General Jackassery

I’m sitting here listening to U2’s Joshua Tree album and it brings back some good memories. Mostly of my first year of college. The album had been out for a while then, but I really go into it then. I think it’s their best.

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Well, after two years in the doldrums of second place we finally pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and won regionals this year! I don’t know of the last time a UAH canoe team went two years in a row without winning regionals but we did it. This year we swept all of the technical aspects of the competition and didn’t fair too poorly in the water, but we could have done a lot better! Oh well, hopefully the paddlers will hoist themselves and actually be ready for nationals when they come around in two and a half months.

Anybody else want to go to Washington D.C. for a couple of days and cheer on the team?

You know it really stinks when you have to turn your computer over to the Information Management people and they decided to keep it until the get good and ready to do something productive with it. They’re supposed to be changing out the operating system on it and updating the software because the government has this irritating policy where they test new software to death before they decided to actually implement it. By they time they upgrade to that software they’re already behind and the newest software has come out. So, they’re “working” on loading XP Pro on my machine and have been working on it since Thursday afternoon. It doesn’t take THAT long to load software on a machine!

Oh well, we leave for Tampa on Wednesday evening. Mo and I went and picked up the boat from Maaco this morning and there’s some relatively minor work that needs to be done on the interior of the boat before it can be called finished also so clear coating to do where the boat was resting on the stands when it was clear coated. I’ll be posting pictures of my cross-section sometime soon, I’ve had help building it, but the concept and the majority of the labor in construction goes to me, I’m pretty proud of it. We currently have to finish building the boat stands and the base for the cross-section, fill and sand the inside of the cross-section and the boat and have Tidwell put the vinyl lettering on the outside of the boat and the trailer and we’ll be ready to head to Tampa!

I would really like for some of these guys to get a chance to see Nationals and have that experience, but the other half of me would really like for this season to be over and us all to get our lives back. It was really nice to have the summers off and I’m kind of looking forward to working on my house and my garden and yard and bidding fair well to the concrete canoe!

It really is the simple things in life that are the coolest. I’m currently sitting in my new cubicle at work, it’s a little bit smaller than my other cube, but it is far more private. If you want to see what I’m doing you have to either be tall enough to see over the 6′ cubicle wall, or you have to make a point to turn down the little isle that I’m on. So in light of the fact that it’s Friday afternoon, the Chief of my Branch is gone for the weekend, the Chief of my Division is gone for the weekend, Thad is gone for the weekend and just about everyone else is gone for the weekend I’m sitting with my feet propped on my desk, leaning back in my chair, a nice cool breeze blowing on me from my fan, music coming through my headphones (Puffy, “I’ll be missing you.” ), my new wireless keyboard in my lap just chillin’ dawg! It’s been a pretty good day, quite the opposite of my favorite person in the world, I have been completely useless all day (well not completely). I got up this morning and played hockey, came to work, did my training CD’s, got on my bike rode 16 miles (not bad considering I was alone in the wind and rain.) Took a shower when I got back and went to McAllisters and had lunch with my favorite person in the whole wide world. This afternoon I’ve been farting around with the new Line of Sight software that we’ve been working on and I was told that next week I will start developing spreedsheets to help us with the designs that we do. That really means that I’ve got to get one of the old computers set up to share with mine so I can use it as a server for me and Thad, then I have to learn Excel in a little deeper more personal way because these spreadsheets will require “If/then” statements and things like that. But, developing these spreadsheets should help me study for the PE. I’ll be taking that in about a year and a half, but there’s not time like the present to start learning the things that I never learned in college.

See, I was a structural engineering major in school and no my job is more like that of a transportation engineer. So, I have to learn some new things that I didn’t know. InRoads (the design software that we use) has all of that stuff in there and it computes it for you, but I need to know how it really works. The idea is to start designing roads based on a design speed instead of setting the design speed based on the alignment of the road. (Probably greek to most, but it’s cool to me.)

Anyway, it’s been a pretty good day. Hope everyone else’s is good too!

You know, I’ve been saying for too long that I was going to get back into cycling hardcore to try to drop a few lbs by the time we leave for regionals. So last week I told myself that I had a holiday on Monday and I was going to use that to go on a decent ride that would maybe catapult me back into the swing of things. Well I rode yesterday and today, a grand total of 41 miles over the two days, the wind chill just standing still was 36 degrees now, take the wind speed up to 18-25 mph and your windchill drops into the teens. Needless to say that’s pretty cold when you’re on the bike for an hour. Yesterday wasn’t that much better, but atleast I was dry. Oh well, what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger and I certain need that. The good news is, today was about as miserable as I will ever allow myself to be on the bike. It took nearly an hour for me to regain feeling in my toes, I either have to get more cold weather gear (NOT!) or use the trainer on days when I know it’s going to be super cold. And I’m sure there will be a few more of those over the next couple of months.

Okay, that’s all for now.

Okay, so I have a few minutes to update my faithful two readers on my life. I’m about 99.9% done with this design and it has to be done today because it has to go out the door on Monday and I won’t be here Monday and I’m not working this weekend. So that’s good news. The bad news is that I could have about 25% more work to do if Rodney decides to convince Thad that we have to change the layout of the intersection for our road. That would suck! But, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In other news things in my life seem to be progressing nicely. I’ll be really glad when the academic year is over so I can have friends again for a little while and so I can have a girlfriend that has just a little more time on her hands. Right now she’s buried under the concrete canoe competition and while I’m not opposed to her doing that (wouldn’t matter if I was) I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I think she will be glad too.

Mom’s coming over this weekend, we’re going to figure out what I need to do to make my kitchen look nicer and I’m probably going to tile it. I already have the tile, it’s just a matter of laying it out and getting it done. I think any kind of ceramic tile will look nicer than the vinyl that’s down there now, but I think what I’m putting down will be very nice looking. It helps to know that I’ve got enough tile to do the kitchen, the half bath and the laundry room, all the grout, the thinset morter and the admixture for the mortar to lay the tile on top of the vinyl all for less than $500 and on top of that if I went to a normal tile store to buy this stuff and had someone install it for me it would have cost over $3000. Sometimes it’s nice to be good with you hands. That should be a nice little investment in the house.

So that’s mostly what’s going on in my life right now. Hope everthing is going well for everyone else.

Todder, Out

Okay, I admit it, the concrete canoe is in my blood! I realized this weekend when I didn’t get a chance to work on the cross-section that I’ve been building that I actually missed it. I’m not sure if it’s becuase I didn’t want to be here at work or if it’s because I really wanted to work on the cross-section. I think it’s mostly that I wanted to work on the cross-section. I have a goal of being done with the mold part of it by the time the club is ready to lay-up the real boat. That way we have plenty of time to make it look perfect. I believe for the first time in the history of the competition the cross-section is actually being judged for craftsmanship, so it’s sort of important that it be done right. I’ve got a really good start on it and we’re looking at doing something pretty diffrent with it from what we’ve done in the past. I think it’s going to be pretty awesome when it’s done. Anyway, I’ve started looking forward to going to the competition in March. I mean it should be really fun to get to go to Tampa, FL for a couple of days, but I think the kids have a pretty good chance of winning this one. They have to get their collective butts in gear in the water though. It’s really time they started practicing a little more seriously and getting into better shape, but they have a good bit of time to get in shape and get good.

In other news, we got the 95% submittal for the Access Road we’ve been working on done this weekend. The cost was Thad and I were here virtually all weekend. I worked 9+ hour days on Saturday and Sunday, then got here at 7:00 Monday morning and worked until 9:00 on Tuesday morning, but we got it done. There is still one more iteration, the Final Submittal, so we’ll have some clean-up work, but there shouldn’t be any major changes. It’s looking like Thad and I will have to go to Pueblo one more time to pick up the last bit of survey for this project, but it should only be a couple of days. Anyway, we should have this out of our collective hair in a couple of weeks. Then it will be time for the next Pueblo design, upgrading the roads in the area where the weapons that we’ll be destroying are stored. So for now I get a little bit of a break. I’ll be working on creating new files and preferences to make my life easier when we start new designs, and I have to do some touch up work on the design that we have to get it ready for the final submission, but things should be much slower for the time being.

I started the morning out by playing hockey, nice thing to do at 6:00 on a Friday morning. Blake (my old roommate) came out and played so we got to chat and catch-up a little bit, it was pretty cool. The team I played on won 3 of 4 games to 5 goals and I scored a pretty nice little grinding goal. I had a dude drapped all over me in front of the net when the puck slid through and out of Blake’s site, I got a piece of it and slid it underneath him and in the net. Later in the game I missed the most beautiful scoring opportunity I’ll probably ever have. I was on the right side of the crease when one of my teammates slid the puck across from the other side. I was all alone in front of the net and Blake went down to cover the bottom half of the net. I took my time (an amazing thing on it’s own because I usually freak out in that situation, “Gotta shoot, gotta shoot now), look where I want to shoot, draw back and fire the puck. Just half an inch to the left was all I needed, instead CLANG, Metallurgy save! It was good crisp, hard shot and the ring off the post would only be rivalled by the bells of a cathedral. I shook my head, Blake laughed, and one of the guys on the bench was like, “Dude, that was beautiful………until you hit the post!” Jackass!

So anyway the game’s over, I get everything put up, get my shower and head for work. I decided to stop by the bank to check my account balance because I need to make a car payment and much to my surprise the balance is FAR lower than I thought it should have been. So I spend the morning shitting bricks sideways and I finally decide to head out to the house. I needed to feed the dogs and I could kill two birds with one stone if I got on-line and check my statement to see what happened. Aparently about 2 seconds after I got my $20 out of the bank, the other money that I was expecting to arrive yesterday, finally showed in my account and because Microsoft Money is evil and screwed something up, it turns out that I have a good bit more money in my account than even I expected. Must check on Microsoft Money and find out why it made me worry so much when it shouldn’t have.

Okay, so that’s all settled and I’m much happier now than I was about 3 hours ago. I was doing pretty good though. I was following through on my previous post and despite being upset about the banking situation I was still pretty happy all together. I just decided that was how I was going to be!

Has anyone picked up on the fact that it’s ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS outside today. I wish it had been 60 degrees when I was out riding my bike, but it wasn’t too bad since I had my cold gear on. I’m still pretty darn weak by my standards, but yesterday I was able to top out at 37.4 mph on flat land. I still have the power, I’m just lacking in stamina right now. Need to get this weight back off. Granted I’m still 32 lbs lighter than I was this time last year, but I’d like to lose another 40 lbs and get done to 225 ultimately.

Okay, I’m done rambling, I need to get some work done.

Todder, OUT!

Good Lord! I’ve gotten really weak! I haven’t really been motivated to ride lately. I pretty much explained what was motivating me to ride when I posted this . Lately I’ve been having to come up with new motivation and I think that I’m just going to have to remember how much I enjoyed watching the weight come off and how much I loved the feeling of accomplishment when I would get to the top of Bankhead Pkwy or when I rode the 105 miles in Claxton, GA for the Cruisin’ in the Country Century that I have every intention of returning to next year. That was very cool!

Okay, that’s all.

CAUTION: This post contains some boring Civil Engineering blather! Those who feel they can get through it may continue to read, all others should turn back lest they loose brain cells!

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