Category Archives: Engineering

Engineering, expatriate life

The journey is a joy

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Today marks the 34th anniversary of beginning my first job after graduating college, so perhaps my few readers will indulge me if I make a second post today on this non-milestone anniversary.

I began work in Kansas City for Black & Veatch, one of the leading engineering firms in the nation. I remember much about that first day: the layout of the large room; the empty desk right behind my reference table, of the man who was on assignment in Duluth; the man in front and kitty corner to the front (Bill and Stan, respectively); of being told I would be drafting for the first few months (turned out to be only two), not engineering; of quickly realizing how much I didn’t know; the heat walking to and from the remote parking lot; the team across the room who flipped coins for coffee every morning about 9 AM.

I’ve had four jobs in my career, this last one lasting more than seventeen years. It would have been only two or three jobs had Iraq not invaded Kuwait in 1990, keeping me from returning to my expatriate home away from home. Most of the time the work has been pleasurable. Challenging, fulfilling, interesting, almost always giving a feeling of accomplishment. They say that if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. And I have loved the engineering I’ve done, even as the career changed. First designing wastewater treatment plants, then designing lattice-steel transmission towers, then studying water distribution systems, then designing water treatment plants and other water works, then moving into a project management/department head roll of a crew mostly designing wastewater collection systems, then designing a mixture of wastewater and water works, including an award winning reverse osmosis water treatment plant, then on a major wastewater system study and related work in a management position. And that’s just the first 17 years! After that it is a blur of design, management, new roles, much work and many hours.

My interests are slowly changing, as I tumble to a retirement that, unless plans change, is only 8 years, 6 months, and 13 days away. Writing has certainly taken over the non-engineering hours, and even sometimes the engineering ones, forcing me to work the extra hours to put in my time. When someday I write my memoirs, should any one care about them besides my most immediate family, I expect the title to be The Journey Was A Joy.

Engineering, reading

This week in review

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It was a good week–finally!

After several weeks in which something always seemed to occur to make the week less than stellar, last week was better, much better. Hopefully it’s not because I’m batching it. Some highlights from the week:

– I completed the proposal for my study guide on The Screwtape Letters. Only a couple of days of polishing remain before I send it to the interested editor.
– I was able to concentrate on my work at work. I didn’t complete my major project, a flood study, but I made progress on it, including planning how to make it work. I organized my new work space, and completed a number of minor things that I started months ago, but had let lag.
– I tallied up my continuing education credits for the year and organized the certificates. This is important because, until this year, we had a staff member who did this, but cuts have put this back on licensees.
– I kept up with housework in Lynda’s absence, unlike previous times she’s been away.
– I worked on maintenance tasks around the house.
– I kept up with reading and blogging and e-mailing.

I’m excited about almost having the proposal done. I think this is possibly my best current work as related to being accepted for publication. And I think I did this right: plan out the book; prepare sample chapters; prepare a one-sheet promotional to show at the conference; then prepare a proposal at the editor’s request. In preparing the proposal I used Terry Whalin’s Book Proposals That Sell as a guide.

Also this week, my reading produced several ideas for future blog posts.

Carlyle, Engineering, Wesley

It’s been an even more turbulent week

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More than a week has passed since I last gave the “weekly report”. Sorry for my absence. Many of the days during this time were chock full of what I can only describe as turbulence. Much of that was at work, but some was personal, especially yesterday. I can’t say anything publicly. The immediate crisis has passed, but a long term crisis looms.

But, each cloud has a silver lining, right? The good news is that all the stress has about taken away my appetite. I’ve reduced to the lowest weight I’ve been at for two or three years.

Hopefully tomorrow I will find time to get back to the Wesley letter of recent posts, then to a Carlyle letter I began research on three weeks ago.

We can hope.

Bible study, Engineering, Life Group lessons

A Turbulent Week

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I can’t believe I let the entire week go by without posting! I had such good intentions, planning to write two more posts from the Wesley snippet I found, then going on to something else. I can only plead the strangeness of the week, and the turbulence thereof.

On Monday we had another corporate downsizing. Twenty-two people were laid off in our offices nationwide, I think eleven in our Bentonville home office and the rest scattered among all offices. In addition, pay cuts have been implemented, affecting me and many others. Management took the greatest pay cuts, and people who are wholly in production took none at all. This seems a fair way to do it. No one wants to have a pay cut, but that is better than looking for a job.

I spent much of the week on drainage issues on two or three projects, including some “heavy” calculations for one project. I say “heavy” because I haven’t had to do this for a few years, and we have new software that I have barely used. I found it easy to use for most things, but some complicated features of a storm water detention pond could not be easily handled. I entered data and ran the program, thought I had it right and printed, only to find when perusing the report that it wasn’t right, and I had to do it all over again. I don’t know how many trees I killed with printout I found were erroneous. Our recycling box was considerably fuller by the end of the week. But, I got that done, went on to other projects that I had to review (not do the calcs), and found a bit of closure at the end of the week. I still have one more set of calculations to run on Monday-Tuesday, and will have to begin a fairly major flood study about the same time, but my workload seems manageable.

Then, I wrote two lessons in the Sunday School series I’m currently teaching, “The Dynamic Duo: Lessons from the Lives of Elijah and Elisha”. That puts be one week ahead, and with another started and well along, almost two full weeks ahead. I need to be two ahead–or three if possible–because I will miss two weeks in May, if all goes well. That is really the only writing I’ve done this week, except for a series of e-mails to a project manager in our Dallas office, explaining to her how to run a public bid project. I don’t suppose those qualify for creative writing, though.

I will hopefully be back before the day is out, and make a follow-up post on Wesley’s letter, then will be more active this week.

Engineering, Life Group lessons, miscellaneous

It’s been a worse week

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Yes, after writing last week that the week had not gone well, this week was worse, mainly from the standpoint of not having the time to do much that I really wanted to. Work has been intense. Life Group preparations have been demanding. The world, the flesh, and the devil have all pounded on me. As with Wesley, “leisure and I have [indeed] taken leave of each other”, except this week not due to a conscientious intent to accomplish, but due to commitments of life. I was working on a post to this blog, something from the letters of Thomas Carlyle, when life swallowed up the small amount of time the research required. Maybe this weekend.

Yet, in all of this, God remains on the throne, not high and lifted up, but in a still small voice close at hand. Praise His name!

May next week bring improved state of mind to mirror my state of soul and spirit.

Engineering

To my loyal reader(s)

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Sorry for my absence these few days. I’ve been extremely busy at work. A couple of projects in the city where I serve part time as city engineer have demanded much attention, taking more than half the day today.

My paper to be presented at a conference in Orlando FL in August is due on Monday, and I’ve been working evenings trying to complete that. I finished the basic paper last night, and will be editing it this weekend. The conference is StormCon08, and the title of my paper is “A Water and Wastewater Engineer Retools for Storm Water”.

Then, this coming Tuesday, March 18, I will take part as one of three trainers in a Lorman training in nearby Springdale, Arkansas. The other two on the panel are attorneys. The subject of the seminar is “What to do when construction projects go bad”. I think it it tailor-made for me.

I will return as soon as I can, possibly this weekend for a post, but not too much before next Wednesday.

Engineering

Feast and Famine

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As I’ve said before, my day job sure gets in the way of writing!

I’m a corporate trainer for a civil engineering company. Since I’m also the senior engineer for the company, I wind up getting involved in a number of special needs, and am given those things all the youngin’s don’t know how to do. Since the company is in the midst of a slowdown, travel is restricted, and I’m not traveling to the branch offices to hold training classes. It’s been a time where I had to force myself to keep concentration. I’ve always had plenty to do, but a lot of it was self-starter type stuff.

That all changed this week. I found a training seminar we can have in-house via a conference call, and invite in a bunch of clients and potential clients. This week I started the ball rolling on that. A “white paper” I wrote on a marketing issue a few months ago came up this week, and I’m to present it at a managers meeting next week. Our Phoenix office has a problem project, and I’m trying to help them out. Our Dallas office has a municipal recreational project for which that they weren’t sure how to write the specifications, so I’m helping them, trying to teach them how to do it rather than do it for them–by long distance, of course. I’ve been working on revising a detail (our name for detailed information about a specific piece of construction work that goes on our construction drawings) that involves a change in the way we do our engineering. I’m finally ready to do the work needed, which is getting some final reviews, and that came to a head this week. On a large, local project, there is a sudden fear that an item I designed a year ago using approximate methods will not withstand the applied loads, so I now have to do a rigorous design. That is coming up this week. And the usual mix of people coming by my desk, asking for help with this or that relatively minor issue intensified a little. Maybe that is a leading indicator that our work load is increasing.

All of these things are unfinished as the work week ended. Next week will see all of these continuing, with more things added. Thus my time for writing will likely be minimal. I won’t be able to sneak a few minutes here and there to read writing blogs and web sites. I’ll likely have to work a few extra hours during the week, and I’ll likely be mentally exhausted at the end of the work day. None of that bodes well for finding time to write, so I may be reading in my evening hours. This will be a real test of my mental stamina.

At least I’m not playing any computer games!

Engineering

Vocation Rules

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Yes, you read that right: vocation, not vacation, ruled the day today, and will for the next several. Blasted day job! I could get a lot of writing done except for that.

I had a late start today due to a doctor’s appointment (lab work) and icy roads, this being the eve of one of the most important days in my job for a year or so. That pub me behind on preparations, and though I was caught up by the end of the day, tomorrow will be full with a special presentation, and then next two after will be spent catching up from that one. And, to top it off, I learned on Monday that my proposal for a paper to be presented at an engineering conference in August was accepted. I have till March 17 now to actually write the paper. No pressure.

So, writing went by the wayside yesterday, and looks like it will for a couple of more days. Except, last night I did get into the marketing of Documenting America. A small step, but one in the right direction. Maybe with a number of small steps I can conquer my array of fears.