Gnubbs Blog

So, it has been quite a while since I posted anything on the Everything Engine. This is a bit my fault, and a bit works fault.

So, last week I was on the 6am-2pm shift at work. This means I am there for the very busy morning but not the slower afternoons. Additionally, I was put on an emergency project sorting out some file structure inconsistencies… So, it has been a while since I have done much work on it.

Add to that the fact that I need to sit down and do some serious design (which I am not altogether looking forward to), and you have a formula for days spent surfing Slashdot. Oh well. Back into the fray. I have spent all day today making diagrams in Dia. This is a pretty nice peice of free software. Granted, I cannot point it in the direction of my mySQL db and have it pull the DB structures but it does make doing it by hand pretty easy.

So, hopefully, tonight I will spend some time working out the design over a couple of beers or a couple of whiskies. Tomorrow I will be back to writing design docs and hopefully have something useful to post. Heck, maybe i will even put up the design docs for a period of public comment.

gnubbs

Today I am going trad climbing for the first time. This is a big deal. This is a transition point in my climbing. It is the point where you change from climbing occasionally to being a climber.

I started climbing at a climbing gym. Nothing could be more sterile and safe. Painted walls with little plastic grips and rubber padding on the floor — max height, about 40 feet. Then, when I moved to colorado, I started top roping.

Top roping is when you hike around to the top of the cliff, set up anchors and throw down your rope. Hike back around to the base, and you are looking at a rope with both ends dangling down from your anchors at the top. You tie in to one end of the rope, the rope runs up to the top of the cliff and back down to the person belaying you (they stop your fall.) When you fall top roped, you might fall 3-5 feet (the amount of slack and stretch in your rope). It is not a safe thing to do, but it is pretty safe. Max height, about 90-100 feet.

Then I started sport climbing. When you sport climb, you climb routes where someone has been kind enough to go through and put in 1/2 inch bolts with hangers along the route. You tie in to the rope, start climbing, and clip the rope into the hangers as you go. This is a lot more dangerous than top roping, you might take a 15-20 foot fall, but your protection (those bolts) have a very low chance of breaking loose. Max height, usually about 90-100 feet.

Today I am going trad climbing for the first time. You start a trad climb with piles of gear around your neck and staring at a blank rock wall. As the leader climbs, he places peices of pro (little chunks of metal in cracks, spring loaded cams, etc) and clips the rope to those. Now, you have the same long falls as in sport climbing, but if you are not careful those peices of pro can pop out. This is where shit gets scary. Not all out horror show scary, but not the type of place where you can make mistakes. Max height — well, The Grand Voyage on Trango Tower is about 5000 feet tall…..

Today I will be making my first trip high off the ground. Not a little high like 75 feet, but potentially a couple of hundred feet. Now I am talking about real risk, not just a little risk. Now I am talking about what climbing is really supposed to be in my eyes.

Keeping a reef is a fundamentally cool thing to do as an engineer. If you get a dog, you have a dog. Sure you can train it and stuff, but generally you just have a dog. A reef on the other hand requires a great deal of problem solving, design, and creativity to construct and maintain. It is a perfect hobby for an engineer.

A succesfull reef requires months of design, building, revision, chemistry… You have to figure out lighting systems, water flow, water quality monitoring, stocking levels, temperature control, evapation control, chemistry maintenance. You have a lot of work on your hands. If you choose a 12g reef things will be even more interesting.

Some of the more challenging aspects of a small reef are maintaining water quality. On my tank, I have natural filtration in the form of a deep sand bed and rock that bacteria live on. I also do nutrient export by growning seaweed in a refugium hanging on the back of the tank.

Temperature on a small tank is another challenge. With the amount of lighting you need to raise coral, the water temp can skyrocket during the day and plummet at night. I am currently using a 150 watt ceramic heater and a 50 watt peltier cooler to keep my temps just right (77 degrees).

Did I mention lighting? Try fitting 100 watts of power compact flourescent in an area 12×17 inches. (about the same amount of lights as 500 watts of of regular flourescent. That is about 10 of those banks of lights above your desk at work. That is 90 lienear feet of regular flourescents)

I have yet to even hit water chemistry and water motion and I have already gotten out the dremel tool a couple of times. And if this isn’t fun enough for you, you can pursue the grail of a completely automated aquarium. Or a computer controlled aquarium. Or you can just try and get some coral and fish to stay alive and propagate in your little microcosm.

With a reef, you can pursue it as science or art. As an engineer, I am pursing mine as science. And it just happens to be gorgeous too.

So, i finally broke down and bought new tires. It is the type of thing that you do with mixed feelings. My old tires were too threadbare for me to drive any longer, but I didn’t have the cash to upgrade wheels right now.

That left me trying to find fucked up 215/50-16 tires. There are 5. Summer only Kumho Ectsa, winter only Dunlop or Michilen Arctic Alpines, BFG CompTA, or BFG GeforceTA. Not exactly what I would call a plethora of choices. I was hoping to find some cheap all season tires to buy me some time until I could upgrade wheels.

But, at $134 a tire installed, the BFG CompTAs are not exactly budget tires. So, I am stuck with my current wheels until I eat all of the thread up on these tires now. Kind of sucks. Then again, I think you only get about 20,000 miles of treadlife out of these so it shouldn’t be too long of a wait.

After surfing tire websites, and calling my local tire stores I discovered that I wasn’t going to save much money buying from Tirerack. So, I call up my local Tire Source (they buy all of thier tires from tirerack wholesale, so they are very reasonable), and make an appointment for Monday afternoon. Since this was only tires and an alignment, I was not too concerned about where I took my car. I was looking for someplace cheap.

As soon as I pulled into the parking lot I suspected I had made the right choice. Several porsches, corvettes, etc. Piles of SUV tires laying around out front. Walk in the front door and there is row upon row of high performance tires and racing slicks. Look in the magazine rack and it is filled with GRM, not Road and Track.

A couple of hours, a tank of gas, and a car wash and my car is happier than it has been in a very long time. My wallet on the other hand… Next up, brakes.

gnubbs