Tuesday Morning

Posted Tue Aug 24, 2010 in

CoffeeI’m up but not really awake yet. Mr. Coffee just finished gurgling, so I need a cup and one is available. I’m going to go get it. I poured a cup for myself and stowed the remainder in my ancient Stanley thermos.

That’s better. I made a short pot this morning because I’m not drinking as much coffee as I was a few weeks ago. I’m drinking more water because of my training/diet regimen.

My electronics just went nuts reminding me that cardio starts at 0600. I don’t think I have it in me this morning, so I think I’ll use my low time this afternoon to go ride the glider. I’m toast this morning — a little tired physically, but beat mentally.

The upper body workout yesterday worked. My upper-body muscles are tweaked this morning. They are not really sore, but definitely were worked hard enough to break down and rebuild. The adaptive response is alive and well. I guess that means I’m not dead yet. I might be old, but the basic systems are still working.

Yesterday afternoon I ran out of mental fuel about 1600. I turned in the second dam-breach analysis to the prime contractor in the morning, then started on the next structure. The final three all drain to a single receiving water. Fortunately I will not have to do a network analysis; just each one as a singleton. I set up the terrain and stream network in the geographic information system (GIS) software, then reviewed the simplified breach hydraulics for the three structures. I then set them aside for a bit so I could think about the approach. There has to be a way to reuse the cross sections so I don’t have to draw them multiple times.

In the meantime, I had an open channel hydraulics problem to solve for a colleague. His project has a flow measuring device that was supposed to be a Parshall flume — but it’s not. It is an open channel throttle or Venturi, but not a Parshall flume. Therefore, the standard rating curves for Parshall flumes won’t work for the device and the flows that are reported by the sensor are incorrect (in retrospect).

I completed the initial portion of my analysis last week when I wrote the conservation of energy equation from the constriction to the measuring point upstream. But, I needed to write a short R script to execute the computations and then complete my analysis. So, about 1400 I started that process. I confirmed my governing equation, then wrote about twenty lines of code to do the arithmetic. The only wrinkly was using the uniroot function to solve the governing equation. It required a little research and a couple of tries to get it done.

R is wonderful interactive calculator and general-purpose computational tool. I was able to solve the problem numerically in less than an hour because of the basic computational tools it provides. The ability to display results graphically and quickly makes R a useful exploratory tool. I find it much easier to use for such problems than a spreadsheet.

By the time I completed that task it was between 1600–1700 and I was done. There wasn’t anything left in me and I reached the point where I did not want to make another decision — not even about supper. By 1800 I was a little hungry but could not decide what I wanted and was too burned out to go fix. I almost just ate a bowl of cereal, but Wife rescued me and warmed up the leftover sirloin and a half of a baked potato.

I watched a couple episodes of Millennium and went to bed. I wanted to read a little, but the text swam before my tired old eyes, so I plugged in my iPod, listed to one or two songs (I remember Boy with the Moon and Star), and drifted off.

Now it’s time to refresh my cup, drink some water, and regroup for the push today. All I have in front of me are these dams. Everything else will have to wait.