Electricity...........................

      Like everything else with the Old School, it seemed prudent to abandon the old electrical service and begin anew.  A decision was made early in the game to opt for an underground connection from pole-mounted transformers.  The building was previously served by pole-mounted overhead lines.  Given that the building is "all electric" and has an elevator, three-phase power was a requirement.   (Us history majors learned early in the business to recognize the presence of three-phase power by counting the number of transformers on a pole.)   While public utilities are often complained about, the service provided to us by AEP has been timely and first rate.  We now have new service:

Last fall we trenched for the underground service

Conduits were laid from the pole to the building in preparation

A crew from AEP prepares to make the new connection

The old overhead service is visible in the background

AEP had set this new pole and placed the three transformers
on it about four months ago in preparation for this day

Making the connection

Having successfully made the pole "hot," our friends from
AEP drive off.  Thanks guys.

Organized common sense..................

     "But is there still enormous gain to be made with organized common sense that doesn't require a computer?  I think the answer is 'yes.'  Are there dangers in getting too caught up in the minutiae of using a computer so that you miss the organized common sense?  There are huge dangers.  There'll always be huge dangers.  People calculate too much and think too little."

-Charlie Munger

About hurdles............................

"To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers.  The finding may seem unfair, but in both business and investments it is usually far more profitable to simply stick with the easy and obvious that it is to resolve the difficult."

-Warren Buffet

Fifty years ago............................

Gary Puckett and the Union Gap........................................Over You

 

Just the way it is................................

"Why oh why are human beings so hard to teach, but so easy to deceive?"

-Dio Chrysostom

The Invitation...........................

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from this poem

Fifty years ago..................................

The Rascals......................................................A Beautiful Morning

 

Challenging.............................

Others regarded Galileo’s telescopic findings with suspicion not because they reeked of black magic or contradicted theological doctrine but because they challenged personal worldviews and philosophical commitments. Cesare Cremonini, professor of Aristotelian philosophy at the University of Padua and a colleague of Galileo, denounced Galileo’s claims of craters on the moon and spots on the sun but refused to look out of the tube. Cremonini was later quoted as saying, “I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge, and about things which I have not seen ... and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. Enough! I do not want to hear anything more about this.”

-Alan Lightman, as culled from here

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with a capital "S".........................

“As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.” 

-Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House

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Fifty years ago...............

Spanky & Our Gang.............................Like To Get To Know You

Undergrounds...........................

     In the early days of planning, we sort of ignored the underground storm water and sanitary sewer lines.   I guess we thought we would just tie into the Old School's existing line.  Let's see:  twenty-nine new apartments with showers and dishwashers and washing machines dumping waste water into an eighty-year old 8" clay tile.   What could possibly go wrong?  On top of that, it was sort of a mystery where the rain water from the gutters and downspouts was going.   The downspouts disappeared below grade and we weren't exactly sure where the water went from there.   Into the sanitary sewer system?  Into the ground?  It was hard to tell.  A preliminary conversation with the City Engineer about tying the new downspouts directly into the sanitary sewer system was met with a funny look.  (A bit of a back story:   The older sections of Newark are served by a combination sanitary and storm sewer.  EPA frowns on such things today, for good reason.  The City is actually in the middle of a massive, and very expensive, project separating the storm water system from the sanitary sewer system.  That separation is not scheduled anytime soon in the Old School's neighborhood. Also, West Main between 5th and 6th, which is the longest block in the downtown and is where the Old School resides, is not served by any storm water inlets.   For the most part, heavy rains caused the sidewalk in front of the Old School to flood.)  Anyway, back to the story.  Once we started work, we got a bit wiser.  Engineers were consulted and plans drawn to both install all new sanitary sewer lines from the building to the existing manhole in the middle of West Main, as well as new storm water lines, connecting the existing gutters and downspouts to a brand new catch basin that was installed along our front curb.  While not accounted for in the preliminary budget, this was an expense best not avoided.

New connection for one of the gutters



ditto

new storm and sanitary collection lines side by side

one more downspout connection

New manhole for all of the storm lines to connect into

Large pipe is the storm line from the manhole to the catch basin at the curb.
From there it flows to the combination sewer manhole in the center of West
Main.   When the City separates the sanitary from the storm in the future,
we will be prepared.

Smaller pipe is a sanitary sewer connection.  Larger pipe
is for storm water.

The plumber's job was to get the sanitary sewer line 3' out of the building.
From there, our excavator made the connections for the waste water to get
to the City sewer line in the middle of West Main Street.   This is the first step.

Making one more of the sanitary sewer connections

We also needed to put a sprinkler fire suppression system in
the building.   We would have done it anyway, but the
building code requires sprinklers for buildings over 14,000
square feet, especially when there is a "change of use."
This is the trench for the new 4" water line that will service
the Old School.



Oops.  What's this?    Right about here is where the new 4" water line is
supposed to enter the building.   We found what looked like a concrete vault
at the entry point.   No one knew why it was there, or what it was for. 
After much debate, we just drilled a hole through it and there was no problem

digging up West Main to make all the connections

playing in the mud

Safety first when working deep

Fifty years ago..........................

Tragedy strikes.............the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recommended.........................

     Life, like poker, is one long game, and there are going to be a lot of losses, even after making the best possible bets.  We are going to do better, and be happier, if we start by recognizing that we'll never be sure of the future.  That changes our task from trying to be right every time, an impossible job, to navigating our way through the uncertainty by calibrating our beliefs to more toward, little by little, a more accurate and objective representation of the world.  With strategic foresight and perspective, that's manageable work.  If we keep learning and calibrating, we might even get good at it.

Unassailable..................................?

" ... there is nothing about oppression that confers virtue on the oppressed."

-David L. Burkhead, as culled from here.   As they say, read the whole thing.

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Opening paragraphs.....................

          Having rowed myself since the tender age of twelve
          and having been around rowing ever since, I believe
          I can speak authoritatively on what we may call the
          unseen values of rowing - the social, moral, and
          spiritual values of this oldest of chronicled sports
          in the world.  No didactic teaching will place these
          values in a young man's soul.  He has to get them by
          his own observation and lessons.
                                  -George Yeoman Pocock

Monday, October 9, 1933, began as a gray day in Seattle.  A gray day in a gray time.

-Daniel James Brown,  The Boys In The Boat:  Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Fifty years ago.....................

At the movies....Richard Burton/Clint Eastwood....Where Eagles Dare

 

Plumbing........................Step One

In converting an old, masonry, three-story, school into an apartment building, one of the first issues to resolve is the plumbing.   Each one-bedroom apartment has a shower, toilet, two sinks, and a dishwasher.  None of the existing classrooms had those things.  Water has to get in and waste water has to get out.  The old plumbing was inadequate and in the wrong place.  So... in with the new:

Step one:  Cutting the concrete floor and digging new trenches for waste lines

Dug nine trenches for nine new plumbing stacks

Getting ready to penetrate the outside foundation wall

Ready to start installing the sanitary lines

Don't try this at home

from humble beginnings

Constant decision making............

"You could base an entire philosophy of life on what to ignore."

-Michael Wade

Risk, decisions, and consequences............

Because decisions are made so quickly, players don't have the luxury of time in coordinating their rational, long-term, strategic plans with their decisions at the poker table.  And all those decisions made under severe time constraints have immediate consequences expressed as an exchange of poker chips.  The constant exchange of poker chips reminds players that there is risk in every decision.  Of course, the direction in which the chips flow in the short term only loosely correlates with decision quality.  You can win a hand after making bad decisions and lose a hand after making good ones.  But the mere fact that chips are changing hands is a reminder that every decision has consequences - that all those execution decisions you make along the way really matter.

-Annie Duke,  Thinking in Bets:  Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

image via

Consequences........................

     Away from the poker table, we don't feel or experience the consequences of most of the decisions we make right away.  If we are winning or losing to a particular decision, the consequences may take time to reveal themselves.  If we make a losing decision, like substituting SnackWell's for apples, there's no immediate outcome that lets us know there might have been a cost to that choice.  If we repeat that kind of decision enough, there will be consequences, but they take time to play out.  In business, if a leader ignores the ideas of an intern because "What does an intern possibly know?" it could take years for that intern to become a successful competitor before that mistake becomes obvious.  If the trajectory of that business suffers because of the poverty of new ideas, the owner of the business might never realize the effect of that attitude.

Annie Duke,  Thinking in Bets:  Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Nap skeptic......................

     Naps also improve our overall health.  A large study in Greece, which followed more than 23,000 people over six years, found that, controlling for other risk factors, people who napped were as much as 37 percent less likely as others to die from heart disease, "an effect of the same order of magnitude as taking an aspirin or exercising every day."  Napping strengthens our immune system.  And one British study found that simply anticipating a nap can reduce blood pressure.
     Yet, even after absorbing this evidence, I remained a nap skeptic.  One reason I so disliked naps is that I woke up from them feeling as if someone had injected my bloodstream with oatmeal and replaced my brain with oily rags.  Then I discovered something crucial:  I was doing it wrong.
     While naps between thirty and ninety minutes can produce some long-term benefits, the come with steep costs.  The ideal naps - those that combine effectiveness with efficiency - are far shorter, usually between ten and twenty minutes.   For instance, an Australian study published in the journal Sleep found that five-minute naps did little to reduce fatigue, increase vigor, or sharpen thinking.  But ten-minute naps had positive effects that lasted nearly three hours.  Slightly longer naps were also effective.  But once the nap lasted beyond about the twenty-minute mark, our body and brain began to pay a price.   That price is known as "sleep inertia" - the confused, boggy feeling I typically had upon waking.   Having to recover from sleep inertia - all that time spent splashing water on my face, shaking my upper body like a soaked golden retriever, and search desk drawers for candy to get some sugar in my system - subtracts from the nap's benefits ...

-Daniel H. Pink,  When:  The Scientific Secrets Of Perfect Timing

Fifty years ago................................

Traffic................................................You Can All Join In

 

Fifty years ago..................................

The Bee Gees..........................................................I Started A Joke