We could all use some protection

Occasionally in the office we have external suppliers come in and give lunch and learn presentations so that we'd hopefully specify their products in our designs. I love these lunch and learns; the content and quality of the presentations vary wildly but I'm a sucker for free food, so I always go.

On Monday, we're having a presentation on Cathodic Protection of Concrete Structures:

For those who don't know, the big problem with concrete, especially near road surfaces in places where snow and ice is a problem, is the corrosion of the steel reinforcing bars (rebars) inside. Concrete is permiable, so dissolved chlorides come in and cause the steel to corrode. Concrete is also really strong in compression but really weak in tension. There are two main problems with this: 1) that rebar is there to give the concrete strength in tension, and if you remove some steel, then your concrete structure isn't as strong anymore, and 2) rust takes up more space than the original steel, so this results in tensile stresses within the concrete as the rust tries to expand, which will cause the outer cover of concrete to spall off. Very bad stuff.

Now there are a few ways to combat this. The main thing we do now that we didn't do in decades past is use much more concrete cover (thickness of concrete between the exposed surface and the rebar). This will greatly delay the ingress of chlorides. Other options are coating the rebar with epoxy so that the chlorides can't get to it or using stainless steel.

Cathodic protection is another method. In an electrochemical cell, the anode corrodes and the cathode doesn't. So if you connect a block of metal to your steel that has a higher electrochemical potential than steel, this will act as a sacrificial anode, itself rusting while pushing more electrons into the steel and preventing it from rusting. You can also used impressed current cathodic protection, which uses a power source.

However, the email notice for the lunch and learn said Catholic Protection.

With recent news out of Ireland, I guess it would be a good idea to have protection from Catholics.

6:00am + 1 Thunderstorm + 14m Deep Pit = 1 Crappy Morning

This morning I went to visit my hole. It is currently less than 3m away from its final depth of 14m. It's getting big and scary and, miraculously, it hasn't fallen down yet. I was required to go observe the stressing of the last level of soil anchors. This was problem #1 - the stressing was supposed to start at 7:30am, meaning I would have to leave at 6:30am to get there, further meaning that I would have to get up at 6:00am. As I am not a morning person, this was excruciatingly painful. Excruciatingly. However, I appear to be getting smarter: unlike last time, I remembered my safety boots and hardhat so I didn't have to drive all the way home again.

Things started well when I got there. Then the rains came. It started as a sprinkle, then died. The contractors said that if it rained too much, they'd have to take their trucks out of the pit and stop construction because the pit would be impossible to leave if it got too muddy. Well, it started to sprinkle again, then we saw some lightning and heard a thunderclap somewhere in the distance. Then another, closer. Then the deluge started. The contractors hustled to their trucks, desperate to get them out of the pit before the access slope got too muddy, stopping only for essentials, like lighting up a cigarette.

The first truck made it up okay. The second truck required 3 runs at the slope and all of it's 300+ horsepower to make it up, sending up huge plumes of mud in its wake. Man, did it get muddy in a hurry; my boots were so heavy I could barely walk. Those of us not in trucks hid under a steel beam protruding from the wall, that is, until the thunderstorm came closer overhead and the potential for electrocution outweighed the certainty of getting very wet. As we abandoned our refuge, we realized that the rain was decreasing in intensity, and, within about 15 minutes or so, it was actually getting a little sunny. It was too late, though; the deluge had turned the entry slope into a big, muddy Slip 'n' Slide, and we could see in the horizon that more rain would be on the way eventually. There would be no stressing of anchors today.

So the result? I woke up freakishly early (by my admittedly nocturnal standards), drove about an hour through frustrating construction, got rained on, found my clothes (and myself) to be covered in mud, and we didn't even accomplish any of what we set out to do; all this while I should have been in the office doing design work on stuff that's already running behind.

However, the morning wasn't a total loss. For instance, I learned that the two most popular words among construction workers these days are "fucker" and "cocksucker," which they use to address each other (jovially) and to refer to consultants (this includes me, while I'm within earshot - decidedly not jovially).

Stressing has been postponed to Friday and Monday, and someone still needs to observe on our behalf. It won't be me, though. I'm going on vacation until Tuesday. So long, Suckas!

I was at church and a wedding broke out

I'm sure most of you have had the experience: going to a wedding at a church where it seems like the soon-to-be married couple is the farthest thing from the mind of the officiant. Instead, the whole wedding is just one big church service sandwiched between a woman in an expensive white dress walking up and down the aisle and interspersed with the same woman and a sweaty, nervous guy exchanging rings and kissing; apart from those distractions, you might as well just show up to church Sunday morning and you'll get the same thing.

Over the weekend, I went to the wedding of a friend from undergrad. And you know what? This wedding was almost the opposite of the stereotypical church wedding. It was great, it was outdoors in nice weather - not a church in sight. The thing is, my friend, the bride, is from rural Ontario, but the groom is from Jordan. I can't think of a more opposite set of homes. The wedding itself was non-denominational. I couldn't even tell if the officiant was a pastor or something and his affiliation was never mentioned.

The ceremony did have some religious elements. The officiant read a passage from each of the bride and groom's "faith traditions," as he called them, not mentioning either by name. Surprisingly, the two passages, from the Bible (a psalm of some sort) and the Koran, did not mention God at all and instead focused on love and family. Secondly, a Unity Tree (I have never heard of this before, but I'm guessing it's a Muslim thing) was included as part of the ceremony, and it was supposed to be watered with spring water from Mecca and have rocks from each of their hometowns placed alongside. Turns out my friend left all of these at her parents' house so they used two rocks they found on the site and some bottled water. Oh well.

Anyway, wedding was good, reception was excellent (open bar, hehehe). The reception was actually held in my old university cafeteria that I ate in every day for almost all of first year. The food we got was never close to as good as the food at the reception.

One freaky thing was that we were seated at a table with a girl who went to elementary school with me. She was in french-immersion so I had no idea who she was. She remembered me though. Fortunately, she told no embarrassing stories to my wife, only saying that me and my brother were brilliant and won all the academic awards at graduation. Very true. Well, that and saying that I was a nerd, which is also true. Still true, actually; I'm not sure about the brilliant part.

Implications of the Minneapolis bridge collapse

By now, everyone has heard of the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed, and some of you are probably wondering if I have any special insights because of my having a masters in structural engineering.

Answer: no, not really. We've been talking about it at the office, sure, but we really don't have access to any of the structural reports, better photos, etc, so we have no idea specifically why the bridge collapsed.

In more general terms, the big story is the massive infrastructure deficit - the gap between needed and actual infrastructure investment - in North America right now. That's right, it's a serious problem in Canada, too. According to Canadian experts, Canada faces an infrastructure deficit of $74 billion, with $10 billion of that due to bridges. That's a significant amount of coin. Of course, it's much much worse in the States right now, so it's amazing that more structures haven't fallen.

That's part of the reason why I did my masters research in the field that I did. My research was under the umbrella of the ISIS Canada (Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Structures) Research Network. Their goal is to make our structures more sustainable and durable by incorporating lightweight, non-corrodible synthetic structural materials into buildings, either for new construction or for repair and refit(the "Innovative Structures" part), as well as using fibre-optic sensing systems and other high-tech computerized monitoring methods to ensure that our structures are performing as desired (the "Intelligent Sensing" part).

As for what the collapse means for us, as my boss put it, it means we'll be very busy with bridge inspections for the next little while. In typical political knee-jerk fashion, my boss got a call almost immediately after the collapse from the local municipality asking him how long until their bridges collapse and if we can inspect stuff for them. It's a good time for us business-wise, but it's sad that it takes a tragedy like this to get politicians on the move when the underlying problem is already so well known.

Same start, different result

A friend of mine from undergrad is getting married in two weeks. I would have invited her to my wedding but, at the time, we had lost track of each other. It wasn't until a freak run-in last year at the Toronto Zoo that we got back in touch.

We were both in the same program and took mostly the same classes in structural engineering; however, even though both our jobs are based out of the GTA, our professional lives have gotten very different since then.

I did a masters and went into structural design. She went into the construction industry. There's a big difference. I sit in a cubicle doing designs and analysis. If I'm lucky, I get to go to Newmarket, or Cobourg. She's the engineer who plans and supervises contruction. Routinely, her job takes her to places like Alberta, Quebec, and Newfoundland; she's currently in the Bay of Fundie overseeing construction of a jetty. She spends little time in the office, is always away from home, and works extremely long days on a regular basis, followed by many days off. I do a daily 8-5 grind.

The thing is, even though we can see the advantages of the other person's job, we both prefer to do what we're doing. As much as I would like to get out of my drab grey cubicle more often, I want to design stuff and would feel stiffled overseeing other people's work. She would like to spend more time at home but likes being out where the action is too much. We both have the same degree, but our work lives have almost nothing in common.

One thing worth noting: when you're actually doing construction, you see the potential carnage vividly and in-person, rather than just having some vague image in the back of your mind with the associated dread. She related a story about driving massive steel piles for the jetty. The piles were brought into position on a barge while a boat-based crane picked up each pile and drove them into the seabed below. For this one particular installation, several piles had been installed successfully when the cable securing the next pile to the crane snapped, sended the pile plummeting back to the deck of the barge. The barge superstructure was damaged, one of the piles sitting on the deck of the barge was destroyed, and, as the dropped pile slid off the barge and sank irretrievably to the murky depths below, it managed to hit and damage the pile that they had just installed. Furtunately no one was hurt, but the cost and delays were significant.

The funny thing: each of the damaged objects fell under a completely separate insurance policy. The dropped pile counted as "lifted material", the barge was "equipment", the destroyed pile on the deck was "cargo", and the damaged installed pile was considered "finished structure". Aren't legal distinctions great?

...

One more thing: my friend's wedding is going to be open bar. Huzzah!

Monday Rant: People taking stuff and not telling me

I'm in the structural department but right now I'm designing the structural components of a job from the mechanical department. It's pipeline support system and part of my job requires me to put together a specifications document (specs) relating to all the materials that will be used to construct the damn thing. In this case, we have sections for cast-in-place concrete, structural steel, concrete formwork, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary, but still I have to tailor our general specs to fit the job.

So I'm marking up these specs by hand last week and I'm just about done. Friday rolls around and all of a sudden the specs have disappeared from my desk. I search everywhere, bother my supervisor to see if I accidentally left it on his desk, turn my office upside-down and inside-out, completely spazzing looking for it. I finally gave up and went home. This morning I come in and have a meeting with the mechanical department people. They inform me that they've printed up the specs I gave them. Oh? How'd they do that? Some damn mech person pinched the document from my desk without telling me. They didn't so much as leave me a freakin' post-it note. How thoughtful. I spazzed out for two hours plus worried for most of the weekend over this damned thing and all they had to do was leave a note. Nothing much, just "I've taken the spec - mech" would do. Is that too much to ask?

It's not even just the waste of my time (actually, my supervisor wasted a little time searching his desk, too); it's also bad business. Turns out I wasn't even done doing the markups yet. I could have told them that much on Friday if they had informed me they were taking it. Instead, it wastes more time because I have to have them redo it again with the additional changes. Now imagine what happens if they believe this is final copy and ready to send out? If they steal a half-done document off my desk and send it out, then what? We're screwed, that's what.

I am a gigantic idiot

In that my recent idiocy is quite spectacular, rather than me being an idiot and also being very large. I assure you that I am of reasonable height and weight.

So why am I a gigantic idiot? Probably because yesterday was one long stream of stupid actions by me. You see, yesterday I had to visit a job site - actually a giant excavation where the shoring system was designed by me. Shoring in this case comprises steel piles with timber lagging in between forming a wall. The wall stays upright because each pile is held to the backill via a very long soil anchor. The soil anchor itself is a steel tendon with a cast-in-place concrete end. Here's a picture of a shoring system. Mine isn't quite so large. When I went yesterday, mine was about 1/4 the height of this one; when done, it will be about 3/4. Note also that this was the first time I had ever been in/on/otherwise endangered by a structure that I had designed. It was frightening. VERY frightening.


The project leader wanted me to go out to the site as the contractor was stressing the soil anchors a) because I designed them and could make sure they were doing things right, and b) because I've never seen such things before in real life and could learn a thing or two about the industry. Fair enough.

I had to get to the job site by 8:30, and given the traffic in the greater Toronto area in the morning, I had to leave by 7:30 - very early by my standards. So I go straight from home to the job site, barely making it on time, walking into the construction supervisor's trailer and immediately realizing that I forgot my safety boots, vest, and hardhat in my cubicle at work. I said "hello" and promptly turned around and drove back to the office. An hour and a half later, I finally returned to the job site and installation could proceed.

By this time, the contractor and the geotechnical consultant were at each other's throats regarding testing procedures for stressing the soil anchors. This was not my fault directly; turns out we did not send the installation specifications to the contractor but that was the project manager's responsibility. Unfortunately, he wasn't there; I was. So the result was much heated discussion directed at me.

Additionally, there was more confusion about the anchor installation that due to me. The most recent set of drawings based on my designs had certain anchor stress levels shown. However, the contractor's team was referring to a shop drawing produced by their supervisors to determine the anchor stresses. My company had reviewed and okayed their shop drawing several weeks ago; however, in the meantime the design had changed somewhat and the stress values were now different. For some reason, these changes, which were communicated to everyone else, did not reach the anchor contractors. So there I am, the designer of the structure, holding an official stamped drawing saying what the stresses should be, and the contractor is arguing back saying that the stresses should be something else, using as evidence a different drawing that is signed by me. So I'm basically conflicting with myself. In short order it's decided that present me is correct and past me is wrong and we go with the proper stresses. Nonetheless, it reflects really poorly on me that I couldn't keep track of my own design stresses.

I eventually solved the testing procedures thing by sacrificing my lunch, using the hour to contact other people at my company, eventually getting the project manager to send me an email with the new procedure on it. This enabled the now happy geotech consultant and the contractor to get down to work at 1:00. Regardless, it still meant a critical two morning hours down the toilet.

Anyway, after a good half-day's work for them and many hours standing in a dusty hole for me, I start to leave at 3:00. When I got to my car, I realized that my keys are gone. In a panic, I ran back to the hole and got all the contractor and geotech people to help me look for my keys. Nada. I then retraced my steps and realized that it's highly likely that I was really, really stupid and locked my keys in the trunk of my car. I ended up calling CAA and one of their service guys came and broke into my car for me (impressively and frighteningly able to do so within 5-10 seconds); however, this did not have the desired effect, at least not right away. The plan was that he'd open the door to the car, then I could us the internal mounted trunk switch located on the driver's door to open the trunk get and my keys. In reality, my car's alarm system went off, not only producing an incredible honking, but disabling the internal trunk switch as well. I still could not get in. The one saving grace here was that my car has pass-through rear seats, which I fortunately never bother to lock. I was able to crawl into the trunk that way and use the emergency interior latch to open the trunk. And behold! my keys were there and not at the bottom of a dirty pit. Huzzah!

Concrete Canoes!

This year the Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition was held at my old university over the Mother's Day weekend. Already home for the weekend to visit my mom, my wife and I decided to pop by for the finals. The fact that it was being filmed for the Discovery Channel and hosted by Survivorman Les Stroud just added to the cool factor. I love Les's show, mainly for his continual assurances that he "hates killing wildlife, but in a survival situation, all life is fair game" just before he whacks some little critter on the head and eats it.

The concrete canoe compeition is exactly what it sounds like. Teams of civil engineering students build a canoe out of concrete and race the suckers. And yes, they do float - they just have to displace more than they weigh. In the past, we were actually able to make concrete that was less dense than water but the rules have changed a little and the artificial aggregate we used to help accomplish this is now illegal for health reasons.

I competed back in 2002 at the island in Toronto. Me and one other guy who is just finishing his belated masters now (and was actually one of the organizers of this year's competition) were the first people to set foot in our school's boat. It was quite frightening, but very quickly we found out how good our canoe was. It was very robust and handled just as well as a real canoe. Being there brought back a lot of memories, though the weather this year was a lot better than cold, hypothermia-inducing rain we had in 2002.

The good news is that the Discovery Channel will be airing a segment on the concrete canoe race tonight on Daily Planet (7:00 and 11:00 Eastern), and the whole event is up on the website.

The best news is that I got to have my picture taken with Survivorman!

Very Busy

I've been ridiculously busy at the office recently, meaning blogging has all but vanished over the past week. I'm so far behind and I still have a meme or two that I've been neglecting. Today I had a three hour long meeting that I probably only needed to attend for the 20 minutes that it pertained to me, but I had to sit through the whole thing anyway. I need to learn how to sleep with my eyes open.

So in the spirit of work, today I'll quickly touch on two structural engineering items:

1) The elevated highway collapse in LA Oakland - The interesting thing of note here is that the fuel from the gas tanker actually caused temperatures to reach the melting point of steel ~1510ºC (note that the temperature isn't exact as it depends on the proportion of the elements in the alloy), though this temperature is unnecessary to cause a structural collapse. Here's what happens to the strength of structural steel as it is heated.As you can see, even at half the melting temperature, the steel gets very weak indeed; though still a solid, the steel may no longer be able to support the applied loads and the structure will collapse. This is what researchers believed happened in the World Trade Center.(Image cred here)

2) I've been working as a structural engineer-in-training for almost 2 years but it's only now that I've finally seen something large that I've designed (I've seen some barrier walls I designed but they aren't very impressive). The sad thing is, it's only a temporary structure, so once it's done its job, it's coming down. The sadder thing, I haven't actually seen it in person. It's on a webcam. Aww, crap, they've changed the direction of the webcam since yesterday so you can't see it. Good thing I took a screenshot when I had the chance. So what is it? It's a support tower for the large roof trusses of an arena in Kingston, Ontario. I've circled it on the screenshot. The roof trusses are too large to be assembled on the ground so they assemble each one in two parts. One part is installed with one end sitting on the tower, then the other part is installed and the two parts are connected together. Move the tower to the location of the next truss and repeat.

So now you know: if the arena collapses during construction, I'm probably to blame.

Massacre in Virginia

By now, everybody has heard of the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech. Not sure why, but this is the second major massacre of students at an engineering building, following the Montreal shootings (to my knowledge). New reports say the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was not actually an engineer; he was an English student.

I have no idea why he would target the engineering building. Maybe coincidence? It's horrible enough that he killed 32 innocent people, but that so many of the victims were engineering students and professors brings it a little closer to home for me.

We are the Engineers...

And at PZ's blog, engineers are the topic of the day.

First, a bunch of us (and some medical professionals, plus a few misguided science types who appear to have not read the instructions that the post was directed at engineers and doctors) invaded the comments of a post to proclaim our support of science and denounce our high-profile creationist breathren. Whoohoo, I'm the 2nd guy on the list.

Second, here's a link to arguably the worst engineer in a galaxy far, far away.

Time heals all wounds, I guess

I just got back from the Iron Ring ceremony, and let me say, I was disappointed. My sister-in-law's friends and classmates who I tortured and belittled as their TA two years ago were no longer afraid of me. Nor were they still mad at me. In fact, some of them were pleased to see me. And not even in the "ha ha, you said I'd never pass, I sure showed you" kind of way - they were genuine in their pleasantness.

I don't get it. I thought I had done a better job scarring them for life. They certainly hated me at the time.

I was more scarred than them, for, at the reception afterwards, I ran into one of my superiors at work, which, since I'm not good at sucking up, is not a good thing. His daughter is one of my sister-in-law's friends, and I was left chatting with him while the two girls had a gab-fest.

As for the ceremony itself, which I'll remind you is not to be shared with non-obligated engineers, I'll just say that it's a lot easier to understand the ceremony when you attend as an audience member rather than as a graduating engineer. They give you a book with which to follow along, whereas the candidates are thrown in cold turkey.

My only other observation is that my old department was poorly represented. Only one prof and a couple of grad students I knew attended, and all left before the reception so I couldn't catch up with them. Lazy bastards.

Iron Ring Ceremony

This weekend, my wife and I are traveling back to our alma mater to attend her youngest sister's Iron Ring ceremony. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Iron Ring is a symbol of pride and humility for Canadian engineers. It originated in 1925, soon after the completion of the famous Quebec Bridge (which I had the pleasure of visiting in August), which, in addition to having the longest cantilevered bridge span in the world, also experienced two collapses during construction which killed 86 workers in total. The Iron Ring is meant to remind those entering the profession that when they screw up, people die.

Ok, that's a little melodramatic, but it still symbolizes that our first duty is not to the client but to the safety of those who would be affected by our works.

The Iron Ring itself is no longer iron; it's stainless steel, and it's worn on the pinky. It's given out in a special, secret, hokey, and cultish ceremony that usually only attended by other engineers. And if I tell you what goes on in it, I'll have to kill you. It's kinda like the Stonecutters.

What's frightening about this weekend is that, in about two months, my sister-in-law and her classmates are actually graduating from engineering. They are so young. And stupid. Hell, I wouldn't trust them to design a cardboard box. Good thing that they can't work alone as professional engineers until they get 4 years work experience as an engineers-in-training.

It seems like just yesterday, but was it really only 2 years ago that I was TAing her class in 2nd year mechanics? I have to give some background on this. I was in the 2nd year of my masters in civil engineering. It didn't look like I was going to get a TA job that term, but at the last minute I was assigned to the dregs: 2nd year mechanics and materials for mechanical engineers. I don't even know why the civil dept teaches that class - for us, it's probably the worst class to TA: the class is too big, the material is too basic, and they aren't even in our department. Still, I needed the extra money so I kept quiet about the conflict of interest (ie. TAing my fiancee's sister) and took the assignment. So I guess if they're stupid, it's partially my fault. Anyway, don't worry about the conflict of interest; I played hardball with her when she came whining to me for 20 minutes about the 1/2 mark I took off (she's smart - I didn't have to take marks off very often). All of her classmates hate me though. You see, I was really strict with them and took off tonnes of marks for neatness and organization. Now all her classmates make fun of her because she's related to me, the mean, unlikeable TA.

I'm looking forward to going back and terrorizing them, but I've got some trepidation. It really doesn't seem like 2 years have passed. I feel like an old fart.

A chance meeting at a meeting

I've been crazy busy the past week or so at work and at home so have had absolutely no time to blog for a while. You have no deadlines for a month or so, then all of a sudden they drop a half a dozen jobs on you that need to be done by the end of the day all at once. Bastards.

Last night I went to a small conference, held in Toronto, with some of the other engineers at the office to meet with structural steel fabricators, engineers, erectors (no jokes please), and researchers. The purpose was to discuss measures to streamline design codes and make the relationship between consultant engineers and steel contractors friendlier. Looking around, I saw all the engineer stereotypes abounded: all men, save one woman who's an engineer but currently working for the steel construction institute organizing events such as these; almost exclusively middle aged; mostly white guys, but some asian and middle eastern thrown in for good measure; and ample beer. Just as I thought to myself that I was going to be the youngest one there, by a lot, I heard some young, incoherent voices across the room. Further, it was the alcoholic/druggy sounding loud voice of one of my university friends who I hadn't seen in almost a year. Relieved at no longer a) not knowing anybody there at all, and b) being the youngest person there (not only is my friend a year younger than me, he was there with a colleague that looked even younger), I immediately bounded over to them, shook his hand, and bellowed, "What the hell are you doing here?!" - for I knew he hadn't graduated yet.

Anyway, he's here because his lease ran out so he moved back home to finish writing his thesis, but got a job instead. So the last month's worth of work on his thesis will now take him another 3 years to write. News from home is that my prof's cheap ways are rubbing off on the other profs, resulting in a whole crop of grad students whose master's degrees are taking longer than they should to complete and who don't get any help from the technicians.

Merry Cephalopodmas to All!

It's getting late in the season and I'm heading back home for (fictional deity)mas. I won't be back until January, so enjoy your presents below.

Here's something I drew a few years back at a grad/faculty Christmas party:


And here's what Christmas looks like in the structural engineering department where I work (Note: This should be one drawing but blogger compresses the image funny, so I had to split in two to make it smaller). Click to enlarge:



May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage, may you receive an aardvark giftwrapped under your tree, and, most importantly, make sure you protect your nuts!

The value of looking at the final draft when you are a distant 2nd author

Without lifting a finger, I got a new paper published this month in an engineering journal based on the research of me and another former grad student at my old department. The paper is just recycled stuff based on a conference paper I wrote a year and a half ago. In turn, that conference paper was just what I could scrape together from the stuff that wasn't heavily featured in the papers that me and the other grad student were already in the process of publishing. My prof, it seems, just got around to publishing this paper a little while ago without telling me or the other grad student that he was doing it. I just found out about it the other day when my prof emailed me about doing another conference paper (ASIDE: turns out he's unable to provide funding for me to go to the conference nor provide financial compensation of any sort, so there's no way in hell I'm busting my butt for a month to write that).

The problem arises in that my prof didn't ask me to review the paper before it was published. Now, I trust him when it comes to the data and discussions because he was a very hands-on supervisor and understands everything I did at least as well as I do. But there are some things that he just doesn't know. For instance, in the author contact information, he decided to enter my information for me, since he knows where I am and what engineering firm I work for. Problem is, he got confused, and instead of giving my company's address, he gave my real home address. So now, whoever goes to the journal website and views the paper's abstract can come drop by my crappy apartment. Fanfrickintastic.

The Roads in Quebec Go Round and Round...

Me and Queen Aardvark just got back from a great trip to Quebec City. If you haven't gone, go. It's like visiting Europe; city walls, narrow streets, great french and italian food (we spent entirely too much, and I ate a lot even when I wasn't hungry, just because it was so good), lots of old buildings and neat architecture. It was all good other than damaging my new digital camera.

But, as an engineer, one thing really rankled me about Quebec: the roads are crap.

Now, I'm not talking about old Quebec City; they have an excuse, in that their roads are tiny things built in the 1600s. They are allowed to be old-looking, narrow, mostly one-way, and not meet up at right angles.

But why should most of the new highways in the province be the same?

The highways in Quebec are insane. It's like they were designed by a drunk person, on top of being in generally bad states of repair.

In Ontario, we have all of our onramps and offramps on the right side of the road. Sometimes we can't do that in the middle of a big city like Toronto, so we post lots of signs far ahead so people have time to react. In Quebec, ramps come on either side haphazardly, often with only one small sign about 200m before the ramp itself. Of course, that means driving like Paul Tracy just to make your exit.

The highways are also much more complicated than they need to be. Cloverleaf structures are by nature complicated, but when Quebec does them, you'll feel like you're driving on one of those diner placemats with the childrens' mazes on them. For some reason, if you want to turn right, you will take a ramp off the left side of the road which will go under the ramp going straight and then turn right. And to turn left, you may or may not have to drive around an extra big traffic circle somehow incorporated into the cloverleaf.

Also, when you're in a big city, say, Montreal, you tend to get situations like this:
Picture a major elevated highway.
You have a large arterial road that needs to have a ramp onto the highway.
You have another large arterial road in the same neighbourhood, also needing a ramp to the highway.

So, what to do? Well, you could have two separate ramps entering the highway a slightly different locations, allowing enough time for traffic to filter in. Or you could have both arterial roads share an extra large, double lane ramp to accomodate all the traffic.

Or, you could do what Montreal does on a regular basis: have both roads share a ramp, but make the ramp only a single lane, causing a gigantic traffic backup clogging both arterial roads.

I think I know why Quebec drivers are crazy, and it's not their fault; their highways make them that way.

On the plus side, we (my wife and I are both engineers) made a pilgrimmage to see the Quebec Bridge, which is the inspiration for Iron Rings Canadian engineers wear on their pinkies.