i haven't been in the bay area long enough to have experienced any of the really big temblors, but what surprised me the most about them is how 'out-of-nowhere' they seem to arrive.
i always kind of expected that you would hear an earthquake approaching, like the rumbling of a train in the distance. or like a missile whistling en route to it's destination.
but no.
out of the blue, without any audible warning sign of any kind...BAM! like a car drove into the side of your house/building. so weird. so scary.
and after every one, i run to the computer to check the real-time monitors and see how big it was and where the epicenter was.
had a pretty good-sized (or at least closeby anyway) bump last saturday night. i was on the couch watching a movie with headphones on and i really thought someone had driven into the house.
'Hi' from the road! It's been a busy past couple of days, but I now have a place to live, for sure, first month's rent paid and lease signed and everything. It's pretty, and the ride from there to campus is even more pretty- I get to cross a bridge going over a big ravine which looks like it has no business being there amid all those streets and sidewalks. There are about a million or so cyclists here, and we basically have our own freeway. But after riding about 15 or so very hilly miles today on my rental bike with a boy's narrow seat, my ass couldn't take anymore for a while, so I stopped by my hotel for a rest. I have to take the bike back to the shop at six though, so it'll be a short rest before I head out for more exploration.
I haven't taken as many pictures as I expected- I was really good about it on the first day, and got lots of pictures of the Freeway Park and Gasworks Park, as well as cool parking-meter-cum-bike-parking things, and then I kind of slacked off because the most picturesque things were what I was seeing at about 15 mph, and I didn't feel like stopping to pull out the camera.
I didn't even take pictures of my new place! I brought the camera, and then when I got there, you know what I did? I drew a plan of my room, so that I can figure out what furniture will fit. Not only that, but my roomates, who are also architect(ural intern)s were busy doing the same thing. It was a real archi-geek moment, but I like them a lot and am very relived to have the roomate and home issue settled.
I fly home tomorrow, but as my mom's meeting me at the airport and staying the weekend, I'll probably be pretty scarce for a couple of days more. My love to TC, and the lurkers too.
My office moved us around today. I now sit in a corner. I have kindly named it the 'time-out corner' because one of my walls is all white. I am not allowed to tape or tack anything on it. Bland.
Also, my corner is freezing. It's 104 degrees outside and I am inside wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a donated cardigan with my company's logo on it. My arm hair stands fully erect and my nose is cold to touch.
The long and short of it Cardinal got Screwed! Personally I would never put myself in a position where another Architect would get screwed so I could get a commission....and others I might add...
Clinton's Library. It was a buff and polish job between Polshek and
West from the Smithsonian. Diversion to the Max! I along with a number of other people wrote letters to the Commission and said keep Cardinal on to finish this Project....as he was the Design Element of the Project...why take the project away from him when he had no control over the timing of the Production Architectural Firm?
You might note Polshek, has kept a limited profile on this project....they were just coming to the rescue .....which in my opinion was pure Bull!
I along with many recieved nice letters...from the Smithsonian.....for our interest in the project....and you know when it opened....it has been blessed with Bad Blood....I might add More Bad Blood....oh America does know how to screw the American Indian Time and Time Again....and yes I know West is an Indian. Which makes it even more disgusting....kinda like the Chiefs that signed away the Black Hills of South Dakota, for a life destined on Reservations....and the most severe level of poverty in America.
What Washington DC didn't realize is they had the real deal until they tossed it away. The changes to the building pissed Cardinal off enough that he declined and dissed the project completely. I think he is a very brave individual, to stand up for the principals of his design.
I'm sure you think I completly over board on this one, but I must say my piece because I think this is the biggest mistake of the Clinton Administration, the Second being Monica.
Snooker - Doug Cardinal conducting one of our masterclasses. He suffers under the same ailment of many accomplished architects where he feels the need to re-create himself and his work every chance he gets. In my eyes he's a hack, nothing to write home about. His reasoning of using the rock faces to make a subjective link with the many cultures of the American Indians is well...weak.
So this morning we get this silly memo saying we need to tidy the office (architect & engineer sections) in means to please the head office. And to do it ASAP. So we bite the bullet and get to it. I was told off by a close friend/co worker who wasn't going because he had an assignment to finish. I wasn't pleased.
Anyhow ran off to a meeting to fix the country, through the new housing policy and made a room full of lawyers honour and respect architects/engineers - it was a great way to pick up what would of been a sucky day.
Ahhh and before I forget - the hurricane passed far south from us. But the sea was a dog's breakfast, and its really breezy at the moment. They gave us half day off - the best thing to hear on a Friday. So I joined another coworker at a local bar, I was searching for food honest. 4 whiskeys later, and nearly heading home with a lady whose name I don't know, I made the 1/4 mile journey home and crashed out to sleep it off. 3 hours later.
architechnophilia, yeh the shear wall thing i get, but standards for amount of re-bar and percentage of open area allowable (in walls) in these kinds of buildings has changed so much in the last 30 years that i wonder how safe this building acually is.
more to point the open spans are simply enormous. really wonderful to live in, but not exactly legal anymore. i have designed similar buildings in last decade but they had very small openings cuz of lessons from kobe earthquake...ah well, at least no soft stories on this building...but that diagonal crack that spans my whole living room endwall is lookin kinda scary when i let my paranoia out to play...;-) not looking forward to the big one.
jump take solice in the fact that many stone buildings are considered "below code" by today's standards. However many of them have existed for centuries. Knowledge that is 30 yrs old might just be right just not to today's concept of right.
my father in law has a 120 year old timber frame house that he figures will fall down when it gets hit by a really big earthquake(no tie-downs or anything on his house). apparently back then they made them strong for most things but assumed a big one couldn't be dealt with...he is architect and home-builder so i guess he knows... hopefully the next big earthquake ain't coming anytime soon.
thanks guys i still have ten more to lose before i hook up with the exgirlfriend/future wife. man i like beer. anyway i have no coffee in the house!!!! so im outta here.
wasn't around much yesterday but i did see the comment: thanks vado! and congratulations on losing 20lbs. that's a pretty big accomplishment.
thanks, too, to snooker. i'll have to dig back a little and refresh myself on the whole cardinal story. i DON'T quite feel the same that if cardinal had already been fired that it wasn't ok to finish the job. that stuff happens all the time and - really - someone has to finish the job. standing on principle and letting the project languish would not have been a better result, would it?
had a wonderful drink at our new favorite louisville restaurant - a vietnamese place called 'basa'. the drink was a 'david carradine martini' - a bourbon martini that was beautiful and tasty. also our first date since the baby was born, so that added to the experience.
today we're going to an aia picnic at the bernheim forest, including tours of the new visitor's center that mcdonough did. we'll learn how it's performing: is it really producing more energy than it uses and releasing cleaner water than it collects?
I harvested 56 beautiful and not so pretty specimens of tomatoes on thursday. the first batch of oven dried tomatoes (salt, pepper+ olive oil) tastes amazingly divine after 16 hours at 200 degrees (didn't peel them at first, just cut in half so the process was very slow). one more batch going in the oven tonight- that still leaves me with a dozen of the best ones to gorge on over the next week. got another 20 or so still ripening for later harvest.
I experimented with drying some summer squash, so now I don't have to give away the daily bounty.
my contractor failed his inspection on his moment frame welds and called to whine and told me he was going to fire my structural engineer. I laughed. He had me on speaker phone...
Here are a few items that I found regarding Douglas Cardinal and the National Museum of the American Indian:
Article from enRoute magazine. It alludes to a 134 page piece called A Forgery for the Smithsonian that Cardinal wrote himself, yet I can't find a copy anywhere. The enRoute article also concludes that Cardinal has moved on and found peace in his life.
An academic piece. Skip to the numbered list at the end; the article itself is opinionated and borderline obnoxious, but the concluding list has some factual statements.
I still cannot find any accusitory remarks against Polshek. The other articles I read indicate that Cardinal was fired for taking too long in producing documentation (perhaps DD and CD level drawings). Polshek was brought in to do a design review (we all know that these can happen at any point in the project; incidentally Polshek was also brought in to do a design review for the new Washington Nationals ballpark, but that's a discussion for another day) and was engaged to carry out the detailing of the schematic design that Cardinal produced.
Other accounts state that Cardinal spent $1 million in producing work for Fine Arts Commission presentations but was never paid for it.
All this talk of the museum is making me hungry for the excellent native food in the Mitsitam Café at the museum in question. I think I'll go there for lunch today. And I'll stop by the information desk to find out what the "party line" is on this topic.
ha! I fail to see how the general contractor's inability to weld connections per the contract documents is grounds for dismissing your structural engineer.
I learned recently that there are many types of moment welds and connection details. Did your structural engineer specify a full penetration weld (or a "full pen" in industry slang)? The number of passes on those connections is astounding. Perhaps your general contractor only used a one or two pass weld instead?
vado: This is where I can use my uber-seriousness to my advantage when I need to discuss such matters during meetings. Any smirk on my part would indicate weakness or vulerability.
I thought a glory hole was the excavation during a ground breaking ceremony? Hmm you learn something new everyday.
great news, hurricane dean seems to be passing south of Jamaica/aka hometown. Parents, sister, family & friends are safely tucked in watching the hurricane activities live via their windows and ms windows.
the laundry's done.
now enjoying my second caraffe of coffee and an eggbeater omellette with fresh garden tomatoes, red pepper, avocado and new mexico chile. now what to do with the rest of the day. besides take a nap of course.
Thread Central
i haven't been in the bay area long enough to have experienced any of the really big temblors, but what surprised me the most about them is how 'out-of-nowhere' they seem to arrive.
i always kind of expected that you would hear an earthquake approaching, like the rumbling of a train in the distance. or like a missile whistling en route to it's destination.
but no.
out of the blue, without any audible warning sign of any kind...BAM! like a car drove into the side of your house/building. so weird. so scary.
and after every one, i run to the computer to check the real-time monitors and see how big it was and where the epicenter was.
had a pretty good-sized (or at least closeby anyway) bump last saturday night. i was on the couch watching a movie with headphones on and i really thought someone had driven into the house.
hi orhan.
has anyone had sex during an earthquake and if so was the experience enhanced or interrupted... im turning into mdler.
does this count?
it's friday...i'm still alive
which plug should be checked?
This one...naturally...
oh, the self-referential humor never gets old, does it?
how come puddles never has anything better to say than "i'm alive"?
puddles comes alive.
hi tumbles :P
'Hi' from the road! It's been a busy past couple of days, but I now have a place to live, for sure, first month's rent paid and lease signed and everything. It's pretty, and the ride from there to campus is even more pretty- I get to cross a bridge going over a big ravine which looks like it has no business being there amid all those streets and sidewalks. There are about a million or so cyclists here, and we basically have our own freeway. But after riding about 15 or so very hilly miles today on my rental bike with a boy's narrow seat, my ass couldn't take anymore for a while, so I stopped by my hotel for a rest. I have to take the bike back to the shop at six though, so it'll be a short rest before I head out for more exploration.
I haven't taken as many pictures as I expected- I was really good about it on the first day, and got lots of pictures of the Freeway Park and Gasworks Park, as well as cool parking-meter-cum-bike-parking things, and then I kind of slacked off because the most picturesque things were what I was seeing at about 15 mph, and I didn't feel like stopping to pull out the camera.
I didn't even take pictures of my new place! I brought the camera, and then when I got there, you know what I did? I drew a plan of my room, so that I can figure out what furniture will fit. Not only that, but my roomates, who are also architect(ural intern)s were busy doing the same thing. It was a real archi-geek moment, but I like them a lot and am very relived to have the roomate and home issue settled.
I fly home tomorrow, but as my mom's meeting me at the airport and staying the weekend, I'll probably be pretty scarce for a couple of days more. My love to TC, and the lurkers too.
the link only gave me three paragraphs, snooker, none of it about polshek. ???
My office moved us around today. I now sit in a corner. I have kindly named it the 'time-out corner' because one of my walls is all white. I am not allowed to tape or tack anything on it. Bland.
Also, my corner is freezing. It's 104 degrees outside and I am inside wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a donated cardigan with my company's logo on it. My arm hair stands fully erect and my nose is cold to touch.
Damn.
But, it's Friday.
No damn.
steven i wrote something really nice about you on the phenomonology thesis thread. check it out and say thanks.
in celebration of losing 20 pounds i have bought beer for my crib for the first time this summer. woohoo...
Steven
The long and short of it Cardinal got Screwed! Personally I would never put myself in a position where another Architect would get screwed so I could get a commission....and others I might add...
Clinton's Library. It was a buff and polish job between Polshek and
West from the Smithsonian. Diversion to the Max! I along with a number of other people wrote letters to the Commission and said keep Cardinal on to finish this Project....as he was the Design Element of the Project...why take the project away from him when he had no control over the timing of the Production Architectural Firm?
You might note Polshek, has kept a limited profile on this project....they were just coming to the rescue .....which in my opinion was pure Bull!
I along with many recieved nice letters...from the Smithsonian.....for our interest in the project....and you know when it opened....it has been blessed with Bad Blood....I might add More Bad Blood....oh America does know how to screw the American Indian Time and Time Again....and yes I know West is an Indian. Which makes it even more disgusting....kinda like the Chiefs that signed away the Black Hills of South Dakota, for a life destined on Reservations....and the most severe level of poverty in America.
What Washington DC didn't realize is they had the real deal until they tossed it away. The changes to the building pissed Cardinal off enough that he declined and dissed the project completely. I think he is a very brave individual, to stand up for the principals of his design.
I'm sure you think I completly over board on this one, but I must say my piece because I think this is the biggest mistake of the Clinton Administration, the Second being Monica.
Dub, I just heard that they are re-releasing the Lambretta and thought about you and wild scooter gang.
That's a wacky looking bike, techno! Wouldn't that be awesome though!?
It's that time of year when all I want to eat is tomatoes. Fresh, ripe, red, rich, sensually vivid tomatoes. Oh my god, I could faint from the taste.
Also, if you can't tell, I've had a little wine to go with my tomatoes tonight.
Snooker - Doug Cardinal conducting one of our masterclasses. He suffers under the same ailment of many accomplished architects where he feels the need to re-create himself and his work every chance he gets. In my eyes he's a hack, nothing to write home about. His reasoning of using the rock faces to make a subjective link with the many cultures of the American Indians is well...weak.
I am about to fill up the most recent comments section. Woo!
Oops, damn, I screwed it up for you, garpike, sorry!!!
Dammit, I did it again!!!
Ha ha it's cool...
I don't know anything about Wiki anyway.
So this morning we get this silly memo saying we need to tidy the office (architect & engineer sections) in means to please the head office. And to do it ASAP. So we bite the bullet and get to it. I was told off by a close friend/co worker who wasn't going because he had an assignment to finish. I wasn't pleased.
Anyhow ran off to a meeting to fix the country, through the new housing policy and made a room full of lawyers honour and respect architects/engineers - it was a great way to pick up what would of been a sucky day.
Ahhh and before I forget - the hurricane passed far south from us. But the sea was a dog's breakfast, and its really breezy at the moment. They gave us half day off - the best thing to hear on a Friday. So I joined another coworker at a local bar, I was searching for food honest. 4 whiskeys later, and nearly heading home with a lady whose name I don't know, I made the 1/4 mile journey home and crashed out to sleep it off. 3 hours later.
i scored some organic tomatoes from a coworker today woohoo.
i watched shaun of the dead had never seen it. laughed til i cried in the scene where they were throwing l.p.s at the zombies.
architechnophilia, yeh the shear wall thing i get, but standards for amount of re-bar and percentage of open area allowable (in walls) in these kinds of buildings has changed so much in the last 30 years that i wonder how safe this building acually is.
more to point the open spans are simply enormous. really wonderful to live in, but not exactly legal anymore. i have designed similar buildings in last decade but they had very small openings cuz of lessons from kobe earthquake...ah well, at least no soft stories on this building...but that diagonal crack that spans my whole living room endwall is lookin kinda scary when i let my paranoia out to play...;-) not looking forward to the big one.
congrats on weight loss vado! that is super cool.
No beer diet? Sounds rough.
Congrats vado. Have a 10 lb goal going right now...
jump take solice in the fact that many stone buildings are considered "below code" by today's standards. However many of them have existed for centuries. Knowledge that is 30 yrs old might just be right just not to today's concept of right.
ha, that is my hope.
my father in law has a 120 year old timber frame house that he figures will fall down when it gets hit by a really big earthquake(no tie-downs or anything on his house). apparently back then they made them strong for most things but assumed a big one couldn't be dealt with...he is architect and home-builder so i guess he knows... hopefully the next big earthquake ain't coming anytime soon.
thanks guys i still have ten more to lose before i hook up with the exgirlfriend/future wife. man i like beer. anyway i have no coffee in the house!!!! so im outta here.
wasn't around much yesterday but i did see the comment: thanks vado! and congratulations on losing 20lbs. that's a pretty big accomplishment.
thanks, too, to snooker. i'll have to dig back a little and refresh myself on the whole cardinal story. i DON'T quite feel the same that if cardinal had already been fired that it wasn't ok to finish the job. that stuff happens all the time and - really - someone has to finish the job. standing on principle and letting the project languish would not have been a better result, would it?
had a wonderful drink at our new favorite louisville restaurant - a vietnamese place called 'basa'. the drink was a 'david carradine martini' - a bourbon martini that was beautiful and tasty. also our first date since the baby was born, so that added to the experience.
today we're going to an aia picnic at the bernheim forest, including tours of the new visitor's center that mcdonough did. we'll learn how it's performing: is it really producing more energy than it uses and releasing cleaner water than it collects?
Steve - collect some water if it does. There could be a new market for it "McDonough water - made from our finest buildings"
McDon-ice, to rival Trump Ice.
I harvested 56 beautiful and not so pretty specimens of tomatoes on thursday. the first batch of oven dried tomatoes (salt, pepper+ olive oil) tastes amazingly divine after 16 hours at 200 degrees (didn't peel them at first, just cut in half so the process was very slow). one more batch going in the oven tonight- that still leaves me with a dozen of the best ones to gorge on over the next week. got another 20 or so still ripening for later harvest.
I experimented with drying some summer squash, so now I don't have to give away the daily bounty.
isnt a bourbon martini a manhattan?
my contractor failed his inspection on his moment frame welds and called to whine and told me he was going to fire my structural engineer. I laughed. He had me on speaker phone...
manhattan:
rye (not bourbon)
vermouth
bitters
I like mine on the rocks but it is too early on a saturday morning to start drinking.
Here are a few items that I found regarding Douglas Cardinal and the National Museum of the American Indian:
Article from enRoute magazine. It alludes to a 134 page piece called A Forgery for the Smithsonian that Cardinal wrote himself, yet I can't find a copy anywhere. The enRoute article also concludes that Cardinal has moved on and found peace in his life.
An academic piece. Skip to the numbered list at the end; the article itself is opinionated and borderline obnoxious, but the concluding list has some factual statements.
I still cannot find any accusitory remarks against Polshek. The other articles I read indicate that Cardinal was fired for taking too long in producing documentation (perhaps DD and CD level drawings). Polshek was brought in to do a design review (we all know that these can happen at any point in the project; incidentally Polshek was also brought in to do a design review for the new Washington Nationals ballpark, but that's a discussion for another day) and was engaged to carry out the detailing of the schematic design that Cardinal produced.
Other accounts state that Cardinal spent $1 million in producing work for Fine Arts Commission presentations but was never paid for it.
All this talk of the museum is making me hungry for the excellent native food in the Mitsitam Café at the museum in question. I think I'll go there for lunch today. And I'll stop by the information desk to find out what the "party line" is on this topic.
treekiller - I have a fridge full of tomatoes and would love to dry them. More info please.
Strawbeary:
ha! I fail to see how the general contractor's inability to weld connections per the contract documents is grounds for dismissing your structural engineer.
I learned recently that there are many types of moment welds and connection details. Did your structural engineer specify a full penetration weld (or a "full pen" in industry slang)? The number of passes on those connections is astounding. Perhaps your general contractor only used a one or two pass weld instead?
im sorry but when i read the word penetration my mind wanders far away from architecture.
vado: This is where I can use my uber-seriousness to my advantage when I need to discuss such matters during meetings. Any smirk on my part would indicate weakness or vulerability.
yeah but you were probably never in a meeting where the term glory hole was used.
A term used to describe site excavation activities?
I thought a glory hole was the excavation during a ground breaking ceremony? Hmm you learn something new everyday.
great news, hurricane dean seems to be passing south of Jamaica/aka hometown. Parents, sister, family & friends are safely tucked in watching the hurricane activities live via their windows and ms windows.
thank goodness for that techno.
glad you're safe and pickled, techno.
the laundry's done.
now enjoying my second caraffe of coffee and an eggbeater omellette with fresh garden tomatoes, red pepper, avocado and new mexico chile. now what to do with the rest of the day. besides take a nap of course.
Techno, Keep us updated with your family in Jamaica. Weather.com said it looks like it will be moving its way to the island on Sunday.
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