A Training Exercise

Yesterday was my normal day to post, but I was extremely busy, both at work and at home after work, and, well, I didn't get it done. So sue me.

What was tying me up, you ask? At work I have been intensely conducting a training operation this week, one that involved me almost full time. It's the third (and maybe last) in a series of picking apart projects that went bad in some way. The examples came from my days as contracts city engineer for the City of Centerton, Arkansas. I pull out the aspect of the project that was bad, give it to those in the company who have registered as wanting to participate, and work with them over the week to solve the problem.

Last Friday I sent out the e-mail to the company, saying that this week we would hold that exercise to begin on Monday, and anyone who wanted to participate would have to register with me. Slowly people started to. By Monday noon, the time I picked to start it, I had 12 participants. This grew to 18 by the next day, then shrank back to 15 as workload got the best of three. And actually, two others didn't have a lot of participation.

At noon Monday everyone received an e-mail from me with a packet of information. Construction of the project was complete and it was about to go to the City Council for final plat approval. But it had been passed along by the Planning Commission two weeks before with contingencies, and one of those contingencies still hadn't been met. The City hadn't received copies of the tests of the newly constructed asphalt pavement. No tests in hand, and no statement from the "project manager" that the pavement met minimum standards, no approval by the City Council.

The next e-mail they received was from the construction contractor, passing along the asphalt tests, with no explanation or apology for their lateness. The participants had to take those asphalt tests and figure out if the asphalt was good or bad. Included in their original materials was a copy of the asphalt paving specification, which included the minimum standards for construction. The tests showed that it didn't meet the minimum standards. Nine out of nine tests failed; three of those were close to the standard, while six were way below standard.

At this point the participants have to pass these along to the "city engineer." But before they could, they received an e-mail from their client, the "developer," who is unhappy about the late tests and tells the participant that the project better pass at the City Council meeting on Friday or he'd hold them responsible for any losses he incurred. So with failing asphalt pavement on one side, and an angry and impatient client on the other, the participant has to decide what to do.

I had a little fun with this, as you can tell by the names I chose for the parts I played.

• Riley Straight, City Engineer, All American City
• Klaus E. "Bubba" Nuff, owner of Klaus E. Nuff Construction, NLC
• Will E. Nilley, an engineering troubleshooter hired by Nuff to "help" in the situation
• Jack Slacker, owner of Slacker Development, the developer

And then the e-mails started flying. Nilley was brought in on the project, and fired off letters and e-mails to convince the participants that the pavement was actually good, we just have to do some more tests and throw out the originals, and let's use this non-destructive testing method. Sure, it's not normally used for acceptance but it will work good in this situation. Nilley buries bad news in his letters and e-mails, and the participants had to read very closely to realize it.

I copied the manager of our design center with the e-mails, at his request, and he said he had over 140 e-mails about this. I didn't copy him on the first 20 or so, and I'm sure I missed a few along the way. I haven't counted mine yet, but I'd say it must have been close to 200 e-mails, taking up four identities and corresponding with 15 participants. Thursday morning I put together a PowerPoint presentation, highlighting some of the best and worst e-mails from participants, aggregating five batches of pavement tests into a series of growing spreadsheets, and coming up with solutions. By the time we got to the noon hour class on Thursday I was exhausted.

The class went well. Two participants had their department schedule a conflict and weren't there. But others came who weren't participants to hear the discussion. As the class went on I was rockin' and rollin', as the saying goes. I explained exactly what went wrong with the pavement (they had all figured out the manner in which it had failed), and showed how the only solution was to tear it out and do it over. I helped them to see how they could best serve their client and the citizens of All American City by directing Nuff Construction to tear out the pavement. And I showed them (I hope they got it) how they could make themselves a hero to their client in doing so. At the end of the hour class, I invited the V.P. who attended to say a few things, and he did, echoing our mantra of client service, and how what I was telling them was correct. At least, I think that's what he said. I'm not sure I followed all that closely, as tired as I was.

Then, at home, there was supper to eat and daughters and grandchildren to have a rambling phone call with an stock market business to conduct. Suddenly it was 11:00 p.m., and, well, I didn't get this written and posted. But here it is now. That was my day and week.

Searching for a Topic

Once again, this week, ideas for blog posts have passed through my mind without capture. But that doesn't mean I'm without a topic for today. I have at least two in mind as I start this.

One relates to something I'm working on at my day job. Next March I'll present a brown bag class in the office with the title "How to Recession-Proof Your Career". I've already started working on it, and several items from it would seem to make good blog posts. The other relates to our Life Group at church. We finished our "Jesus is Lord" study on October 19th, and we didn't have Life Groups on Oct 26th due to having a special service. We are supposed to start a new series this Sunday, November 2. The problem is neither I nor my co-teacher have a clue as to what to teach next. A request of the class on the 19th as to what they would want to study brought dead air, with the exception of maybe one of the shorter books of the Bible.

So, what to do? I was actually thinking of doing a series on prayer. The book The Circle Maker has been highly recommended, and I was thinking on using that. However, upon looking into it more closely, I'm concerned that it's actually not all that biblically based. Maybe it will work, maybe not. I meant to go to a bookstore and pick up a copy, but haven't yet had the opportunity.

An alternative method of studying prayer came to my mind over the last couple of days. Actually, two alternate series. One would take a fair amount of time to prepare lessons, the other very little time. I wonder which one I'd select if it were up to me. I hope I can convince my co-teacher on going that way. I'll try to contact him today.

Meanwhile, I think I'll write a few posts based on this class I'm preparing for work. I can see several that I could pull out as stand-alone posts. Enough to keep my busy for a while.

Post 900: On Accomplishment

As you'll know if you've read this blog or my other one, I'm in a Time Crunch. I put that in capital letters because it is the daddy of all time crunches. It's so much of a crunch that I can't see my way clear to do any writing. In an odd half hour here and there I do some research for a future project, the type of research that can be done in 30 minutes chunks of time. And to some extent I'm keeping up with my blogs. Beyond that, I don't foresee any writing for the next four months.

Yet, I have to say, I'm not without accomplishments during this time. This is my 900th post on this blog. That's not bad. I started it in late 2007, just under seven years ago, so that's an average of around 115 posts a year. I'm pleased with that accomplishment. Someday I hope someone will be interested in reading them all, seeing what the last seven years of my life have been like, and perhaps be impressed. Or, maybe not.

Another accomplishment of late has been better productivity in my engineering career. Most of the things I do are self-starting type stuff, and I've had trouble starting things. Recently though I've started several things. I have in-house classes planned clear up to December 2015. In the next four months I'll be teaching classes I've never taught before, which means I'll have to prepare notes, study the material, plan a presentation, and build a PowerPoint file for each. Three more things to put into my resume.

The main cause of the Time Crunch has also resulted in accomplishment. Lynda and I are in a stock trading education program. Part of that is having a mentor, having conference calls with him, and doing a bunch of homework. I'm pleased to say I've been keeping up with the homework, even out-pacing my wife with it. It's enjoyable to a degree. Whether or not it will make us more successful trading stocks I don't know, but I think it will. It's a quality program, unlike so many I've evaluated over the years. At least it's keeping me busy, and accomplishing things.

And today, I had a minor accomplishment: I paid the bills. We stayed home from church today. I'm nursing a mild cold, and Lynda was nursing a moderately severe headache. After morning devotions I grabbed accumulated mail from the kitchen table, went through it all, and paid all bills that were due, one not due till Nov 13. I sorted through things and discarded a bunch of junk mail. I have a few more things to go through, but overall I'm pleased with what I got done.

So three cheers for accomplishment. Of course, I'd rather these accomplishments be writing related, but perhaps that will come again in time.

Nothing to Write

Today is my day to post to this blog. Unfortunately I have nothing to write. We've been expecting rain since around noon, but then they changed the forecast to say we wouldn't get any till around 9:00 p.m. this evening. It finally started a few minutes ago, just in time for me to walk out to the car without a jacket. That's okay. Clothes, skin, and hair all dry without being damaged. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my papers from becoming wet.

Today I spoke to the engineering seminar class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. This is a weekly, 1 hour class that features practicing engineers coming in to talk about a significant project. Back in August the call came in to me to try and set something up to support this professor and his class. I wanted someone else to do this, but got exactly zero responses to my e-mail, so I did it. Actually, I got one response to my e-mail: on Tuesday of this week—just a little late. I talked about the engineering challenges with the Crystal Bridges Museum, focusing more on the flood control issues than anything else.

The class had around 30 people attend. I knew two of them: students who interned with us this past summer. Actually, I knew an older man who attended. He's a practicing civil engineer in Fayetteville, where the U of A is. I recognized him, but couldn't remember his name. He came up after the program and introduced himself, and I recalled where our paths had crossed before, perhaps 8 years ago.

Tonight Lynda and I will participate in another live training webinar for stock and options trading. Following recommendations from this service, I placed a trade this morning that would go up in a down market. It gained close to 20% in the sharp downturn today. Had I not been on a conference call when the market opened, I could have made even more. I got in after 9:15 instead of at 8:30.

Other stock trading training will consume a lot of time over the next week, and even up to six month's time, as we work through this training. I'm hoping the time commitment will taper off some after the first two weeks, but we'll see. People who know about this have asked me when I'll write. I tell them I don't expect to write anything for the next 6 months. Should an hour or two a week present itself for writing, and should I have sufficient brain power left to actually work on something, my order of writing work will be:

- prepare Father Daughter Day for publication and publish it
- research my next Thomas Carlyle book, and begin working on the essay I'll include in it
- get back on my civil war book in the Documenting America series.

I should probably look to short stories, given that I'll have so little time, but that would mean beginning another project rather than working on a present one, and I don't think my head would stay together if I had another project to do.

Well, the rain has stopped; it's time to go home and see about supper and webinars and dream about leisure. Not much of a post, I know, but it's what I got today.

Any Compromise between JIT and FTT?

The extreme deadlines I've been under at work, coupled with being very busy at home, have caused me to think about deadlines, how they are set, and how they are dealt with. Tuesday-Wednesday I worked on a project with an urgent deadline. I put in some extra hours and turned it over to CADD people to complete, and I think it's going out on time. Thursday I was given a construction specification to write, with great panic on the faces and in the demeanor of the two men who brought it to me. It turned out to be much less work than either of them thought, and I had it done at the end of the day with barely any extra time.

But this got me thinking about two ways of planning your schedule. My dad's way was to build in what he called "flat tire time." That is, wherever he wanted to go, with a sensitive deadline, he wanted to leave early enough time to be able to change a tire if he got a flat en-route. In 18 years of riding to church with him, or being the driver once I had my license, we never once had a flat tire. Two miles on a main road with light Sunday morning traffic, sometimes picking up old Charlie Kenyon at the bus stop to save him the fare. Always there way ahead of time, with time to sit and pray or otherwise contemplate why we were there.

The alternative is what modern industry calls the "just in time" schedule. If church starts at 9:30, and the drive should take you 18 minutes under normal conditions, leave the house at 9:12 and you'll get there on time, if all things hold to the average. Poor Charlie will have to take the bus. No, actually, he'll have caught the bus long before you whiz by at 5 miles over the speed limit. If anything isn't average, you have no margin for error, and are likely to be a little late close to half the time.

I must confess to being a FTT person. JIT throws me for a loop and gets me overly stressed out. If I have a deadline, say on Thursday, to have everything ready to give to the client Friday morning, I'd rather work my extra hours on Wednesday (or even Tuesday) rather than on Thursday, giving myself flat tire time. Alas, the dominant culture at my company is built around JIT, and I can't do anything to change it. Many things in my personal life seem also to be built around JIT, with no hope of changing it either.

Where is the compromise point? If the drive takes 18 minutes, and changing a tire would take, let's say, 15 minutes, that says you should leave 33 minutes before the event. Or, actually, since you'll have to wash your hands once you get there, before you enter the event, that's more like 35 or 40 minutes ahead. If everything goes well, you'll be there 20 minutes early. Lots of contemplation time. Most of the time that won't be needed.

But, surely some amount of margin in needed. Planning to get there 10 minutes ahead of time gives you margin to account for a wreck on the highway that slows you down, or for rainfall that slows you down. Or, if you plan for 10 minutes of margin, and you're getting ready to leave and can't find your cell phone, you have time to track it down and you can still make your engagement on time. That's margin. That's what I like.

I wish I knew how to make that happen. If anyone knows, I'd appreciate you leaving me a comment about it. Meanwhile, I can only control my own behavior, give myself margin, and use that margin to contemplate when things go according to average.

Your Failure to Plan

The last two days at work, and now today, the modern adage "Your failure to plan is not my emergency" reared up in the office. Tuesday they (i.e. someone with the emergency) and said they needed my help urgently on a somewhat large and very complex project designed in our Dallas office. Actually, the man may have come by my desk Monday evening late and made the request. Tuesday I started on it, working more of the day. It turned out to be the need for a end of the project quality control check. The project manager had quit, the department head was taking on that role, and it had to go out. There was some confusion about what the deadlines were, and a few hours were lost therefore.

I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday working on the project check, including some overtime (unpaid, of course) on Tuesday. I did my check, though to be honest the complexity of the project required I spend at least 4, maybe 8 hours I didn't have on it. I met with those producing the work, and all's right with the world. Today I've had three minor questions about it, all easily dispatched.

So today, the VP of Production comes to my office around 8:30 a.m. He said another department, one here in Bentonville, was in a jam, and they needed my help urgently. They needed a construction specification put together for a street project in nearby Rogers. The project is being advertised Sunday, and they are still working on the drawings and haven't started the spec. But, this one was extremely simple, as it's really just to do some of the preliminary right-of-way clearing, not construct the street; that will come later. So I asked for a set of the drawings so that I'd know what I was specifying. It's now 1:00 p.m. I still don't have the drawings. I have been able to do a lot of work on the spec, however, just based on the description of the work included. If I get the drawings in the next hour, I should be able to complete the project without staying much past my normal quitting time.

That's important, because, I'm on a vacation tomorrow (Friday) and Monday. I'll be in Branson, with Lynda, meeting my half-sister, who I just learned about in the last 45 days. Our rooms are already booked and paid for, as is her flight. This is a vacation I can't give up for the company.

So all the work I had planned on doing this week has not happened. I'm speaking at a class at the University of Arkansas on Tuesday afternoon, and figured I'd put my presentation together today. Alas, I don't think that will happen. I did manage to find the time to do some scheduling of some training sessions. Perhaps I'll find a little time to work on that presentation.

So, here I am, under the gun, as always seems to happen when I announce vacation time. Next time I should just not show up on those days and call in. If I do that, most likely no one will miss me.

Some Very Busy Days

Today is my normal day to blog here at An Arrow Through the Air. Yet, today is the third of four incredibly busy days, and the time to blog just isn't there. We have just completed a major training event at work. I was the facilitator/organizer, not the trainer or trainee. I had much to do to get ready for it, and things to do during it. This was followed by a minor training event this afternoon for some of the same people. Again, I was just the facilitator, and didn't have to sit in on all of it, but I did have some responsibilities for it.

Add to that on Tuesday, near the end of the work day, I had a project dumped on me for quality control checking. It was supposed to go out the end of the day today, and I stayed late last night working on it. Then today I found out that yesterday afternoon they sent out the part I checked last night and today. I still have more of it to do, but, given that it's already gone out, I think I'll back off and check it more leisurely.

So, aside from the prior two paragraphs, I have no blog today. See you all Sunday.

Rain Today

Weather forecasters say we're supposed to get rain today. Although, the heavy storms that, last night at bed time, stretched from Wichita to Oklahoma City and beyond, seem to have dissipated by this morning's radar. Right now it looks like a weak system that may or may not make it here with rain.

Sure enough, I just checked he forecast, and the chance of rain has been reduced since last night. Maybe we'll get some, maybe we won't. If we do, it's likely to be a lot less than at first predicted. At least, that's the way things look at 7:42 a.m. at my desk in my office in Bentonville, Arkansas.

This post will be a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts, the things running through my mind at the moment. I'm thinking of making a stock trade today, a one week option play on U.S. Steel. I ran the numbers a little while ago, and it looks good. Of course, I'll need to see how the market opens and what happens with the price before I place the order. Last night I read some in the Battle of Shiloh battle reports. Read one from a subordinate general on the Union side, but it was hard to follow what he meant without a battlefield map in front of me. Last night Lynda and I also listened to a stock trading webinar, a live one. It was good, but will take some more study before we can implement anything from it. So for now I'll keep going with what's working fairly well for me.

Yesterday was a busy day at work. I was asked to help out on two projects, which consumed most of the hours in the day. One was where a resident next to a large project which I served as contract city engineer on in Centerton has sent a letter with a bunch of questions on the drainage report. I checked the report, done by the company who now serves as regular contract city engineer (so they couldn't check their own work). I spent some hours looking back at the report, comparing it to the resident's questions, and formulating responses. This will take more time today. I'm enjoying it; it's a reminder of the type of work that once consumed half my work hours.

Just before 5:00 p.m. a man came to me with a question on a site lighting specification. I suggested to him how to handle the situation. He was back in my office a little after 5:00, still struggling with how much he needed to change the specification, which wasn't meeting the needs of the project. I pulled that guide spec up on my computer, and together we edited it, taking ten minutes to do so. He left with a nearly completed spec and his project in a position where he could send it out before the end of the day.

One negative of the day was how my knee is hurting. I don't remember if I posted it or not. About five or six weeks ago I quit taking my rheumatoid arthritis medicine because of how I became nauseous and frequently threw up in the days following when I took my weekly pills. The nausea stopped, but as the medicine worked its way out of my body the pain in my right knee came back. This isn't actually rheumatoid there; rather joint deterioration. A knee replacement awaits me somewhere in the future. But so long as the medicine was controlling the pain, the surgery was a long way off. After quitting the medicine the knee got progressively worse, until last week I could barely walk. I went to see my rheumatologist—actually his nurse—last Wednesday and was shown how to give myself the medicine by injection. I took a dose. Friday I puked twice.

So maybe the medicine does that to me even if I don't put it directly into my stomach. I've been taking up to six Aleve a day, which seems to have done nothing for the pain. I took my second injection on Wednesday. So far I've been okay. Had some nauseous feeling last night, but it passed fairly quickly as I walked it off around the house. Right now I'm feeling slightly nauseous. I'll have to get up and walk around the building here in a moment. In anticipation of this, I've been eating less over the last few days, trying to empty my stomach. The reason this medicine is causing that is because one of my diabetes meds, Byetta, delays the emptying of the stomach as a means of controlling blood sugar. So my stomach stays fuller than it should. Then when the methotrexate hits it, boom: vomit.

So, I'm still in the experimental stage with the injections. If I get through today without vomiting, I'll feel good about it. The pain in my knee may be marginally less. Or maybe that's wishful thinking, feeling what I'm hoping for. But for sure the reduced eating has helped in the weight loss department. Today I weighed-in at a 22 year low. I had kind of stalled at weight loss. Now I'm losing again. My blood sugar has been well under control. If I can just get my knee working properly, all will be right with the world once again. The strange thing, none of my joints that are bothered by rheumatoid have started hurting. So it's all very strange indeed.

Well, enough ramblings for one day, a day late from when I was supposed to post. Too busy yesterday, no gumption.

Pouring Rain

Last night I was very tired. I had walked over three miles that day, with my noon and evening walks combined. I came to the computer in The Dungeon yesterday evening, intending to write a blog post here, but couldn't get my mind to focus so ended up reading blogs and playing mindless computer games.

Back upstairs I couldn't concentrate any better. About 11:15 p.m. I called it quits. As I did so, however, I heard thunder. Checking radar I found a small thunderstorm just developing around us. Some storms were further west and north, but not close enough to be concerned about. I believe I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

In the night I woke up, and saw that the light was on next to Lynda's side of the bed, though she was asleep. This light is connected to one of those devices that allows you to tap the light to turn it on and off. I could hear thunder over the noise of the box fan we had going, and heard rain on the skylight in the bathroom. I turned the light off and immediately went back to sleep.

At 5 a.m. that repeated. And at 6 a.m. the alarm woke me. This is the third day in a row that I haven't woken before the alarm went off. I suppose that's an indication of tiredness.

The drive to work included many slow downs for water on the road. It was too dark and too dangerous to be looking at most of the creeks off to the sides. By the time I reached Bentonville streets it was lighter. The rain was heavier, but I could see the various drainage ditches and man-made features, and could see how the water was. When I passed over Tributary 2 to Little Osage Creek, the creek was out of its banks downstream, but not even close to being over the road. This is a creek I have done much study on for its flooding. It was behaving exactly as my models predicted.

The storms are slowly moving out. It looks like we will be over with the rain by 9:00 a.m. and have sunshine by 10. The day's activities beckon me. Somehow I have to concentrate on a paper I'm supposed to deliver in Nashville February 2014, and finish writing it. I've been working on it off and on for over a week, with only minimal progress. I have most of the elements in the paper, but can't seem to pull them together to make my case on how erosion control fines should be assessed. I can finish it today if I can just get some concentration.

We have actually been in a fairly rainy period, unusual for our summers. Or maybe that's just because we've had several consecutive dry summers, so this seems unusual. For about the last week, every morning we have had rain. Not a lot of rain on any given day. The sky will be cloudy; at some point some rain falls, enough to make everything wet and to make people pull out umbrellas; then the clouds depart in the early afternoon and we have 85-95 degrees and humidity the rest of the day. As I say, this is unusual.

Somehow I have to get to a point in my life where all the activities I must do come as the rain has this summer, not as the overnight storm. A little time spent here, a little time spent there, lots of balance, nothing falling behind, nothing reaching the point of being critical. Let's see if I can begin that today.

My Time of Late

I reported somewhere, either here, on my other blog, or on Facebook, that last Tuesday, April 17, I received a subpoena to give a deposition on April 25th at a certain attorney's office. The issue being litigated is a dispute between a development company and the engineering company they hired (not us). I'm involved because this project was in Centerton, Arkansas, and from 2000-08 I was the de facto city engineer for Centerton. CEI had the contract to provide those services, and I was the one assigned to do it.

The project became complicated, however, in the fall of 2007 when the developer fired their engineering company and hired CEI to complete the project, thinking it was a simple surveying task and finishing up a couple of months of construction. However, shortly after CEI (the design part) took over the project, CEI (the city engineering part) found even more items that needed correcting in the previous engineer's design, along with a number of construction warranty items that hadn't been addressed. As the new engineer, CEI (the design part) had to deal with it.

Turning the clock forward several years, those who were directly involved with the project for CEI (the design part) are no longer working for us, so the only one still on staff who could talk with the lawyers about what CEI (the design part) did was CEI (the city engineering part).

So yesterday I spent seven hours in the deposition (less break and lunch time) giving sworn testimony, trying to make an extremely complex engineering/construction situation understandable to an attorney. Actually, to three attorneys, one plaintiff, one defendant, our CEI, and a court reporter. I had spent almost all my working hours in the eight days between subpoena and deposition going through the files, refreshing my memory, and being prepared.

The deposing attorney, for the defendant, had already prepared a project timeline, no doubt as given to him by his client. He asked me, question by question, to fill in the holes in the timeline and produce documents to back-up either what he said or what I said. By the end of the day we had 21 exhibits identified, pulled from my somewhere-around 3,000 pages of files. They were well organized, to the point where the attorney called me "anal retentive", but that was off the record.

During my testimony I mentioned an e-mail where someone said something critical four or five years ago (the project started in January 2004). The attorney wanted to see it, but I couldn't find it. When you look for something in a hurry, something you know is somewhere in one of two 3-inch stuffed full binders, it's hard to find with eight people waiting on you. I couldn't find it, and was instructed to find it sometime after the deposition, back at our office, and make known to our attorney when we had found it. I spend from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. trying to find it, and did so just before 6. It wasn't an e-mail, however, but a comment in a lengthy minutes of meeting that I had prepared in August 2006.

I went home last night brain dead and exhausted.

That project required limited work by me today. I tried to get back to things that have been piling up for the last nine days, and had a little success with that, but my brain just wasn't in it. So I shifted to filing about 300 sheets of paper that have accumulated over the last three to six months, actually some much longer ago than that. Such work is best done when you are otherwise brain dead.

During this time, I've been through most of the season coordination of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I should be able to finish it tonight, including marking any needed changes in the printed manuscript. Over the weekend I hope to get all those edits typed. Monday will be re-printing day, at which time I'll begin rereading it, slowly and carefully, as the final edit. I plan to pitch it to an agent at a writers conference on May 4, but realizing it will have almost no chance of being accepted (and even if accepted the draconian contract provisions publishers throw up at first-time novelists will make my acceptance of that contract close to impossible), I plan on self-publishing it about a week later. I've already pulled the trigger on the cover, and have begun some research on marketing. More on that in another post, maybe on my other blog.

Getting Used to Presenting

In a little more than an hour I'll step before a packed conference room, with the video conferencing camera and screens running, and make a training presentation. At least, I hope the conference room will be packed. The topic of my presentation is: "Dealing with Regulated Floodplains: Part 1 - Floodplain Basics".

Floodplains have been a huge part of my civil engineering work in the last three years. Part of that has been detailed engineering analysis of floodplains. Another big part of it has been coaching our project managers through the process of developing in a floodplain. Another part has been working with a local city as their floodplain engineer, helping them comply with Federal regulations. It's worked, since they won an award in 2010 for their floodplain management activities.

I do these presentations as "brown bags"; that is, it is intended to be a lunch time presentation. However, since we have offices in three time zones, any of which may want to conference in to any given presentation, we do them at 1 PM Central Time. Almost no one eats their lunch at ours, maybe not at any of them. I usually eat my lunch after, since it's kind of hard to eat and present at the same time.

I've been making presentations like this in the company since 2001. At first they were for our small but growing department. Then we opened some of them up to other departments. When I moved to the training position in 2006, they went "global". For a while we did it at two different times. Now, with a down-sized company, one time is sufficient. So I've ben on-camera with these for five years.

The camera doesn't bother me. I barely know it's there. The audience doesn't bother me much. But the whole idea of presenting in general is not my favorite thing. I wouldn't mind getting up and reading something. But preparing a document to be read, which can fill a one hour training class, if a time consuming activity. It would take me two weeks to do it for a one hour class. So I present sort of extemporaneously, from notes and knowledge of the subject. I prepare mostly by knowing the subject, more than practicing what I'm going to say.

I've never been totally comfortable doing this. Nervousness? Not really, just always concerned that what comes out during the class will be truly beneficial to those who attend. A lot of the things I talk about are dry topics that don't lend themselves easily to lively discussions: construction specifications; floodplains; erosion control; construction management; drainage. I try to find ways to make them lively. Part of this is animation of the voice. Part of it is showing myself to be excited about the topic. None of it is easy. I have to make myself do this the way I do. It seems to work. People seldom fall asleep. And after one particularly animated class a few years ago, the CEO said to me, "I think you've found your calling."

Part of what I do during these classes is treat them as "media practice" for when I'll someday be on camera or microphone for promoting my author activities. If I can do it for engineering, why not for poetry? Or fiction? Or non-fiction historical/political books? Or Christian non-fiction? The topic may change, but the need to show poise and to not say anything stupid are the same. Today I get some more practice at that.

And, I have at least four (and maybe as many as nine) visitors coming from local governments to hear this. Let's hope that poise shows through.

Miscellaneous Friday

This has been a killer week, emotionally and physically, but more so emotionally. Where shall I start?

The knowledge that my John Wesley small group study won't be needed by my church for the foreseeable future was a gut-wrenching blow. I probably over-reacted, since I can still write it and see what else I can do with it. Still, it was an emotional setback.

Yesterday I was hoping to get my Bentonville flood study back out to FEMA, Revision 5. But the remapping after the remodeling after the remapping after the remodeling after the corrupt informal submission to FEMA was rejected after the formal Revision 4 submittal came back from FEMA with yet more comments showed that some additional remodeling was needed. Both I and the CADD tech lost time yesterday due to meetings and computer problems, so I didn't get the latest map till 4:00 PM, which showed ten cross-sections still needing work to get the map and the model to match. I worked on that till 6:30 PM, thinking I had them all done except for one, which I was convinced was a map problem. This morning the CADD tech convince me it was a model problem. I had that corrected and she had the map corrected and the annotated flood map produced by 11:00 AM. The entire report is now ready to go; I only have to stuff the maps and CD in pockets bound in the report. So it goes out by FedEx this afternoon, making the Monday deadline. Just barely.

Not getting the re-mapping until 4 PM yesterday, with it showing still much work to do, about caused me to lose it. I did throw a notebook across my office, and pounded the desk a few times, so I guess I did lose it in a sense. But I pushed on through. Another deadline met. Now back onto the third floodplain project, thence to the fourth and fifth. Someday I hope to get back to my training tasks.

Actually, this afternoon I think I will. I like to use Friday afternoons for miscellaneous stuff, such as: getting caught up on daily timesheets; getting caught up on daily activity logs; cleaning the week's accumulation of stuff off my desk; seeing what correspondence needs to be done. In some ways Friday afternoon is the most productive time of the week. This afternoon, I think I'll write a new construction specification section. There's a certain product for permanent erosion control that we use some, but for which we don't have a decent construction spec. Yesterday I saw a competing product advertised in Erosion Control magazine. I think I can produce a pretty good spec section in that time. That would be writing. I like that.

Tonight I may just read. I should write, I know. I should decide what to do next. Documenting America needs some editing, and it would be nice to have that ready to go about the same time as the permanent cover comes in. That could be any day now. In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People needs to be finished. Lots of work there, and I've been thinking about it lately. Also of late I've had a desire to get back into my Harmony of the Gospels and finish the passage notes and the appendixes, as well as correct a few typos. That's a non-commercial project, and so hard to justify from a career standpoint, but it's enjoyable, so I may go in that direction for a while.

Also among miscellaneous tasks is the article I have under contract for Buildipedia. I'd like to get that mostly written this weekend, well ahead of the next Thursday deadline. And, abstracts for next year's Environmental Connections conference in Vegas are due next Friday. I have three that need work.

So my writing and work lives are really both in miscellaneous states right now. At least it's raining today. Glorious rain, that shuts down construction sites and prevents noon walks, that fills ditches and detention ponds and creates floodplains. How it always lifts my spirits. Now if it will just rain tomorrow and allow me to do something other than clean the gutter helmets.

A Calm Place in the Whirlwind

Life is busy. At my engineering day job, it seems like no task gets closed, yet many more get open. I can't quite get my current floodplain project to work. The lateral structure I entered, as a way to simulate an overflow pipe, needs to be revised, and I haven't yet figured out how to revise it to make it correct. Or rather, I believe I know what needs to be done and how to do it, but time to do it hasn't materialized. I figured it out at the end of the day yesterday, but today so far has been fully consumed in...

...teaching a class at my company, and preparing for it. I haven't done a class in at least three months, due to busy-ness, and several people have been saying they needed professional development hours. So I decided to teach a class titled "Five Important Construction Items Often Overlooked During Design". Creating the PowerPoint presentation to go with it took all morning—or all least all of the morning that I didn't let myself get distracted with a couple of personal things. Even half my lunch hour went to that. I didn't actually prepare what remarks I was going to say. I just talked an hour from the PowerPoint, using my many years of construction engineering experience. From the comments of attendees, I did pretty good. Add this to my list of classes for listing on a resume or on a website, if I ever get one built.

Back at my desk after teaching, I talked with my wife. It seems I am to go to the next town over after work and purchase a used jungle gym to give to our grandson Ephraim on is third birthday in two weeks. That's if the one called ahead of her doesn't take it. We are second in line. Hopefully we'll get it. Sounds like a good bargain. But, it does take away time I could have used on something else.

My writing efforts right now are fully consumed with the John Wesley small group study. One chapter done, another half done, the outline finished—except today I realized I had left out a major part of his writings, the many hymns he wrote, and the many of his brother's he published. How can I leave those out? I can't, so I will have to insert another chapter (I think I'm up to 22 now), figuring out the best place for it to go. The pressure to have the study ready around September 1 is off, as I believe the church is going to do another all-church series. I might not need it finished until December or January. That would be nice. I might be able to work on volume 2 of Documenting America. I'm still inching toward e-self-publishing volume 1, maybe in less than a week. It looks as if I'll have to do that without any beta reader comments, as no one has gotten back with me. I think I ran four or five of the chapters through my previous writing groups, though they were shorter at the time.

So where, you ask, is this calm place in the midst of life's whirlwind? It was last night, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM at the Bentonville Public Library, as we held the second meeting of the BNC Writers group. The previous meeting was to organize; last night was for critique. The same four of us met. Four others who want to attend couldn't because of illness or other unspecified reasons. About the time some would be traveling here the sky opened up with another round of rain, which probably contributed some to keeping people home.

But the four of us who met had a great time. Last meeting I had given them copies of my short story, "Mom's Letter", not for critique, but just as a sample of my writing. But they came back with some critique, and I will consider it. It's already for sale on Kindle, but I can easily make changes and re-upload it if necessary. As group leader, I chose the order of presentation. The three ladies went first. Brenda shared a short story based on a dream she had. Joyce shared the first chapter of a novel she has just begun. Bessie shared a non-fiction story from her years on the mission field in Papua New Guinea. I know that was her first formal writing, and first time sharing writing in a critique group. I think it was also Joyce's first time. She had been involved in the writing process before, helping writers through critique and editing, but I think she is just beginning her writing efforts.

We had a great time with the critiques. Our procedure is for each person to have copies enough to pass around, then for the author to read their work while the others follow along and make notes. We then discuss the work, making suggestions, asking questions. In the end we give the author the copy we have marked on. The author can respond to comments, sometimes indicating what their intent was, but always accepting critique with graciousness and thick skin.

Alas, we ran out of time, and I wasn't able to present the Introduction and first chapter of Documenting America. Maybe next time. I did receive the crit on "Mom's Letter", so it's not as if I was left out. We will meet again in two weeks, probably at the church this time, which will allow us a full two hours, not limited to the library's allowed schedule for conference room use.

I left the group and went home, to evening storms (outside and inside), a checkbook that wouldn't balance, a pile of mail to go through, and no time to write, very little to read. But that was okay. A momentary respite out of the whirlwind was sufficient for the day.

Stymied at Work on a Saturday

This morning I had a busy time at the house, doing the usual Saturday chores/ maintenance/ operations. I had a lengthy to-do list, and I did a lot of it. Some remains for tonight, but that's okay.

About 12:30 PM or so I headed to the office, a little later than I wanted. I had five things on my office to-do list, things that just never seem to get done during the work week. I had two letters to write documenting construction items that are either done or decided, from more than a month ago, which I reported verbally to the responsible party, but which I'd never documented in writing. That is now done, with the letters sitting on the admin assistant's desk for Monday mailing. I created a form that will help a client receive reimbursement from the highway department for our water line relocation project. This is outside the contract scope, but the client seems to be as busy as I am, so I decided to help him out. That is done and sent via e-mail.

I have a nagging item to help a citizen fill out a form for a floodplain protest. I'm not in favor of the protest, but the City has asked me to help them fill out the form. I printed everything I need, but set it aside to do a larger item, getting back to the floodplain project in Rogers that I had to lay aside the last three weeks due to urgent items on other projects.

So I began my floodplain work, and discovered what I had a CAD tech do to help me with this is not really in the format I need. The data is probably correct, but I need her to 1) check the location of an improved city street within the cut cross-sections, and 2) adjust her ground point horizontal stations to what I already have in my computer model. Once she does that, I should be able to enter the data in the model with no problem. I have another item or two to do on this model, not related to the cut cross-sections, so maybe I'll jump on those.

Or maybe I'll just go home. I had a certain order in mind of what I wanted to do on the floodplain model. Entering data for those cross-sections was first. I'm not sure I want to do the other items before the cross-sections. Maybe I'm just out of pep. I'm feeling slightly under the weather today, weak and with a rumbly tummy, as Winnie would say. Maybe the best thing for me to do is head to the house, accepting what I was able to accomplish and not regretting what I couldn't. I can take a few minutes to complete that form for Centerton, then be on my way.

I have much to write about on this blog, about three or four items. Let's see what the next day and a half yields.

Trying to do Things Right

The siege has not lifted, nor has the whirlwind subsided. But today I actually see a little bit of light through it all. One major project hurdle is complete. A date is out there, probably predictable, at which my workload will return to normal. Hence, I take a late afternoon break to write a post here.

As I work on this drainage project in Rogers, Arkansas—a hurry-up project with future project consequences, I'm reminded of how important it is to do things right the first time. A former senior employee of ours, who came to us from a large developer for a transition job into retirement, had a sign in his office, "If you don't have time to do it right, when are you going to have time to fix it." So true.

As I rushed out the drainage report upon which the drainage additions are based, I made a mistake in my spreadsheet. The area of flow in a ditch was incorrect, resulting in the spreadsheet indicating a larger ditch was needed. Now, I proofed all my formulas; yet the drainage report went out the door with the error. The reviewer at the City caught it. The error was not large, but it was still an error. The smaller ditch will save some money while still functioning as required. Also in the drainage report were two other errors: one where a spreadsheet printout did not show all the information the City needed to make their review, and one where one of four handwritten flow rate on one of eight storm sewer profiles was not correct. These were presentation problems, not calculation errors, but they also made a less than optimum presentation to the City. Correcting these three items took time, time that kept me working an extra hour or two.

So, when I came to the point of preparing the project specifications, I had some decisions to make. The project includes a precast reinforced concrete box culvert. I dumped our guide construction specification section for these into the project file (along with 25 other guide specification sections). Eventually I opened the document and looked at it to see 1) was it suitable for our project, and 2) was it a good specification. The answer was no to both questions. It didn't contain the right box culvert standard for the project, and the way the spec was written did not provide the kind of provisions we want to give to a contractor to get something built with the right materials in the right way.

Decision time. Simply changing "AASHTO M 273" to "AASHTO M 259" would give us the right product for the project. But that didn't answer the six or so questions that the purchaser of these critters is supposed to answer. Is fiber reinforcing allowed? Are both deformed and smooth reinforcing bars allowed? Which design table within the manufacturing standard is to be used? What type of gaskets shall be used? And so on. Also, since that is a manufacturing standard but I'm writing a construction specification, what about the description of how installation of the box culvert segments is to take place? I decided that I did not want a half-baked (kind word substitution here) spec, so I took the hour or so to write a good spec, complete with research on the options.

But then, what do I do about the guide specification, still sitting there on the corporate intranet, waiting for the next person to download and use it, possibly a person who doesn't know as much about it as I do and will use it without thinking or editing? To turn my project specification into a proper guide specification would take at least another hour, maybe two. Already working 7 AM to 7 PM, how could I justify the time it would take? I would do what I always do in these circumstances: Add the box culvert spec to the list of specs that need improvement, mark it urgent or non-urgent, and go back to my project work.

But I realized I never get to those guide spec to do lists. In fact I couldn't even find in my office the last one I made out. So I decided to just do it. I worked an extra two hours, did a bit more research, wrote the spec to include the various options to be decided upon, wrote a great installation section, and added many "Note to Specifier" entries, providing those less experienced than me with some idea of what the decisions to be made are and how to make them. That was two days ago (I think; the days are running together). I have the revised guide spec printed out, on my desk, slightly buried under the urgent items of the last two days but with a corner still visible.

I think I will take that printout home tonight and do my proof-reading there, in my favorite reading chair, a cup of coffee at hand and slippers on my feet. Then tomorrow I'll type any required edits and upload it to our guide spec database. Who knows when it will be used next or who will use it. It might be me, a year from now. It might be one of our engineers or designers tomorrow afternoon. But it will be available, and it will be done right. None of which furthers my writing career, other than the little bit of piece of mind it gives me, which should help everything in my life.

ETA: Something has gone haywire with my blogspot settings; the paragraphs didn't display. I had the same problem with the bullets on the last post.

A Fulfilling if Tiring Day

It's only 5:15 PM as I start this post. My daily work log includes lots of items. I began the day with my Bella Vista water transmission main project, trying to do the work needed to tie down some remaining easements needed. I shifted to my Bentonville flood study, the bane of my existence. I'm on Revision 5, which will be the 5th submittal to FEMA. I then shifted to a citizen complaint in Centerton concerning drainage problems that have been hanging on for four years, and a floodplain issue from the last three months.

Through all this, I shifted back and forth to filing papers for the Bella Vista project. I thought another man was going to manage the project under my direction, so I was letting him file as he saw fit. That didn't happen, however; he was assigned to other projects, and the papers mounted. Earlier this week I re-did the project filing system to my liking, and began to dribble a few papers into the notebooks. Today, any time I finished a pressing project task, I shifted to the filing. I must have stuffed a 150 pages in those notebooks. I've got double that yet to go, but I feel much, much better about it.

The usual parade of people needing senior engineer advice came by or called. A backflow prev enter problem, a paving overlay problem, and some floodplain issues in Rogers took up some time. Then there's the project from almost nine years ago that wasn't constructed per the approved drainage report: one storm sewer run was reduced in size. For lack of another body carrying a brain of adequate intelligence, I wound up doing the calculations and mini-report over three days this week. That came back with another request today.

And over all this was the Bentonville floodplain engineering. I'm going back and forth between the model and the map, seeing where they don't agree, tweaking the model when that makes sense and marking up the map for changes when that makes sense. It's getting close. Thirteen more cross-sections to go for the 500-year floodplain, then a recheck of the 100-year floodplain and the floodway to make sure they didn't get out of whack due to the last changes. Then there will be a short engineering report, maybe four work hours to complete. That's a Monday task.

I'm so sick of floodplains. If I never saw another one I wouldn't mind. Yet I've got three more to do in the next year. In fact, I'm coming in to the office tomorrow and Sunday to try to get something done on the Rogers flood study that has been backed up due to the Bentonville flood study that was backed up due to the Centerton flood study. Then there's another Rogers one to do and then another Bentonville one to do. I'm so sick of them, I feel like going out in the rain, standing in the worst portion of Tributary 2 to Little Osage Creek, and just ride the flood wave downstream.

But instead, I think I'll review two more cross-sections then call it a day. With Lynda still in Oklahoma City, tending to grandbabies, I'll head to Barnes & Noble, browse the remainders table, look at shelves where someday I might have a book, grab a couple of mags, drink a vente house blend, and just relax for two hours. Then home to write the last (or maybe next to last) chapter in Documenting America. Oh, yeah, before the work day began I found a document I needed, a full version of one of John C. Calhoun's speeches. Of course, that led me to another speech of his, which I may use instead of the one I intended. Ah the tentacles of research.

Signing off. I'll have this post in two hours, when I will be firmly b-i-c in the B&N cafe.

The Roller-coaster Continues

My last post, on Thursday morning, spoke of how I'd had a great day on Wednesday. I should know better than to post something like that. Every time I do the next days are always losers. Actually, I don't have to post about the good days. The bad days always come. The bad items came more from work than writing, but

Thursday morning I received a letter from FEMA concerning my floodplain project in Centerton. After several submittals, with revisions to satisfy FEMA, I was expecting the letter to say approved. Instead it had one comment, saying the water surface profiles for the different storms crossed. They should not cross. Therefore FEMA wasn't approving it. I really lost it when this happened. The comment addressed something in my model since the very first submittal, but in 2009 sometime. And they are just making that comment now?

Also on Thursday, on my Bentonville floodplain project, I received an e-mail late, consequently got to a meeting late. The meeting was to coordinate with the City and another engineering company for where our two floodplain projects butt up to each other. As a result of my meeting, I will have to make adjustments to my computer model and the mapping before I can submit to FEMA.

While this was going on, I wasn't able to work on the floodplain project for the City of Rogers (next door to Bentonville). I'm supposed to be way far along with this project, but can't get to it because of these other two that never seem to end. I finally got an engineer assigned to me to help with it, but he'll be on vacation all next week. So how much will I be able to get done on it?

In writing, the bad news was not as big a deal, but it through me for just as big a loop. My e-mail to the art teacher concerning illustrating my poetry book bounced. I called the high school, and couldn't reach her. All day Thursday I heard nothing. Finally on Friday I saw an e-mail from her in my spam. They (she and the principle) want to read the book before they make a decision. That's good. I e-mailed it to her right away. The bad news on this was just the waiting. Could she see her spam? Did she get the message I left with her receptionist?

The other bad news concerning writing is just the lack of time to do any. With the kids coming in for Thanksgiving, and having Christmas with us at the same time, we have much to do around the house. Cleaning. Decorating. Finishing projects. Way too much to do. And with these floodplain projects stacking up, I really can't take any time off work to do the home projects so that I can squeeze an hour out of the evening to write.

Well, I know these bad times don't last forever. Eventually all the busyness will pass. My floodplains will be approved by FEMA. Projects at home will taper off. And I'll write again. But for now, I'll set it aside.

Day(s) of Accomplishment

Some days are just better than others. Maybe it's a burst of energy, pent up from slackard days in between. Maybe it's biorhythms. I've never figured it out, but some days seem destined for accomplishment.

Yesterday was one of those. I'll just bullet a few items.

• We received permission to begin some culvert construction in a floodplain here in Bentonville, based on a "no-rise certification" I prepared and submitted to the City. We had been anticipating a 3 month delay, so this was good. I told our project manager to tell the contractor we pulled a rabbit from our hat.
• I made contact with a fellow genealogical researcher who is researching tangential to the Todd family. Turns out we can't help each other much, but just making the contact was good.
• I e-mailed the art teacher at Gravette High School (the school district we live in) about making the illustration of my poetry book a class project. Just doing that, in a burst of energy lasting ten minutes, felt good. Of course, when I got home after church I learned the e-mail bounced. But it only bounced because the spam catcher caught it. I'll have to make a phone call today to see if they will accept my e-mail. I don't know if anything will come of this, but I've done nothing on this for almost a year until yesterday.
• I received permission from Worcester Polytech to use some of their graphics in an article I wrote for Buildipedia based on some research they did. This turned out to be a major effort, as WPI had the wrong phone number on their web site, and I wasted a couple of days, phone calls, and e-mails on it, putting us right up against the deadline.
• I completed what seemed like numerous minor tasks in the office, having finished the last floodplain study and not yet started the next. Invoices, filing, training records, soil borings ordered, and more. All done (or close to done), all checked off the list. One more day like this on the miscellaneous tasks and I'll almost be caught up.
• I learned of a writers retreat in Orlando in February that begins the day after the erosion control conference I'll be presenting papers at, and contacted the hostess to learn more. I've never been to a writers retreat, only conferences. I don't know if this is something I'll do, but the successful research and making contact felt good.
• The Christmas tree is up and almost all decorated. I don't like it up this early, but the kids, grandkid, and amniotic grandkid are coming for Thanksgiving, so we like to have it up for them. Only the tinsel and garland are left. It's so nice to have something done ahead of schedule. Now I can concentrate on making the Chex mix.

Today the article went live on Buildipedia. I know I'm biased, but I think it's one of my best. It had a good number of views as of 7:15 AM, so the headline on the Buildipedia home page must be creating interest. As it turns out the editor didn't use any of the WPI graphics. Go figure. Now I need to develop and pitch a follow-up article.

So what will today hold? So much energy spent yesterday on so many separate items. It's going to be hard to have as much accomplishment. If I can just get that reimbursement spreadsheet done, something I'm doing gratis for a client, and maybe get a few edits done on my Orlando papers and get them turned in (two weeks ahead of schedule), this will be a day of as much accomplishment as yesterday. Oh, and somehow get the e-mail through to the art teacher.

Mediation Brings Mixed Results

Yesterday most of my work day was spent in a mediation of a construction dispute. This was my second one of these. The first, in December 2007 (or was it 08?), was for a client of ours that I had worked with. I started the project, got under construction, and turned it over to another engineer when I took our training position.

This one was not my client. Another engineer in our office handled this project. It wasn't even our design. We took over a few months after construction had begun, to help out a new client. But I was involved in helping that engineer make decisions throughout the project, was familiar with the issues, with construction in general, and with the mediation process, so he asked me to participate and the client agreed.

In the first one, the parties were $450,000 apart on a $2.3 million project. I thought no way could these two come together and a settlement be reached. It's going to court for sure, I thought. But the mediator's job it to help the two parties find some point in the middle where both feel it is worth not going to court if I can get or give that much.

A normal mediation session begins with everyone in the same room. Each side states their claims, and their response to the other's claims. Then the two parties go to separate rooms, and the mediator goes back of forth between them. His job is not to determine who is right and who is wrong. He doesn't reveal details of discussions in the other room. He does summarize the other sides arguments, and helps each side to see where the other might have a valid concern. He keeps pushing for a settlement. "What is it worth to you to avoid going to court?" he'll ask.

Last time the issues and amount involved were clear. The settlement was reached fairly easily. A lot of back and forth, but in the end our client didn't have to yield too much to avoid court. This time the issues were clear, but the dollar amount in dispute was not. It was about $300,000 on a $1.2 million project. So it was really a lot bigger than the last one as a percentage of the project. Since the parties had already had several meetings in an effort to resolve this, the mediator dispensed with the normal statements of positions and had us go immediately to separate rooms.

Since all involved in the mediation are subject to a confidentiality agreement, I can't reveal specific discussions. We took most of the morning just defining the amount of the claim. It turns out neither side had understood what the other side was really claiming. They started farther apart than we thought. Our side consisted of us two engineers, the client's chief executive, and the client's attorney. After a working lunch the mediator said the main problem on the other side's part was they were disputing a claim that some work was defective, a big chunk of the project, in fact. They admitted to one, smaller piece of defective work which they offered to fix, and wanted a certain number of dollars to change hands in their favor. It was still way far away from where we were at.

About 3:oo PM I concluded it would not be settled; we were headed to court. If that happened, both sides would sue the other. I felt that our client was in the right and would most likely win in court. But a jury is a crap shoot. They don't always side with the one in the right. We considered the likely success of lawsuits. The mediator finally asked the question: What is it worth to you to avoid going to court? Our client suggested what he was willing to do. He gave up much more than I would have had I been in his positions. The mediator shuffled back to the other room and was gone a long time. Had the other side refused the large concession?

When the mediator finally did come back, he had a typed agreement in hand. It needed one modification, but it basically ended. it. Well, not quite ended, since the clients board of directors has to approve it. But it's mostly over.

I would not describe either of these mediations as pleasant. But, they were probably better than being a witness at a trial. I've done that too, and it isn't always fun. Having been through two of these is better experience than just one. Hopefully I won't have another in the next 7 years, 3 months, and 2 days, but who knows? Construction can lead to disputes; disputes have to be resolved; meditation is cheaper than other remedies. So I guess bring it on if needed.

Good Days and Bad Days

I have so many facets to my life that it's sometimes difficult to say, "Today was a good day," or "Today was a bad day." It might be good in one sense but not in another. Take yesterday for example. Was it a good day? Here's the things that suggest so:

• My weight was down to the lowest it's been in months, back to that set-point weight I always bump against but can't seem to get through. I think I have motivation to break through it this time.
• The mediation preparation in the morning went well, although I think the City (our client) is too willing to compromise. If they let the contractor sue them and they counter-sued, I think the City would win on 14 points out of 15. What some people do to avoid litigation.
• I had a pleasant lunch with our Transportation department leader, after the mediation prep. He's leaving us in a couple of weeks, going back to Texas, so this was sort of our goodbye lunch. He's a good friend, and an excellent engineer. Hmmm, should this be on the good list or the bad?
• I studied some floodplain issues I had been putting off studying, since our young engineers have been asking me questions about these issues. I'm aiming to give a training class on this within a month's time. And, I found I could probably get three articles for Suite101 out of my prep. Of course, the bad news part of this is that my Suite articles still aren't earning much.
• The editor at Buildipedia e-mailed me, asking me if I wanted to write a certain article for publication in late October. I believe this is the first time that an editor has solicited me, which is a good feeling. Now I just have to see if I can write the article he wants.
• I prepared a mailing to our former pastor, returning a book I borrowed from him. I included copies of the adult Life Group lessons I wrote from the book. To the P.O. today to mail. One more item checked off the to-do list.
• I balanced the checkbook, an easy task this month. I had one $2 error, on the third-to-last entry. Took less than 1/2 an hour.
• Even though I was tired in the evening, I went to the basement bathroom and did the trim work on the painting. I had finished the primer touch-up the night before, so this is the finished color, a nice lavender the wife picked out. In fact, she came down and helped me with some of it. I'm sure we'll need two coats, but it's looking quite nice. Progress in home improvements by inches and feet.
• Went to bed at the time I wanted to, and fell right to sleep; slept well until 5:15 AM, when the arthritis pain woke me and let me sleep only fitfully thereafter.

But in other ways, it was a bad day.

• After a morning without too much pain, my rheumatoid arthritis flared up by the end of the evening, and I went to bed in considerable pain in my right wrist and arm, the place of "Arther's" current interest. Woke up in the night with much stiffness (guess I said that already), and worse this morning. Typing is quite painful. Oh, wait, I can't put that on yesterday's good and bad list, can I?
• My powers of concentration at work were poor. After the mediation prep took up the entire morning, I was not terribly productive. Yes, I did the floodplain issues study, but what should have taken me 2 hours took 4. I've got to recover my powers of concentration.
• With the evening activities, I did almost no reading and no writing. The Suite floodplain article was 90 percent done, but I couldn't push myself to pull up the article editing screen and do the work. I have two Buildipedia articles under contract, but I couldn't push myself to spend even 15 minutes working on one of them.
• I did nothing on stock trading. I had no trades on to take advantage of the recent market run-up. And I call myself a stock trader.
• I missed my noon hour walk, although I walked 12 minutes in the evening, two laps around the circle plus up to the stop sign once. So maybe that wasn't all bad.

So was it a good day? I say yes, though in many ways it good have been better. Today, except for the arthritis, is starting well.