Category Archives: Engineering

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

A Full Week Ahead

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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, Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101

A Week of Expectations

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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.

Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101, Writing

Two Down, Two to Go

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Yes, yesterday the SW “I” Street CLOMR project was stuffed into a FedEx envelope and today was dropped off at the LOMC Clearinghouse in Maryland. My second flood study is done–until I get comments back from FEMA, if they don’t approve the submittal. While the work was tedious and intensive, I actually enjoyed doing this project, or so it seems in hindsight. I just need to figure out how to generate some articles for Suite101.com from the project.

Speaking of that pursuit of mine, I published my 99th article there last night, about recent stock market trends. Despite that, my page views are considerably below where they were two months ago, and still well below my highs from October 2009, when I had just 50 or so articles posted. Today looks better as far as page views are concerned. Revenue is still in the toilet, however, with no turnaround in sight. Oh, well, I guess I can go back to thinking of Suite as just “platform building”.

The rest of this week at work I’m trying to do some miscellaneous tasks that I’ve put off for a month or longer. One is a water system evaluation in my own town, Bella Vista. I had the first of two site visits scheduled for tomorrow morning, but will have to put that off one day due to a health situation with my mother-in-law. That will give me more time in the office tomorrow to get other miscellaneous projects out the door. It feels good to finally have some time to spend on them.

As far as getting back into the thick of writing, I don’t see any light yet. My wife will be gone for ten days beginning today. Normally I get lots of writing done at those times, but if I have m-i-l duties in her place, writing time may be difficult to come by.

So next week I begin flood study number 3, the Perry Road flood study. We’re designing the widening of Perry Road, and installing larger and longer culverts. This will affect the floodplain, though I’m not sure how yet. On the heals of that will be the McKisic Creek flood study in Centerton. I may actually try to work on that simultaneously with Perry Road. I’d really love to knock both of them out in a month and see my way clear to get back to training.

Engineering, flood studies, Writing

Not Much Time for Nothing

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I had great plans to write some blog posts last week and over the weekend. Life got in the way, however. This second flood study has become an all-consuming monster as I try to make an extended deadline—extended through the goodness of the reviewer for FEMA’s consultant. I even went in to work about four hours on Sunday. Today, finally, the three drawings are done, my computer models are correct, the request to burn CDs has been turned in. And the original of the computer models and my engineering mini-report are on my desk, ready for making hard copies tomorrow. All that remains is a title sheet and dividers between the sections. Well, I still haven’t seen the drawings off the plotter. I still have to put my seal and signature on them, and write a certification, but those are minor. I’d say it’s a guarantee I’d have it out the door tomorrow except…

…I’ve been called on to go to Eureka Springs (an hour east of our office) tomorrow, to chase a new drainage project. That will consume my day from 8:30 AM to about 2:00 PM—prime time for copying, assembling, and packaging submittals. We have an admin assistant who can do most of that, but it’s nice to be available for the unexpected glitch.

I find these flood studies to be all consuming as far as brain power is concerned. I get home at night drained, and don’t feel much like writing. What time I do have has gone to study for the Life Group lesson series I’m teaching. Perhaps I can cobble up a post on that this week.

After this flood study goes out the door, I have two other things I have to jump on real quickly, get them knocked out, then go to the third flood study. This one will be from scratch, I think. I won’t have to struggle over whether to fix other people’s mistakes or just let them ride. Won’t have to second guess how another engineer built the model or drew the map. That, at least, will be a nice change.

So when will I get back to writing? Don’t know. The situation at Suite101 is not good. Something has happened to the web site business model. Page views and revenue has tanked. I’m not writing hardly anything there any more, though that’s partly because of the time and brain drain thing. I’ll try to keep posting here, but I see lots of difficulty ahead.

Engineering

A Construction Project Completed (sort of)

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Yes, yesterday, at long last, the church parking lot improvements were “completed”. I put that in quotes, because just like the flood study I just posted about, the project is not really done. Yesterday the sub-contractor completed the corrections for two areas that were non-draining. We put the hose on them, and they both seemed to drain. The larger one, however, drains to another area that doesn’t drain. That, however, can be corrected by a little bit of grinding in the gutter to get the water into the east rain garden.

The contractor actually had a couple of more things to do when I left the site yesterday. He had concrete coming to pour two short sections of sidewalks where we cut in the entrance. I’m assuming that happened as scheduled. Also, the contractor yesterday noticed a short concrete apron that he poured earlier that wasn’t draining. He saw it just too late to order concrete for it, so said he would take it out today and re-pour it. I didn’t go to the church to see. This is a vindication of sorts. When the apron was being poured, I warned the contractor twice that it didn’t look right and that he ought to put a level on it. He said he would, but never it. It turns out I was right.

Then he also has to finish the striping. He held back some of it where the corrective patches were to be made. Today is a beautiful day, and I thought he would come do it. But he says no, he’ll come tomorrow, Saturday, when there’s no one at church using the parking lot, and do it then. So I assume when I arrive at church on Sunday the lot will be fully striped. I’m not actually holding my breath on that.

Then there will be the contractor’s final bill to haggle over, then the church’s own work to put a light pole and lights on an existing base, and to finish out the rain gardens with bedding soil and plants. But hey, the end is in sight, and I don’t need to be making daily trips to the church to watch the contractors. I have close to 30 hours to make up for time siphoned off from my employer.

And yesterday was a good wrap-up, being on site and smelling fresh asphalt being laid. It’s one of my favorite smells. I guess you’d have to have been on a lot of construction sites to enjoy the smell of asphalt.

Engineering, flood studies

A Deadline Met (sort of)

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Monday, the federal Memorial Day holiday, is the deadline to have a re-submittal in to FEMA’s consultant for the floodplain project I’m currently working on. That means that Tuesday is the day it would have to be turned in. Just today, about 10 AM, I made all corrections to the computer model and had successful runs of the conditions that must be checked.

That’s just the computer model, however, is not the full submittal. We now have to take the computer results and re-map the floodplain, creating a revised work map at a large scale and a revised floodplain map at a smaller scale. For this I will be at the mercy of the CADD people. I have a tech assigned to it, and may have him do some of it this afternoon–or I may wait until Tuesday. For I called FEMA–actually the consulting firm that reviews map change requests turned in to FEMA, and the assigned reviewer said as long as the computer models are turned in on Tuesday, he would consider the deadline met and we would have a few more days to get the paper submittals in.

Hooray for that! In the second half of the morning I spent my time “cleaning-up” the model. As I do one of these, lots of extraneous information is added, as I try out this or that to see how the model can be made more accurate. All of those can be confusing to the reviewer. He just needs to see the files that we actually want him to check, the correct ones. I’m almost done with the clean-up; maybe another 30 minutes or so. I’ll get the e-mail fired off (remembering to attached the files, of course), and that part of the project will be done. I’ll begin printing the paper files, and as I said above maybe get to some of the modeling. Or not. I have another project on my desk for QC review that I really ought to get to today.

So the “I” Street CLOMR is almost done. Hopefully Wednesday it will be. Then I get to work on the Perry Road CLOMR, then the McKisic Creek LOMR (complete with hydrology work), then a re-do of the Crystal Bridges CLOMR (to correct the labyrinth weirs). Then I hear we might have a CLOMR or LOMR in Terrell, Texas. I’m supposed to coach a young engineer in that, rather than do it myself.

At this rate, I might become an expert in floodplain modeling. Which doesn’t really further my writing career, but helps with the job security that I need for another 7 years, 7 months, and 3 days.

Engineering, flood studies, Writing

Will It Never End?

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You can’t say “will it never end” about “Lost”. That ended last night. I didn’t watch it because we haven’t seen seasons 4, 5, 6, and 7 yet. At least, I think it was season 3 where we ended. Maybe it was 4, but I don’t think so. Anyway, some day we’ll catch up and see those other seasons, but without that we weren’t about to watch the grand-finale. There would be some better things to do with 2 1/2 hours on a Sunday evening.

But what there never seems to be any end to is work to do, and things that interfere with writing. Today I’m working on the next flood study, and have found it to probably require more work than I thought it would. This won’t keep me away from writing–unless overtime is needed to get this thing out the door by early next week–but it will mean I won’t be able to move on to the next work task as soon as I’d like. And it means this week will be pressure-packed, just like last week.

Company arrives on Saturday to spend two or three days with us. We’ll have five guests staying at the house. That’s okay. We’ll have a lot of clean-up needed over the next few days, and there’s plenty of yard work to do. The checkbook is balanced, and I’ll pay bills tonight. The parking lot project is winding down, but this week there are still things to be done for it.

What little writing I managed over the weekend was on the Harmony of the Gospels and on the next Bible study I’ll be teaching, beginning June 6. I guess that qualifies as writing, but it may never progress to something publishable, so I can’t really count on it.

So it looks like another week without being able to jump back into writing as I want to. I’ve got a couple of blog posts I’m planning for this week, so check back in every couple of days for new material.

Engineering, flood studies

One Flood Study Down (again); Three to Go

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Yesterday, after I thoughtI had done everything needed to get my Little Osage Creek flood map changes out the door and FedEx-ing back to FEMA, as I was trying to resolve why a 50 foot long section of the creek was not behaving (i.e. I couldn’t get the spread of the flood waters to make sense between the model and the map for three cross-sections), I saw an elevation error in the model. At least I thought that’s what it was. All my paper copies of the map had markings in that area, and I couldn’t read them to resolve whether I had an elevation error or not. What to do? I was shooting to get this out the door the next day, now today. It was 5 PM.

I can’t do AutoCAD, or any other type of computer aided design/drafting program, but IT has installed a viewer for these drawings on my computer. So I went searching for the original survey drawings on our network, found them (or I guess it), and opened it using the viewer. There I was able to pan, enlarge, and focus in on the problem area. There was a bust. I showed the ground elevations almost 3 feet higher than they really were at the problem cross-section. For the first 200 feet south of the ditch, the flood waters would certainly spread farther up the side street than I was showing.

So I changed the elevations in the cross-section, re-ran the basic flood model, and had good results. I then pulled up the encroachment model and ran it, and had good results. Actually, I was able to tweak the encroachment limits to something much more reasonable and not exceed allowable encroachment elevation rises. I printed the documents I needed–and the program crashed. That was 6:30 PM last night. I finished tweaking the map and put it on the CAD tech’s desk for today’s work.

But the pages did print. So this morning I opened the program and found that I had saved often enough that I only had to re-enter a handful of numbers. Of course I had to re-print some pages so that the dates on the printout would match the date on the model, but I had that done. One table changed in the flood insurance study book, a request to I.T. to burn three copies of the model onto CDs, and some collating, and the report was on the admin assistant’s desk. So I was at the mercy of I.T. and Admin, as of 9:30 AM this morning.

But all three support people came through. I had the corrected work map and flood map on my desk by 10:00 AM, the CDs by 10:45, and the bound volumes by 11:30. I’ll put one in FedEx this afternoon, and deliver one to the City about 1:30 PM, and consider this project done. At least until FEMA comes back with other comments.

I’d like to coast a bit, but now I have to jump on the “I” Street flood study revision, then the McKisic Creek flood study, then the Crystal Bridges flood study revision. Except for that Federal law back in 1968 I might not have a job now.

Engineering

Site Work

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The contractors are at the church, working on the last few tasks of the parking lot. Yea! It’s something to cheer about because yesterday they could have worked some, prep work for today. Actually, if they had worked yesterday, they would be able to finish it today except for final clean-up. So yesterday was frustrating, but at least they are working today. The striper was there, and in just a few hours he will be able to do all the striping except where they are doing some repairs. The general contractor is there, digging out the sacrificial asphalt at the rain gardens and preparing the areas for curb & gutter around the rain gardens. The concrete crew is there, following right behind the general contractor.

If the weather holds, which it probably won’t, as rain is forecast for early tomorrow morning, it will all be over except for the paperwork this week. I’m glad, because I’m weary of it. This has taken a lot more out of me than did the much larger and longer family life center project a decade ago.

But I do love being on construction sites, watching things get built, facilitating the work, solving problems, and just getting things done. I love the big picture aspects of construction and the minutia of details. I don’t get on site much any more for CEI. Sometimes I have to help solve a problem on site, but not often. Those days of my career are over, perhaps forever. But I transition, as I wrote about yesterday, and keep hanging on. Right now I have to hang on for another 7 years, 7 months, and 13 days. Or maybe a little more, depending on how my funds shape up.

Engineering, Writing

Transitions

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Yesterday was a special day at church: our pastor’s last Sunday. Their good were packed on Saturday, all but the furniture, which ten of the younger men were going to load up Sunday afternoon and so they are off. To Columbia Tennessee, an outer suburb of Nashville. To a larger church in our denomination.

We had Mark and Kelly for almost seven years, and little Ivan for less than two. No one suspected this was coming, as everyone was happy with Mark and hoped he would be our pastor for years to come. Unlike past pastoral changes, I had no inkling of this coming. Previously I’ve been able to sense that a pastor’s ministry was drawing to a close in the congregations I attended. This time, not so. The transition was abrupt.

Transitions happen in life all the time. Not always as momentous as a pastoral change, but they happen. I wrote once before in this blog about this, using the words of Pamela Tudsbury, a character in Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance: “Some moments weigh against a lifetime.” I’ve had a few such moments in my life, but it seems to me that transitions often happen gradually. Condition A changes to Condition B. You’ve been in Condition A for a long time. Then one day you wake up and realize you’re in Condition B. How did it happen?

I’m in the midst of two such transitions right now. At CEI, it appears my time as a corporate trainer is drawing to a close, and I’m transitioning back to being a project manager. I have no official word of that; in fact, my supervisor hasn’t talked to me about my status since the last round of layoff last month. With those staff cutbacks we are no longer large enough to either need or support a full-time trainer. Every week I find my time more and more consumed with managing project, less with training issues. Is this a permanent situation? Stay tuned.

The other transition is in my writing “career”. But this transition is confusing at the moment, the ultimate direction not yet clear. I haven’t worked on a novel for about three months. I wrote only one Suite 101 article in April, three so far in May, with one more in draft status, one other in research status. I’ve written no other freelance articles during that time, nor submitted anything. Poetry no longer comes to me either by inspiration or perspiration. I continue to monitor writing blogs and forums, and of course keep up this blog. In the last month I’ve critiqued only one poem at Absolute Write, doing it last Friday.

So what’s going on with my writing? Am I losing my desire to write? Ideas still come to me, and I capture some of them. Ideas for improving works I’ve already written but not yet published still come. I’m still spending a little time researching markets and marketing methods, as well as studying the craft. But as to actual writing, very little accomplishment.

The problem with transitions in progress is recognizing the start, middle and end. It’s kind of like a stock chart. After the price movement is over, the signals that it was going to make that move are obvious, but as the movement is in progress, one doesn’t see it, or refuses to believe that’s what’s happening.

With this writing transition, all signs seem to be pointing to this as the cause: The dream is dead. I don’t want to believe that. I’d rather believe it’s just the busyness of life in these couple of terribly busy months. But I’m afraid it’s the other. The key piece of evidence, of course, is that I haven’t submitted anything to potential markets. I have enough things written that I could be submitting constantly. But it seems the work of making the final selection of the market(s) and actually going through the motions of making the submittal, just don’t excite me, and so I don’t do it.

So where is this transition taking me? I don’t know. Stay tuned.