. And it seems that I read something else earlier in the week. Oh, I’ve read some in an investment/trading book, and have brainstormed a series of articles for Suite101.com on the subject. I hope to write one tonight.

So all in all a productive time. I’m fairly well caught up on mags, so will go back to my reading pile and see what book is next.

Buildipedia, Engineering, flood studies, Life Group lessons, Suite 101, Writing

A Full Week Ahead

Leave a comment

Yesterday was restful, sort of. I began the day with lots of aches and pains, especially in my left arm, after the home improvement work of Wednesday through Saturday. Even the after-church walk down the trail to the Crystal Bridges Museum construction site overlook was restful. Ten minutes each way in 95 degree heat, but with clouds obscuring the sun.

So I face the new work week a bit tired, but not so much as late last week. My main engineering work this week will be two flood studies: Little Osage Creek in Centerton AR and Blossom Way Creek in Rogers AR. The Little Osage one is tweaking the computer model based on recent survey information and tweaking the mapping as a result, and getting it sent off again to FEMA. The Blossom Way one is more substantial. I finally have data on the previous study, and need to extend that floodplain into new areas upstream and merge new survey data with the existing. There is a major difference in the amount of flood water between my calculations and the previous study, and I have to work that out this week. Some training may also be on the docket this week.

For writing, I have an assignment for Buildipedia, deadline next Monday. I’d like to have it wrapped up and in the mail this week, though. It’s on America’s wastewater infrastructure, a subject I know fairly well but haven’t looked at for a while. Still the research will be easy. I may also receive a contract this week for the series of articles they want me to write on construction contract administration. Those will be shorter (300-500 words), and should appear on the site during September, maybe four or five articles, though I proposed as many as seven.

I’d also like to get two articles written for Suite101.com: the next one in my series on technical analysis for stock trading, and one about the St. Jacob’s Well site in southwestern Kansas. I’m ahead of the article quota required by my Suite contract, but these are two fairly easy articles. Might was well get them written and posted and give them a chance to be earning a little revenue.

I also have two more lessons to write in my adult Sunday school (a.k.a. Life Group) series Sacred Moments. I taught one on ordination yesterday, that seemed to be well received. The next one is on last rites/death, then one on foot washing and the series is over. I will need to write a sell sheet on this and perhaps market it as a potential publishable Bible study.

I don’t anticipate that the week will give me time to work on my novel. I’m not sure about carving out time to go to writers guild meeting tomorrow night, though it’s possible. If I complete the other items, that will be enough.

Buildipedia, Suite 101

Deck Invasion

2 Comments

Yesterday was a better day at work. At least part of my mind has now followed me home and is no longer in southwestern Kansas. I got more done at work than I did the three days I worked last week. In off hours I was able to better concentrate on writing tasks, and did required brainstorming of a new article series for Buildipedia and began drafting a new article for Suite 101.

Most of the evening was quiet. I tackled family finances, getting all debits from our trip entered, the checkbook added, and a few bills paid. I read forty pages in a book we picked up at Meade, Tales of a Sod House Baby. It was all quite enjoyable.

As I was sitting in my reading chair in the living room, about 10:30 PM, I heard noises behind my head. They sounded like they were in the exterior wall of the house, and I thought we might have mice in there. The sounds were repeated, and I was able to distinguish the noise was out on the deck, a critter of some sort, kind of loud. It persisted for a couple of minutes. Finally I told Lynda (who hadn’t heard it), got up from the chair and turned the exterior lights on. Two raccoons were there, now fixated by the light and not doing much but stand still. I saw movement over to the left; four more raccoons were over by the bird seed and water.

It’s not enough that we have to feed the squirrels as a consequence of trying to feed the birds. Now we have to feed the raccoons too? Six of ’em at one time? I suppose that’s what happens when you live in a thinly populated area. Our street includes about twenty platted lots, but only four houses have been built. The rest is all oak forest with a few pines, sassafras, hickory, pecan, and persimmons.

Having to chose between a fully populated neighborhood and raccoons and squirrels stealing the bird food, I guess I’ll take the latter. Some day these lots will be built on, at least some of them. Our time in the woods will come to an end. But we’ll enjoy it while we can.

Buildipedia, miscellaneous, Suite 101

New Gig, First Article Posted

2 Comments

I arrived home last night at the usual time, anticipating a busy evening, and hurting greatly due to my rheumatoid arthritis. Clean-up of the basement from the hot water heater leak was on the evening schedule. That had consumed most of the at home hours Friday, Saturday, and (less so on) Sunday. I also figured I’d have to cook supper, as my wife has been “on strike” from cooking for a while now. Not on strike in the union sense, but just having no desire to do so.

I whipped up taco salad with ground turkey (low fat, of course). It had been a hot day, but a shower came up as I was driving home, and the brief dash from driveway to garage was through cooler air. I didn’t walk through the house, but put my portfolio and calculator on the kitchen table and went straight to work.

It was hot in the kitchen, but it’s supposed to be hot in the kitchen, so I paid no attention. Then Lynda said she was real hot. I walked across the great room to the thermostat, feeling the heat. It was 87 degrees, and the digital printout said “cooling on”. My first thought was that, during the hot water heater replacement, someone had turned off the wrong breaker by mistake and had never turned it on. But that was Saturday afternoon. Surely we would have felt a warming house on Sunday. I checked: all breakers on; inside air handling unit running; outside heat pump not running.

I went back and forth from stove top to various rooms in the house, opening windows. It was now cooler outside. About the time the taco salad was ready I finally remembered that our AC guy said that the first thing to do if the AC wasn’t running was to turn it off at the thermostat, let it sit a minute, then turn it on. I did so, and immediately that outdoor unit kicked on. Who would have thunk you’d have to re-boot your air conditioner? For 30 minutes I had visions of having to replace something on the AC, and they weren’t pretty visions.

What does all this have to do with the title of this post? Not much really. I went to The Dungeon after supper and did my thing with the carpet shampooer, sucking up more moisture. Then I went to the computer and wrote a new article for Suite101.com, the first in a series on technical analysis for stock trading. I hope to write quite a few in this topic.

During the day I had worked with the editor at Buildipedia.com to put the finishing touches on my first article there, which was scheduled to be posted at midnight. As of 7:45 AM CDT it has already been read 33 times. That’s good exposure. I don’t think I can reveal how much I am being paid for this, but for on-line writing it’s a good amount, much better than the little I earn at Suite101.com. I’m working with the editor at Buildipedia on concepts for several more articles, perhaps as many as 10 to 20. Right now they seem hungry for feature articles, and I hope I can provide many. Here’s the link to the article.

Buildipedia, Writing

Time Short for Writing

Leave a comment

Yesterday I turned in my first article to Buildipedia.com. If accepted, and I feel confident it will be, it should appear on the site in a week or so. Payment is supposed to come in not more than a month. I can sure use the payment. And I’m looking forward to the next assignment…

…so long as they don’t give me too tight of a deadline. I don’t like to give much about my schedule on-line. I’m sure thieves/home invader professionals have set up Google alerts for the words “I’ll be away”, and then go after homes during that time and clear them out of all valuables. Yes, I’m sure these hoodlums have become quite tech-savvy.

But I’ll go ahead and say it. I’ll be away for a little over a week, on a 3500 mile road trip. I’ll attend my 40th high school reunion back in Rhode Island, visit with family, visit with friends, and maybe see my sister on the way back. This will be the first of my h.s. reunions I’ll have attended, and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m actually prepared to be disappointed in it, however. Our graduating class was about 700 people. Of those 80 some odd are on Facebook, and the report given on Facebook is that about 50 alumni will attend. Is it possible it will be that low? Perhaps that is only those from Facebook who are attending, and there will be many others. My best friends from school, who all live in RI, are ducking the main reunion in favor of a private get together of a few of us. Perhaps a lot of our class still live in RI, and for them the reunion doesn’t hold much interest. Or they’ve been to them in the past and they don’t feel the need to attend again.

Actually, I probably won’t attend again. High school was not my favorite three years, for a variety of reasons. College was much more enjoyable for me. But I want to see of those I haven’t seen in 40 years one last time. I can’t explain it, but I want to be there. I think that will satisfy me. There are fewer reasons to visit RI the older I get. Who knows when the next time will be.

I obviously won’t be on line much for the next week. I may work on some draft posts for this blog. I have five book review type posts to do, and a few writing ones. No shortage of things to write about, just little time. Still, if the opportunity arises, I’ll try to get on line and post an update. While I have few readers here, I want to give you all reasons to keep coming back.

Buildipedia, holidays, Suite 101, Writing

A Long and Busy Weekend Lies Ahead

2 Comments

Well, the boss just sent out an e-mail: Anyone not pushing a tight deadline may leave at 3:30 PM. I may just do that, if not quite at 3:30 then at least somewhat early. The pick-up needs an oil change, so I may go and do that.

We have Monday off for Independence Day, so it’s a three day weekend. But I enter it feeling as if I have a to-do list a mile long. Of things to do at the house, that is. At work I’m in the middle of–shall I say bogged down in–the next flood study, with it going much slower than I would like. But at home I have a ton of things to do. Here’s a few of the major tasks.

  • Finish writing and studying for the Life Group lesson I’ll teach on Sunday. The series is called “Sacred Moments”, and we are on lesson five this week. I’ve done the basic research, but each week I prepare a class handout. That’s only half done. Then I have to do some more studying. I should read at least two more chapters in my reference book and have separate teacher’s notes.
  • Write my assigned article for Buildipedia.com. It’s not due until July 14, but I’ll be driving east on that day, and I want to beat editor expectations. It’s to be 500 to 1000 words, though I think I’ll need about 1200-1300 to do the subject justice. The editor said that would be fine. Most of my research is done; it’s a question of pulling the final information together and write it.
  • Pick blackberries. I went last Saturday and picked 3 quarts. I’d like to get that many again today. The patch is huge, and I don’t think too many people know about it. If I can get 3 or 4 quarts between tomorrow and Monday, I’ll consider it a good year.
  • Finish cleaning the interior of the pick-up. I started that two weeks ago, and should be able to finish with another hour of work.
  • Take down a “leaner” from the back of my lot, before it falls where I don’t want it to and it takes two other trees with it. In North Carolina they called these “widow-makers”, so I’ll be careful. It’s cut about 1/2 way through, and I think I should be able to finish it this weekend.
  • Filing and clean-up. Always have this kind of work.
  • Adding an article to Suite101.com would be nice as well.

I think that’s enough. I’m sweating just thinking about it all. I’ll get in some good relaxation too. The weather should be nice, so maybe I’ll get a couple of long walks in as well. And maybe post here.

Buildipedia, flood studies, Health, stock market, Writing

Expectations: Some met, some Waiting

Leave a comment

On Monday I wrote that this would be a week of expectations. Many things of somewhat momentous consequence in my life all seemingly coming together. It’s now Wednesday, and I thought I’d give an interim report.

The stock trade I wrote about was for a down market. With the market plummeting yesterday, I made money and closed the trade not too far from optimum. This is my first trade since coming back to stock trading after a two year hiatus. Of course, my friend Gary is right when he commented that a single trade doesn’t mean a whole lot, and that stock trading (as opposed to investing) is more chance than skill. Those that employ this full time would disagree. In fact, on my personal trade development sheet, I wrote where I thought the downtrend was most likely stop. It was right where it did stop yesterday. Time to reassess now, see where investor sentiment takes us (a pause on the way down or a rebound) and plan the next trade.

My flood study, of two tributaries to Blossom Way Creek in Rogers, Arkansas, goes slower than hoped. CAD help is the problem, as horses switched in midstream and I have received nothing to key-in yet. Hopefully this afternoon or the first thing tomorrow morning I can work in earnest. Completing the keying-in this week is in jeopardy. But I’ve used the time wisely in studying in the handbooks a new aspect of floodplain analysis that applies to this project, so that’s good.

No word on those three proposals for conference papers, yet. Today was the published deadline for submitters to hear back. Down to four business hours (five; they are on mountain time).
Edited to Add: The e-mails came through a half-hour ago. All three abstracts were accepted! Two are for 1-hour workshops, and one is for a 1/2 day training class. More about these in future posts. I should say that acceptance is conditional–upon my meeting certain deadlines for increasingly more detail about the presentations, and upon the reviewers liking the extra material. “There’s many a slip,” as Pamala Tudsbury said. [in Herman Wouk’s Winds of War]

Yesterday I spoke with the editor of Buildipedia.com, and we had a great visit. He liked my ideas for the first article in the infrastructure series, and confirmed that I can do that and pitch many other things to him. He liked the three or four ideas I gave him for articles and features. I received the contract in the mail today, complete with deadline, word count, fee, and copyright info.

Weight wise, I can’t seem to lose any more. I have had three or four consecutive days of eating right and getting good exercise. Normally when I do that, especially when I start at the top of a recent range, I lose four or five pounds. Not this time. Two only. I’m not sure what’s going on, unless the extra exercise I’m doing has signalled my body to shut down its metabolism a little. That doesn’t make sense, but I can’t think of what else it could be.

So, two of my expectations have not been experienced yet, the others have or are in progress. It’s a good week so far.

Buildipedia, Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101

A Week of Expectations

Leave a comment

Well, a number of projects from last week remain loose today, part of the mix of things that need to be done. One is the stock trade I wrote about on Friday morning. It’s a trade that should make money as the market goes down. The market went up on Friday and the trade lost ground, though not terribly so. The market went down today, but the trade still lost a little ground, perhaps due to option time decay. My assessment of market direction appears to be correct, but I may have waited too long to trigger the trade and lost more of the trend than I hoped.

Engineering-wise, I have a flood study to work on this week–two flood studies actually. I have a smattering of miscellaneous stuff to do as well, but the flood study will dominate. It would be nice to have the entire 2.75 miles of waterway keyed in and initial runs made by the end of the week. I’ll have to have a little CAD help to do so, but it is doable. The one thing in my favor is the cross-sections are all short. It’s a narrow waterway, and only five culverts to model. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m optimistic.

Also engineering related, this is the week I should hear on the proposals I turned in for presenting papers at the national erosion control conference in Orlando next February. At most only two will be accepted, so submitting three ideas was to improve my chances of having two accepted. Wednesday is the day they are supposed to notify us by.

Writing-wise, I’ve already begun work on the first article I will submit to Buildipedia. I won’t finish it till I talk with the editor and get a better feel for the style they want. From reviewing the site I believe I will be okay with what I’m planning. These articles will take considerably longer to write than those I do for Suite101.com, but then they pay considerably more. This is a bit of an experiment, maybe even a gamble, but certainly a risk. I approach the week optimistic that it’s going to work out.

And in personal matters, I’m in the last big push to lose a few more pounds before I meet my classmates of 40 years ago in three weeks. It seems no matter what I do I don’t lose any more. On Saturday I picked blackberries (3 quarts) in the heat for a couple of hours, and ate only what I’m supposed to eat, yet this week I was barely down from last week. I must have breathed some heavy air along the way. I shall have to go on my dad’s diet: only water, and that just to wash in.