The Cure for Road Rage?

This hangs in my office.

It has been hanging here for over 5 years, so I didn't really notice it much anymore. I rediscovered it this week when I noticed Prospector was keenly interested in something on the back wall. I now position his baby seat so that he can see it at all times.

This giant smiley face (approx 2.5' X 2.5' square) is an actual road sign from a logging road in northwestern Alberta. (Alberta is in Canada. Go to Montana. Hang a sharp right. Drive for about 30 hours.)

We are not 100% sure of its actual intended design, but we have a guess. Logging roads are these awful, dangerous, narrow muddy affairs with ravines and such. If you fall asleep or get distracted you could easily become footage for a hilarious but tragic youtube accident. Perhaps this sign was supposed to surprise you with some unexpected sunshine,make you laugh and keep you awake for another 15 minutes.

Apparently, there is someplace in Scotland that also uses smiley signs: Speed signs reduce you to a smile.

The trouble is that they are so appealing that they wind up in home offices instead of out solving the worlds problems. Oh well.

Looking for a Civil 3D book? Check out Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008

My Autodesk University Packing List

Has it really been a year? My jack-o-latern is fully rotten and I fried up my last batch of green tomatoes, so it must be.

The other day I pulled out my suitcase and made my shopping list of AU Essentials.

HEALTH

You'll be shaking hands with everyone from Pete Kelsey to the DWF Spot- and who knows where they have been. Last year, I was responsible for spreading some sort of frog voice-cough-plague to everyone who visited the EE both. I also learned that a bottle of cough medicine at the Venetian Apothecary costs more than my honorarium. So this year, I am coming prepared. No need to bring the Sam's Club super pack, just a travel sized packet of a few meds will go a long way.

1. Prevent yourself from catching the post Thanksgiving blerg by using Hand Sanitizer. They come in almost microscopic travel sizes these days- you should really keep it in your pocket and apply all flippin' day.
2. Though I am skeptical, I still take Airborne. I like the taste and I figure if it gives me just the slightest improvement in my immunity, it would be worth it.
3. I also like Zicam. It may turn out to be Zi-scam, but I truly think that it has prevented me from getting ubersick when I use it.
4. Everything gets sore at AU. Your brain. Your eyes. Your legs. Your throat. Your beer drinking arm. Your fat lip after starting a barfight over Scaling Viewports. Bring tylenol, advil or something similar.
5. Nothing is worse that snaking a hacking cough on the plane then fighting it through classes. Definitely bring Cough Medicine and Cough Drops.
6. If you have ever gotten sick on the road, you know how hard it is to sleep. I so wish I had brought Nighttime Cold Medicine with me last year.
7. Strange food. Strange people. You'll suffer from at least one of the following: Hangover, Norwalk, Heartburn. Bring Stomach Remedy
8. Vegas is dry. You won't drink enough water. You just won't. It might even be impossible. For this reason, you need to bring fiber. I know, I'm like your embarrassing mother who shouts through the grocery store- "Honey, are you still CONSTIPATED?" At least eat some fruit, OK?
9. If you don't like water, bring something to make your water taste good, like those Crystal Light packets.

BEAUTY

For 51 weeks a year, you can hide behind a screen name and an avatar... but at AU, you gotta face the public.

1. Dry, smoky air, excessive free beer and late nights guarantee you'll wake up with red eyes swollen shut. Bring cucumber pads and Preparation H to fix the puffies. Also invest in a bottle of Clear Eyes.  This is especially important if your boss is traveling with you. Ladies- be sure to bring lots of concealer and some eye brightener.
2.  Vegas is freaking dry.  Really freaking dry. Bring moisturizer, the best you can afford.  Slather on a night cream before passing out, and be sure to have a daytime weight lotion too.   
3. Chapstick. See Number 2.
4. Super duper deodorant. You don't want to stain the pits of the AUGI giveaway t-shirt. Also, we don't want to smell you. Walking through the casino on the way to class is stinky enough.

COMFORT

You will be walking. I am always taken aback by the sheer scale of Vegas. If you get put in the new tower or in one of the satellite hotels, you will be walking even more.

1. Chewing Gum. The Venetian doesn't sell it. Last year I had to hock my Recorded Speaker watch for some very unsatisfying Mentos. Bring Gum. (Just don't spit it on the marble floors you slob.)
2. Candy, lollipops, breath mints, Listerine strips. Your breath stinks enough already and the dry air doesn't help. Spare us all and suck on something. Also, sharing candy is a great icebreaker and might help you start a conversation with your favorite AUGI HotNews columnist or Discussion Group poster.
3. Comfortable shoes. I mean comfortable. Shoes that are your actual size without big heels or narrow toes. That means sneakers, Sketchers, Doc Martens, something.
4. Patch up your blisters with moleskin and Band-Aids.
5. Powder can be used in your shoes and your "easily chaffed" areas to keep the damage to a minimum. Also apply liberally to keep your stink down and those of us sitting next to you comfortable.
6. Last year I was on a hospitality floor. I wish I had brought earplugs.

TECHSENTIALS

1. How will you know where the cool kids are meeting during the next break if you don't bring your Blackberry or pocketpc? Bore the world with hourly mobile blog posts and remind your spouse back home how you are in Vegas and they are at work through a series of one word text messages.
2. Since you only see these people once a year, be sure to pack your digital camera. You need to collect a year's worth of blackmail material.
3. All of the transfer cables so that you can get those photos up on flickr or picasa IMMEDIATELY. Digital photos are like milk- if you don't get them put up within 20 minutes they lose their appeal.
4. If you are a speaker, don't forget your laptop. Duh. (Just a note to remind myself.)

CLOTHES AND PACKING

1. Travel Sized Space Bags will get all of this crap inside your suitcase. Bring a few extra for use in the...
2. An extra duffel bag or foldable suitcase for all of the junk you will collect.

THINGS NOT TO BRING

1. Workout clothes. It just isn't going to happen.
2. Work. It just isn't going to happen.
3. A lot of money. Unless you plan on gambling or hitting up Versace, you won't need a lot of dosh. Make a game out of finding all of the free food-n-booze events throughout the week.
4. Family Members. I seriously almost left my husband in Vegas after last year. AU is a total drain on your strength, your patience and your ability to care about anything else. Trust me, your wife is NOT going to understand why meeting Lynn Allen is such a big deal, or why you felt the need to get totally drunk at the AUGI Beer Bust. She will not be entertained by you treating her as sherpa for your swag on booth night, and she will not share your excitement when you shake hands with James Wedding. If you do insist on bringing family, come out a few days AHEAD of the conference and pack them back on a plane by Tuesday at the latest.

Pack well, fly safe and I will see you there!

Savage Truths

My mornings are defined by certain rituals. After a night of baby-roulette (will he wake? or will he sleep? where it stops, nobody knows!) I wake up to small fingers pulling my hair, poking my nose and demanding Nutri-Grain bars and orange juice. I stumble into the kitchen and make a full pot of coffee (of which maybe one sip will actually be consumed) then turn on the TV to my favorite channel, Noggin.

At 8AM, Noggin viewers are treated to a delightful little show called Oswald. It's not cerebral, like say Dora or Blues Clues, nor especially jaunty and musical like the Backyardigans.

As an aside, Mr. Probert always volunteers to wake up with the kids on Saturdays. I had thought it was because he wanted to give me a break. Turns out he just secretly enjoyed the Backyardigans. It's his favorite show after Prison Break. Which, by the way, is his favorite show because the hero is a Civil Engineer.

Oswaldis a great show for first thing in the morning because unlike those obnoxious children's programs with hard skill curriculum objectives and learning goalslike math, logic or reading, Oswald is a simple story of an urban octopus and his companion dachshund, Weenie. The official learning goals listed on the Noggin web site include the warm fuzzy hot cocoa soft and comfy skills here:

• Language and Early Literacy Goals:
  • Familiarizes viewers with conventions of narrative and story structure
  • Develops listening skills
• Social and Emotional Development:
  • Models positive responses to conflict
  • Demonstrates taking turns, sharing, listening to others, and polite behavior
  • Presents characters getting along and working together to achieve shared goals

Listening Skills? Positive Responses to Conflict? Achieving Shared Goals? Anyone who reads my postings to the Swamp knows that these are things that I need to study up on. Is there an AOTC available?

Even with my four minutes of sleep and spit up encrusted pajamas, I can follow plots such as "A Day at the Beach" and "The Big Balloon Rescue".

While I can handle the anthropomorphism of octopi and penguins, somehow their friends Daisy (a walking talking daisy) and the Snowman (a walking talking snowman that runs a snow cone shop) disturbed me just a little bit. I also wondered who paid for Oswald's apartment, piano and Weenie's vet bills when he clearly didn't have a job. Despite these shortcomings, I still watched alongside Panorama as she ate her "blueberry grow-bar".

Until....

The other day as the credits were rolling, I caught a name on the list that sent my heart into a tailspin.

The voice of Oswald is FRED SAVAGE!

How did one of the greatest television icons of my generation get reduced to providing the affected voice of a repressed purple octopus?

The year Kevin Arnold started middle school, so did I. He went ice skating, to school dances, passed notes, got acne and was stuffed into his locker alongside my friends and I. Year for year, Kevin mirrored my emotional turmoil and clean cut teen angst (ok, so we didn't have Vietnam to deal with- what's your point?).

I thought the worst day of my life was when I flipped by Animal Planet and saw Mario Lopez hosting Pet Star. (Panorama instantly perked up because she has become a big Dancing with the Stars fan thanks to evenings spent with my mother and her pathetically middle aged television taste.) To add insult to injury, Pet Star was featuring special guest Danica McKellar**.

This must be the same kind of Hell my parents found themselves in the 1980's and 1990's when my brothers and I knew the songs of their youth only as adapted advertising jingles, Paul McCartney as that "old guy" who sang with Michael Jackson and Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire.

Perhaps this bothers me because I wonder if my life has followed a similar path. You come roaring out of the gate. You swear you will never compromise. You will lead an exciting life where you take only the most interesting jobs. You'll never commute. You'll always be creative and adventurous and raise your fist to resist the shackles of your parents, society and the "man".

Then you fall in love- with a house, with a job, with a person, with a pack of children and you search for ways to pay the bills so you can fund this life you would have once considered "boring".

Then you realize that this IS the adventure.. that dreams change... that you can't be expected to define your life at age 15...and that maybe just maybe being a purple octopus is your new dream.

**I later found out that Danica McKellar kicks butt. She has a math degree and a book called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail . I also saw her guest star on How I Met Your Mother. Phew.

Scenes from the Home Office: Markups

Me: Why is there green scribble all over this set of plans, Pannie?
Pannie: I colored it with my green crayon.
Me: Give me the green crayon.
Pannie: I can't
Me: Why not?
Pannie: I accidentally ate it.

Soon, He'll want his own desk...

Right now, I am catching up on some documentation and Prospector is catching up on being cute and sleepy. In general, he's a great office mate.

He does, however, have his moments.

All told, he's in the top 3 office/cube mates I've ever had- tied with Amanda in Edmonton. Anyone that can talk me off the ledge and into a Squishy at Mac's at 3PM when it is pitch black outside and forty below in the middle of winter has a special gift. She also snored less than Prospector and always took care of her own lunch arrangements.

Unexpected Wisdom: Standing in Line

At swimming lessons this week, the kids were taking turns jumping into the pool. Panorama took her turn, then instead of getting back into the line at the end, she cut ahead of some of her small friends.

Me: Pannie, why did you cut in front of your friends? Everyone needs to take a turn jumping.

Pannie: I went to the back of the line, but someone was already there.

While this logic didn't really fly in the swimming lesson situation, I couldn't argue with its unexpected wisdom in the big picture.

How often do we just shuffle to the end of the line without asking if this is the right line to stand in, or if the end of the line is where we really want to be? Or, are we that person that is already there and letting others move ahead of us?

Scenes from the Home Office: Sunscreen

I share my office with Panorama (Age 3.5) and Prospector (age 6 weeks).

Me: Pannie, what are you doing?

Pannie: Putting sunscreen lotion on my hand.

Me: Um... ok. Where did you get sunscreen?

Pannie: From my nose.

Never Forget that the Party Chief Can Read Your Lips Through the Scope

I had always thought I was the most unenthusiastic rod person on the planet.

Prospector has arrived!

Prospector has arrived!
Originally uploaded by danacadapult

Prospector arrived this morning... He already shows a preference for Autodesk over Bentley. Close to ten pounds of cuteness and delight. Panorama is very excited to be a big sister.

Pregnancy Brings Out My Inner Tree Hugger

I have been spending a lot of time indoors lately. So I've been reading a lot of books. Being a republican and all, I've been avoiding reading An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. But, it has been on my list for awhile and though I didn't ever doubt that global warming was an issue, I figured it was about time I did a little more homework on the subject.

Al Gore brings up some good points and has some very convincing science. I would like to save the world, I really would. But the thing that appeals to me most is saving myself some cash right now- and if that helps save the world, then doggone it, I will do it.

The first thing I latched onto is this nifty lightbulbs. A quote that struck me was this one from Fast Company Fast Company:

"What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads. "

There is also a video going around the net on the subject:



The second thing that struck me was something I read in Maximum PC (pg 29 of this pdf
http://dl.maximumpc.com/Archives/MPC0807-web.pdf).

The headline reads:
"Put Your PC to Sleep and Save Hundreds of Dollars"

Here is another article on the subject:
http://www.exoid.com/?page_id=47

At the very least, I try to turn off my machines overnight these days. I never really thought about how much it might be costing me. To save time on bootup, I just took just about everything out of my startup process and I really don't notice how long it takes. Maybe I won't be able to save the world or afford that Hawaiian holiday this year, but I could have a few extra bucks for the movies or planting trees or something.

Civil 3D Essentials for the Unborn Boy

So you know I could never approach a project as big as motherhood without my normal amount of research and hysteria, right? While pregnant with Panorama, I played endless Mozart and researched baby sign language. I made sure I had a well stocked toybox full of engineeringly appropriate baby toys such as blocks, gears, stackers and more.

This time, I stumbled upon an interesting book called While You're Expecting: Creating Your Own Prenatal Classroom. This book discusses methods for communicating with your blessed unborn as well as research and interesting anecdotes about exposing children to things while in utero.

The story that stood out the most was one about a cellist who was working on perfecting a certain piece throughout her pregnancy. She played the tune just about every day for several hours. When the child grew up and became a musician himself, he always had a particular and seemingly unnatural connection to that certain piece and never could understand why.

Other studies show that babies who hear a certain piece of music, or hear a certain poem read seem to recognize, if not prefer, hearing those sounds as newborns and babies.

So....

Since April 15th or so, I have been talking out loud just about every single day about Civil 3D. I've lead an AUGI CAD Matinee, many CAD seminars, custom trainings and about 20 days worth of Essentials training. The Essentials training is the worst because I must speak quite loudly and I repeat myself over and over again for each class.

Does that mean Prospector will come out wanting to hear me read the AOTC? Will I be pacing the hallway at 3AM with a screaming baby only to find out that repeating "General>Toolspace" and "Pick, Right Click, Select Corridor Properties" is the only way to soothe him???

Another book I am reading is called Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.

For Christmas, my Dad gave me The Female Brain which truly opened my eyes to the fact that despite my distaste for being called "Mrs. Probert", my BSCE and the lack of skirts in my closet, that my brain does indeed work differently from the male brains around me.

When Prospector turned out to be a boy, I wondered if I knew enough about boys... I mean... If there really is something to this Nature over Nuture idea, maybe I'd better study up.

So Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences talks about hard science- real studies of boys and girls, men and women. One thing that struck me is that little boys tend to think, act, draw and be motivated by "verbs"; where little girls tend to lean towards "nouns". For example, a little boy will draw a picture of a rocket flying and crashing into the moon, while a little girl might draw her friends and her on the moon with some trees and a kitten.

This explains why though my daughter does enjoy playing with her Cabella's hunting sets...


She tends to act out little stories with them, while her male pals and cousins tend to zoom them off of cliffs and have the hunter actually hunt things.

So I decided that though I will still buy Prospector his own kitchen set and a doll or two, I must embrace boyness to a higher level.

I can teach him how to change oil, train a retriever, and build a fire, but I am woefully lacking in my understanding of tying knots, building tree forts, setting trip wires and skipping stones.

(My husband, being Canadian and all, can teach him about hockey, tapping maples and making snow angels.)

I began to panic... then I found this book that contained all of the answers.

The Dangerous Book for Boys is 300 pages of everything a boy should know (or at least in the author's opinion). In addition to knots, treeforts and stones, it also covers pirates, important battles, invisible ink, essential grammar, coin tricks and more.

My copy arrived today, and since I have finished Harry Potter, I am hunkering down to read it and practice up my coin tricks. I have 43 days or less until Prospector arrives, and according to this book every boy needs to know 50 essential Latin phrases. Dang it. I should have ordered it last week so I only had to memorize one per day. Well, at least I already know Ad Hoc and Carpe Diem.

Land Desktop Users at the Cadapult CAD Clinic

It was nice to see the Land Desktop users make the trip to the CADapult CAD Clinic at the Atlantic City Aquarium yesterday morning. I managed to catch one with my phone camera during the break.

Something Better For Your Health Than Learning Part Builder

I have spent the past 8 or so days trying to build one part in Part Builder. I have decided that there are probably better things that a person can do for their overall body health and mental sanity.

This includes Eating Deep Fried Twinkies

and if you don't like those, they also had deep fried Oreos or Snickers Bars.

Civil 3D Rocks Book List and Stuff

I used to keep a booklist, but I didn't have time to make it pretty. I found this neat way to make one on amazon, so I did. I'll continue to add more fun stuff to this list- including this year's summer reading assignments for all of you Civil 3D Rocks Book Clubbers out there. (Ok, for me at least).

Civil 3D Rocks Recommended Reads and Good Stuff

Five Stages of Civil3Disillusion

This week I was working on some GIS data for a friend and a potential client. I had my google earth image, my google earth surface, a FEMA floodmap, soils information and land cover datasets all beautifully in place in Delaware State Plane coordinates.

I went to import the Sussex County Parcel boundaries and they came in somewhere in Ohio, which reminded me of the Five Stages of Civil3Disillusion. While the example here is Map related data, the same stages apply for any Civil 3D task you can think of.

Denial : "This dataset must be crap"

You instantly get on the Delaware Geospatial Data Committee newslist and compose an email proclaiming that while the website says that these parcels are referenced to DE83, they are obviously lying. You tried stripping out the .prj file and assigning several other coordinate systems (DE83F, UTM83-18N, etc, etc) and none of them work. You received about 10 responses from very intellegent people that all said they tried the dataset in various software packages from ESRI through Map 3D 2007 and they all worked. On to the next step...

Anger : "The Freaking Program must be crap"

Obviously, it must be Civil 3D's problem. You never really get past this stage in all honesty. Though you may progress and eventually reach the acceptance stage, the mean and scathing direct emails sent to Autodesk QA will always stick with you as the real reason for the problem.

Bargaining : "If I tell you what you want to hear, will you just get me close so I can finish the project?"

Sweet talking Civil 3D works on occasion. Pat it, stroke it. Add more ram, update your video card, play into its vices. Swear you will always follow the Parcel Rules, that your profiles will always be as long as your alignments and you will never complain about the lack of tags for general line labels. You remove the explode command from your CUI all together.

Depression : "I'm way too stupid to learn this program. I give up."

You follow the rules. You work with the toolspace. You watch the webcasts. You still can't find the place to set the code set style to an assembly or figure out how to use otrack to draw an arc in deed recreation. You post a few cries for help on the Autodesk Discussion Groups and are told to RTFM. Autodesk Support tells you it is a known issue and to just get over it. You take out the DVD and try to break it over your knee but realize you are so weak from spending all of these months in front of your computer that you can't break it in half. You try to uninstall it, but it won't let you. In a last ditch moment of desperation, you post to the Swamp. Someone reaches out of the mire to remind you that you are not alone. Thank heaven for the Swamp.

Acceptance : "The problem is between the seat and the keyboard."

After a few days, you take another stab at a fresh project. Your corridor builds like a dream and you save the client some money by moving the road around a high spot that you may not have noticed if you were using Land Desktop. Though your GIS data is still hopelessly lost in space, you realize that this minor setback is a drop in the bucket compared to what you have gained.

After a few days, you reenter the cycle by making a dynamic block that includes annotative objects and building it into a parcel label style.

Happy Bloomsday?

I'm trying to get smart... catching up on the classics, you know- Dickens, Tolstoy, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Shakespeare, etc.

One of the books on the list is Ulysses. OK, it isn't just on the list. It's been on my shelf for about 5 years now just waiting for me to crack it open.

I guess tomorrow is the day I should start according to this article written by a guy I went to grade school with.

Sevenfold Path to the True Meaning of Bloomsday

Intersection Design

http://xkcd.com/c277.html

If you are looking for some information about how to model and intersection in Civil 3D, check out this link:

http://www.civil3d.com/2006/11/another-intersection-sample-drawing/

and this one, too.

http://www.civil3d.com/2006/10/sample-drawing-for-intersections-and-culdesacs/

Sites and Snakes

On my way in to teach at Cadapult this AM, I saw a big ol' black snake in the parking lot. Kevin, the architecture AE and my hero, threw his shoe at it. The snake reacted by slithering under Kevin's car, which made Kevin very happy.

Still Alive

Though rumors have been flying and the occasional shrine erected, I have not fallen off the face of the earth.

Just got in today from Bel Air, MD (on the "other" side of the Chesapeake) and in the past six weeks I've been to Chicago, Ramsey, NJ, Lancaster, PA, and all points down I-95 and Route 1 in Delaware. I'm beat. Mix in wrapping up the last edits and tweaks of our book, throw in a moderate amount of gestation and the occasional nap, and that makes for a very unbloggerific mood. I'll be back soon...

Just a note that June 3rd marked the one year anniversary of the blog post that changed my life. Ha.

It's a Prospector!

I have been incredibly slammed the past few months so it is hard to believe I am more than halfway through my pregnancy. Sometime around Labor Day, we'll be meeting Panorama's little... BROTHER. Found out today. Very exciting news.

Though boys names are easy to come by in the Civil 3D world, we've decided on Prospector. It was a tough call though between Cannon, Corridor, and Label Toggle Pin.

I wish I could sit here and wax poetic on the similarities between a 3D ultrasound and a corridor rendering, but I must get back to work. I'm off to North Jersey tonight, then a busy month with the AUGI CAD Matinee, client visits and a trip to Chicago.