Posts, June-October 2015

The thumbnails are links to the full-size image

20151029
 October 29th. Still deluged with work. My new Rain Gauge Database is still not fully understood by Dusty, so I did up some explanatory step-by-step e-mails for how to pull out five years of data for one datalogger, summarized to the hour. In the course of that, I found that four files out of 756 are actually for the wrong year! Leaving Dusty a little cleanup we must discuss next week.

I also spent some time today reviewing Chris Tse's work on the economic lifespan of water meters, provided an alternate financial model for consideration, though I stressed that nobody has yet caught all the TBL variables like customer annoyance with the replacement itself. (I was always embarrassed to have people see my basement...)

Also I helped Gloria and Oscar query the number of customer house backups from sanitary main problems. From which Gloria learned a new lesson on pivot tables.

5pm, signing off.

20151023
 Sorry about the 3-day gap. Well, five, counting the weekend.

Between Friday, a bunch of time on the weekend, and some cleanup time today, I managed to get almost all the rain gauge data squared away. It was quite the wrestle with 750+ files and 1.4 million lines of data. But I think it'll be a great and useful database that I can leave behind instructions for keeping up as data comes in for another 27 years.

Our pic at left is from Calgary again, Evergreen community again, a morning walk again. It was the next day and I caught this weeping birch silhouetted against the morning light.

Sooooo....boy, is there ever a lot of space left to fill in this column beside that big picture. Ahem.

Well, the Rain Gauge files are a "to-do" item that was left very late, but I've cleared away most other stuff and we're still waiting the final version of the new Infranet database so that Jeffrey and I can test on it. So I finally got to it late last week.

At this 11th hour, I ran across another of those data-mining treasures that utilities hoard. Our rain gauges have hardly changed over years except through expansion. "Datalogger #1" is still Bowness as it was in 1988, and we have these 27 years of files, over 750 of them, with 1.4 million lines of rain-watching. It was all so cleanly kept that one program was able to process all 27 years into database-ready INSERT statements and we now have 1.4 million rows of Oracle table. There's still lots of cleanup to do, and much data reduction to make use of it, but a relational database is going to be a lot better tool for it than what they've been using in the past.

I didn't get enough time here to make the same contribution to drainage as I did for water and sanitary, so it's nice to have gotten this off to a start. It'll be easy to use the same program to load every year's data into Oracle going forward.

I'm not sure if Natalya and Dusty are already swimming in data-analysis tools to graph these rainfalls or what, but a relational database combined with Excel can whack up some pretty powerful and flexible graphs in a hurry, so there may be more work for me there, too.

20151022
 I'm writing this at the end of the day - man, I was so eager to get to work, I skipped even updating brander.ca.

I took this picture 11 days back, actually, in Evergreen in Calgary.  Another Calgary fall picture tomorrow.

Today I was able to advise Hugo on a document-management idea for the feedermain manual, help Gloria with an evaluation or two, gave Jordi some thoughts on InforEAM, and advised DA that a main on Centre St. had a good 35 years left, should a developer have to upgrade it.\\

A good day I'm cutting off a little short because I put in 3 hours yesterday before flying here.

Tomorrow, I have to fill out my last X509 to bank all the vacation I just got hit with on Oct 14, my 85-date.
20151009


OK, no lame jokes today. Serious work. To indicate seriousness, a somber pic of the patio a nightfall in the rain.

20151007

That day was just a lame joke.

20151006
 Quieter day today. Trying to get code together to make oracle to pg conversions almost automatic. If I can get that going, it'll be time to load in Shawn's new Infranet database and try to make the AMdb code work on that. That'll probably fill in the rest of my career.

14:07Taking a late lunch, back in 23m

20151006
 Jeez, I'm so busy this morning I haven't had time to do this! More later.

In the meantime, please enjoy this fine snap I took at sunset last night on my jog around the neighbourhood...the Coal Harbour float plane airport and North Vancouver enjoying the sunset light in the background.

Wow, never did get to fill in that day. Too damn busy with interruptions.

20151005
 Holy cow, not a moment to take a breath this morning! The sewer run crashed last night and I fixed that and re-ran it, while fielding questions from Cory about some service he can't find, Gloria about a main she wants to line, and Joanne about some san service tables that seem to have gone obsolete.

Some of those are ongoing, but with the AM run fixed, I'm getting back to sorting out the mess of the PostGIS copy run. The tables were all unlocked again by this morning, so I didn't need a reboot, but I'll have to do the loads MUCH more carefully, timing so they don't overlap each other.

18:15 Well, I'm now up to a Holy Herd of Holy Cows, that was a long day. I'm starting to suspect I'm never getting this time back. Except that Curtis asked me again today how soon after 2016 Jan 4 I can start working as a retiree. I reassured him Andy wants me back quickly. So I suppose I couldtake a REEP job and then not work much at it to get revenge for days like today. But we all know I won't.

There was just an outpouring of questions today, more than a few from Cory downstairs about giant horrible, 2-page queries that Jeff left them with, queries that depend on databases that have changed. I was able to sort him out (along with continue work with Gloria, Jeff Hastings, others...) while being interrupted from my day-long struggle with the Ora2PG conversion scripts. I had to painstakingly update every PG table that's fallen out of synch with ongoing changes to the database..which make it ever-clearer to me how any one fixed database product devised by IT/BT, one that takes months to change once it's handed over, can never meet our ever-evolving needs.

The day ends with me finally getting a full clean run-through of the conversion script, but now I've set it to run automatically in the evenings and this evening I get to keep tabs on its progress and make sure nothing falls, or two parts don't conflict with each other because one runs long.

The server had to be rebootted to clear up some of the hung processes that came out of the last clashes, hopefully no more will be needed...though it seemed to run faster after the reboot and maybe for PG's sake, eww should be rebooted monthly or weekly...

20151001
 Today started off well with the finding that Postgres had unwedged itself and my database is working OK again. Should likely be another full day of getting tables in order and working right and the copy process glitch-free.

Plus, I have to keep working on my home mapping system, and really should get a start on those rain gauges for Natalya. Lots to do.

But never mind that now, get a load of this awesome fog bank that rolled past our house yesterday. I first saw it when I jogged around our side of Lost Lagoon, almost home, but as I came out of the trees into sight of the Lagoon, it was like one of those Chinese paintings from Gulin.

...By the time I'd run home and gotten upstairs a few minutes later, it was this river of fog running across the lagoon and to the harbour:

17:12 Well, the day flew by, but the _TXT layers are all working now in PostGIS, and the WFLOWMON database is safe from being decommissioned and I hope that Dusty and Frank Frigo use it again some day.

I'm basically clocking off now, but my E-mail will remain up and my phone on as I fiddle away with colours and layer upgrades on the home mapping system. That's the place I can't tell the difference between my job and a hobby any more, I just work on it in any idle moment.

20150930
 Well, I started at 7AM today with the news that the Road Trip was simply a miscommunication. After a bunch of frantic effort on it last night, I'm back to mapping today and must get ready for Erik Poloquin and helping him find all the CS work under Surface Overlay 2016 this morning.

12:44 So, a busy morning dealing with Dusty's "WFLOWMON" database, I still haven't moved all the indexes to safety, just the tables, more to do; and mostly two straight hours of work with Erik Poliquin to find all the work orders on six types of assets that are under next year's surface overlay program.

In the middle of that, my GIS died and couldn't be revived, and I can't reboot a remote machine. I put in an E-mail almost an hour ago for somebody around me to reboot it. No reply. So the heck with ya all, I'm going for a run in the park, my phone is on, 604-704-1527. And I'll send a18:45 Well, ArcMap 10.2.2. ruined most of my afternoon; it has real bugs as far as I'm concerned, I can't get it to do a table join, possibly because our server is Oracle 12c and there are reported problems with that.

Then it was just hours of tedium, converting all our sewer "_TXT" tables over into PostGIS so we can use them as geodatabase tables in maps, and altering the many tables in PostGIS That match those Erik and I altered in Oracle to add an "SOL" column.

But there's hope dawning that I could have a really comprehensive copy of AM entirely in PostGIS as a geodatabase anybody can take home. That's got to a be good thing for somebody with more and more telework happening.

Christ, I put in nearly 12 hours today; even subtracting lunch and a run and stuff I must have worked for 10. My 85 date is nine days away. What the hell am I thinking?

20150930
 Got right to work this morning, replies to Mike Luck about lining the downtown and Curtis Osiwy about adding new valve columns to the CAD stabilization project. Now the E-mail is quiet again and I'll just plug away at my map layers.

17:52 Well, that didn't last long. Seems I have a new trip to Toronto to book! Off to see lateral lining! My last road trip. Clocking off now, need to get out of here and run. At 403-819-4286 for the next half hour.

20150929
 My Ocean View
Well, you CAN see the ocean from our place and it is there in the picture - lower far right, you can see the boats are floating in it.

I should get going on Natalya's rain guages and perhaps I'll make a start on them later today, but I have to start off the day with more getting my maps in order. I've been putting it off for months.

Can't find Natalya's files; I'll have to ask Dusty again. 

12:38  - Knocking off for half an hour to get lunch and shower.

14:58 Back and just grinding on the new maps.

17:10 Enough already.   Quitting time.   What a quiet day.


20150928
 Lots of background work to do today; I need to get my PostGIS databases squared away and will be reorganizing them. And Mike seems to want "several" more kilometres of lining work in the downtown core...just as Gloria took a week away.

Mike says that Gloria never gave him any more downtown work over the last some weeks since he asked, so I suppose I must.   I know Gloria was working on some - perhaps Mike can wait until after she gets back.

Ultra-quiet day today; other than that and Hugo and I discussing his idea to stop renaming hydrants and valves, I spent it all trying to get my PostGIS databses consolidated and cleared up of junk, both for our own purposes and so I can mail off a copy to WRF.

17:20  And it's time to knock off and go enjoy Stanley Park, which has been tantalizing me all day. 

20150925
 A man and his smurf.

Each contemplate Stanley Park in their own way.

A man, wistful that there remains a day of work in his week. A Smurf, with more limited mentation, since his brains literally include nylons from my first girlfriend in 1982 (He was starting to sag; the nylons have kept him buff and pert-looking all these years.)

Getting ready for my briefing on Jeffrey's san service page at nine. I should probably look at it first.

10:01 The briefing went great, though "attending" a meeting by monitoring a phone on the table sounds like listening to a water polo match unless somebody faces the phone and speaks clearly - smartphones otherwise chop off all the sentences, usually in mid-word.

Anyway, we got the job done and the page is now redesigned and ready for first tests.

I'm back to replying to Mazen about troubles with WF Jobs, which should be fixed soon.

15:55 I got off an Oracle dump to David Spencer of the whole water database, with some explanations. He also wants my map-system-on-a-USB; I should update the version of QGIS on it first.

20150924
Well, I'm mostly going to fool around with WaterFront Jobs today. But I'm very available.

13:42 Besides E-discussing the San Service app with Jeffrey, just messing with WF Jobs. Knocking off for lunch now.

14:30 Got back and I couldn't test WF Jobs any more! The application is acting very badly at login time all of a sudden, and not letting me see the "jobs layers" on TSSPA. Sent a note of query to Mazen with a CC to Curtis.

14:50 Got to go get a dental X-ray - I might have a toothache coming. 15:58 That was quick. If this is BC medical care, I'm for it. The X-ray was clear, the doc said maybe my cold-ravaged sinuses were just swollen around the nerve or something. And thank goodness - the tooth in question was an implant. But no infection visible!

16:50 Knocking off for the day, no news on WF jobs.

17:30 Or not. Andy needed a question answered up to their Directors; routine san main assessment.

18:00 Why do I do this stuff - an hour writing a long E-mail to David Spencer, a WRF researcher who wants our data. I had to outline just how complex it is.

20150923

Well, I got off to a roaring start today.  Barely got in to find questions from Gloria pouring down the Lync line, and a longish e-mail to answer from Joanne about a new san service management system that I'm getting Jeff Hastings to mock up for her today.

One those are handled, I'm getting tea, doing a workout, and clocking back in, in an hour.

Jeff and Joanne seem to be getting along well on the san-service problem, I think I can book off for an hour to catch lunch! (12:55)

Doing Waterfront Jobs testing while I chat with Jeff Hastings about programming options for Field Services problems by E-mail. (16:02)

Got to a good breakpoint in WF jobs testing, left Mazen an e-mail, quitting time! (17:15)

2015 09 22
20150922Back at it; attempting to clean out junk from the AM database, we're apparently running out of space.
I've got to package up our seesnake and mainbreak data for David Spencer of HDR Incorporated, who are working WRF research contracts.

And I've still never got Golam Kabir a CoC Computer Account.

Currently helping Gloria get some graphing done (14:44).

Yikes, well the day got all serious at the end.  I've concluded we need to turn "extensions and upgrades" into a serious program with serious engineering time spent on it.  It's not just that AM is being bombarded with requests to "clear" developments, clearances that have a capacity component; it's the Centre City Levy recalculation, and ID's recent request for job-requests to apply the extensions and upgrades budget to.   All three issues that have concerned me in latter 2015 have come together - they're one issue.

So that ate much of the afternoon.  Clocking off late!  (18:14).

2015 09 21
 We are a mixed marriage: she got an iPhone and I, a Galaxy Note running Android.

The precipitating event is that you can't find headsets for landline type phones any more.  It's gotta be Bluetooth.   So I'm all set up for hands-free talking.  Call me!

This is just part of the building of the full-blown teleworkstation!
I now have a Keyboard-Mouse switch and can flip back and forth between the Calgary inside-network environment on the PC and my own mapping system on Linux.   I'll be much of the rest of the day renewing that with 2015 versions of map layers.

Taking an hour for lunch! Back at 15:30.

Knocking off for the day! Got Andy his graph and declaring victory. (1740 Hrs)

 

20150918 picture

 0844 MDT 2015 Sept 18

I'm  baaacck in Vancouver!   Long, butt-flattening drive yesterday, still waking up (not yet 0800 my time).  But I'm available for calls.  Other than responding to E-mail, my plans for the day are getting my main computer set up, and updating its PostGIS/QGIS mapping system.  Then I should be firing on all cylinders.


1900 MDT 2015 Sept 18
Quite a day.   With some athletic effort, I hvae the main computer wrestled into place, the three monitors set up, and running.  The monitor and keyboard

0758 MDT 2015 July 29

(Threw away the pic, sorry) Earlier than 8AM this morning!   A record for telecommuting!

Got some comments in to Gloria about picking flat mains for lining, made some progress on the 311 response, and working away at Joanna's table of broken valves for prioritization.   (Name: VALVESIH8 )

Knocking off for lunch at 11:40 our time, which is late for Calgary - see you all about 1350, MDT.
1349 MDT  - and back as promised.  Back to work on Joanna's valve table.
1500 MDT -  I've got Gloria deep in thought about consequence calculations, going to take an hour offline to do some GIS on QGIS at the laptop. Signing back in at 1600.  Meantime, you'll have to call my cell at 403-819-4286 to rouse me!
1610 MDT - Back at it.  Finishing up.
1700 MDT - Have signed off tomorrow as Vac'n on HCM, notified other staff I'm off tomorrow - but that said, I'll be available until about 10:00 when I have to pack up and leave the hotel.

201507280805 MDT 2015 July 28
Up and at 'em this morning!   That's the cover of the Sherlock Holmes book I'm reading.
1230 MDT: Done the San DA map!   Knocking off for Lunch.
1500 MDT: DA map deployed in Beta
1628 MDT:  Got the nasty 311 call done; some twit claimed we were going to remove the extra main that put a MH in somebodys yard, so I figured to send out a video crew to check if its running.  Should be sorted in a few days.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO QUITTING TIME.  No free OT today, sorry- the weather is just too awesommmme....

201507270953 MDT 2015 July 27
Slower off the mark this morning - it was quite a weekend, Fireworks in Vancouver is like Stampede in Calgary - but I survived it and am determined to forge ahead to new heights of management of assets.

We moved from the delights of the Sylvia Hotel to the old familiarity of Times Square Suites, at the exciting (noisy) intersection of Denman and Robson, rather like moving to a hotel in Calgary at Centre St and 8th Av Mall.  I am keeping the windows closed because of traffic noise.

On the bright side, the WiFi here is vastly superior and I'm anticipating decent GIS work over the Internet.

1637 MDT - Well that day went by fast.  Nobody bugged me and I made as much progress as I could on the DA map for sanitary (awaiting some feedback from Mike and Jeff in ID) and consequences for sanitary mains (have new formula for pond conflict consequences), and I'll be answering an awkard 311 tomorrow.

201507240810 MDT July 24 2015

Rainy day here in Vancouver!   Which was desperately needed and indeed the 5mm we're going to get is not a tenth enough.  But we'll take it.  And I guess I get a good day to stay inside and work.

Well, had a super-quiet day, both in Vancouver weather and in Calgary work.  Except for helping Gelareh find the right drafting staff to send the new-map request to, I basically worked on the problem of finding valves along Joanna's most critical feedermains for purposes of prioritizing valve repairs.

To some success; we have a valve list with only a few missing from it.

probably.   See y'all Monday!

20150722852 MDT 2015 July 23
Spent the morning prepping for a discussion of valves with Joanna this aft, reading the research proposals for WRF and making comments to Andy, and telling the story of Steve the AM seagull.

Knocking off for lunch now, back at 1400 MDT.

Well, a good day.   Had a great telemeeting with Joanna about valve replacement prioritization and gave Gloria all she needed to set up a second set of maps for the water-body/san conflicts, and I've got a nice job ahead of me for Friday, prioritizing valves.   Knocking off at 1740PM, see y'all tomorrow!

NB: Check out  
http://brander.ca/sylvia   for a "tour" of my office!

20150722852 MDT 2015 July 23
We have acquired a new staff member here at the Calgary Water Resources Asset Management International Command Bunker on the 7th Floor of the Sylvia Hotel.  This seagull is the same one I fed the other day and again last night.   He's now decided that he's on-salary.

Not many creatures can go mooching on a ledge 25m above the hard ground, but our new hire is made of that stuff (feathers).

Well, time to log in and see if there are any emergencies.
9:50 MDT - Nipping out for coffee, back by 10:15.
10:10 MDT - Back!   Dull day out there, hope fades for tanning at lunch, but it should be cool enough for a run today, at least.
10:11 MDT - It's quiet. Too quiet.  No 311's, no E-mails, nobody on Lync needing tech stuff explained.   Almost spooky.
                        Fortunately, I have about 200 pages of WRF project RPF and two proposals in reply to that to review.  I'll  be sitting here reading if anybody needs me.
14:50 MDT - Off to lunch for 45 minutes.
15:10 MDT - Made it a quick lunch.   Just reading research proposals, very ready for interruption.  Just Lync, Email, or call...
17:20 MDT - Well, I got Gloria going again, picking the lining, threw Joanna some advice about main replacement, and I'm very done.
20150721
0905 MDT 2015 July 21
A month past the solstice today - the days are getting shorter.

Having fun here with the limited light-range of the web cam in my broken laptop, which I now have to pick up off the floor to take a morning picture-of-the-day.  I need a flashlight just to be seen, if a window is in view of the lens; the rest of the room is dark by comparison.

Finished up a map of san services by roots seen in videos yesterday, but much polishing to do today - specifically, I have to make it work in ArcMap, which increasingly makes me tired; I have much more fun with QGIS.   I'm trying to think of a case where the free software actually was better, professionally , to work with than the costly equivalent and I'm coming up short.   I'm using the free "Komposer" software to do this web page, and it's kind of nice, but also really lame with bugs and shortfalls, even as a simple HTML editor, much less a development powerhouse like Dreamweaver.   OpenOffice (or "LibreOffice", another version) is nice, but it can't touch Excel for many high-level spreadsheet tasks.

It really didn't cross my mind that the very heavy computing and relatively small user base of GIS, of all things would be the place an open-source project would shine.

1100 MDT - Just finished a reasonably successful conference call with salesmen for InforEAM, mostly bitching about WAM's pain points.   Which is to say, giving them information on how to tailor a September sales pitch to impress us they can cure all our pain.   Their strategy for integration is a bunch of API's into their application using "Web Services"...I stressed that the ultimate cost of doing interfaces was still going to be our business case, whatever the technology.

1105 MDT - Arrgh.  Hating this WiFi internet connection at the Sylvia Hotel today.   Remote Desktop keeps freezing for 10 seconds and more.  For that matter, the last web-page upload of a few thousand bytes took minutes.   I'm going to do some offline work, though I should be able to hear a Lync message or E-mail coming in.  Or just phone me.

1245 MDT - Some good discussion with Joanne about roots analysis.   Or root-cause analysis of roots.  Sorry.  Anyway:  LUNCH!!   Back in an hour.
1700 MDT - At last, done with the barbell map for service roots.   I think.  Knocking off.

201507200922 MDT 2015 July 20
24th Wedding Anniversary Today! We'll celebrate by me doing my job and Connie painting, not even our place, but the suite below ours, seeing as how our highly professional renovation team put a foot through their ceiling last week.

Well, I guess it's back to work for Joanne and the map of sanitary services by degree of root problems, inside and outside the PL. 

1545 MDT - Have to take an hour off for some personal stuff; back around 1700 to finish up the inside/outside roots map.

201507170820 MDT 2015 July 17
Let's go make some water!
Spent most of day trying (often in vain) to clean up WAM data enough to load up how many roots are on the inside and outside of the PL for san services
Mostly needed by Joanne now, but it's all in order to justify the san service lining program that both AM and FS want.


Yikes, lost this picture.0824 MDT 2016 July 16
Brander.ca is back!   Keepin' you informed with the latest on,ummm...me.
 I probably won't be at work yet for an hour or so, still settling in here.

1215 MDT - Got some problems resolved via E-mail re the CAD stabilization project, now looking at a 311, but knocking off for lunch.  Available again at 1300 MDT.

1739 MDT-  Helped Gloria with her efforts to come up with the "SMX"  (Sanitary Metric "X") the condition assessment rating for mains we don't have video on.  And answered a 311 from Fire Underwrighters' Ass'n that wanted the location of every hydrant in town.   A decent day, callin' it quits.

j0830 MDT 20160630
Departing Revelstoke

j0817 MDT 20150629

Last day in the hotel!   I'll be working until nine-ish Calgary time here, then packing up and doing some reading on the road.  I'll be checking in from Revelstoke in mid-afternoon.

0917 MDT - Ducking out for breakfast, having annoyed Andy, Jordi, and Gloria with various emails.

1020 MDT - OK, I've got Gloria tasked with the hydrology/san conflicts for Tuesday's meeting, I'll check in with her this afternoon.  For now, I'm going to pack up and spend much of the day reading until late afternoon.

j0830 MDT 20150626

Well, I had a good day yesterday, helping Gloria, attending my first telemeeting, and doing up some maps and charts for Joanne's sales job on a sanitary lining program, which is desperately needed. 

But I didn't keep up the blog, because disaster struck when my laptop was knocked over and the screen stopped working.  So I greet my loyal readers today over the back of the new monitor....fortunately, the rest of the laptop is fine, and I can still work as long as I plug it in to a monitor.  So a mere $222 in surprise business expense and I'm working better than ever.

As you can see the laptop camera is working fine, but it's the only part of the screen-half of the machine that is.  Well, I now have a very portable (and expensive) desktop.

1500 MDT  Having a successful telework day!   My new setup is actually preferable to the old one.  The new 22" monitor is a quarter again the size of the laptop screen and I can sit it close to me and switch to reading glasses.   Joanna and I just had an entirely successful teaching session via shared desktop.   Here I am, sharing the desktop of my own machine in Calgary, to my laptop in Vancouver, AND sharing it out to Joanna at her desk.  And with a phone in one hand, I was able to mouse around and walk her through how we do the final tweaks on the probabilities in the main break prediction model.   We were able to see the results by spreadsheet, tweak the probability table with Golden, and lather, rinse, repeat until all the predictions were matching the actual breaks that have happened over the last 15 years.

Meanwhile, I was beavering away right up to that point with an epic, all-illustrated E-mail for Gloria and both Jeffs on aggregating GIS linestrings into "multilinestrings" and why that is something one would occasionally do.  The giant E-mail will have to become a document, of course, in the Waterpedia, or Word/Livelink, or both.  But the basic text and illustrations are done.

j0920 MDT 20150625

Well, I asked at 8 if anybody could wake up my machine, than again at nine.  I'll do some work on the laptop until somebody comes in....wait, David Deng just caught it; and Joanna says that 3 others did as well.   I guess I really have to be there because it goes back to sleep almost immediately.

j20150624  0807 MDT

Up and at 'em in beautiful Vancouver.

Let's check the E-mail for today's emergency.

Uh-oh, the Remote Desktop is not responding.  I'll have to see if somebody can wake up my machine... OK, Jordi's out of the office, we'll see if there anybody else is there.  

Hah.  Jeff woke it up.  No emergencies, though, I'm off to gym & brekkie, back at 0930 MDT.  I have my phone on.

1330 MDT  - I have finished two very cool slides that Joanne and Jeff may be able to use to make the point that we desperately need a sanitary service lining program, click to see them bigger.

sanitary services north end
  - - san servs by root count sw

STATUS: AWAY FOR LUNCH 1300 - 1400 MDT.  See you in an hour!

1730 MDT - Yikes worked O/T.   Quittin'.



0805 2015 June 23

jBack at it.  Today I may be able to get some time to look at Joanne Barrett's figures on the sanitary services.  She may have found a way to predict their odds of costing us money statistically, just like the mainbreak probability model.

If so, we can use it for budget justifications - and long-term predictions.

I'll be putting in some time right now at eight, then taking off an hour from 9-10 because the plumber for our new condo renovations has a "problem he needs to talk to us about".   Which sounds ominous.

1015 - Not so terrible; they really have to go in through the ceiling of the bathroom below to do the plumbing for our new bathroom.   Fortunately, the place below is unoccupied just now and getting permission should be easy.   OK, back to work.

I'm awaiting a reply from Brad Larson about my progress on downstream tracing; possibly he's just on vacation.  That is a problem with telework; I can't go downstairs and see if his cube looks recently lived-in.

So perhaps I'll have to checkpoint that work and address other issues.   I'd like to spend more time on Joanne's statistics for SRs and sanitary services, but I do have issues on my To-Do list below that are outstanding for months, so I'm just going to add san services to the to-do list and tackle the higher priorities for now.

1255 MDT  - OK, I've got Gloria working away with GIS via SQL, I can work on the DA maps of the city, a month or more after promising them.  I'll be doing that on my laptop directly for the first hour, but I'll keep checking the remote desktop for Lync or Email messages.

1725 MDT - Well, put in some free overtime; Joanne and Jeff could use some support for their presentation on lateral lining for san services, and I have just the map they could use, already made for my QGIS on the laptop.  I should have it ready for them tomorrow, took almost no time.  But that's enough for today!   Gloria made excellent progress on her GIS maps of sanitary vs ponds today.

0830 June 22 2015

jJust checking in, caught a question from Joanna, but other than that I'll start work in an hour after hitting the gym and grabbing a bit.

14:39 - Been kept hopping all morning and into the aft with construction-related questions: Joanna trying to decide the cost of also replacing San services when we have to replace lead water services; discussing lining jobs with Mike Luck.

But more time has been spent helping Gloria report on her "Sanitary Criticality" project.  Finally, I should now be able to get back to work on Brad Larson's downstream tracing.  I am learning "hierarchical queries" in Oracle that may be able to do network tracing right inside one SQL query.
17:05  Well, mixed successes - Gloria is going great guns on the criticality, she`s done her first GIS query and is learning bounding boxes.  But my downstream-tracing has hit a snag; it can go into infinite loops.    Well, tomorrow is another day.  Signing off!
...hah.   Couldn't resist.  I signed back in about 7PM with a couple of new ideas, and they all worked.  Brad has his tracing program, question is whether many of the traces will have to be corrected by hand as the network has some connectivity problems.



0800 MDT June 19
jChecking in at 8AM, but no e-mails or emergencies, so I'll hit the gym and be on deck by nine.   Could somebody please start my computer after last night's generator-test?  Thanx.

...whew. Well, that was a longish day.  I helped Gloria do some criticality work, she's about ready to start doing actual GIS intersection programming, next week should be some fun new learning for her.

But most of the day was struggling with fussy code involving long lists of column names from the Storm Pipe Table...but I now have downstream tracing working right to the pipe level, for Brad Larson's capacity queries.

June 18th:
jI am now working too fast to be accurately caught on camera.

10:15 AM:  Email and Lync all quiet, I can hit the gym, bat at 11.

13:59 : Got Andy's note about the "Respect in the Workplace" course, and since that's an issue for me, I'm right to it.   Available for interruptions, though!

...barely finished the course before our computers had to be shut off.  I've got some reading to finish out my day.  But I did some good today - Gloria showed us how there were some missing things in the san_main_rpt and I found the lack and corrected it!   Now she can tell which mains were sent for lining but couldn't be.
June 17th: Over the day
 Checked in, found Hydroscope is being blamed for grease or something in the mains, and trying to get somebody to brief me on the timeline of events.

Meantime, back to work, which is teaching Gloria, by E-mail, how to tackle a rationalized criticality and failure-probability (condition assessment) of sewer mains.

Once Gloria is running OK with that, I'll get to Brad Larson's downstream traces. 

17:30 PM - finishing up for the day; contact me before 18:00 MDT to catch me.   After that, cell is always on.
June 16th: afternoon
jSettling into the Marriott Residences Hotel on Hornby, setting up the telework office.

They offer a reasonable desk, and a pull-out table under it that functions nicely as a keyboard tray.   I just added a proper keyboard (MS Ergo 4000, accept no imitations) and have ample mouse space beside it, I'm pretty set.

If only the alleged office chair that comes in front of the desk were, well, high enough to sit at that desk.  The height's adjustable...up to the point where you're still typing at your sternum level.   Then I just piled up cushions.  I'll have to develop better height adjustment solutions tonight.
June 16th Morning
airport
At the airport, June 16 11:45 AM, about to be called for the flight.  New experience, doing Remote Desktop and getting real work done in an airport lounge.