Random Ruminations: Page 2

End of the Rainbow

Posted Thu Aug 26, 2010 in Humor

One of the things we laughed about here in the Ruminator household is the viral double-rainbow gig. (I really like the parody even better¹!)

So, when a friend sent me the image left as a gag, you can only imagine my amusement (or maybe you can’t — tough). The caption read “Another myth shattered… Someone finally managed to photograph the Pot at the end of the Rainbow.”

Such things amuse me.

I just dropped dam-breach analysis number four off on my dropzone for my colleague at the prime contractor to pick up. One more to go. I’ll get started on it in the morning and should finish, or mostly finish, by the end of the day tomorrow. There will be some clean-up work on Saturday, I’m sure. But, the bulk of the heavy-lifting should be done. Now we wait for review comments from the client.

I managed to get my cardio done today. I didn’t do it at the butt-crack of dawn, when I prefer. But, after waking at 0400 and working for a couple of hours, I still didn’t have it in me. The lower-body workout yesterday pretty well toasted the quick-twitch muscles in my legs and they were just a bit pissed at me. So, I gave myself a break and decided to wait until mid-morning when I could take a break from the head-work and do the workout. I almost waited too long; it was pretty warm in the garage by 1000 when I went out there to do the routine.

The remainder of the day was spent on knowledge-work. I’m learning to use some new tools. This is a good thing but it’s a challenge to learn them under the duress of a project deadline. Still, they enable me to be more efficient with my modeling effort and allow me to make prototype models to confirm my hydraulic intuition before committing to a particular cross section layout.

Now, my poor little brain is toasty, my body is pretty well worn out, and I think it’s time to call it a day. I’ll start again in the morning.

¹ There is an interview with the double-rainbow guy. Very strange…

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Three Down

Posted Wed Aug 25, 2010 in Bloggish

I handed off breach analysis number three about noon today. The modeling was mostly finished late yesterday. This morning was do some checking and edit the boiler plate report, add in the specific figures needed for this structure, and then read over things to ensure they are basically correct.

I packed everything up and dropped it on my dropzone for pick up. Then I took a break, reviewed my leg routine, and went out to the garage to do the lower-body workout for today.

That went OK. It was a good workout, but there are still a number of kinks to work out of the system (pun intended). The time allotted for each exercise (pace or tempo) is something I’m working on. I’m still adjusting weights as well to get muscle fatigue at the end of each meta-set. I have a lot of learning to do, which I think is a good thing.

Food is good and the right food is better. I had a lean hamburger patty (grilled Sunday on charcoal) and a medium apple for lunch. I like to cut my apple into slices. I use my tool-knife for this task. It was a little dull so I took a few minutes to resharpen it. While sharpening the blade, I wondered if my little 10x hand-magnifier (left over from my college geology laboratory) would work as a makeshift macro lens for my iPhone. That could be fun.

I’ll have a mid-afternoon snack in a bit, probably some cottage cheese and more fruit. I think we’re making chicken fajitas for supper and that will be wonderful! I even have some non-fat cheddar to top mine.

Now I’m back to work on the next structure. Two more to go and I’ll have done what I said I would do.

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Tuesday Morning

Posted Tue Aug 24, 2010 in Bloggish

I’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.

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Why Do Sharks Circle?

Posted Mon Aug 23, 2010 in Humor

From a friend…

Two great white sharks swimming in the ocean spied survivors of a sunken ship. “Follow me son” the father shark said to the son shark and they swam to the mass of people.

“First we swim around them a few times with just the tip of our fins showing.” And they did.

“Well done, son! Now we swim around them a few times with all of our fins showing.” And they did.

“Now we eat everybody.” And they did.

When they were both gorged, the son asked, “Dad, why didn’t we just eat them all at first? Why did we swim around and around them?”

His wise father replied, “Because they taste better without the shit inside!”

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Ending a Weekend

Posted Sun Aug 22, 2010 in Bloggish

I have ‘burgers and sirloin on the grill right now. I have a Corona Extra, a wedge of lime, and enjoyed a few potato chips on my free day. I didn’t go crazy today, but enjoyed a couple of treats I don’t normally eat anymore — a Klondike bar and a few potato chips.

It was a pretty good day. I woke about my normal time this morning, rose, made some coffee, and puttered at the computer while I woke. Wife woke and we made breakfast. We bought some turkey bacon yesterday and I cooked some of it, but I think neither of us liked it much. It’s not awful and I could eat it, but there are better breakfast meats so it will go away. It was a good try.

I worked on one of my dam-breach analyses today and just about have the modeling done. I have the figures prepared for the report and the back-matter (oops, just realized I need some HEC-RAS data for the appendix) and will finish up the report either this evening or first thing in the morning.

In reflecting on the weekend, it was a good weekend. I worked some and played some and feel pretty good about the upcoming week. It will be hard, but I can get things done. The following week in Utah will be a nice break after the big push on two projects. Then it will be time to come home and push on the next project, which languished in the challenge of the current one. It sounds like consulting, doesn’t it?

Now I’m going to go take care of our food and we’ll have supper. It will be time to regroup then, and see what will happen with the remainder of the evening.

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Links — 08-21-2010

Posted Sat Aug 21, 2010 in Links

I’m crashing on a project this week, but I still find time to surf just a little…

Here are a few of the many uses of salt — yep, plain old sodium chloride.
I admit it, I enjoyed the Lara Croft franchise, even if some of the games were not good. The images of her changes through the years are an interesting retrospective into the gaming world.
Georgia Wonder just released Siren and it’s definitely worth a listen. ITMS has it for a buck. Support independent music and musicians…
I posted the link to this Rube Goldberg machine a couple of years ago, but it’s still good.
The story of the D-Day piper ends here. Rest in peace, sir.
Shawn Blanc has a decent description of why he decided (finally) to jailbreak his iPhone. It’s worth a read.
Felicia Day was interviewed by GameSpy this week. In the interview, she describes her interaction with Hollywood as “needing a lot of work done.” I call BS; she’s beautiful as God made her. She’s intelligent too.

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Jailbreaking iPhone 3GS

Posted Sat Aug 21, 2010 in Hardware

winterboard I’ve been working through the jailbreaking process for iOS 4.0.1 on my iPhone 3GS. I waited a long time before instituting the process because it’s a hassle. I only upgrade the iPhone’s firmware when there is a reason to.

The reason arrived last week. HDR Pro was upgraded and improved. It requires iOS 4 to install. Time for the upgrade…

I made a weak attempt at jailbreaking the new iOS a week or so ago, but gave up when Pwnage 4.0.1 err’d out with the cryptic error message “Wrong Firmware Version” even when I had the correct version of the 4.0.1 firmware downloaded. So, I gave up.

When I revisited the problem a few evenings ago, the issue remained. So, I spent some time using Google to search for an answer. There is a lot of material out there. Most of it seems untrustworthy and so I wouldn’t nibble (so to speak). However, directions (and the required iPhone 3GS bundle) provided by Blancer saved my ass.

I followed the directions, got the correct bundle stored in the application contents, and Pwnage built the custom IPSW. I backed up my iPhone (just in case — always recommended), then installed the new firmware. After a few minutes of screwing around, the iPhone rebooted and I was on Firmware Version 4.0.1.

The next step was to patch the security issue with PDF documents. Fortunately, Saurik and Cydia came to my rescue through PDF Patch. Even if you are not going to upgrade the firmware on your iPhone, you should install the patch if you’re running a jailbroken system. Someone will take advantage of the issue.

Unfortunately, the firmware upgrade broke my favorite iPhone Theme, Matte Nano. That’s because the underlying user interface modification, Matte Graphite UI is broken under iOS 4. The Matte Nano icons are fine, but the system icons do no rescale to the smaller size as they did under iOS 3. Urgh…

I’m an engineer. I’m not an obsessive-compulsive. But, I think things should be “right.” This wasn’t “right.”

I spent some quality time with Google searching for an answer. I tried uninstalling my non-Matte applications, but all that did was delete my user data. (D’Oh!) I tried deleting all the cached icons (using ssh to manipulate the iPhone’s file system — cool!). But again, no joy.

So, I diverted my attention to finding an alternative user interface and theme suitable for my well-refined eye. MP2 received some favorable reviews and the interface looked clean on the MBP screen. So, I decided to nibble and dropped $3US on a license.

MP2 will do the trick. It’s iOS 4 compatible, uses the faster Winterboard interface, and rescales the system icons well. I’m going to live with it for awhile. I think I found something I like — and that looks good.

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