Shortest Distance vs Shortest Time

I bought a Magellan Road Mate GPS navigator for my travels in my new job. On Sunday I drove down south on 71 highway through western Missouri and Arkansas. When I first left town I set the GPS to Shortest Time and it calculated an 800 mile route. Must have been only using Interstate highways. I then set it to Shortest Distance. Well somewhere in Arkansas I got off 71 where it turned east to bypass a mountain. I bought a snack and starting the car again, the GPS told me to go through town southward. Before long I was on a road without stripes and the pavement was pretty rough. Common sense said "Stop!" and so I did and took time to zoom way out on the GPS map. I could see that some miles ahead the road I was on ran into 71 as it returned from the mountain bypass. I proceeded driving and before long I was driving over that mountain on a red dirt road! Well if you know me you know I love to take scenic detours. I did finally get to the highway and it remains a mystery as to weather the "shortest distance" route was equal to the "shortest time" had I followed 71 around the mountain.

+ The worst part of the drive was the half hour I spent on pins and needles when I realized upon descending the mountain that I had but a 16th of a tank left. It was Sunday, after 5 pm in rural Arkansas. I turned off the blue-grass music I'd played all day as I imagined spending the night on the shoulder with some hillbillies like the Greiner Brothers watching me from not far enough away. (Movie reference there... Can you name it??) Alas I did find an open station. Amazing how all my fears went away when the tank was full again!

Snoopy's Pier

Okay, here are a few of my friends from the Mactec field team taken at lunch today. Phil is the QA/QC manager, Christi is our technician, Troy is a fellow architect. He is showing me how a master does this work. The bird's name is Woodstock.

Padre Island

I arrived in Corpus Christi yesterday for a week of work on the Naval Air Station. After a day at work I spent the first evening in the sand dunes of Padre Island and at Snoopy's Pier where I had a tasty dinner of fish, clams and shrimp. Here are a few photos of the beach and sunset.

Drottz Group

It has been so long since I entered an update on my roller-coaster life that I left out my other job. I haven't made a penny, but I'm a tentative partner in a small architecture design/build firm called Drottz Group. So far my contribution has been building a website. http://www.drottzgroup.com/ The founders, Vern Drottz and Doug Drottz (brothers), have made a place for themselves in the field of historic preservation and garage additions. They are awesome.

Honestly, it is a real priveledge to be part of Vern's business endevors. In the long run, when this depressing economy turns around, I hope I'll be working with the Drottz Group full-time. Here is a picture of me at my card-table desk in the file-storage room behind Vern's office. Oh, and Vern's office is behind his dad's accounting office. I guess when my website wins him a big comission, I might get an upgrade in workspaces. While I'm out measuring military warehouses, Vern and Doug have a lot of marketing to do.

Same name, New game

In case you've been wondering, I still work for Mactec but I won't be back to Kabul. After several weeks at home, I'm now involved in another military-related project for the Defence Logistics Agency. They keep track of everything the military owns that is in storage in locations around the world. Last week I was in Jacksonville FL at the Naval Air Station documenting warehouses. The resulting product of our labors will be reports and data that will support the DLA's facilities management needs. The photo shows an aerial from http://maps.live.com/ of some of the buildings our team measures and draws in cad. The subject matter isn't too exciting, but the experience (being part of a field team, visiting cities and bases, working outside the office and, once I return to the office, recording these structures with BIM software) is very fulfilling to me having had needs unmet during most of the last 14 years of my career. (Whew, long sentence.) In coming weeks I'll be in Corpus Christi and Texarkana.

Life at the Corps of Engineers in Kabul

I found this article online written by a lady who volunteered for deployment to Afghanistan. She is an employee of the US Corps of Engineers at the AED compound, which stands for Afghan Engineering District. Her experience is similar to mine, with exception of living quarters. She does complain about being confined, but frankly, she has it a lot better than I did. I had a private bathroom at the villa, but I had nowhere to go for a jog, play volley ball or sit in the grass under tall pine trees like you'll see in the photos. Of course there are many pros & cons to our two situations. For example the Corps employees must wear those baggy uniforms & floppy hats all the time. http://www.aed.usace.army.mil/News/Stories/reflection2.html


Here is an article about a guy I met at the AED compound. I really enjoyed reading his impressions: http://www.defendamerica.mil/profiles/june2006/pr061406ms1.html

Flying to Dubai

I flew out of Kabul on the 3rd of January, the first day it snowed in Kabul. I was quite nervous because of the snow. My visa expired that day and I feared what might happen if I couldn't leave Afghanistan till later in the week. I have heard enough stories of Afghan prisons and bribery to know you don't want to get caught doing anything illegal there. After only an hour's delay, I finally boarded Kam Air and was off the ground. The snowy weather was behind me by the time we got over eastern Afghanistan. The desert-like mountain terrain of Iran and Iraq were clear to see below.

I spent the night at the most luxurious hotel I've ever visited called the Le Meridian. I ate at a "fish-market" style restaurant where I chose fish from beds of ice to be prepared however I liked. I ate a baby shark! I spent the 4th mostly on a tour bus or wandering the shopping centers of Dubai. I'll soon post those photographs.

For this entry, I'll just upload a shot of a familiar guy in front of a familiar building... "familiar" as in, "you should have seen this stuff on the net already."