Speed Bumps on the Road of Progress

Took Wednesday off this week for mental health after spending much time on a large apartment project that went out last Friday for a HUD submission. Didn't really need it but there's basically nothing to work on after spending Monday and Tuesday cleaning my office and email account. On Monday we had to reprint everything on the electronically for the apartments as the owner decided to change the name of the project. That after the owner decided last Wednesday that several of the apartment types were too small and needed more area. Funny that the same owner told the architect the unit types were too large about five months ago and needed to be smaller. Ah, the sweet sound of add service work.

Part of my day off included a trip to Best Buy for a couple 320GB, 7200 rpm, hard drives. I'll be doing a drive upgrade and backup on my PC at work. I've tried getting a backup drive since I'm paranoid about drive failure - a not uncommon thing around our office recently with machines of the same model and age. Hopefully, the change-over will go easy and as planned.

Our CAD manager has been trying for two weeks to get AutoCAD 2010 installed on the machines for those of us still using R2009 and R2008. I'm in the latter group having the older version. I was suppose to have gotten R2009 during the middle of last year.

I've had Revit MEP Suite 2009 on my PC for over one and half years. I've never used it. Why? No freaking Revit work - period. Every Revit project that we agreed to do using Revit has died either before we got a model file or shortly after we got it. We had some that would have been perfect for first-time project 12 to 20-story hotels were some. Other projects clients have done in Revit were not agreed to be done in Revit for MEP. That's right we've had Revit for almost two years and haven't done a project, real or practice. Not sure that it matters much given the low quantity of work. Frustrating. Yet, it may be an opportunity in the near future should a Revit project happen.

Friday's hard drive swap at work was thwarted by lack of a data cable. No spare in the case nor in the server room. Has to wait until Monday when I'll take in a cable from home. Purchased a Thermaltake BlacX Duet docking station for home in an attempt to further a drive swap on a notebook that failed a few months ago. Data transferred just fine as the Seagate Disc Wizard did the job. Big headache is a screw holding the old hard drive to the secured mounting cage - will not come loose and now the Phillips slot is borked. Tried it warm and cold and with needle-nose pliers. No luck. Next step is grinding it off with a Dremel tool. Such a headache to go to 500GB from 160GB.

Once done with the hard drive swap at work and installing the second HD for a RAID-1 configuration through the BIOS, I'll go back to a spec section rewrite I worked on last Thu/Fri dedicated to "Mechanical Sequences of Operation" that I started three years ago and never really finished. After using it several times and complaining to myself for never finishing it, the time finally arrived. Couldn't get last week off so much of my time was spent doing office stuff. Over 100 sequences identified. Some system sequences will be isolated as insert supplements due to complexity and degree of LEED certification.

From then on, I'm back to the apartment project for coordination (read "changes"), COMcheck calculation which will require using a spread sheet to total all the surfaces (two glass types, multiple window sizes, two roof types, four directions, outer walls and courtyard - had to do it on another project a couple years ago so the spreadsheet is already formatted) and then spec review/redline/change.

Got news on Friday that was a bit confusing. Not sure where some things are headed at work. Some annual expense issues are coming up and the discussions make me a bit uneasy about workload this year. Could be sheer lack of information on my part. If so, the decisions made are part of the corporate officers responsibility and I'm not one of those. Odd situation considering how much future work is on the books. Big difference between the past year and those before has been the time lag between major milestone issues for projects. We once had DD/Permit/CD issues that were spaced about two weeks apart. Now they're a month apart and may include a couple more milestone issues. Time equals money and the projects are eating up more time.

Got to remind myself to keep a positive outlook but I'm thinking of making some preparations for the future.