Engineering, Writing

New Assignment – am I a glutton for punishment?

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A couple of posts ago I wrote about how I was preparing (or maybe had already prepared) a pitch to Buildipedia.com for a long article about asphalt solar collectors (ASC). This was a bit of emerging technology I came upon, somehow, that looks to have a lot of potential. I began looking at it and saw some advantages and pitfalls. In three on-line articles, two on-line research summaries, and a press release by Worcester Polytech I didn’t see any mention of the things I thought of. Immediately my mind said, “If you don’t see an adequate article on-line, write your own.”

So I made the pitch. This morning I had a call with the editor, and he assigned the article to me. A bit smaller at first than I planned for, but with two potential follow-up articles covering the other things I wanted to say. This will be a feature article, so for the better money they pay.

The research on ASCs (which, BTW, should really be APSC for asphalt pavement solar collectors, since it’s the pavement that we’re interested in) seems to be in its infancy. WPI has done computer modeling, and lab-scale tests, and larger-scale tests of the technology. They’ve determined the potential is there for significant energy recovery from asphalt pavement. But are ASCs economical? Or do they have the potential to be economical? That question has not been answered. Much research will be required, including a full size demonstration project with the asphalt under load and energy being used.

Given what I’ve written the last two days, with my work and home time about to be under a busyness siege, why would I take on such an assignment? Well, the article won’t be published until November 4, and the due date will be October 21 (or 28th if I need that long). It fits in well with a theme they planned on for November. I need the money. I need the writing credit. I suppose I need the goal to keep me on the straight and narrow of time management. And I see considerable spin-off type articles coming from this, coming over several months or a year.

So, all things considered, I pitched the article and accepted the assignment. I don’t have a contract to sign yet, but I should receive that on Monday. Looks like my writing career isn’t dead. I just hope all this magazine article stuff someday pays off with creative writing assignments.

poetry

At Sunset

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At Sunset

On icy roads I drive with caution toward
my home, still seeing piles of work not done.
With traffic all around I can’t afford
to look behind to see the setting sun.

I speed the mower recklessly along
the field and hope the dark holds off a bit
to let me cut it all. A sparrow’s song
breaks through—oh, shoot, is that a rock I hit?

The fading light gives me so little time
to harvest luscious berries, blue and black.
I spent the day’s best part in corporate climb.
It isn’t fruit, but daylight hours I lack.

Oh Lord, you’ve blessed me much, but tell me when
I’ll watch, in peace, an evening sky again.

Engineering, Writing

Under Siege Again

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Yes, the siege has begun. It seems all areas of busyness come together in life. At work, I have almost missed a FEMA deadline and in the next two days need to rush a submittal to avoid having to re-pay a fee. At the same time, the next FEMA project is about to start. Well, I’ve started it, but have been waiting on CADD tech help to both do it better and save a bunch of hours. That help is about to arrive, and then I’ll have to hit it quick.

Also at work, a fairly good sized water line relocation project got the go ahead yesterday. This one I will only be managing, not doing, but I’ll be writing the specs for it and doing a few other things. It will consume hours.

The biggest hit of all will be having to do a large chunk of another man’s work for some time. That won’t start right away, but surely within a month, lasting for at least three months.

At home, we have about resolved all issued related to the water damage, other than completing an inventory of damaged books and furniture and sending it to the insurance company. We have pretty much shown there is no more water damage occurring above the fixed ceilings in the basement, so we need to proceed with getting that work done. Then we can get the carpet replaced, then put everything back in place. Four of the movable bookcases sit directly on the floor with no false bottom. Those I want to set on a board of some kind. I’ll have to figure that out, buy the boards, and stain them. Not a major project, just symptomatic of the siege.

For sure work is going to be busier than home. I anticipate some extra hours, probably in mid-October for a couple of weeks, probably longer. My writing assignments and desires are not terribly burdensome at this time, so I should be able to maintain that work. This blog is the easiest thing to give up if the siege gets too great, but I hope to keep posting, maybe shorter pieces.

So, today is not earth shattering news; just an interim report, a diary entry, if you will. Let’s see if I can do things more substantial over the next month.

C.S. Lewis, Emerson, reading, Writing

New Books or Old Books

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Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” 1837

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. C.S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, 1944

So, two eminent scholars seem to disagree! Why am I not surprised. Emerson says read the modern books. The generation right before you, after they observed the world and digested it, shared the knowledge they had for my generation. C.S. Lewis says not so; read first the old books, then if you have time and inclination read the modern as well.

This came up because, at my last foraging in a thrift store, I found the Athanasius book. I might not have bothered with it except I have an interest in the early Christian writings, and thought this slim paperback would be a welcome addition to my reference library. Also, in 2005 I first read a seminary paper by my son-in-law on Athanasius’ de Incarnatione Verbi Dei. I didn’t understand it, put it down, picked it up again almost exactly a year later, didn’t understand it, put it down again, etc., until finally I was able to glean enough from it to understand it (I think) the discussion and write a review. When I saw the book I thought, “I’ve read about this writing of Athanasius; now I have the chance to read it in modern translation.”

When I got it home I read the Introduction. C.S. Lewis’ words stood in stark contract to what I remembered reading in Emerson. “The American Scholar” is actually the only essay of RWE’s I’ve gotten all the way through. Others I’ve picked up and put down, but that one I really liked. Emerson’s words had seemed true to me. That’s why every American generation writes another biography or two of George Washington, and why the shelves of our local libraries are constantly rotating books, selling off those more than fifty years old and replacing them with newer distillations of the same subject.

Lewis has more to say about this than does Emerson. He goes on to discuss the importance of reading the original sources. Commentaries on Plato are more confusing than Plato, he writes. Just read Plato. He’s not so hard to understand in modern translation. Since that is exactly what I am attempting to do with the Athanasius book, I could understand Lewis’ remarks. And, as a writer I’d better figure out how to write materials for the next generation while at the same time directing them to the old books.

We’ll see how this goes. I’ve read about fifteen of the 95 pages of Athanasius, and sort of understand what he’s saying. I haven’t gotten to the meat of his argument yet. Of course, when he began by saying, “In our former book”, I had to divert to various on-line sources to see what that book was and what it is all about. That led me to some letters he wrote. That led me to some biographical materials, and even a compilation of his works. The tentacles of research are at work.

It is taking me much concentration to read De Inarnatione. I can’t do it while also watching television, or even while that noise is on in the house. I can’t read it if I’m also thinking of articles to write or blog posts to post or bills to pay or work issues the morning will bring. So I may not finish it quickly, may even put it aside and go to some other book in my reading pile. We shall see. The experiment is on.

Buildipedia, content writing, Suite 101, Writing

Writing writing writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buildipedia, holidays, reading, Suite 101

Working Hard at Doing Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

book reviews

Book Review: The Adams Chronicles: Four Generations of Greatness

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I’m not quite sure where I picked up The Adams Chronicles: Four Generations of Greatness by Jack Shepherd [1975, Little, Brown and Company, ISBN 0-316-78497-4]. It cost me $2.00, whereas it sold new, at its second printing in 1976, for $17.50, and used at a previous time for $5.98. I bought it thinking it would be a good history read. It was, and I’m glad I parted with the two.

The book covers four generations of the Adams family, beginning with John, second president. he was the fourth generation of Adamses born in America, but the first we know anything about. For many years history regarded him as almost an accidental founding father—an elitist, a monarchist, a distruster of rule by the people. More recent scholarship has returned him to a place of prominence among the American revolutionaries.

Much of John Adams’ writings fueled the Revolution. An example is his recording of James Otis’ argument, in 1761, against the Writs of Assistance. Since Otis was later deranged and burned most of his personal papers, most of what we know of this opening salvo of rebellion against England comes from John Adam’s notes. I was happy that Adams wrote an opinion about this event that accords with my own: “Independence was then and there born.”

John Quincy Adams is treated fairly by the book. His diplomatic successes, his failed presidency, his later Congressional career, and his efforts against slavery and for the Union are all described. I knew less about him than I had about John, and this book went a long way toward filling my educational gap.

I knew even less about the next two generations, having heard of Charles Francis Adams but knowing nothing about him or his career or his sons. They are treated in the book in less depth than the two presidents, which I suppose should be expected. Charles Francis Adams and his four sons who lived to adulthood—John Quincy II, Charles Francis Jr, Henry, and Brooks—spent less and less time with politics and more with literary and business pursuits.

Charles Francis Adams had a diplomatic and political career, even being considered for nomination as presidential candidate once, but he also spent much time editing his grandparents’ and father’s writings. Charles Francis Jr. began as a journalist but went into railroads, becoming president of the Union Pacific Railroad until he was forced out just before the Panic of 1893. Henry Adams did mostly writing, primarily of history but also a couple of novels. John Quincy II had a political career, trying to rebuild the Democratic party after the Civil War. Brooks, the youngest, had the least paragraphs in the book. He led a quiet life of writing and described himself as “a crank, very few people can endure to have be near them…as soon as I join a group of people they all melt away and disappear.”

The author made a valid attempt to show the family’s faults alongside their good qualities; yet I sense he was not neutral (duh; the subtitle tells me that). He generally likes the Adamses and sees them as a positive force in American history. The writing is good and captivating. It took me only fourteen sessions to get through the 452 pages, including the historo-babble filled Introduction by Daniel J. Boorstin. The book is well illustrated, and has an adequate index.

By 21st century standards, the book can be faulted for its lack of documentation. It has no footnotes. Thus it would be classified as a popular rather than a scholarly history. The bibliography implies the author relied primarily on original family writings. Some notes as to sources would have been nice.

While this is a good book, a worthwhile read, it is not a keeper. If I do any more study on the Adamses I would want to do it from the primary sources. As soon as I note a few things from the bibliography, off to the garage sale pile it goes.

freelance writing, home improvements, reading, Writing

Oh for a Holiday Weekend

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Labor Day weekend is upon us. My supervisor, the CEO, usually comes around early afternoon and tells us we can leave early, somewhere around 3:00 or 3:30 PM. I usually don’t, but might do so this time. While it’s a holiday, with one extra day, I have much to accomplish. Here’s a sampling.

  • We had a strong rainstorm last night, and one of the skylights leaks in our living room. It was a slow drip, but it followed the ceiling slope to the wall and then down the wall. We protected the carpet right away, but now I have to deal with this. Water in the living room, water in the basement. What’s a homeowner to do?
  • Speaking of water in the basement, we are in a testing phase right now. Had the plumber out yesterday. He couldn’t find any water, but wants us to watch it for a while before we do the ceiling re-installation and then the carpet installation. Another week at least with The Dungeon torn up.
  • Speaking of The Dungeon, I’m going to at least clean up the mess in it this weekend. We put down plastic sheets to catch the sheetrock and dust, but the sheets were so old that they kind of crumbled. Who knew? So I’ll get them out and vacuum up all the stuff that fell through the sheet cuts.
  • Speaking of cuts, it would be nice if I could finish taking out that leaning tree this weekend. The cut I made through the large branch that is preventing the tree from falling is mostly through the branch, but it closed up under the weight and I’ve got to start a cut from the other side. Weather is supposed to be good this weekend for working outside.
  • Speaking of working outside, I’ll have a little grass to weed-eat, and maybe I’ll take out those two bushes Lynda wants taken out. That will take an hour. And a few other bushes need trimming. Another hour.
  • Otherwise, I have two Buildipedia articles under contract that I need to finish or at least work on. I have three others under contract that I should start on. And it would be nice to write two for Suite101. Ideas are on my mind; I need to help them find an outlet.
  • Otherwise, I plan on reading, reading, reading. 150 or more pages in the book I’m working on, three or four newsletters, one Geographic, and one Poets and Writers.
  • And last, it would be nice to begin work on the next Bible study that’s on my mind. Actually, I started it last Sunday, but quickly saw it was a lot more work than I had envisioned, and so laid it aside.

That sounds like enough. I’ll perhaps make a couple of posts to this blog, get a few walks in, play Scrabble with Lynda, and enjoy the weather on the deck.

miscellaneous

A Few New Words I’ve Learned Recently

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With all the old stuff I read (18th and 19th century English stuff) you’d think I would run into new words regularly. But that’s not the case. Those older documents tend to use the same words we do now, but with different shades of meaning. I’d have to go back another century to find large numbers of unknown words.

But I ran into four new ones in the last few days for my work, two in floodplain computer program manuals and two in technical magazines. The latter two first:

pollutograph – I didn’t have to look this up. Surely this is someones attempt to say “this graph contains data plots related to pollution. I’m not sure we needed a new word for that, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt anything.

sonication – This was used in the context of biofilms on surfaces, and how, in some study of biofilms as pollutants, after they scraped as much of the biofilm as they could from a concrete surface they removed more by sonication. Now that seemed if must have to do with applying sound waves as a means of dislodging a film from a surface. I did look this one up, and I was right from the context. So, I need to use these two in a sentence.

“The pollutograph was more accurate after they added the data generated from removing the biofilm by sonication.” Not bad. Now, the two from the manuals.

thalweg – This one threw me. Given it was used in the manual of a computer program for analyzing floodplains, it obviously has something to do with water flow. I had to look it up: “1. a line, as drawn on a map, connecting the lowest points of a valley; 2. the middle of the main navigable channel of a waterway that serves as a boundary line between states.” There’s other definitions as well. Basically it’s the low points of a valley/river from source to mouth.

dendritic – This one threw me worse than the last. The sentence I first saw it in was: “The Hydrologic Modeling System is designed to simulate the precipitation-runoff processes of dendritic watershed systems.” The dictionary definitions include: “formed or marked like a dendrite; of a branching form, arborescent; any of the short, branched, threadlike extensions of a nerve cell, which conduct impulses toward the cell body.” Well, what does that have to do with floodplains? It’s used in the manual for the program that calculates runoff rates from precipitation. When you think of a watershed map, with only the boundaries shown and the flow channels all merging to one point, it kind of looks like a nerve cell. So I guess engineering has borrowed that from biology.

Time to use these last two in a sentence: “The dendritic watershed of the Mississippi River results in variable runoff, the forces from which are constantly modifying the thalweg of the river.” Not a great sentence, but I’ll stand by it.

All of which has very little to do with the main purpose this blog, my snail’s-pace attempts to become a writer. I suppose learning new words are part of a writer’s work, but I can’t imagine using any of these words in any of my works now in progress or contemplated. No, not even Ronny Thompson, college education in agricultural engineering, is going to say to his less-educated dad, “Gee, Dad, did you ever notice how our farm resembles a nerve cell, dendritic as it is.” Or “That big spring rain relocated the thalweg of our drainage ditch.” AGH—ain’t gonna happen.

But it’s still fun to learn a few new words, especially work related, in contemporary documents.

Engineering, Magazines

More on Magazines

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I wasn’t quite as caught up on reading my magazines and newsletters as I thought I was. One day this weekend I saw the book bag I had packed for our two summer trips. In it was one volume of The Annals of America, which I use for history article and essay ideas. Also in it were about five mags/newsletters I had taken on the trips but never read. So I put them back in the mag pile, along with two others that have arrived since I wrote my last blog post. Maybe I’ll read and finish one tonight. I’m way ahead of where I expected to be on my current book.

But my mag piles at work seem to be growing. I didn’t think I received that many. I don’t subscribe to a lot, but some come to me as a result of having attended a conference and visited a booth and been put on a mailing list. Then there are three or four that the chairman of the board sends me. I try to go through something in a mag every day, but still never catch up.

Because these are piling up, and because magazines were on my mind, I decided to go through my piles and make an inventory of what comes my way, and how many issues per year.

Arkansas Asphalt News – 4
Stormwater – 6
Environmental Connection – 4
Geosynthetics – 6 (gonna ditch this one soon)
Grading & Excavation Contractor – 6 (this one as well)
APWA Reporter – 12
CE News – 12
Journal AWWA – 12
Erosion Control – 7
Standardization News – 6
Opflow (newsletter) – 12
Pollution Equipment News – 6
Missouri PE newsletter – 4
Kansas PE newsletter – 4
Arkansas PE newsletter – 4
Arkansas Drinking Water Update – 4
Land & Water – 6 (not sure I’m still subscribed)
Water Environment & Technology – 12

If my non-calculator math is correct, that’s 129 mags a year, which I should get through in 220 or so working days. No wonder they are piling up.

For the more important mags, I try to read them closely. Many articles and news items are of importance to my work. Heck, even most of the ads have information in them about products I ought to know something about.

So they pile up. I get through at least one article a day. Some days I do more, even a whole magazine of the lesser important ones. I think, because I’ve been diligent with these as of late, the piles are actually a little shorter than the were at the beginning of the summer.

Right now, I’d better close this and see where I left off in the May 2010 issue of Erosion Control.

Author | Engineer