Late last year, I started drawing a little. I had joined Post.news and wanted to see more art in my feed. I decided that I had to make some of my own in order to manifest this desire into reality.
The drawings are nothing special, but it was good to start moving my hand again.
Hands are a rich subject. They are very hard to perfectly, but they are quite forgiving to make decent. It’s just a matter of breathing slowly and taking your time.
This exercise is highly recommended for anyone that wants to get out of the digital vortex of the 21st century.
Index Finger pointing towards the Right.An open palm with my Pelikan Fountain Pen cap resting on my fingers.Two attempts at a twisted wrist. I wish I could say it was a nice stretch, but it was just tiring.
I have a perverse desire to so the unglamorous side of my profession, and without something flashier at the top of my mind, let’s do it again!
Five years ago, my neighbors mentioned that they were taking over an old shop on Fremont Street to create a wedding chapel. They were planning on a minimalist buildout, but still needed an architect to analyze the conversion from a Business Occupancy to an Assembly Occupancy. Such a change increases the risk of the space since cramming a bunch of people into a room is is inherently more dangerous than stocking merchandise.
My boss was kind enough to write up a simple hourly proposal for a basic code analysis. I set up shop at the PublicUs coffeeshop around the corner, field verified the space, hyper caffeinated to save my neighbors on fee, and banged this out in a day.
The clients did all the work from there — I take zero credit for their enormous investment of sweat equity for the buildout.
In the past few years, I changed jobs, we moved, a pandemic happened, and they moved. I never got to see the place in action, but their original partner is still running the place so if you want a cool spot to get married (or elope!) check out Flora Pop and her Sure Thing Chapel in Downtown Las Vegas.
A single sheet drawing with an architectural code analysis for a Tenant Improvement showing an occupant load of less than 50, allowing the clients to use the space with minimal modifications.
After reading Burkeman’s excellent 4000 Hours, I borrowed this cheeky little BBC radio series “The Power of Negative Thinking” on Overdrive/Libby.
Strangely, the last half hour is a non-sequitur program about “Imposter Syndrome”.
To be honest, I’ve never really struggled with Imposter Syndrome. I’ve always had a good knack about my own skills and strengths and never felt the need to hide my vulnerabilities.
Such openness might have cost me some opportunities, but it also saved me from a lot of stress. If someone hired me, I always felt, “I’ve been honest about what I can provide, so if it goes wrong, they shoulder much of the blame for picking me.”
But Imposter Syndrome seems to be a real issue for a lot of folks, and I suspect this is a great piece for someone who suffers from it.
The first hour about negative thinking is fun, so in all, it’s worth the hour and a half if you can find it at your library.
The flip side of leaving Houston ten years ago is arriving in Las Vegas ten years ago.
Gotta celebrate that with the King, though Ann-Margaret completely owns this scene, shot in the old UNLV gymnasium, now the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.
A few years ago, I was roped into assisting with the state’s transition to a new Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP), updating our ancient web-software backbone to link all our HR and financial information.
Anyone who has helped implement an ERP can attest, it’s a complicated effort — enough that this initiative has been put on hold for a year.
I’m an architect, not an accountant. But as a project manager, I’m now accountant-adjacent. A big part of my job is preparing and moving documents around. As the division’s representative, my goal was to make sure that they didn’t set up the system in a way that make our lives as Project Manager 2’s harder after implementation.
It was an enlightening experience. I’ve always been the Architect-Consultant who is hired to fix a problem. Things shifted a little when I joined the state and became the Owner.
This was the first time that I was just a User.
It’s hard! These consultants swoop in with minimal knowledge of how I do my job. They shove my needs into a their workflow for their brand new, opaque system. They don’t know what I do, and I barely know what they do. In this case, I was doubly ignorant — of both software and accountant-speak. Amidst the confusion, I was keenly aware of the high stakes because we were gonna be stuck with this program for the rest of my career.
I’d like to think I was a reasonably humble architect, but being a User is humbling at a whole other level! I was powerless, just praying that the experts listened to my pleas and followed through on their promises. I appreciate that a new software platform presents opportunities for positive change, but it felt like they were following their own standard playbook without addressing our specific concerns. It didn’t help that as a project manager, I was extra-sensitive to how they were mismanaging the process. It was so frustrating that I lost my temper a few times, once in a large meeting!
Aside from that shameful embarrassment, this effort gave me a chance to build great relationships with our accountants (nothing builds comradery as an uncaring outside force).
And in a moment of inspiration I threw together this diagram showing how the new system will allow to analyze our project finances along multiple dimensions.
I’m inordinately fond of this diagram, maybe because it melds my current work with my old life. I doubt a non-architect would have realized that an axonometric drawing could sell the potential of the new ERP!
Alt Text: Axonometric diagram of the ERP tracking project funds on multiple dimensions. The different funding sources are shown as different layers on the vertical axis, with cost categories on the X axis and project phasing on Y axis of each spreadsheet. I suspect my early experience as a hand draftsman is why I love axon’s.
We spent our last night in Houston a decade ago on 2/13/2013.
The apartment was packed up and we’d head out for Las Vegas on Valentines Day.
In honor of our years H-town, here is a ridiculous song that captures the brashness of that energetic city in all its problematic glory.
We miss it.
After a long delay from a busted tire on the car trailer the next day, we’d enjoy our most memorable Valentines Dinner eating packaged salad on the parking lot at Buc-ee’s in San Antonio (as in sitting on the concrete tarmac and eating our meal, cause they didn’t have picnic tables at the truck stop).
The girl was an awful sleeper as a baby. This lullaby emerged over hours of trying to walk her to sleep.
小宝宝去睡觉 (little precious, go to sleep)
It never worked.
Not for her. Not for him.
It just riles them up. So I sing it at every opportunity.
Last year, I transcribed it into Flat.io so you can now hear it as a round, because I doubt I’ll ever convince anyone in the family to sing along with me.
