Diving Pictures

            It was another good year for diving. As always, I was sure to keep my camera handy for any photogenic fishes. I found a couple, and a couple that weren’t fishes too.

            Working in North Dakota over the summer, I didn’t make it to the lake as much as I would like. I went out a few times, and took a few pictures:

A bass by some rocks

  

A catfish

            Much more exciting that any lake in South Dakota was my trip to St. John in the Virgin Islands. I spent a whole week snorkeling in the Caribbean, and it was stupendous. There were white sand beaches with coral and all sorts of exciting stuff just off shore. Plenty of good picture material:

This was one of the first things I saw

  

All the fish and coral!

Black fish

Blue fish

  

One fish

Two fish

Bold fish

Shy Fish

Fish with small fins

Fish with big fins

Lots of little of fish

One little fish

And these guys was probably my favorite

            All those were just the common stuff. There were some less common fish that I was able to spot too. These are the pictures I’m proudest of:

This one lived in a hole and was really good at swimming backwards

Most of the stuff that I had a hard time finding was nocturnal, so they would do stuff like hide in the rocks

This one could change color!

He looks mean, but he wasn’t very big

A sinister cephalopod

And the elusive Porcupinefish

            There were also a few things I found away from the coral. Things that weren't bony fish:

  

Rays were pretty common, but this was the biggest one I saw

A Cuttlefish and some Conchs

I really had to zoom for this one to catch it out of its shell

Another crab

And I can’t forget these dudes

            My only complaint about going to the Caribbean was that fresh water diving really doesn’t compare. Still totally worth it. I also have some pictures I took above the water, but this post was already long enough. Next time.

Work Pictures

So, I took a lot of pictures last year that I think are pretty alright. I want to share them, and the easiest way to do that would be to just have a few picture dump posts.

I’ll start off with some pictures I took while working. A camera is useful for documenting what is going on while surveying or observing construction, so I always carry one. It’s nice to have pictures that show where you were and what was going on. Plus, if the project makes it into the company newsletter you need some nice pictures to go with the article. I think I ended up with some decent project shots:

This is a Right of Way stake

A scoria pit that I helped survey

An old railroad tunnel

One of the more action packed moments of culvert installation

There are also plenty of non-work related pictures. I covered a good portion of western North Dakota over the summer, and I’d take landscape pictures whenever the scenery caught my eye:

  

Yeah, they’re just backlit trees in a cow pasture 

A canola field

  

Fields of flax

       

            No sunset pictures this trip. There are also the non-landscape features of North Dakota. Surprise, they're related to oil:

A common sight

You can generally see a couple of gas flares no matter where you’re at

The thing I always got the most excited about was wildlife photos. Maybe I just think that getting a picture of something that's alive takes more skill:

A dragonfly that landed on my passenger seat

An enormous fly

A Flickertail Gopher 

 

Cows!

Leopard Frog

A salamander I found hiking though the road ditch

Who would I be if I didn’t hunt down some waterfowl?

This is technically just a fresh water diving bird, but I’ll take it

And a bunch of lovely ducks

 

I even found some duck eggs

            I also took some picture to document the state of my life on the road. Pictures to capture the essence of what was important and what parts of life became inconsequential:

  

All I kept in my fridge was beef jerky and dill pickles

These are right of way peas, and they were a major part of my diet

Here is the other half of my diet

Here is my face after a day of surveying

 

Road Beard

My take of hotel toiletries for the summer

            I had a good time working over the summer, and not just because of all the pictures. There were boring or tedious moments, as with any job, but give me a camera and I’ll find something interesting (a book, and mp3 player full of podcasts also help). I also like to take pictures in my free time, especially while diving. Up next is shots I took while snorkeling.

Two Weeks Unnotice

            So I’ve decided to unquit my job. My quarter life crisis is winding down and it looks like I’m going to end up at the same place I started out.

Everything I’ve tried after quitting my job hasn’t turned out as expected. Writing didn’t work, because the stuff I’m motivated to write isn’t stuff anybody would want to read (like my dreams). I still enjoy writing, and I still want to do it. I just don’t expect it to be profitable in any monetary way. Drawing a comic didn’t go well, because I’m not a skilled artist, and I don’t have the drive to become one. Ideally, I would like to continue my comic too, but it just takes so much more time than writing, and I end up with a product that I’m never completely happy with. My comics is indefinitely on hold until I can find a better way to do them. Doing nothing was actually the worst thing I tried. The mix of guilt, ennui, and inner turmoil made it one of the most stressful periods in my life. I don’t know when I picked up the idea that any unproductive free time was something to feel bad about, but it really messes me up. My current alternate career move was to study physics, and it hasn’t turned out like I’d hoped either.

I really just wanted physics to be engineering with more math. It turns out that science and engineering have completely different way of doing things, and I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. Science seems to be about answering questions, and is concerned with the truth. Engineering looks to solve problems, and is interested in what’s functional. Personally, I have a hard time finding interest in truth, since I don’t really believe it exists. Function, on the other hand, is something I always get excited about. In the end, I care more about how things can be useful or how I can improve them, and I don’t much bother with why or how things do what they do. In school I'm taking science and engineering courses side by side. This has made me realize that I’m not cut out for science, but I've fallen back in love with engineering

What led me to engineering originally was a desire to improve the world around me. I went with civil engineering because I get more of a feeling of accomplishment from having big concrete (or steel) examples of the projects I’ve worked on. It’s hard to beat being able to watch a new road, bridge, sewer, earthwork, or building take shape. Standing back when it’s finished knowing that you had a hand in creating it. Knowing that it was improved by your involvement. It’s also fun being able to congratulate everyone on another fine erection. Subjectivity can take all the fun out of scientific discovery, but even I can’t doubt ten miles of pavement or a few thousand yards or earthwork. Civil engineering also has great puns.

During the time I spent away from engineering, all the reasons I had for quitting my job have faded away. All the motives I had for becoming an engineering in the first place have come back. Some of them stronger than ever. Since the scars have healed, I’m going to take down my old two weeks notice post. I just want to move on from all that shit. I learned a lot in the last year and a half, but the most important thing is that I got question of what I should do with my life right the first time.

G'nite 2014

Nighty Night and Sweet Dreams

The end of another year and all was ok at the Alps ….. the nightly emails continue to flow and my grandma continues to be stupendous … I wish to share this stupendousness through graphical representation …. Up first as is appropriate, is the weather …. another good year which saw me move from Pierre to Rapid City … Thankfully the temps in Pierre were still reported so there wasn’t a break in the data …. looking at that data I’d say I made an upgrade in terms of climate …. so gates

Warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer

There were almost 600 fewer degrees in Rapid City

Throughout the range of the family the weather was lovely …. as usual Gold Canyon was the hotty and New Rockford was wintery with the others a variety in between

Rapid City's 58 degree average beats Gold Canyon's 88 any day

Granny Elaine’s days were often spent baking so everyone stayed fat and happy … sewing kept her busy working on quilts, dish towels, pillow cases, and table cloths …. of course all this work resulted in the occasional nappie ….

 

March 17th was a busy day

 

Someone learned how to make a Venn Diagrams

Evenings were often spent at a card table ….. Bingo brought home roughly $113 dollars … forty nights costing $2.00 each would mean a profit of $33 for the year … There were thirty three games of dominoes played …. she won three times but it’s still not her favorite game …. Pinochle playing was on the decline with only 14 matches played resulting in 13 wins and 15 losses …. Golf was played as a last resort only three times in the last year, and it’s still regarded as a stupid game …. I always enjoyed it when I’ve played it, but I was also playing with a girl I had a crush on during my math class instead of working on the assignment so my perceptions may have been skewed ….. Roughly half of the nights of the year were spend playing Hand and Foot …. the boys showed no mercy and won 117 out of 184 games … bummer dude …. Hate when that happens

A couple of bad streaks

 

Ouch

Speaking of bummer dudes, it was another great year for catchphrases …. so gates showed up 449 times at a new record of 1.35 time per email …. Vashislous also had a good year with 42 occurrences … just look at the graph

Dudes where bummered over fifty times

It was a good year for G’nite emails in general …. I received 333 in 2014 and I may have even missed a few due to a mailing list issue early in the year …. They were sent at a much more reasonable times this year with only a few popping up in my inbox after midnight

I wish I was this reliable

 

12:00 is actually noon this time

The closing quotes were plentiful and varied …. because of this, my method of recording them didn’t hold up very well … the categories I tried to sort them into ended up being arbitrary and asinine ….the most common subject was on the trials of motherhood, which is an understandable coming from a mother of 13 children …. I’ll leave you with two that spoke to me personally …. And now it’s time for this not very ole grandson to get to bed …. I hope you all have had a good year and all is well with all of you….Take Care and I Love You All So Very Much … Cob …

“GOTTA BE TOUGH TO GET OLD METHINKS”

“IT IS BETTER TO GET SOMETHING DONE LATE THAN NEVER.”