Happy Mothers Day to my wonderful Mom!

Happy Mothers Day to my amazingly, talented, beautiful and long suffering wife.

Happy Mothers Day

Mei has finally started pulling up to a standing position.

I figured this would happen as she just qualified for some physical therapy to get her walking. As is usual for her, she started pulling up the moment we looked into getting her help.

The therapist comes ones a week and has been here only twice and is already thinking Mei is fine. She wants to pull up on everything and will take small shuffle “steps”. I being generous here, but the fact remains that our little girl is getting bigger every day!

So big!

I once told my wife that my engineering training and work experience had ruined me.

It is impossible for me to drive down the road, pull into a parking lot or walk into a building without noticing all the mistakes, flaws and just plain bad design.

One way I stay awake while driving on long trips is to pay special attention to new road construction or newly completed projects. If I had a notebook, I would take notes.

I know, I’m a huge dork…

My former job with the City had me reviewing site plans for new development. It proved that there are two ways to do things in this world: The right way and the half assed way.

Unfortunately, what separates the two always seems to come down to money. It costs money to do things the right way. What often isn’t known is that your “cost savings” for doing something half assed may not be real savings at all. Sometimes the savings is lost because of more frequent maintenance because you went with the cheaper unit. Sometimes the savings is lost because choosing to omit something has caused damage to be done to the site or facility.

One of my biggest pet peeves is with curb and gutter.

Concrete is expensive and forming and pouring curb and gutter isn’t cheap. In the City, all new subdivisions are required to have curb and gutter installed. It really adds to the look of the subdivision. The County, however, allows a ditch section to be utilized. This is much cheaper for the developer, but the long term aesthetics of the road are not great.

First off there is the added maintenance to the County to maintain all the roadside ditches. In reality, the ditches are not maintained. As a result, the ditches fill in and the home owner ends up with a nice parabolic, grassed swale from their yard down to the “ditch” and back up to the road. This looks nice and is easy to mow, but the problem is that the ditch is no longer conveying all the water. As a result, water stands in the ditches and then people start to complain. Then the County finally goes out to re-grade the ditch.

Let me tell you, re-grading a ditch pisses off home owners. There are two ways to do it. The County can take dozers out and they can reshape the front and back slopes of the ditch. This will give nice tie back slopes for grass to grow on, but it really tears up a yard. What usually happens is the County sends out a gradall with a bucket and they then re-grade the ditch by scooping out bucket loads. This impacts the least amount of yard, but leaves a very ugly ditch with near vertical sideslopes. As a result, grass is not able to grow and the finished product looks like a scar on the earth.

Not having curb and gutter also allows people to run off the road or park on the grassed shoulder. Over time, the constant parking kills the grass and bare dirt spots and ruts begin to form. Again, this becomes a maintenance issue for the County.

The County tried to make it easier for a developer to build a subdivision because the County desperately needs/wants the added tax parcels. This made it cheaper for the developer, but it has real long term costs to the County.

One more thing about curb and gutter: in parking lots, anywhere there is an island, there needs to be curb and gutter. Often times the developer will forgo curb and gutter at these locations in order to save money. The end product looks terrible and creates a maintenance issue from then on.

We went to my daughters 3-K program at the local Baptist church yesterday. They have constructed a new facility that is a thing of beauty. The layout is great and there is adequate parking….

BUT….

They obviously tried to save money by not installing curb and gutter around the parking islands. Bad move guys. Bad move.

Here are some pictures.

Nice curb and gutter at the front of the building

Why? Why?

That last picture shows what not to do. Notice the car on the right is already in the island. It won’t take long for every island to be rutted up. They already had ugly orange cones up at the ends of each island in an attempt to keep people from running over them. Good luck. It won’t work.

Next time, spend the extra money for the curb and gutter.

So, there’s a new Indiana Jones movie coming out at the end of this month.

Man, it’s been years since I’ve seen the originals. Mental note: rent original Indy movies.

Ace has a link to Aint It Cool News’ review of the new movie. I guess one of their guys got a sneak peak at it.

Steven Spielberg directs this movie and George Lucus is one of the Executive Producers…uh oh…

Anyway, I don’t want to rant on forever, as it doesn’t matter what I say, you will see this movie regardless. And even though it’s not as bad as Allan Quartermane, it’s definitely not a good Indy Movie. But for those of you that feel that the new Star Wars Movies robbed your childhood, expect some molestations from Uncles’ George and Steven…

This reminded me of a post of mine from three years ago.

Maybe it’s not as bad as the new Star Wars movies were.

Maybe…

Check out previous editions of “I Wish I Had Written That”

A red wasp has been building its nest in my shed for the past month.

My sworn enemy

I’m not sure why it’s taken so long, but it only made five or six “tubes”. My guess is she made the smallest number possible, laid her eggs and was waiting for her “help” to hatch so the nest can be expanded.

We had a cold snap a few weeks ago and I thought for sure it had killed the wasp. Nope, it was tucked up on top of the nest, between the nest and the wood above.

I hate wasps. I knew it would be a matter of time before I had to take the nest out, but for some reason I never got around to it.

Until last night.

I was in the shed getting some yard tools when I noticed the wasp staring at me. It made a few provocative moves, causing me to fear for my safety.

So I waited…

When it left to forage for some food or wood pulp or something, I snuck into the shed and knocked the nest down with my rake. I then ran like a school girl away from the shed, thinking that the scorned wasp would follow me.

She didn’t.

All that work. All that effort. It was gone.

I wonder if wasps feel sadness.

I can just see her returning from a successful hunt, her rapidly growing larva on her mind, when she enters the shed…

OH MY GOD!!! It’s gone! It’s all gone! What happened? Oh the humanity!!!!

Are wasp nests the trailer parks of the insect world? I mean, when the insect news comes on with a breaking story of tragedy, do the other insects roll their eyes, expecting to see yet ANOTHER wasp nest destroyed? You know, like we do with tornadoes and trailer parks?

I guess I should’ve taken the nest our earlier.

*shrug*

Oh well.

Here are some pictures: