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Another deadline is looming in the horizon.  Once again, I have little trust or faith in my consultants…with good reason.  I had sent the documents over to the engineer so they could start on it and for once, I sent it over with plenty of advance warning.  I gave them a deadline of 10 days before the actual time that I needed to send in the project.

As that deadline approached, I called in to check up on the engineer.  Gone…on vacation…for a week…no warning.  And no one in the office had any idea who was doing what or what was supposed to be done.  After the engineer returned from vacation, I asked him if he had even started to work on it.

“Nope, haven’t even looked at it yet.” says our intrepid engineer.

“You do know that this is due next Tuesday, yes?” replies our quickly irritated CAD Monkey.

“I do now!” quips the engineer.

“No, Mr. X, I emailed you three weeks ago with the information and deadline” I replied.

“…I know” says the engineer with an air of resignation.

So, later that same day, he called and came in to visit and start looking at the project.  After changing a few paramets forcing us to scramble to send new work to the other consultants who were already near finishing, we sent him along his way to start working.

After the usual delay tactics, we received his “finished” work…and to give credit, we received it on the original deadline.  There were corrections, however, which is not surprising and certainly not demerit worthy of the engineer.  After carefully reviewing and typing up the correction requests, I send the email over to the engineer asking him to return it to me in about 4 working days.  That deadline was today.

I called him up today and asked how he was doing.  Of course, he had no clue what I was talking about and hadn’t even looked at the email.  He told me he would much rather wait for corrections to come out from the city before correcting the things we had found in the office.  I had to tell him that if he did that, he risked multiple corrections from the city for changing things midstream.

This is not the first time he has done this.  We’ll see if he can turn the corrections around by the actual deadline.  I should also mention that he has had in his possession documents which list the actual deadline.  Engineers ftw!

A few weeks ago, we were helping some friends of ours move into their new home (btw, congrats again guys!).  We got to their new home and were taking a break after the official tour and relaxing a bit before unloading the moving van.  As we were lounging around, my son was taking the opportunity to stretch his legs and walk around.  He was pretty warm and had been in the same diaper for a while so, of course, he had a bit of an itch to scratch down there.  He was walking around scratching away and my wife sighed and said, “Son, do you need to walk around doing that for everyone to see?”

Our friend laughed and said, “Oh, all of our boys did that…don’t worry though, they grow out of it soon enough”

My wife looked over at her, then looked over at me…laughed and said, “No…no they don’t”

*sigh*

Here are some of the other critters I picked up to go in the Nano-tank.  I already had the decorator arrow crab, but it was difficult to get a good picture of it until now.

Decorator Arrow Crab rockin out

Actually, later on I caught him climbing up the tube trying to get out of the tank.  Crabs are sneaky like that.  I had also caught him hanging out on the filter intake at the back of the tank pulling out an endless supply of food that got sucked into the filter.

Emerald Crab

Here’s the emerald crab up close and personal.  I noticed that he harrasses the hermit crabs occasionally as well, but he seems to leave the arrow crab alone.  I also caught him going after my snails…I think this guy might be going back to the store soon.

Emerald Crab

Here he was really going at those live rocks; just non-stop stuffing his face.  He was picking something off of those, I’m not sure if it was the algae, detritus or what.  There was a polyp on the other side of there thats missing now so I’m wondering if he mowed it down.  Not sure exactly why they call it an emerald crab; I mean, I would just say green…is it supposed to be more exotic sounding or something?  Anyway…

Bumblebee Snail

Here’s one of the three snails I picked up with the Emerald Crab.  I had lost sight of this one, my favorite among the three, and I was worried that it had overturned or fell prey to the emerald crab’s foul temper.

Snail

This guy didn’t have any cool sounding names attached to him, but here he is doing what I was hoping he’d do…cleaning up that nasty brown algae.  Within minutes of dropping these guys into the tank I noticed just how much algae they clean up.  I’ll have to pick up a few more of snails.

I’ll post more pictures if I see anything cool going on in there.  With me, just about everything is cool in there though (except chasing my dragonet into a corner!!)…my wife says I’m like a kid in a toy store when I’m around aquariums; I don’t know why they interest me so much.  Anyways, I’ll probably pick up a few more crustaceans and invertebrates as my nitrite levels are a bit high in the tank and it will take a few weeks to make it fish friendly again.  I haven’t given up on dragonets just yet, so I’ll probably pick up another one.  Maybe next time I’ll pick up a spotted dragonet instead.  I also plan to put some small blennies and gobies in there too, that barnacle mass just screams blenny and goby apartments.

As I was thinking about kimchi and attempting to divine the divine secret recipe behind its succulent facade, I wondered to myself…what were they thinking?  Who was it that decided to throw this and that into a pot, bury it for a few months and then come back later and try it out?  If you’ve ever smelled kimchi, you’ll know what I’m saying when I say that whoever took that first bite was either drunk off their rockers or had balls of steel.  Solid steel.  Or maybe they just couldn’t smell.

Honestly, did some farmer just sit around all hungry and poor and just think to himself…I wonder…if I put this, this, that and a little bit of that with this cabbage, I think I just might create a sensation!  Last time I tried to throw a little of this and a little of that into the pot…well, I don’t remember.  But I’m pretty sure it has something to do with why my wife prefers to cook dinner now.

You might be thinking of haggis, but that’s not quite what I’m getting at.  At least that, I can kind of understand the mentality and necessity of eating as much of an animal as you can get away with if you’re faced with starvation.  Eventually, it turns into “authentic cuisine” and I’ve had my share of strange “authentic cuisine”; from fried chicken feet (great, but worst heartburn of my life…ever) to beef tongue (just something weird about a cow tongue…on my tongue) to cow stomach (at least I know what tripes are now…and its okay in soup, but not on its own).  I can understand eating all of that (even if I wouldn’t personally want to eat EVERY part of an animal) its the strange combinations and burying/fermenting things for months and eating them later that I can’t quite understand.

Well, my dragonet died today…or possibly last night.  I noticed she was in the back of the tank this morning while I was at work and I figured she was just hiding out back there.  The pictures I had posted were from yesterday, so you can see she wasn’t starving or anything.  Turns out she probably got stuck back there and died last night.  I had picked up a few snails and an emerald crab the other day to help keep the algae down and to pick up a lot of the extra mysis laying around.  As soon as I dropped the emerald crab into the tank, it went right for my dragonet and chased it off.  I’m guessing that last night the crab backed my dragonet into the back of the tank where she got stuck and died.  Not a good day, I’m pretty bummed about that.  Not because of the cost of a fish or anything, I just get attached to any pet I have I guess…”even” fish.

So, here are a few photos of some of the critters swimming/crawling around in my nano-cube tank. As I get better pictures of some of the other guys (or when I can actually find them) I’ll post them up.

Red Mandarin Dragonet

Once I saw one of these in the fish store, I had to have one. They’re quite stunning. This one is a red dragonet, its not as common as the blue or psychedelic dragonets. I’m pretty sure this one is a female but I’ll have to do some more research. Someday, I’d like to try and breed these.

Blue legged Hermit Crab

Here’s one of the three hermit crabs I originally picked up (with the dragonet looking on). I was supposed to get three of these small guys; one of them was D.O.A. and the other one came from a different tank and was a bit larger as the smaller ones didn’t look too hot.

Red legged Hermit Crab

This was supposed to be another blue legged hermit crab. As you can see, OMG H4X, its a red legged hermit crab. This guy is about 2-3 times the size of the blue legged hermit crab. I’m convinced they spend 24/7 camping and stalking each other in the tank.

I’ve got some more critters in there, but they weren’t sticking around for any good pictures. I’ve got a feisty emerald crab who chases my dragonet out into the open (at least I can see it more often now). I’ve got three snails working at cleaning up that nasty brown algae you might see on those barnacles. I’ve also got a decorator arrow crab who’s pretty darn cool but he’s always off hiding in the back of the tank practicing kung fu. Next time he comes out to challenge me, I’ll see if I can’t get a better shot of him than the one I have.

So I’ve made the jump into full marine tanks. I’ve got (more than) a few freshwater tanks and I’ve got one brackish tank running right now (with green spotted puffers) but I’ve never tried a full on salt tank. My co-worker had a small Nano-Cube tank (6 to 8 gallons, I’m thinking its closer to 6 gallons, even though it looks to be larger than that) that he had bought but decided against setting up after reading about all the work that goes into saltwater fish; so, he gave it to me.

It certainly was expensive to set it up, the live rock alone was a pretty hefty purchase, but I think I have it up and running pretty good (I’ve noticed a few polyps growing…yay?). I’ve picked up a few invertebrates, snails and one fish (so far) and hope to add a few more small fish and invertebrates over time. I’m told that its actually easier to maintain the proper balance for saltwater fish in a larger tank but, supposedly, these nano-tanks are supposed to have been a rather huge technological leap in caring for saltwater fish (and coral). The idea is to see how I do with this small nano-cube and possibly convert one of my larger and unused tanks at home into a full salt tank as well.

The Nano-Tank

So it’s been a while, obviously.  Things have been pretty busy at work and at home and, what do you know it, when I finally decided to start up again, it was time for another lengthy wordpress update.  So, I’m going to at least TRY and keep things regular here again but work takes a lot out of me and when I get home, I only have limited time to see and be with my boy and that’s rather important to me.  Of course, it must look rather amusing the two of us playing in his room…we’re both rubbing our eyes trying to stay awake fighting sleep.  Still, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.  Here’s to a new attempt to get back into writing/blogging again.

Lately, graffiti has been bothering me. Its not just because I’m in the business of Architecture and I find it an effrontery to someone’s work, though that should be in and of itself more than enough. In fact, it used to be no big deal to me at all. I would just sort of chuckle to myself and picture some young punk lifting up his leg and spray painting in a fashion similar to a dog or cat spraying to mark its territory. It really boils down to something that ridiculous, when I really think about it. I think the reason that it really bothers me now is the futility of fighting it and producing it.

Every day that I drive to work, I pass up long stretches of wall and its got some ugly gang symbols spray painted up onto it (especially near the high school I drive by). Every few weeks, someone comes out and repaints the walls and gets rid of the spray paint. Within two days, its been tagged again. And I’m not talking tagging like you’d see in a large city where someone has spent a lot of time and effort and spray painted something up that looked, dare I say, really nice. No, I’m talking about crude lettering and a few letters, usually in red or black. If you’re going to “represent” or stake out your territory (which I doubt is the case along my driving route, probably just high school wannabe poseurs), at least put some effort into it. If not effort, than at least practice your lettering (probably the architecture side of me again…hours of practicing lettering *shudder*) so that it looks like a teenager has marked the wall and not a three-year old practicing writing their name. Respect yourself at least that much.

And if you manage to get that far, then…respect others and knock it off with the spray painting. Its ugly, its stupid and no one cares that BCM, or whomever, lurches and struts around these sidewalks. The only people looking at you or caring are the same people who look just as silly as you or people like me laughing at how ridiculous you look and act…walking around looking like you got a baton (or extra cans of spray paint) shoved up where the sun won’t shine…with your lame shadow puppet gang signs. Finger painting classes are for kindergartners…morons.

Just about everyone has the daydream of winning the lottery and what they’d do with the winnings. Not that you care, but this is some of what I’d do with my imaginary winnings…after I bought World Peace™, of course. And after all of the other “basics”, which I figure most people really aren’t interested in. Maybe some other time I’ll outline some ideas for the charities I’d like to start up with using lottery winnings. For now, the selfish bits.

I’d get a house, that would be the first thing I’d do. Not a mansion, but a house…albeit, yes, a rather large house and on a large piece of property. It would be a house that would be designed by me. So many architects, students of architecture and all of the in-between phases have always dreamed of building their own house to their own design. Yet, sadly, few actually accomplish this basic dream…the dream which probably got them into the business of architecture in the first place. Instead, we’re whored out and build the buildings that other people have dreamed up or smoked up. Usually smoked up. Not that I’m bitter or anything!

Anyways, not to get sidetracked. This house that I design will definitely be filled with secret passages, hidden rooms, false walls and the whole gamut of concealed and hidden spaces and paths. I haven’t really worked out any of the design for the house, the style or anything general like that, but I do know that I want it to be a veritable warren of secret rooms and passages. Sure, there are styles that I like (such as Richardsonian Romanesque), techniques of building (rammed earth walls and SIPS) that I’m interested in and also other random “styles” or “techniques” that I’ve always wanted to experiment with (such as earthships); but I keep coming back to the whole hidden passages/rooms deal. How would I conceal a room or passage? How would it not be obviously an obfuscated space? This is what I keep coming back to and seems to be the fun part of the design.

As far as the large property goes, I’ve always been interested in ponds. Ponds with koi for starters and, lately, ponds which could house other species such as mudpuppies, salamanders, turtles and other warm water fishes perhaps. I’d probably like a piece of land with a lot of terrain to it so that I could terrace a lot of the ponds and interconnect some of them. Landscaping would play a large part of the design as well, something I’m also interested in yet acknowledge that I’m probably not going to do a very good job at.

So, that’s the start of the dwindling supply of my imaginary lottery winnings. I’ve got a few more that I’ll throw out there every now and again along with anything else I might think of. Who knows, maybe someone out there who’s actually won the lottery will read this and it might inspire them.