Sometimes I hate learning new things.

I seem to follow a predictable pattern when learning new things that are not inherently intuitive:

1. I get completely overwhelmed and sometimes have the urge to cry, want to quit my job, run away from life, join a commune…stuff like that…and no…I’m not joking.

2. Next comes frustration. I get frustrated that I can’t figure it out. I’m a smart guy, I should be able to figure this out.

3. I spend several nights lying in bed at night thinking about the problem.

4. I finally kick my own butt and decided to jump into the details. I will study the references and background material. I’ll call people who know how to do whatever it is I’m trying to figure out. Then I end up attempting to work through the problem, one issue at a time.

5. Once I work through the problem the light bulb usually goes off and I understand what I’m doing…usually.

So these past few days I’ve been struggling to understand how to do determine the hydrology for a bridge replacement job.

Normally, I would just fire up TR-55 to determine my Time of Concentration and then plug that into HEC-HMS and do a standard SCS Hydrograph. Simple stuff. Done it many times before.

But…

This is different. This bridge is located in the Harris County Flood Control District and they have their own methodology. They want to see a different rainfall distribution, they use Green & Ampt for initial loss, they use Clark hydrograph and finally they use Modified Puls for routing.

I’ve never done any of those things before… Something about TC+R and distance to the centroid of the drainage basin.

Centroid…oh my God…I haven’t done that in 12 years…Ah, my cad program has a little button you hit…

I pulled up some reference material that HEC-HMS has for their program. It didn’t help a bit and made me more confused. Reading theory confuses me. Ken probably understands this stuff…Geek…

wenden Sie sich bitte in Englisch?

Anyway, I went through stage 1 Tuesday, stage 2 yesterday and stage 3 both nights. Today I have a better understanding and I’m ready to jump right in. Thanks to a call from one of my colleagues in Texas, I think I can do this.

We shall see.

BTW, this reminds me of Homer going through the 5 stages of death.