Happy Halloween 2011

Posted Mon Oct 31, 2011 in

Moon BoobsEight-years ago today, Older Son and DiL were married. I remember it well. I was both the groom’s father and the wedding photographer. I only hope that now, after eight years, they’re still happy with the work I did at the wedding, before and after. I had help for some of the shots from a friend who is talented with cameras as well.

I used to get wrapped around the axle about the harvest celebration. The devils and demons and such bothered me.

Now that I’m older, it’s just play and sometimes I think that playing in this fashion is a human way of making the world seem a little less scary. It’s a big, scary place — especially for children (of all ages). If we lampoon the scary things, perhaps they no longer hold so much power over us… or at least we give them less power over us.

The image circulated early in the month and I saved it for my weblog. The original caption was “You’ve been mooned! Happy Halloween!” Consider yourself mooned… and Happy Anniversary Older Son and DiL.

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Light Posting

Posted Sun Mar 27, 2011 in

Dave's TalkWow! I see that my posting is almost vanished from my weblog. In addition, my Twitter and Facebook postings have been limited to a few bit.ly links.

The truth is that I was and probably still am totally covered up. Between travel and project deadlines, I have had little energy left over for my personal writing. I wrote in my Moleskine journal once in the last six weeks. That is relatively rare.

I pushed out a project last week and have only a few edits to do to the report this week. Another project is nearing completion as well and that will take some of the pressure off. Development work requires a lot of energy as well and I have to keep projects in the pipeline. This is no different now than it was at the university. The time frame might be a bit shorter than university work, but it’s all the same.

I have a notion to convert the static pages of my professional website to a CMS so I can post the occasional article there as well. My professional brand needs development too. I’m the only one who can really do that. To accomplish that will require a day or so of work. I’ll need a design for the site, although I think the bulk of that work is done. I really like “Shelob’s Lair” as it is. It will probably want a few tweaks, but the heavy lifting is installing and configuring the CMS.

I should host directly or link my writings. I have a large report library of information that was developed for my sponsors and clients. Some of the work is of technical interest to other engineers. These materials should be associated with my professional brand.

Other than that, I continue to work on hydrologic and hydraulic projects. Now I think it’s time for some more coffee and some food. Oh yeah… the image was made by the walk-about photographer at the National Hydraulic Engineering Conference held in Park City, Utah last August. I did a short talk on a simplified method for estimating infiltration losses when building a flood runoff model. I had fun doing the talk, even if it wasn’t my best.

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Logitech H760 and Ruminations…

Posted Sun Mar 13, 2011 in

Ruminator with Logitech HeadsetThe image is me wearing the Logitech H760 wireless headset. I bought this a couple of months ago for playing World of Warcraft because I hate being wired to the computer. As it turns out, the headset is good enough for light music-listening, especially at the office where I try to block the sometimes noisy environment.

When I bought the headset, I wasn’t so sure about it. It can be a little uncomfortable for wearing a long time. It pinches me just a little above the ears where some pressure is applied to keep the unit in place. Use of the unit also requires some adjustment of eyeglasses placement. I put the headset on, then lift the temples of my glasses slightly. It doesn’t affect my vision and makes wearing the headset more comfortable.

Happy Daylight Saving Time Day. Sheesh… I know that changing the time helps a little, but it sure is hard on this old man. I think I complain about the change semiannually. I guess I’ll never get used to it. OK, enough bitching…

I’m not sure what the day will bring. I suppose I should sit down and figure out what I want to accomplish today. Yesterday we finished a bunch of errands that piled up during all of the travel and travel preparations. I have a pretty good stack of mail in my inbox to review and I want to clear it before the week begins.

I’m still working through my music collection. I decided to go back through the collection, make sure everything is entered into my database (and transferred to my iPhone so I don’t double-buy), and rip my music to high-rate MP3s. I’ve written about the process many times before. I use Exact Audio Copy to pull the digital files from my discs, then use LAME to encode them to MP3. I use a variable bit rate and let the psycho-acoustic model embedded in the encoder decide which segments need more definition and which need less.

It might surprise you, but the process is executed on my Winder$ box. EAC only runs under Winder$ and it’s the best extraction tool found to date. LAME will run on many platforms, but it integrates so well with EAC that I just do the work there. I considered lossless, but I don’t think my equipment is good enough (nor are my ears that good anymore) to justify the additional storage.

I’ll probably finish the task over the next week or so. Then I’ll work through the collection using Tag & Rename to update the MP3 files. Finally, I’ll copy the tracks to an external drive and replace the lower-quality tracks in iTunes on my Mac with the updated files.

I find myself listening to music more and more now. I use it to fill the background so things don’t distract me when I’m working. Music also does something for my soul.

I might have to start playing again. But, I’m not starting that project until I get a lot more work done around the house. I still have a lot of accumulation to work through and eliminate.

Happy Sunday…

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Friday Departure

Posted Fri Feb 18, 2011 in

Waves and RocksI’m wrapping up my meetings this morning. We have a teleconference with two other researchers that will be hosted here at TTU with three of us here and two others remote. It’s an experiment to determine whether this can be done efficiently, as well as the practicality of the tools. The meeting starts about 0930 local time and will take us a few hours to complete our coordination and setup for the last push on this project.

Then we’ll break and probably go to lunch. I’m hoping for Texas BBQ today. I haven’t done that this week and it is one of the things I miss most about Texas. Bigham’s BBQ here in Lubbock (on 19th Street) has the best smoked turkey to be had in this area. Their brisket is great too.

While I’m at my meeting, Wife and Young Son will pack up the car. They’ve seen me do it many times and I have every confidence they’ll get it done. If not, then it won’t take me long to pack the car because we are not full this time.

After lunch we head back west toward home. It will take a couple of days to get there and I’m praying for decent weather. There is some snow and rain forecast for the north route (U.S. 50), but we will make it only somewhere into central New Mexico this evening, so I will check the weather Saturday morning before we leave on the next leg and make a decision about direction then.

I guess it was my turn in the barrel again this trip. I managed to capture some bronchitis. I guess I was due — it’s been about a year since my last bout with the germ. I made a visit to my doctor-away-from-home, Dr. Mario Pena, who takes good care of me.

All in all it was a good trip. I saw my friend and colleague finish his second dissertation (and Ph.D.). It was an honor to sit on his committee for a second time. He did an excellent job, as expected. He is a mature scientist.

Now I’m going to try to get a little more sleep. It’s about 0200 local time as I write this. I woke with a full head and needed to clear it.

Next stop will be somewhere in central New Mexico. Oh yeah, the image is from one of our recent trips to the west coast. I love the ocean, especially the Pacific Ocean.

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Off to Supper

Posted Tue Feb 15, 2011 in

Greetings from Lubbock, Texas. We rolled in late in the afternoon Sunday. I had a training class on Monday. I filled in the time with some work I brought with me.

This morning (is it only Tuesday?!?) I spent time working through a couple more chapters of a dissertation I’m reading. I have a couple of more to finish in the morning. I also worked through some analysis of rainfall at a meteorological station near Lake Tahoe. Apparently a relatively heavy rainfall event occurred in October 2010 at a site of interest. The client was interested in whether that event approximated the 20-year, 1-hour event.

We pulled some data from a Roadway Information Site station and I reviewed the results. They looked “light” to me for the reported event. So, I asked my assistant to pull some data for the National Weather Service gage at the South Lake Tahoe Airport.

The RWIS station appears to record reasonable estimates. Either the event wasn’t so heavy or the cell missed the station. Regardless, I reported this to the project manager (after completing my initial analysis) this morning.

Then it was off to meetings this afternoon. I am still trying to develop additional work.

For now, I think it’s time to go get some food and then settle in for the evening. I’m a little tired and have a lot yet to do this week.

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98th Anniversary

Posted Thu Feb 3, 2011 in

Today, 98-years ago, the 16th Amendment was adopted. Thus began the income tax.

Edit: I was just thinking about income taxes. Let’s tax the corporations more — Oh, wait, they’ll just pass it to the consumer. In the end, it’s the consumer (you and me) who pays the tax. TANSTAAFL!

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House Hunting

Posted Sun Jan 30, 2011 in

Hydraulic JumpI was just reading an old (very old) essay posted about one of my root canal experiences. I noticed that the wonderful Ann Stone posted a comment or two on the entry. I was reminded again of my voices fascination and that I miss her writing and that she was hanging out here (way back when I hosted my weblog on shelob in my workroom1 on campus.

There are a few folks that went missing along the way and I miss them. It’s funny how things are.

We’ve been looking at houses again. I think there are a couple of them we’ll try to walk through. I don’t know if I’m ready to buy, but I think that looking is a good thing. It’s always fun to be out and about with Wife. She likes this sort of thing.

This morning I think we’ll visit church again. I don’t know whether I’m truly ready to plug in again, but it’s good to spend some time with other Christians. I think it’s especially good for Wife.

The image is an old one from my archive. While retrieving one (or more — can’t remember) of my offspring one showery afternoon, I came across this wonderful example of a hydraulic jump. The approach was hydraulically-steep, so the flow was supercritical. The culvert entrance was sufficiently restrictive to force a hydraulic jump at the entrance. The height of the spray indicates the amount of kinetic energy in the flow, which in this case was substantial. I thought it was cool. I remember the kids saying “dad…”

Edit: Well, we didn’t try for church this morning. I think I’m still recovering from my travels and we didn’t move fast enough. So, we’ll put it on the schedule for next weekend.

1 Yeah, it’s balrog but he was the evil twin (if that’s appropriate) of shelob.

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