Icewind's Ramblings

I . . . am curious to know your thoughts on this?  As you know, recent Earthquake activity has sparked death and fear throughout Chile , Haiti and Japan .  It seems that more and more earthquakes are occurring, more and more wars are beginning or starting and the rumors . . . such as Libya declaring a "jihad" of sorts against Switzerland .  What’s that all about?  Are we rushing towards the “End Times”?   What are your thoughts?  Is this simply sudden random acts of nature . . . or are the predictions of our Lord coming true? The news of yesterday’s earthquake in Chile brought to mind a bible verse I learned so long ago . . . Matthew 24:7 Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. Ring of Fire Chile and Haiti . . . Two countries . . . Two earthquakes, both tragedies and apparently two vastly different outcomes. One , Chile : a relatively wealthy nation, one of th...

I enjoyed a nice lunch on Thursday with several friends at The Peppermill restaurant.  Several of us used to work with one another and one is my new sales guy for an equipment rental company.  It was nice meeting him as my former salesman is working out of a different location so it was one of those quickly planned lunches that are usually made within the hour of everyone meeting. This day the morning started off with snow coming down on top of the semi breakup melting that happened the day before.  The water runoff had refroze overnight as the temperatures dropped and once the snow hit this morning it turned all of the roads into a slick mess.  There was a couple inches on the ground by the time I left the house and the short drive to my office found several vehicles in the ditch or others involved in a crash with someone else or into an object. By lunchtime another three inches or so had fallen and with the compaction of the vehicles the roads were in sad shap...

These last couple of weeks has found me busy traveling the state getting ready for the upcoming construction season.  I have two projects on Kodiak Island in the villages of Old Harbor and Larsen Bay .  Both have new water treatment plants (WTP) and Old Harbor also has a new water storage tank (WST) as well as 1500 feet of water transmission lines going from the existing WTP to the new WST.  These are 6” and 8” lines which will be fused together and buried in the new ¼ mile roadway up the mountain. I have made a couple trips now meeting with the village mayor and tribal leaders as to what we are going to be building and to figure out a few of the difficult aspects of this project.  Today several of us, the engineer, my superintendent, and me met with three possible subcontractors who are going to give us a bid for building the roadway, clearing the land, and making the pads that the tank and treatment plant will sit on. The flight down this morning started i...

Systems Performance Analyses of Alaska Wind-Diesel Projects; Selawik, Alaska (Fact Sheet) Last week I flew to the village of Selawik , Alaska an Inupiat Eskimo community just above the Arctic Circle .  The group I traveled with was made up of mechanical engineers, AutoCAD draftsman, construction, and Indian Health Services.  Our mission was to do an emergency evaluation of the existing water treatment plant and come up with a design and construction plan to renovate the plant as quickly as possible.  The 35% design drawings completed by another firm were almost useless as when we arrived on site we discovered much of the information in the “As-Built” drawings was wrong.  Equipment was located in the wrong place and the measurements for things were so out of whack that the easiest way for us to proceed was to make a new drawing to work from and design the new system. We gathered in the Anchorage airport just after 4 am to begin our journey first on an Alaska Ai...

I’ve been traveling a lot the last two weeks and will write about it soon but for tonight I’m home, tired and going to get a good nights sleep so more in a bit. Ice