design..................

 

He lamented that because he had never outlined a design for how he should conduct himself, his life so far had been somewhat confused.  "Let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and some form of action, that henceforth, I may live my life in all respects like a rational creature."

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

The art of stoicism.........................

 

But in Stoicism the art of journaling is more than that, more than some simple diary. This daily practice is the philosophy. Preparing for the day ahead. Reflecting on the day that has passed. Reminding oneself of the wisdom we have learned from our teachers, from our reading, from our own experiences. It’s not enough to simply hear these lessons once, instead, one practices them over and over again, turns them over in their mind, and most importantly, writes them down and feels them flowing through their fingers in doing so.

-The Daily Stoic

Ah, planners.............................

 

.............Arnold Kling is feeling imposed upon:

What appalls me is the arrogance of the project to alter other people’s lifestyle. When people moved here, they showed a preference for living as we do. The plan replaces the preferences of the residents with the preferences of the planners.

If a developer came along and built a community where cars were disfavored, that he said would “repair past injustices that disproportionately affected people of color” and “reduce climate-related risks,” then people could decide whether or not to reside in that community. I have no problem with that. But to take a community that people chose to live in and completely remake it to suit the planners’ idea of utopia to me seems un-American.

What if.............................

....................there's absolutely nothing standing between you and a kind of ecstatic and unhinged happiness except your need to have it all mapped out before it happens?

About those plans................

      Adams would proudly claim that he never troubled himself with plans for his future.  All evidence corroborates that approach, one not everyone could afford.

-Stacy Schiff,  The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

A few more snippets...................

 .....from Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money:

History is littered with good ideas taken too far, which are indistinguishable from bad ideas.

What's often overlooked in finance is that something can be technically true but contextually nonsense.

Wealth is just the accumulated leftovers after you have spent what you take in.  And since you can build wealth without a high income, but have not chance of building wealth without a high savings rate, it's clear which one matters most.

If respect and admiration are your goal, be careful how you seek it.  Humility, kindness, and empathy will bring you more respect than horsepower ever will.

Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.

Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.

Capitalism is hard.  But part of the reason this happens is because getting money and keeping money are two different skills.

Action too...................................

 "Long-range vision and strategic planning are great tools, but we need to get some things done before lunch!"

-culled from John G. Miller's QBQ!: The Question Behind The Question

A few morsels.................................

"The idea is that you have to take risk to get ahead, but no risk that can wipe you out is ever worth taking."

"You can plan for every risk except the things that are too crazy to cross your mind."

"A good rule of thumb for a lot of things in life is that everything that can break will eventually break."

"In fact, the most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan."

-Morgan Housel, from the chapter Room for Error in his The Psychology of Money:  Timeless Lessons On Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

Better than not doing any at all...........

             via

Off track..............................

“The problem with long-term investing is the short term. Nothing destroys a good long-term plan like extreme short-term volatility. That throws people off track, and they often do things that are emotional rather than rational.” 

-Richard Ferri

While flying into Heathrow.....................

A few years back I was attending the World Humanities Conference, which had Members of Parliament, and Ruth Carter Stapleton, and all kinds of impressive people.  I was on the program, and I was to be met by dignitaries.

Except that I didn't get through customs.

I wasn't carrying anything, but I was on a list that said that I was "not conducive to the well-being of the United Kingdom," mainly because of my affiliation with Timothy Leary.  So I was detained, and then I was thrown out of the country.

Now, I had planned to arrive and be welcomed and be taken to a hotel, and instead I found myself sitting in this green room with guys guarding the doors.  I was sitting there with Pakistanis, and South Africans, and all these people who were also not conducive to the well-being of the United Kingdom.  We were a great group and we had a wonderful day.  It took me a few minutes to go from "What?" to "Wow! This is a much more interesting day than I expected to spend."

It's always a question of how long it takes you to let go.

-Ram Dass, Changing Lenses:  Essential Teaching Stories from Ram Dass

The world...............................

"The world is not a debating society;  it was not wise to be provocative without a plan."

-Richard Brookhiser

The basics......................

Plan-do-review. Review last week. Plan next week. Then the doing will be so much easier.

-Nicholas Bate

Facing............................

"There’s also something to be said for tackling uncertainty head on and building it into your expectations about the future."

-Ben Carlson, as lifted from this post

Well yeah...............................

via

HVAC..................................

       Air pressure, air movement, air temperature; dust removal, mite reduction, dehumidification:  all were not just a matter of soft self-indulgence indoors, but of positive no-allergy health and the deterrence of rot, rust, fungus and mildew.  The Lazarus act on old buildings began, in my no doubt obsessional mind, with the provision of clean dry air, unobtrusively circulating.

-Dick Francis,  channeling architect/builder Lee Morris in his book Decider

Reasonable people will likely agree that my mind does not qualify as obsessional, but the decision about providing heating and cooling for the 29 apartment units in the Old School was not an easy one.   The 30,000 square foot building, when in use as a school, was heated by a gas-fired boiler.  One cold winter's day soon after we acquired the building we could actually hear the gas meter whirling as the boiler did its thing.  We quickly decided we could not afford to heat the empty building, so the boiler was shut down and the gas turned off.  Also, in the old-fashioned way of 1939 school buildings, the only air conditioning was a window unit in the principal's office.
      We knew several things to be true:  1) we needed air conditioning, 2) we needed each apartment unit to have its own HVAC (heating, ventilating, air conditioning), 3) we needed to be able to meter each unit separately so that the tenants would pay for their own utility usage, and 4) we needed a reasonable way to heat and cool the six corridors. 
       After considerable debate, we opted to use an all-electric Mitsubishi Split System to heat and cool the units.  The plan for installing these units seemed rather simple at first.   However, a consultation with the historical folks changed that it a hurry.   The systems operate with individual unit compressors.  We had planned to cluster these compressors for the first and second floor on the ground outside the building, and them obscure them with landscaping.  The historical folks vetoed that idea (and yes, they have veto power since it is a historical tax credit project).  They thought that passers-by being able to see +/- 18 modern compressors would detract from the classical historical structure.  One must admit that they were right.   So without a fight, we changed the plan and put all of the compressors, out of sight, on the roof.  What that meant though, is that the 35 line-sets running between the unit heads and the compressors had to find their way, unexposed, through the building to the roof.   It got complicated quickly. 
       To make sense of the photos, they start with the heads and work backwards to the compressors:

Most of the units have two heads.  One in the living area and one in
the bedroom.   The two-bedroom units have three heads.   The smaller studio
units only have one head

Installation

The supporting bracket

A line set awaiting the head.   The small visible pipe is the condensation line

line set and condensation line waiting patiently for next steps

Collected line sets heading to the roof

Remember the beautiful new roof?    Watching them cut
holes in it hurt

Our roofer will be very busy flashing all the penetrations.   It will require semi-
annual inspections on all the flashing to make sure the roof stays water-tight

setting the flashing for the soon to arrive line sets

Cut the roof and drill holes in the concrete deck.    Double ouch

The line sets make it through the roof

Line sets ready to connect to the compressors

It's like a compressor farm on the roof

There will be additional photos once they are finished.

Architectural......................

It may be just my opinion, but in redeveloping an old building, the choice of an architect matters.  I think we made a good choice.  The better the plans, the better the sub-contractors can bid, and the easier one can get a building code permit. 
      Fixing old buildings may resemble building new ones, but it actually is a very different undertaking.   Old buildings have their quirks.  It has been my experience that honoring those quirks is a good thing.  So, flexibility and adaptability are fairly key, especially in a historic tax credit project where the historical folks have some significant and specific demands on what the result must be.   I won't tell you that the renovation has exactly followed the architectural drawings (I wouldn't want to speak untruths to faithful readers), but for the most part the results align with the plans.  I will tell you that our architect, a true team player, was consulted regularly when issues and questions and changes arose.  I do believe he will be proud of our creation.  Here is a quick stroll through the drawings:

The title page with all sorts of important information

The building code people care about this stuff

a basic site plan

A fairly old photo.  I have no recollection of that fencing

The design for the basic one bedroom unit

The first floor

The re-design of the old boiler room.  Should be a
pretty cool, and very large, apartment

Giving the electricians something to do

The new elevator shaft, part 1

The new elevator shaft, part 2

Your basic bathroom and mezzanine plan

Kitchen plan

One must go to plumbing school to make sense out of this schematic

On "plans"......................

Planning is the main way the human agent shapes his or her future actions, so as to realize temporally extended projects.  Planning now doesn't presume anything like "control" over future events, let alone give on reason to expect things to work out according to plan.  ... In shedding the illusion of control, along with the hope of attaining it, one can stand ready to revise one's plans, on the fly as necessary.  Best-laid plans do often go astray.  Because why wouldn't one have to adapt?  As in surfing, in life.

-Aaron James, Surfing With Sartre:  An Aquatic Inquiry Into A Live Of Meaning

Thinking about the future of................

........................................................automation:

"One thing I’ve learned is a fundamentally Hayekian insight: When it comes to large scale activities, nothing about change is easy, and top-down change generally fails. Just figuring out the requirements for computerizing a job is a laborious process full of potential errors. Many automation projects fail because the people at the high levels who plan them simply do not understand the needs of the people who have to live with the results."

Implementation intentions.......

     While positive self-talk and optimism can definitely help us not quit, by themselves they don't guarantee we'll achieve our goals.  Now, dreaming isn't inherently bad - but it's just the first step.  Next comes facing that awful buzzkill called "reality" and its ever-present obstacles.
      After you dream, think, What's getting in the way of my fantasy?   And what will I do to overcome that?  The fancy psych term is "implementation intentions."  You and I call it "a plan."

-Eric Barker,  Barking Up The Wrong Tree:  The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong