Wasatch Wildflowers

We were lucky enough to find ourselves in Little Cottonwood Canyon at the end of August this year for our summer office party.  We met in the plaza at Snowbird and rode the tram up to the top of Hidden Peak, where we celebrated with drinks and appetizers, thankful that we had another year to be together, doing what we love.   Then we headed back down the mountain to enjoy dinner under stars in perfect late summer weather in the canyon.

Floyd and I decided to stay overnight at the Inn so we didn’t have to drive down the canyon late at night, and just to getaway from the valley for an evening.  It turned out to be a wonderful evening, swimming in the pool, soaking in the hot tub, and enjoying our cozy studio room.  Too bad it wasn’t cool enough to warrant having a fire in the fireplace.  The room was beautiful.

The next day we enjoyed breakfast outdoors on the plaza, and followed it up with a hike in Albion Basin at Alta.  The wildflowers were amazing — hard to believe it was late August.  You would have thought it was June or early July by all the flowers still gracing the hillsides.

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Best Friend

I started this post last year after my beautiful Australian Shepherd, Mesa, passed away from cancer.  It was just too difficult to finish writing it at the time.  The only line I could write was

“I have been fortunate to be blessed by the companionship of one of the most beautiful spirits I have known in my life for the last eight years.”

I can smile now when I see her photos, but I still miss being able to sit down on the floor and have her come curl up right in my lap and let me wrap her up in my arms and tell her how much I love her.  She was the ultimate friend — always there, up for anything (except maybe bath time), forgiving, passionate, intelligent, and full of love.

She taught me so much about myself, and about life.  Like a parent, I hope I can improve my part of the relationship with the next one.  I don’t want to be as protective with the next dog; I want to make more of an effort to provide healthier food and more exercise; I want to see if I can find a way to have the next dog involved with me throughout the day; and I want to provide a companion so that when the dog can’t be with me, he or she can have a friend to hang out with during the day, even if it’s just to share naps with.  I don’t know why Mesa was stricken with lymphoblastic lymphosarcoma at such a young age, but I hope to minimize the chances of this happening again to a future friend.  I will also be more cautious about spaying at a young age — a possible cause for her torn ligament, which resulted in surgery and a frustrating recovery for her where she had to be carried up and down the stairs to go to the bathroom and lifted in and out of the car for almost a month.  And I won’t fear loss so much that I would have another animal micro-chipped.

But I think she has forgiven me for all of my flaws in parenting and friendship.

There’s a reason dog is god spelled backwards.

ArcGIS 10.0 – Calculating Geometry to Display Decimals

Here’s another note to myself that is best kept in a place I won’t lose it – on my blog.

I made the switch to ArcGIS 10.0 earlier this year as I began work on a new project utilizing GIS, hoping there would be a ton of great features that would save me time.  I think I’ve spent more time looking up solutions to basic issues than any version before.  Today’s frustration – how to create a new field in my attribute table so I can calculate the areas of newly generated polygons, and display it out to my preferred number of decimal places.  I kept trying to create a “long integer” field, and then adjust the number of decimal places after I ran the “calculate geometry” function.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the decimals to display.

The solution:

When you create your new field in your attribute table, select “Double” as the type.  You don’t need to set anything for the precision and scale – just hit okay.  Then start editing the data layer, and right click on the properties.  Select the “…” button, which will allow you to change the number of decimals that are displayed.  That simple.

My beef with the support information for ESRI’s GIS program is that it is written only for advanced users.  People like me that never get into the more complicated functions, and who don’t write their own script seem to be completely ignored by ESRI’s help and support information.  It’s like a kid asking why a leaf turns yellow in the fall and having a parent start diagramming all of the biological cycles of a plant at the cellular level.

Virginia’s Quinoa Millet Breakfast Cereal

A friend gave me this recipe for a simple, relatively quick hot cereal made with quinoa, one of the most complete proteins from a plant source, with a rich variety of amino acids, and millet, which is rich in B vitamins.  You can also toast the millet first for a nutty flavor, which I look forward to trying this weekend.

1/4 C. quinoa
1/4 C. millet
1 C. water
5 dates, pitted
1/4 t. cardamom

Place the quinoa and millet in a fine strainer and rinse under warm water, then pour into a small sauce pan.  Add the water, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  In the meantime, chop the dates.  Stir in the chopped dates and cardamom, and reduce heat to medium-low heat – enough to maintain a gentle boil.  You can cover the pan or not, the results are the same.  Cook for approximately 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until nearly all of the water is absorbed.

Remove from heat, and serve immediately.  You can add cinnamon, maple syrup, bananas or other fruit if you wish.  The dates add a delicate sweetness, and I usually enjoy it plain.

 

Enjoy!

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Loading AutoLISP Routines in AutoCAD

I finally started using AutoCAD 2010, and am still finding customizations that I have to load into this newest version.  Today’s discovery was the lack of “aream”, one of my most used AutoLISP routines that let’s you select multiple polygons and provides the total area.  It took some searching in help to remember that I have to type “appload” at the command prompt, and navigate to the support folder where I just copied the AutoLISP file to.  Hit “Load” once you’ve selected you .lsp file and then close.  Pretty easy, but since I only do it once every few years, it tends to slip out of my memory.

These blog entries on AutoCAD serve as my tips notebook, where I keep track of all of the little “how to’s” that are easily forgotten.

Making the Switch to AutoCAD 2010

I’ve been in a rebellion against the latest AutoCAD version, as usual – still using 2008 when most of my colleagues and fellow consultants have been using 2010 for some time now.  I’m sure there are quite a few new improvements that I would love if I took the time to figure them out, but I never seem to have the time to site down and fuss around with software – I just need to get in and get working.  I like to be able to do the things I’ve always done, without having to track down the new hiding place for my favorite function in the latest version.  That said, I had a dream a few weeks ago about using 2010, and for some reason when I woke up from this dream, I felt compelled to use the new version.  So… today I am finally making the switch.

A few steps to make 2010 similar enough to my setup for 2008 that I can get up and running faster: