Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Indulgence

For those of you that don’t have to spend time with engineers, consider yourself very, very fortunate. For those of you that do spend time with engineers, you have my deepest and most sincere apologies…

As many of you know, I'm a Structural Engineer. Structural Engineering is a specialty within Civil Engineering and I describe it as "figuring out how to keep buildings from falling down, and figuring out what happened when they do fall down." Others have more eloquently described Structural Engineering thusly:

“Structural Engineering is the art of modeling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyze so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance."

That definition is a little tongue-in-cheek, but there is also some truth in it.

My personal definition of Structural Engineering centers on two basic fundamentals:

Newton’s First Law:

A body at rest remains at rest, unless acted upon by an external force (kinda sounds like me during football season).

Newton’s Third Law:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction (push forward against your desk and your chair rolls backwards)

These simple definitions have worked well for me in 27 years of structural engineering practice. I have been fortunate enough to perform design work on structures all over the United States (some of which you may have visited at one time or another), to conduct condition assessments of buildings after some horrible disasters (Hurricane Andrew and the Oklahoma City bombing), and to preserve some nationally significant historic buildings. I also have been fortunate enough to work with several very talented and outstanding people, some of whom are readers of this blog.

So far, during the course of my career, I have cumulatively spent over one year away from home on business, assessing buildings or visiting construction sites. My family has always been patient and understanding, and I am so grateful for that. Thank-you S and C and K.

Today I found out that, after a semi-rigorous evaluation process, I have become a Board Certified Structural Engineer. I am only the 12th Structural Engineer in my home state to attain this certification, and one of about 1000 Structural Engineers nation-wide.

I’m a lucky man, indeed!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Mutlimedia Humor

Welcome to the first multi-media edition of Suburban Rogue

One of my favorite characters on television is MADtv’s Coach Hines, played by Keegan-Michael Key. Here is one of the better sketches, notice the blue “coaching shorts” ca. 1972…

Coach Hines

It’s that spring break time of year and this video reminds us to always pay attention to the lifeguard….

Lifeguard

I was recently accused of being a nerd. I always thought I fell more in the dork category, but maybe not. Anyway, I found this video that might help explain a few things…

The Knack

Be kind with your comments, or I will be forced to post my copyrighted engineers’ lecture. Not only is it informative, it is also a guaranteed cure for insomnia…

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Permission


To celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of my birth, Mrs. R and I have decided to spend a long weekend on the Yucatan Peninsula, about 30 minutes south of Cancun.

I mean, let’s face it; they don’t call me "Mr. Spontaneity” for nothing.

Oh wait, actually they don’t call me that for anything. "Mr. Somebody Check His Pulse Is He Still Breathing?” is more like it.

After talking with a co-worker one day I came home singing the praises of Cancun, a place that I had never been to before. A couple of days later we made the arrangements and were set to go. Well almost anyway.

There was the small matter of getting permission to leave from, and then return to, the good ol’ US of A. We needed to get passports, which is a much easier sentence to type than to actually accomplish.

Mrs. R is a naturalized citizen, having been born in Stuttgart. We were unable to find her birth certificate, but we did locate her citizenship papers and her expired passport from when she was a teenager.

Me? I’m 'merican. Born right here in Colorado. Even got the birth certificate, complete with a footprint, as proof. (On a side note, it is difficult to imagine that my feet were ever that small.) What could possibly go wrong?

We had our passport photo’s taken, (apparently senior pictures from high school are not acceptable), filled out the paperwork and headed to the post office. We were both a little apprehensive because we were anticipating having difficulties with Mrs. R’s application. Boy, were we wrong.

We patiently waited our turn in line, and then went into the little room at the post office. We were friendly, polite, ingratiating, and reverential to the clerk. As a bureaucrat myself, I know how effective this can be…

It worked! Mrs. R’s application sailed though without any trouble. Phew, that was a close one…

Then the clerk looked at my paperwork, sniffed, and gave me that “stern, over the top of her reading glasses look,” and said “Is that your birth certificate?”

“Yes” I meekly replied.

“Well it’s not going to work.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

You need an official one from the state,” she said. “Too many forgeries these days.”

Although I was confused as to why someone would want, or need, to forge my footprint, I gamely fought back.

“It’s from the hospital were I was born, just up the road a bit. It’s got my foot print and everything.”

In attempt to provide proof that my birth certificate was not a forgery, I took off my shoe and sock, and placed my foot on the counter. Snapped a hamstring when I did it, too.

Well, for some reason the clerk took offense to this, and I was escorted from the building, sans one shoe and one sock, and asked not to return until I had “cooled off for 24 hours, or the restraining order expires, whichever comes first.”

So Mrs. R and I headed to a soulless, antiseptic “Office of Vital Records” building, where, for just $17, I got an “official” copy of the document I already had in my hand.

The next day I went back to the passport office, waited in line, got back in front of the same clerk, who declared that my paperwork was now in order. It was when she asked to see my drivers license that I realized I had left my billfold back at my desk at work.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, after three trips to the passport office, my application was duly stamped, notarized, and fed to the system.

Noithin’ to it….