Category Archives: flood studies

Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101, Writing

Two Down, Two to Go

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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.

flood studies, Writing

Holiday’s Over; Back to Work–But on What?

Leave a comment

Well, the Memorial Day weekend is over. I’m back at work and trying to put my mind and heart into it, finding that difficult. We had five guests at the house Saturday through this morning, relatives, most traveling from southwest Kansas to Louisville for a family wedding, breaking their trip with a visit to us. They left this morning, probably ten or fifteen minutes after I left for the office. It was a good weekend. Lots of good meals, relaxation, conversation, some war movies yesterday, game playing (by some; I didn’t take part in that), and sitting on the deck conversing and watching birds.

But that meant I didn’t take much time for writing projects or research or reading. I read about ten pages in the book on which I’m basing the Life Group lesson series I’ll begin teaching this coming Sunday. And I re-read the last couple of chapter in The Shack, just in case I was called on to teach the final lesson in that series last Sunday. But other than that, no reading. And no writing on my blog.

I have three or four posts I’ve been thinking of, which wouldn’t take too much time. I guess I’ll be fleshing them out and trying to post daily this week. I’m not going to post goals again this month, as I still am uncertain of where I’m going with my writing career.

Last week I contacted the principal of the Christian school our daughter graduated from, to discuss whether their art teacher would be interested in having their art students illustrate Father Daughter Day as a class project. He sounded interested, but said he had to run to a meeting and would get back with me. That was last Tuesday, and I’ve yet to hear from him. Is he uninterested, or just forgot? Should I call him, or just let it go as another rejection? For now, I’ll do the latter.

Well, back to the grind. I reviewed one drainage project today, and will now jump back on that flood study I wrote about last week. Only a day or two to go on that, methinks. Then I have two or three more flood studies backed up, waiting for me to release them from their current impoundment.

Engineering, flood studies

A Deadline Met (sort of)

Leave a comment

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?

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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, flood studies, Writing

Rain and Progress

Leave a comment

As I drove to work today the rain began, about halfway from Bella Vista to Bentonville. By the time I reached the office, about 6:50 AM, a downpour had passed and light rain was falling. The winds were really gusting, however. This cheered me up. Although I knew the rain meant no work would be done on the parking lot project, it also meant I could spend the day in the office, getting things done. Plus, rain usually perks me up.

So I stayed in the office, and I got stuff done. My Centerton flood map revision is fully recalculated, and the revised map further revised, and ready for the CAD tech to do when he gets back on Monday. Tomorrow I’ll print the report, then start on the next flood study project.

Several items on the big street construction project I’m watching in substitution for our out-of-the-country department head had a few things go right today (paperwork, of course, since the rain prohibited site work). I answered a couple of e-mails that had sat in my in-box for several days. By the end of the day a load had been lifted from my shoulders. Part of that was making a difficult report to the church trustees on Wednesday. With that behind, and a number of major office tasks completed, the load finally lifted. I left the office about 5:20 PM, and for the first day in over a week I was not the first man in and last man out.

Today I went through a stack of mail, much of it junk but some of it keepers. I read a newsletter, slightly reducing my periodical reading pile. And I filed, in my filing cabinet, this year’s taxes that had been sitting around on the work table in the Dungeon.

I still have a killer workload, but it feels better. I’m going to write a passage note for the Harmony of the gospels before I look at stocks. That will be the first writing I’ve done (well, except for this blog) in about two weeks.

critique group, Engineering, flood studies, Health, Writing

A Day Usurped

6 Comments

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, flood studies, Suite 101

A Busy Weekend, and I Learned Something

Leave a comment

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, flood studies, writer's platform, Writing

I’m Still Not Writing—but I’m Making Progress

Leave a comment

Well, last night once again I didn’t feel like writing. I spent a little more time in Father Daughter Day, finding most of the tweaks I had wanted to make and maybe an extra one or two. I read a couple of writing blogs I follow. But otherwise I just read and did crosswords and wasted time.

Today, on my to do list was writing that article for Suite101.com on preparing to give a deposition. I started it, but have mostly the outline and first paragraph or two done. I reserved the noon hour for that, but do you think I got it done? No, I read writing blogs and critiqued a poem at the Absolute Write Water Cooler. And, I found one more place to tweak in FDD. And I got all the edits made to my FDD master file.

In a way, I suppose that’s progress. At least some of my time is still spent in writing activities. Along with what I said above, I shared a strategy for publication of FDD with an agent whose blog I read and comment on. He agreed with what I’m thinking of doing. No I just have to do it and see if it will work.

Meanwhile, my 47 articles at Suite 101 had 1559 page views in the last seven days (ending yesterday). That’s over a rate of 81,000 page views a year. That may not be enough platform to convince an editor or agent to take a chance on my books, but it feels pretty good. I’m sure some of those page views, with come mostly from people searching for some topic using a search engine, may be nothing more than a quick look at the opening paragraph and going on to something else, but it still feels good.

Today, in my working hours, I completed two major tasks, and set about archiving my files for the period when I served as Centerton’s city engineer (by contract with CEI). About four projects are unfinished and I can’t archive them yet. Another six I have to keep here until I extract information from them for the second Centerton flood study, which I began work on this week. They they will go off to archive with their brethren. All these files consume about 25 feet of shelf space. When I’m finished archiving them, which will be late next week or the week after, I should be down to no more than 8 shelf-feet of files. That will feel good, and I’ll be able to do without two book cased in my new, smaller office when we move in late October.

Time to prepare for the weekend. On Monday I give a presentation on the Crystal Bridges Museum flood plain work, to the Arkansas Floodplain Managers Association annual convention. It’s being held locally, and the presentation is at the overlook of the construction site. Then Tuesday-Wednesday I’ll attend the convention in nearby Springdale. Another chopped-up week.