With all the calls and emails I’ve fielded over the past two years, this week was the first time that someone looked at my online portfolio before contacting me. (LinkedIn recruiters are shockingly lazy!)
The opportunity wasn’t a good fit, but we had a great conversation, and I learned about an exciting position to share with younger architects.
Many years ago, a BoardGameGeek user in Australia asked me to receive several shipments before his arrival in Vegas to attend a friend’s steampunk themed wedding.
When he came to pick up the games, his wife gave me this pink handmade pillow with chibi Star Wars characters for my newborn daughter.
Last year, I joined Post.news. The open and accepting crowd inspired me to start drawing again after years of fearful, constipated dormancy.
I started a series of hand sketches forming the ASL manual alphabet. After a few letters I started adding alliterative sentences. A month into this exercise, I was forced back into the office.
Reinserting a commute into my routine was so disruptive that I dropped the project before completing it.
~
A couple weeks ago I also joined Substack Notes. One of the first folks I met was Charlene Storey, who started a weekly ritual to share pictures of “everyday magic”.
Given my interest in the mundane objects that surround us (I earned my 2003 NaNoWriMo by writing about the stuff in my tiny garage apartment), it’s a perfect way to jump into the new stream.
~
I should finish the alphabet series, but I also like this new weekly thing and I don’t want to wait half a year before archiving these memories.
So for the next 26 weeks, I’ll be doing a series of unplanned diptychs. Let’s see how it goes.
Many years ago, a BoardGameGeek user in Australia asked me to receive several shipments before his arrival in Vegas to attend a friend’s steampunk themed wedding.
When he came to pick up the games, his wife gave me this pink handmade pillow with chibi Star Wars characters for my newborn daughter.
This movie is a modern industry propaganda film with the all-American narration of Jeff Bridges, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
It highlights the altruistic sides of the engineering profession — building a bridge in rural Haiti, earthquake analysis in Nepal, and teaching robotics to disadvantaged children. It didn’t convince my daughter to enter the industry, but I enjoyed the heartwarming reminder of why I got into this business.
We joined this profession for a good job, but we didn’t just stay for a tidy nest egg. We change physical reality — we walk over, under, and into our projects. Other professions can’t provide such tangible results.
Given our fears of the incoming pandemic, I skipped his wake, though I left some offerings outside his studio before the world shut down.
I met Alex in his studio during a First Friday art walk soon after moving to Vegas ten years ago. He was working on a series of collages with old black and white magazine images on a black scratchboard background.
It has an intense focus on good and bad (defilement), a clear conception of hell, a strident moral directive evangelize (alleviate suffering), and even included a chapter of detailed logical argumentation to prove the another world is more real than our physical world.
While reading the Bodhicaryavatara, I was struck at its resonance with Christianity.
It has an intense focus on good and bad (defilement), a clear conception of hell, a strident moral directive evangelize (alleviate suffering), and even included a chapter of detailed logical argumentation to prove the another world is more real than our physical world.
I did not expect the book to rhyme so closely to my experience as a reformed Baptist high schooler — there even multiple passages that even vilifies sexual desire!
My wife and her parents speak dialect at home. It can be off-putting to be left out at the dinner table, but I speak English with my wife, so it evens out.
I occasionally mention that she should teach the kids Hangzhou Hua, but I know that it will never happen. My sister and I also started in Chinese but migrated to English after hitting elementary school.
The other day, we tested them on the dialect. Like my halting mandarin, they have a functional knowledge of their mother’s tongue without speaking it.
I’ve always thought I’d read some Chinese philosophy, someday.
That day came on a sunny afternoon my mind was blown as I was parking my car behind E-Jo, a Korean bone broth restaurant. The History of China podcast was talking about a Han dynasty emperor who used Daoism as his ruling ideology.
That blew my mind. I always thought Daoists were crazy drunks in a forest, not competing with Confucians in the halls of power.
I’m only a third through The Box, but I can already recommend it.
A good history book creates context and energizes the mind. As we wrestle with the advent of AI, Levinson tells a a story of disruption that rhymes with what I fear we will see in the coming years.
The world of shipping was completely different up through the first half of the 20th century before the invention and adoption of containers. Then the 50’s and 60’s flipped it upside down.
I snuck out of Berkeley with an architecture degree even though I only completed one architecture studio (while dropping out of a second architecture studio, taking three visual studies studios and one landscape architecture studio).
The landscape studio consisted of a series of quick projects, including this exploration of remediating an abandoned rail line using plants to pull heavy chemicals out of the soil.
It seemed fitting to share this long buried project for Earth Day.
This studio was as much an art studio as a design studio, which isn’t a surprise when you check out Professor Chip Sullivan. This piece was an homage to old science fair presentations, with infographics and drawings, using oil pastels and ink.
With the re-discovery of my old fountain pen late last year, I am now finally finishing the very last of that red ink, twenty three years later.
Over a cup of coffee, my friend defined a group of design students who are basically art majors. There is much appeal to straddling both worlds. What can be better than savoring a creation with no “ifs” about how it might actually be in “real life”? To make is the most primal human activity. Yet “to make” also encompasses “to imagine”. To think a drawing represents a viable space 57,600 times its size, to believe “these” certain lines will best direct the movement of hundreds of people over the next fifty years — that demands imagination. A design education challenges and refines raw imagination. For those who cannot rise above the flatland of pure art or refuse to descend from a theoretical ivory tower, let them remain trapped. While the opportunity remains, I will precariously attempt to scale both worlds high on caffeine.
It’s a bit cringe to read what you wrote as a 20 year old.
~
Hindu thought includes a roadmap of life with four stages. These college drawings were the climax of my work as a Student.
In their system, I should be wrapping up my time as a Householder, but I’ve got another fifteen years before Retirement (I doubt the ancient system expected folks to be making babies in their late thirties…or Social Security age limits).
Even though I might be late on the ancient Hindu time schedule, I’ve noticed that my attitude has changed towards work in the past eighteen months. I’ve lost appetite for business books. I still think about my role as a project manager, but I no longer study “leadership”. I work a hard 40 hours, but I’m not turning that dial up to 11.
I wonder if that next stage in life will be in letters, as with my little library, or if it will be a return to making art.
If it’s the latter, I need to make some space to get messy. It’s been much too long since I’ve gotten my hands dirty.
I snuck out of Berkeley with an architecture degree even though I only completed one architecture studio (while dropping out of a second architecture studio, taking three visual studies studios and one landscape architecture studio).
The landscape studio consisted of a series of quick projects, including this exploration of remediating an abandoned rail line using plants to pull heavy chemicals out of the soil.
It seemed fitting to share this long buried project for Earth Day.
Living in a democracy is a great privilege, but most of human history developed in tyrannies that we would find unbearable. And yet, our ancestors persisted to create a society with the rich cultural heritage that we enjoy today.
We should fight hard to protect our freedoms and improve the world. But I hope that our legacy will be more than a properly functioning government.
Politics is a worthy vocation for those who are called. Thank to all who fight the good fight. As citizens, we have a responsibility to vote intelligently, so we can’t just completely tune out current events.
I get the disappointment in the Dominion settlement. But $787M is an ungodly sum of money.
As someone who manages capital improvement projects for the State, I’m the guy who naturally abbreviates $787,000,000.00 to $787M. I know what that kind of money can do. It’s our Division’s project budget — for half a decade! Or 10 university buildings. Or a hospital with a thousand psychiatric beds. Or a million square feet of office space, including land, fully updated.
<h2><a href="https://www.grizzlypear.com/digital-signatures-2/">Digital Signatures</a></h2>
<p><p>When I joined the State, we processed paperwork manually.</p>
Vendor mails Invoice to Accounting in Carson City
Accounting interdepartmental mails invoice to Public Works
Public Works admin mails invoice down to Las Vegas
Project Manager mails signed invoice up to Public Works in Carson City
Deputy Administrator mails signed invoice across the street to Accounting.
Accounting mails Check to Vendor.
Physical paper shuffled across our state 6 (SIX!) times to pay a simple invoice.
