23 December 2008

Merry Christmas

Or "Happy Holidays" if I'm to be politically correct. So Schuba's is on the list for tonight to see an old high school acquaintance that happens to be a friend of my girlfriend play with his band. Should be a fun time and a good way to kick-off my holiday break.

I'm still not done with gifts. 30 hours until Christmas and I've got one Amazon order trickling in, a few more to wrap, and they all need to get from Chicago to Elgin tomorrow in a wonderful snow/rain storm. I can't wait. Actually, I'm way ahead of schedule compared to my norm for the holiday season. Looks like I won't be up til the small hours tomorrow night. Sweet. Sleep.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Enjoy what warmth you find in family, friends, and bottles of joy.

And if you need some lewd humor from a few years ago:

15 December 2008

chi-city


chi-city
Originally uploaded by Archigeek
Friday night was my company's holiday party. It was a festive evening up on the 95th floor of the Hancock tower downtown. The view was incredible, and I did my best with some long exposures and a steadied camera next to a frozen window mullion.

10 December 2008

superintendent's words

Fell into my inbox this morning: An email with quotes from "a central-casting superintendent of the old school." The words belong to Jim Roosa, who passed away November 6, 2008. As the email's author says, "look past the 'construction language' and enjoy."

1. I’d rather be the only girl on a Greek freighter than sit in that meeting
2. He wouldn’t say XXXX if he had a mouth full of it
3. Run a job? He couldn’t organize a one car funeral
4. He’s slower then the second coming
5. It’s like killing chickens, there really is no clean way to do it
6. He’s stuck in my neck like a chicken bone. Can’t swallow him and can’t spit him out.
7. It’s so messed up it stands out like a XXXX-house in a fog.
8. He doesn’t have enough common sense to know to get out of the rain.
9. If I tell you it’s Easter, you better start looking for Easter eggs.
10. If I go in there without knowing the answers, they will be looking at me like a bug in a jar.
11. Hey what’s done is done, you can’t put XXXX back in the donkey (credits to Tony Soprano)
12. They are so stupid they would XXXX up a free lunch.
13. He doesn’t know if it’s raining or Thursday.
14. I’ll be watching you like a chicken hawk
15. If he were a gazelle on the Serengeti he would have been eaten by now.
16. They want us to track every bolt. Next thing you know we'll be counting light bulbs. It's like picking fly sh#% out of pepper.
17. He doesn’t know sh#% from Shinola
18. Let me tell you something, I ain’t as dumb as you look
19. The moron couldn’t put together a two camel caravan
20. If I tell you it’s Christmas you’d better start singing me Silent Night
21. Why don’t you just go back to the office and count some more paperclips, pretty boy?
22. Drawings? You can roll up those drawings real tight and stick them up where the sun don’t shine.
23. You’d better square up you’re a$$ and start XXXXing me Tiffany cufflinks (borrowed from Full Metal Jacket/ Sgt. Hartman, but used often)
24. He’s just an office rat, you know, a Wall Street Journal in one hand and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the other
25. Hey, you, how come I’m talking and I don’t see pencils moving! (from a subs’ meeting)
26. Your extra tickets? Yes I got them, they are going through the shredder as we speak.
27. How ‘bout I sign your extra tickets as “Abraham Lincoln”
28. Shut up. When I want your opinion I’ll give it to you.
29. If it can’t kill you it ain’t construction
30. Do I have to get an Act of Congress or call George Bush to get you off your lazy a$$?
31. Get out of the trailer and knock on the door first
32. He’s a real BS artist, can talk his way out of a traffic jam
33. Think about how many mouse-clickers we can fit on this floor
34. I’m gonna go out there and stir up some XXXX just for the heck of it. Keep’em on their toes.
35. Watch your step buddy, I got a caisson with your name on it.
36. Did I tell you about the job that burned down to the ground in Cleveland in 1961? That’s not in the corporate brochure.
37. Make sure you don’t lose (insert name of an Executive Vice President) in the building
38. And tell him not to wear his Gucci slippers when he comes to my jobsite.
39. I don’t give a XXXX how you did it at (insert name of another superintendent’s job)
40. Sometimes I think he screws things up just because he can’t stand prosperity
41. Cheap SOB’s – they’d take the low bid if it was from Charles Manson
42. I remember him well, used to take his lunch money in grade school
43. Laptop? You won’t be needing a laptop. You won’t be spending much time in the trailer. Better go buy some thermal underwear.
44. Not much you can do with him. All you can do is give him a map and a ham sandwich and send him on his way.
45. If you can draw it up on your funny paper, I can build it.
46. If you have to talk, make it real quick. One word or less.

08 December 2008

brain dump

I should do this more often, but I'm trying to force my brain to excrete what it likes to think about. Easier said than done... This was a stream-of-consciousness thing, so please excuse the typos.

'architectural digital technology'

understanding computers
ones and zeroes
moore's law - when will it end?
affect of digital on the world's economy
efficiency, collaboration
breaking borders, geography no longer matters
work in a cube
your computer is your new home
spatiality of the digital world
spatial metaphors
information is wealth more than ever
common appreciation for design
apple, microsoft, google, yahoo, facebook
visualiziaton
communication
conceptualization
2d vs 3d vs 4d
mathematics of rendering
turning reality into numbers
blue pill, red pill, the matrix
virtually boundless capacity for storing information
grid computing
the cloud
capacity for computing continues to be pushed
push for hardware
push for software
hardware vs software
building design
building information modelling
why are computers still dumb?
color spaces, gamuts, the human eye
input devices - keyboard, mouse, voice, motion
display devices - crts, lcds, olcds, projectors
device size and its effect on workflows
contant communication
digital addiction
virtual communicative workspaces - message boards, wikis, email, chats
applicability of architectural design to the digital realm
human beings existing in a 2d world
dehumanization
evolution
permanence of digital information and spatiality
ease of 3d design - sketchup, modelling, shaping, molding
mathematics and geometry of digital modelling - polygons, faces, curves, nurbs, vertices, vectors
visualizing information - radiohead's house of cards
edward tufte
resolution - printed, screen, rods and cones
video game generation - comfort and familiarity with 3d
native and intuitive interfaces
the layer metaphor
sketch, talk, model, render, revise, repeat
copyrights and intellectual property - clinging on to 20th c. reality
architects are designers of space - this can be applied to just about anything
pragmatic thinking in a digital world