Category Archives: Engineering

Engineering

A Little Bit of Light – on the Federal Regulations

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Back in November of last year–or was it early December–I became aware the the US EPA was issuing regulations on December 1 that would affect storm water discharges from construction sites. Being the good trainer that I am, and hopefully still a good engineer, I began doing research, put together a brown bag presentation, and taught it one Wednesday in December.

I did so, however, a little uncomfortable at my understanding of the regulation. The Federal Register entry was about 80 pages, of which the actual regulation was not quite two full pages. All the rest was explanation of the regulation and the process EPA went through to get from the draft regulation of Nov. 2008 to the final regulation of Dec. 1, 2009. Eighty pages of government speak. About twenty pages in my head was ready to implode from the sheer effort to stay awake.

How strange. Usually I enjoy reading things like this, but I was drowning in alphabet soup in the explanations. And, the wording of the actual regulation seemed backwards. And, it seemed the regulation did little more than codify what we are already doing to prevent stormwater pollution from construction sites, in compliance with various State regulations promulgated to comply with earlier Federal regulations. I put my brown bag training class together and taught it, but I told those who attended that I wasn’t real confident that I was giving them everything they needed to know.

Last weekend I brought home the notebook I put together to study this whole thing. It contains the draft reg, the final reg, all the Federal Register explanations, a few of the supporting documents in the Docket for this rule making, and a printout of the 250 page “Development Document” of the regulation. My goal was to read the Development Document over the weekend and at least crawl out of the acronym soup.

How much to explain? When the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, and in amendments passed since, several categories of “non-numeric effluent limitations” were established, not based on what harm pollution would do to the water course, but based on what types of treatment technologies were available. So rather than effluent limits for suspended solids and turbidity, we had BAT, BADT, BPT, BCT, and NSPS, each describing a technology-based approach.

It was these acronyms that were bothering me. Oh, I was able to figure the names out and keep them somewhat straight, but I was not able to place those levels of treatment with what type of construction site or what type of discharge. I read over the weekend; I read Tuesday night (when writers guild was cancelled due to weather); I read Wednesday night; I read at work on Thursday; I read Thursday night. Slowly various aspects of the regs became clearer.

Today I was able to get back to them after lunch. I went to the Development Document and learned what EPA meant by active treatment systems (as opposed to passive treatment systems). But the DevDoc was not helping me with the acronym soup. So I switched back to the beginning of the eighty FedReg pages, and alternately going back to the regulation itself. The backwards wording was what troubled me. As EPA explained it: Regulation Option 1 is chosen as the basis of BPT for facilities covered by that sub-part. It seemed backwards; should be: BPT is chosen as the basis of treatment for facilities covered by that sub-part. Government-speak. And, the litany of treatment techniques listed in option 1 were actually the same for the other options, with the exception the other options had an extra requirement: turbidity limits and monitoring therefore.

Finally, about 3:00 PM, I realized that what EPA was saying was: The litany of treatment techniques listed in Option 1 qualify as BPT (best practicable control technology) and should be used for all facilities for which BPT is the standard. I suppose I should have realized that with the first reading. Maybe I did, and was making it all too complicated.

So, tonight I feel somewhat released from the burden of regulatory understanding, and am ready for something lighter. I read fifteen pages in Chuck Colson’s How Now Shall We Live, a 1999 book about Christian world view. And, when I finish this post and check my Suite101.com stats, I’ll go upstairs and read a few pages in the Carlyle-Emerson letters. I’m not sure that will qualify as “lighter” than FedReg and DevDoc and BPT/BCT/BAT/BADT/NSPS, but I think it will be more enjoyable.

From the Dungeon, over and out for tonight.

Engineering, Suite 101, Writing

It’s Snowing – Again

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Why does a snowstorm seem to be so distracting? We’ve had snow showers forecast for today for several days. Only Saturday night did that change to a winter storm warning, with 4 to 8 inches expected in our parts. For some reason, this storm has not had the media build-up that the last one did. The press has barely mentioned this one. Still, third snowstorm in 40 days makes this the snowiest winter since 2002-03. My mind today is too much on snow and not enough on engineering.

For the month of February, so far, I have been a good boy about my writing career. Just a few moments ago I fired off a freelance submittal that I had been working on for a couple of weeks, and which I ran by the writers guild last Tuesday. I have written and published four new articles at Suite101.com in February, including two over the weekend. I haven’t posted four in one week since–what was it, August? I would love to be able to post four new ones every week, and see if I can get un-stuck as far as revenue and page view growth is concerned. Actually, beginning in January I did see an uptick in revenue, both total revenue and revenue per article per month. It’s still pretty small, but at least it’s heading in the right direction.

Over the weekend I read an old Writers Digest magazine that I picked up somewhere. And I subscribed to Poets and Writers magazine, with an incredible one-year deal. I normally look at this mag at Barnes & Noble, it’s so expensive. But it’s about my favorite writers magazine. Of course, the checkbook is so low right now I probably shouldn’t have. I’ll get a $25 payout from Suite101 tomorrow, so I guess I earned it.

Some other ideas have begun to gel. I have about twenty Suite101 articles beginning to cue up, with six or so having some research already done. A Bible study that’s been on my mind for a few months has found its way to paper lately. I’m about to work on my novel in progress, which will make me feel incredibly good. And almost all my chores around the house are up to date.

The last three paragraphs have nothing to do with the snowstorm. I tried to find a master metaphor between snow and engineering and writing, but alas I’ve failed. So I’ll simply say: Let it snow! I’ll bring home some work tonight, some studying I need to do for in-house classes to teach, and spend a joyous eight hours at the kitchen table tomorrow, planning and writing three or four classes.

critique group, Engineering, flood studies, Health, Writing

A Day Usurped

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Okay, so this morning I had two things on my mind–well, actually three:
1. Get the reanalysis done for my floodplain project so that on Wednesday all that would be left would be to have the CADD tech change the two maps and assemble a submittal to send off.
2. Attend writers critique group at 7 PM.
3. Help my wife decide on when to go to Oklahoma City: today with Sara and Ephraim; tomorrow the day after them; Thursday; or Friday.

Concerning the floodplain analysis, I had good success on Friday, completing 1/3 of it (as to total computer runs), and less success on Monday, due to interruptions, working sub par due to this cold, and to normal Monday inefficiencies. Still, the morning went well, and by a little after noon I had completed much, and could see my way to finishing it today or early tomorrow morning, making deadline.

I had a couple of conversations with Lynda. She felt she should go on Thursday, but we are under a winter storm watch for Thursday: 4-8 inches of snow, possible ice, possible rain. It all depends on the track of the storm. I suggested she go tomorrow. Sara called at 1:45 PM or so, when I was working on my analyses after lunch, and said they were going today and that Mom needed the cell phone (hers has never been replaced; I’m not going to do it) and would I meet them in Decatur, sixteen miles west. I hopped in the truck and met them to transfer the phone, and headed back to the office to check one thing in Centerton (right on the way) useful for my floodplain analyses.

Heading back to the office, about 2:45 PM I witnessed a four car accident right in front of me. I circled around the block and hung around about half an hour until I could give my contact information to one of the emergency workers, and drove the mile to the office. So far no one has called to take my statement. Others probably had a better view and so they may not need my observations.

So, with time lost but with no wife to go home to tonight, I decided I would stay at the office till 6:30 PM, rush to writers guild, getting Sonic on the way. That would almost make up for the Decatur run and the accident time. But no, the VP in charge of Production dropped by, asking me to assist that afternoon and help with an unexpected floodplain issue in Covington Louisiana. So from about 3:45 till 5:45 I huddled with one of the young engineers, then with the said VP of Production, including a conference call to our Dallas office where the project manager who botched–I mean supervised–the original work could hear our findings.

That done, I went back to my computer and saw an e-mail from another engineer, saying he knew I was busy but he had finally made the changes to the wastewater lift station project I checked last week and it had to go out tomorrow and could I look at it by mid-morning. He had the specifications done that I insisted he do before I signed off on it, he said. I told him to get it to my by 6:20 PM and I’d take it home. I also wished, by this time, I had not committed to going to writers guild, cause I sure could use the entire evening at the office.

The lift station documents in hand, and the writing I was to share tonight in the truck, I rushed to writers guild, picking up my discount Sonic burger along the way. And nobody else showed up. I waited half an hour, knowing there would be a message on the answering machine at home, saying it was cancelled because of people not being able to attend.

Had I known writers guild wasn’t going to meet, I would have stayed at the office until my floodplain analyses were done. But at that point, I was about a mile from the house and fourteen from the office. So I came home and entered the Dungeon, deflated from the day’s usurpations, very tired from the emotions, and possibly from the effects of my lingering cold, so I decided to not bother with the two articles I was going to write tonight. This post will have to do. I’ll pack a bag to take in tomorrow and spend the night in town, either at the office or at my mother-in-law’s so I won’t have to fight the snow on Thursday. I’ll stay in town Thursday night as well.

Right now, I feel both sad and mad: sad at the missed opportunities and the tiredness, and mad at the usurpations. My choices are to fight the emotions with food or with writing. About the only writing I could do tonight is to critique a poem over at Absolute Write, but the way I feel I’d probably dash some budding poet’s spirit with an overly-harsh critique, and I don’t want to do that. So the forage in the fridge it is. I seem to remember seeing some vanilla ice cream in it.

ETA: Oh, and when I got to the writers guild meeting that didn’t happen and opened up my Sonic burger with mayo and added ketchup and took a bite, it turned out it had mustard on it instead of mayo. The perfect unauthorized substitution for an usurped day.

Engineering, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Back On-Site, and a Writing Lesson Learned

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This morning the street superintendent of Centerton called. He needed me at a construction site. He was modifying something I “designed” a year ago and he wanted me to look at it. I put designed in quotes because this wasn’t a rigorous engineering design. A culvert wasn’t draining properly; erosion downstream had exposed a water line; wingwalls obstructed proper flow of water; he was tired of waiting for the highway department to fix it. So he and I met on site and I drew a sketch of what needed to be done. He hired a contractor and had it constructed. It has worked fine.

Well, sort of fine. The erosion control measures worked like a charm, save in one location they didn’t complete. The culvert drains as it should now. But a problem he has noticed since is that the flow entering the culvert, from the east and west and which turn and flows south, don’t work well together. The flow from the west is so much more than from the east that it overwhelms the smaller flow and creates backflow in that direction, over-topping the highway three hundred feet east. He wanted to put in a diversion wall and let the two flows get into the culvert with less co-mingling. I helped them lay it out, and hopefully it will accomplish what he wants.

I say hopefully, because once again this is not rigorous engineering. I get to do that this afternoon as I re-evaluate a flood study and respond to FEMA comments. But this approximate engineering is something I’m not as comfortable with. There’s no way to know if this will work until the next rain storm allows us to watch it in operation–and it needs to be enough rain to have the ditch flow at lest two feet deep. One of these half-inch rainfalls won’t do that. Much better to engineer something that works according to the laws of science and mathematics. Something I can reasonably predict how it is going to perform. Oh well, billable hours are billable hours. I shouldn’t complain.

It’s sort of like the difference of writing for a residual income website and a pay up-front website. On the latter I know exactly what I’m getting for what I have to write. For Suite101 and its residual income payment model, what I get paid is totally dependent on how many ads are clicked, which is somewhat dependent on what subjects I write about. It’s also dependent on how well I optimize the article for search engines. Maybe, over several years, it will amount to more than I would make writing for up-front pay; maybe not.

I’m working on my SEO abilities, but frequently find that butting up against what I consider to be good writing. So far, with one exception insisted on by an editor, I have always come down on the side of good writing. I hope I always will.

commuting, Engineering, Suite 101, Writing

The Joyous Sound of…Plotters

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I arrived at the office this morning, not knowing what to expect as to IT issues. When I left last night: e-mail was down; Internet access was down; our intranet was down; and all copiers and plotters were inaccessible. All the way home, through especially horrendous traffic, I kept thinking this would be a good time to launch my dream magazine, Technophobia.

This morning, I got to work about 7:30 AM after a stop at the bank and the gas station. Rounding the corner and entering the long, narrow corridor to my office, I saw a beautiful sight: an engineering drawing sitting on the out-put tray of a plotter. They must be working! I thought. Then, after getting coffee and completing my short devotional, the joyous sound came: the whine of the back-and-forth of a plotter head, producing a drawing. I about cheered these two sensory experiences.

So I took a chance. Calling up MS Word, I opened my daily diary sheet, chose the printer that’s supposed to be closest to me, and clicked . For five seconds nothing happened, then came the joyous sound: the printer/copier spitting out my document after it’s morning warm-up. Everything’s working; all’s right with the world.

So it’s back to the routines of the last nine years. Only difference is the route to work, and that only for the last mile and a half. I don’t have a key to the office yet (because the electronic entry is not yet installed), so I’ll come in a little later and fight heavier traffic on the commute. Before work I’ll have devotions then check writing web sites. On noon hours I’ll walk and write and eat simple fare at my desk. After work I’ll spend a half-hour or so waiting on traffic to clear by doing something else for writing. Hopefully, in between these, I’ll return to my past love of civil engineering and find meaning in flood plains and drainage ditches and sewer lines and streets, etc. At least I can write about some of those things at Suite101.

Engineering

The Move Is Over

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CEI is now in its new offices, still in Bentonville, not really that far from our old office. The moving company did some pre-moving on Wednesday and Thursday, to avoid being overloaded on Friday and have to go into an overtime situation. They took all of the library (which I had ready on Monday) and most of my office stuff on those two days. On Thursday and Friday morning I set up the library in its new place–135 boxes, give or take a box. My fingers were raw, my wrists hurt, and I was tired.

Still, on Friday I actually felt pretty good. I went back to the old office to assist in any way I could. I found and broke down utility shelves and moved them to the elevator, where the loading crews took them upstairs to the large storage space we are keeping in the old building. I gathered up old network cables for salvage or discard. I helped the movers load a large bookcase onto my pick-up, for delivery to my near neighbor (who also works here, and who had bought the bookcase). I went to the IT room and helped them break down racks of servers, unplug a whole bunch of connecting cables and sorted them by length and bundled them.

We had lunch at the old building, courtesy of CEI, which was very good. I set up the tables and chairs in the break room. I also suggested to the chairman of the board that we have an informal ceremony for striking the colors. The US and Arkansas flags are tattered and need to be replaced. No reason to leave them for the tenants. He liked the idea, so at the end of lunch we all went to the front of the building, to the flagpole. Without any veterans present (except the chairman and one board member), a couple of boy scout leaders handled the ceremony. The chairman and the CEO made brief remarks. I don’t know that I would call it a “moving” ceremony, but I’m glad I suggested it.

In short, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades on Friday. Got to the new office about 4 PM and worked till 6 PM on my own office set-up, and was far along with it at the end. Oh, and in the morning I received a call on my cell phone (our office phones being down, along with e-mail, Internet, etc.) from a client, assigning us a new project, one we will do jointly with the company I broke into this business with, Black & Veatch. It’s a relatively small share for us, but it’s still a project. That was a fitting event on a day we moved to quarters about 35 % of the size we had.

During these last five days I have not been able to think about much besides the move. So I’m behind on posts to this blog, such as end of the month report and new month goals. Haven’t written anything in over a week either. Hopefully today I begin getting back to normal.

Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101

A Busy Weekend, and I Learned Something

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Yes, Friday-Saturday-Sunday was a busy time for me. I stayed late at work on Friday, continuing to work on preparations for our move. I finished culling duplicate materials out of the library on Friday, and began packing some boxes of things I’m sure we won’t need. I’ll continue that today, and hope to get about ten more boxes packed. Friday evening I kind of relaxed, reading in my current book from the pile and a little in a reference book. I went to the computer in the Dungeon and tried to work on a Suite101 article on floodplains, but couldn’t concentrate.

Saturday was busy with things a married bachelor does on the day his wife is due back. Oh, I had kept the house fairly neat while Lynda was gone, but I had too many things out of place or waiting attention. So I folded laundry and put it away; I vacuumed the main traffic areas; I carried newly purchase furniture (book cases and folding tables from CEI) in their places. I went through a week’s worth of accumulated mail while watching college football. I walked to the P.O. to mail something, about 1.3 miles total. And I read when I felt like it or napped when I was tired.

By the end of the day I had accomplished everything I wanted to do, except complete that Suite101 article. I started on it, and had it about 3/4 complete, but bogged down when I needed to research an item needed to complete it. Lynda arrived home about 10:30 PM and remarked how clean the house looked.

Sunday was the usual activities of church, life group, reading, resting, and writing. About 4 PM I decided I needed to finish that article, and went to the FEMA document I had already downloaded, found the info needed, and finished the article. In so doing I came to the conclusion that the main reason I fail to produce as much writing as I’d like to do is the research. I just don’t want to research. I’d rather be writing. That revelation was kind of strange to me, as I thought I really do like to do research. At work I have to research frequently, so why wouldn’t I want to do it for writing?

I have no answers for that, just a new insight into my solitary behavior. Perhaps just knowing this will help me conquer the problem. I have about six articles in mind for working on this week, all of which will require some amount of research. Let’s see how the conqueror performs.

Engineering, Writing

More Books to the Dumpster

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Since I last posted on Monday, my work at the office has been a mixture of library organization and miscellaneous assistance to people who request help. Tuesday I began work on a small project, checking and recalculating something in the drainage system of a large subdivision designed under my supervision back in 2003. But the computer program has changed since then, and I have to re-key everything into the new program. Except the new program was bought out by AutoCAD, is no longer stand-alone, and I don’t do AutoCAD. So today I need to find someone to help me with it.

The library is organized. Except for two shelves of old project documents I discovered yesterday, everything else is in its place. I haven’t arranged the reference materials in a way that makes sense, but at least they are all together. Nor have I alphabetized the many project documents (specs, drainage reports, flood studies, master plans), but they are all together.

Yesterday I began the process of getting rid of duplicates. I started with the local regulations for the three nearby cities we do many projects in. This required checking manuals that were seemingly the same to make sure they really were the same, or if not to determine if one superseded the other and get rid of the old one. I found one manual of ordinances that had three packets of updates just stuck in the front rather than collated. So I did that. I think I freed-up close to two shelves.

Then I began doing the same thing to manufacturers’ catalogs and data. I only did a little of this, yet freed-up at least two shelves there. Today will be the main work of catalog culling.

CEI is selling some surplus furniture: bookcases, folding tables, file cabinets, etc. I bought some and loaded them in the pick-up last night, took them home via Wednesday night church, and unloaded them into the garage. Consequently I was exhausted physically, which affected my mental state as well. I did no writing, spent a little time on Facebook, played some mindless computer games, and read in the book off the top of the reading pile.

Tonight promises more of the same, as the library work today will not doubt tire me again. I may, however, finally go to the link friend GB sent me months ago and watch Diary of a High School Bride, at least the critical scene an hour in, and re-live a college prank from freshman year. That’s a good way to spend an evening while batching it.

career, Engineering, miscellaneous

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

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I worked till 6:30 PM yesterday. I had planned to work longer, reviewing a set of construction specifications before they went out for bids on Monday. But the design team did not get me the drawings, just the specs. I did what I could without having the drawings, but ran out of stuff to do and so packed up shop and plunged into the storm.

For those of you not in the lower mid west, we were (and still are) in the midst of a huge rain storm, some lightning and thunder too. On Tuesday they were predicting floods for Thursday and Friday, that’s how sure they were of their computer models. It began raining lightly Wednesday night and continued off and on, then hit us hard mid-afternoon on Tuesday, but had periods of light rain sandwiched with downpours. At 6:30 PM it was light rain–or none–so I headed to the Bentonville library to do some research for an article for Suite101.com. When I arrived at the library it was still barely raining, but the sky was darker than ever.

As I arrived at the library so did Scott, a friend from church. He rode up on his bicycle, which he rides everywhere. He has a car, but he prefers to go by bike. He rode his bike to church on Wednesday night. As we left church it looked like rain could start, and I offered him a ride. He said no, he thought he could get home before the rain hit. We went our separate ways and the rain hit a few minutes after we parted. No way could he have made the 5 mile ride home in the dry.

I went straight to the reference books I needed and Scott went straight to the computers. I could see him in my peripheral vision, his back towards me. Hard rain drummed the library roof. When I got up to get one last book to check one paragraph, Scott was gone. I finished my work, checked out a book, talked with the librarians a minute, and headed to the exit. I ran into Scott. He had been somewhere else in the library. I quickly said to load his bike up in the back of the pick-up and I’d take him home. He accepted this time, the rain coming down in buckets (sorry for the cliche).

The route to his place took us along a state highway currently under construction, being widened from two lanes to five. The drainage was not working and we were constantly driving in three inches of water. We got to his duplex subdivision and power was out. He got in to his house, and I headed the twelve miles home from there. The power was out all the way, and it was at my house too. Lynda is in Oklahoma City (drove there yesterday in a seam in the storm, praise the Lord), so I made my way through the dark house, found flashlights, and sat and read.

A most enjoyable time. But only for an hour. The power came on and stayed on, so it was off the to computer for my evening rituals, the dark drive and dark hour not forgotten, but pushed aside. I did all I wanted too then headed to my reading chair where I ate a very late supper and read for an hour under the glare of an electric light.

The dark and stormy night was quite enjoyable.

Engineering, Suite 101

Curve Balls of Life

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This has been a bad week for personal time. It’s been a good week, I suppose, for my engineering career. Monday afternoon the double presentation I made to the site tours of the Arkansas Floodplain Managers Association convention went well. I received many comments on it. This was despite the fact that, at the construction site below the viewing platform, they had decided to jack-hammer out some rock that day, and I had to just about shout my talk.

Then I went to the last day and a half of the AFMA convention in nearby Springdale, arriving back in the office just a few minutes ago. That convention went okay, but I found much of the discussion was over my head. Not the basic floodplain issues; in fact I knew those quite well. But today it was all about digital flood maps and tying them in with various GIS tools, about raster and tif and png, about layers and changing characteristics. It was all more than I could listen to.

Then, as the convention ended, my main client asked me to attend a follow-up session this afternoon and tomorrow here in Bentonville, a session about cities joining/qualifying for the Community Rating System, a relatively new FEMA program designed to reward cities that do a good job at managing floodplains within their jurisdiction.

That’s the curve ball today. I had hoped to spend two glorious hours this afternoon archiving projects. Then I hoped to spend another two hours writing some difficult specifications. I guess the best I can do on those is to tackle them on Friday. But, I may be leaving the office early on Friday to go to a family wedding on Saturday in Pratt, Kansas–a little too far to make it a long day trip.

And I need to write only one more article at Suite101.com to begin earning a 10 percent bonus. Instead of averaging 30 cents a day I’ll earn 33 cents a day. The good part of being unable to write that 50th article is I don’t have to decide where to spend the money.