Technology: woes and wonders

My thesis advisor, Cat Wallack, would be proud of this blog; the title contains a full colon. OK, I'll get to the point. I'm having issues with technology, both good and bad.

First, the bad. My external hard drive fell about 14" and is dead. It contains my pictures from Roma and Cambridge, of Corbie, of my kids, of my broken wrists, as well as the original images from my portfolio, my logo..., heck, it pretty much contains my life from the fall of 2005 until last week. There's a slight chance that my hard drive might be resurrected--slight but as of now, the patient has flat-lined.

Also, I'm taking a class in Revit. I'm using my house as a case study. Now this house has been worked on in stages over the past 20+ years. The dining room and kitchen are really add-ons and are creating havoc in Revit which can't cope with the Rube Goldberg building methods that I'm using to recreate the house. I am constantly saving to two sources after every little change because otherwise the drawing becomes corrupted giving the appearance that internal walls have breached the external ones. This transparency in 3-D views is most annoying. In addition, I can no longer work at home on Revit. I followed the professor's instructions for downloading the student version and wrote three letters to Autodesk, but my ability to save any work from home is a thing of the past. Since I can't work from home I have to go up to Benton County to work at the NWACC labs. Every time I get on I-540 I pray that my car and I make it home in one piece. Today I spent seven hours at the lab but because of the transparency problem with the walls I probably only accomplished 45 minutes of new work.

Now you're probably wondering why in the world I have included a sheet of graph paper in my blog. You see, I'm doing a site plan for my Revit class and needed some graph paper. That was on Saturday when the temperature here reached about 96 degrees; it was far too hot to go up to the attic to track down some graph paper so I decided to make my own in InDesign. However, that process was also annoying. I thought that I could get the baseline grid to print by checking a little box. Oh, no. I had to drag all those little lines from the ruler and then snap them to the baseline grid. Eventually the problem was solved, but it took more effort than I expected to devote to it.

OK, technology isn't totally evil. On the plus side, Billy's knee was reconstructed because of technology, although at the moment I don't think it's working any better than I am with Revit.

In the process of gathering the data for my site plan, I discovered something most helpful. I learned that there's a ruler on Google Earth. Yes, without having to find the closing documents to the house, I was able to measure the fence line with the Google Earth ruler. Probably this is no great revelation to folks in the School of Architecture, but I was thrilled to have made this discovery.

As we all know, technology is wonderful when it works. It takes the credit when it works; I take the blame when it doesn't.

P.S. It's Tuesday. Revit was much more cooperative today. Hooray!

Remains of the day(lilies)

OK, I wanted to get something accomplished today, and this was it!

Summertime

Previously, I showed you how our little pond was teaming with tadpoles. Here is a rare view of a tadpole who is slightly further along in his development. A younger tadpole can be spotted at the top of the picture. The tadpoles love the lily pads.



This picture was taken with Becky in mind. She's my friend who lives in Australia and is quite a photobug (sorry, that pun was intentional). She has taken some fantastic pictures of Aussie bugs and snakes (closeups of both) which is really kind of scary. This little dragonfly didn't leave its perch when I showed up with my camera, and I'm proud to say that this pic hasn't been touched up in Photoshop, either.



We acquired a second water lily when we took the Omni Peace Tour a few weeks ago. The picture above and the one below were shot when the first bloom of the new water lily opened up.



This morning I took a picture of the second bloom that it has produced. Below is the first picture I took. It looks pretty much like the first bloom.



But at 9:00 am on a summer's day when the humidity was already at 80% and the temperature was already 81 degrees, the humidity began to affect my lens. The following picture was taken less than a minute after the one above. However, my camera didn't like it that I snatched it from the cool environment of an air-conditioned house and subjected it to the merciless conditions of summer. The following picture hasn't been touched up at all.



The only ones who can sustain any activity in this miserable summer heat are the ants. The little guys are moving so fast that it appears as if I've speeded up the clip, but I haven't--actually, I wouldn't have a clue as to how to mess with a video clip. Perhaps this clip will take you back to your childhood when you had nothing better to do than to watch ants on a summer day.

Surgical removal of debris

Yesterday, June 23rd, was a day for two operations, both of which resulted in the removal of unwanted debris. The first operation involved the removal of Billy's torn ACL. Here he is with Sarah on the evening of the 22nd. He didn't want this picture taken at all, so I didn't get a chance to close the door to the utility room.



Here's the patient back at home about four hours post-op. We reversed the couch so that it would be easier to elevate his left leg. In this picture, he's opening a gift bag from Roberta that included at least four different kinds of chocolate. Billy was thrilled and hungry, too, from having to fast before the surgery.



Bill also had this surgery about nine years ago. On the day following surgery Bill could not move his left leg at all. Billy, on the other hand, can move his leg and has started his exercises. Young athletes seem to recover much faster than their middle-aged parents!

Billy's quick recovery might also be attributed to his wonderful nurse, Sarah. Of the three of us mobile adults, she was the one to think of the Purell and to help Billy get up from a prone position so that he could walk to the bathroom. She also remembered the discharge instructions better than his parents.



As you recall from previous blogs, we had lost a total of ten trees between the ice storm and excessive spring rains. And we have waited, and waited, and waited for the tree guys to grind down the stumps. Well, naturally, they returned on the evening of Billy's surgery.



There are still stumps on my little path--that procedure requires a smaller grinder. But that big old rootball that was left in the center of our yard is now just a pile of mulch.



Both operations went smoothly, although we wish we didn't have to undergo either one. And Bill regrets that he didn't send Billy to Greece this summer with Dan Levine so that he would have missed the game where he injured his knee. Oh, well, at least the debris is gone and things will just get better.

14. World Peace Prayer Fountain

It's been a while since I have added any entries on the subject of 101 things to do in Fayetteville. Peace is on my mind, having just made the Omni Tour of peace gardens. I like this sculpture because it is at once so simple and so complex, and it appeals to both language and image. Besides, it's situated directly in front of the site of my senior studio project, the Fayetteville Town Center.



Hank Kaminsky is the artist.



As for the artist's intent, it seems that the globe speaks for itself.



You can find the World Peace Prayer Fountain on the south side of the Fayetteville Square.

Rice Salad

Rice salad is very good. This one was made with brown rice, fresh parsley, chives, tarragon, basil, and a little mint all from my garden, salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, black olives, red bell pepper, and slivered almonds. It is served chilled. I was introduced to it during my first visit to Rome in 1976. No wonder I love rice salad--it's Italian!

Omni Peace Tour

Today Bill and I visited a half a dozen gardens as part of the Omni Peace Tour.



We have decided on a name for our peace garden, il Sentiero della Pace, the Peace Path. Still, our yard is far from being presentable because of the numerous tree stumps, including the large stump that fell last month, but there are some promising developments. Above are my African daisies and below is our first water lily bloom of the year.



The following pictures are from the tour and need very little commentary from me. Thanks to my new camera, most of the pictures have not been altered in Photoshop. Below is a magnolia bloom.



I don't know what this is but it's interesting.





One woman had a spectacular blue garden, along with some other very pretty colors.



Bees loved this garden.















I love the carousel horse sculpture in the garden below.



The same gardener distributed glass rocks in another section of her garden.



I believe the next picture contains views of painted ferns and creeping Jenny. Bill and I planted some creeping Jenny this year in our flower garden, but our chameleon plants have overpowered them. Perhaps tomorrow I will get them replanted beneath the armillary just off the deck.



This is our friend, Dick Bennett, who founded the Omni Center for Peace, Justice, & Ecology.



I liked the cheery little flags in one garden.









Bill went with me on the tour. Bugs like Bill because he's so sweet. Despite the bugs, the heat, and the humidity, he was very patient as I snapped a gazillion pictures of this and that.



Our last stop on the tour brought us to this City-owned park.



This is lamb's ears. It's as soft as it looks.



The wetland prairie garden reminded me of the walk to Grantchester where we were rewarded for our efforts by the most delicious scones that were served with clotted cream and strawberry preserves.



There was even Queen Anne's lace.



And many grasses.



And gorgeous views (but no cows).



Very abruptly, our tour ended when I spotted my old nemesis, poison ivy! It was time to head back to the car.



If you wish to learn more about the Omni Center, please visit http://www.omnicenter.org/.

A most peculiar sky

In the midst of a lovely visit with new friends, Tim Maddox and his fiancee, Cyndi, Cyndi noticed that the sky was a most peculiar color.



So we went to the front door and looked at the sky. Mind you, it was 8:35 pm and these pictures are not enhanced in any way by Photoshop. While the color was most unusual, we noticed something none of us had ever seen before--a rainbow against a mauve-colored sky. If you look closely at both pictures, you will see the arc of the rainbow.



The attributes of the sky were also noted by one of Bill's students, Jonathan, who remarked about it on Facebook.

Normally, odd-colored skies suggest bad storms. Fortunately, we had no tornadoes, hail, or any other acts of God, and we woke up this morning to find that all of our remaining trees were still standing!

Full moon rising

This was the view outside our front door last night. Tripods are great inventions!

Sailing away

This was our boat. We had owned it forever but neither I nor the kids ever went sailing on it. Some years ago (at least 10) Bill was sailing with a friend when a small part broke. Two hours before the prospective buyer was to arrive Bill went to Lowe's to purchase a replacement part at a cost of 44 cents. Inertia is a terrible thing.



For several years, the boat resided next to our garage. It's actually visible when you Google Earth our address.



An interesting side note to this story is for my friends at SSA. While I was taking these pictures, the buyer and I started to chat about this and that when I realized I had interviewed him some years back at SSA. It was a QR interview, and as you can guess, he wasn't particularly happy with me. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm afraid I can't explain it to you. Government secrets, you know. Fortunately, he didn't recognize me.

And now the boat is sold. Does anyone want to take me sailing?