bug goes crunch: November 2005

bug goes crunch

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

oj up; wreck two in a cup


oh what a difference wind direction makes. i was blown home last night, and it was easy. today it was a little rough coming in, but not too bad. when the snow flurries picked up a bit, it stung. but i'm asking for all of this.

in bicycling magazine this month there is a little blurb on the value of riding to work; true to form (by which i mean: slave to fashion), the photo shows a man riding one of those trendy "single-speed" bicycles, complete with moustache handlebars. one of the most important things, they say, is to use slick tires, because knobbies will just slow you down and are the wrong thing for every application, except snow. well, i ride in snow. so fuck you, bicycling magazine.



now i am seeing this deer every morning and am recalling how, a few years back, there was a deer carcass on huron river drive just south of wagner, on the outbound side of the road, that i would pass day after day on my recreational rides. it had escaped the attention of the county crews (or whoever it is who is supposed to remove these things), and over the course of the year i watched it decompose until, by late autumn, it was just hair and bones. now i imagine there is no trace. i must imagine, as i haven't ridden there for a couple of months at least.

ah the circle.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

a ham white down


you know, they didn't get the leaves that day. instead, we had large snow-covered piles until friday, and since then there has been a lot of rain and so forth, so the streets (in our neighborhood at least) are covered in mashed-up leaf detritus, so the dissolved organic matter/nutrient loads should be fabulously large this year.

the dead deer took me by surprise. of course it makes sense, but i don't recall ever seeing one out here, close to the office park. several of my co-workers have mentioned a coyote that hangs out in the field just east of the airport (near the city's drinking water wells, the ones not yet contaminated with 1,4-dioxane); i've not seen it, but am on high alert. as alert as a fellow can be to coyotes, that is, when he is trying not to be run off the road by semi-trailers.



it has gotten colder, as predicted. i've switched to knobbies, even though last week's snow has been washed away; it's only a matter of time before there is more. it was a little scary getting up the robin hills of vesper heights last week, where the wet snow had begun to solidify and the slick tires on my bike couldn't get much traction. i nearly went down a couple of times. anyways i'm ready.

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

i've brought some corn


well they spent yesterday just gathering up the leaves in big piles; today they will scoop them up, and cart them off. or so i hope. because it is time, you know? i mean, leaves, come on. am i right?

the snow that is falling will make the ride home interesting. "interesting" as in "potentially dangerous". at least that 12-mph wind will be at my back. but there was already a slippery quality to the roads that will only become more so, with more snow. i made a test skid in the parking lot and it was way too easy. slicks, dontcha know.



today i am going to spend some more time rewriting my particle tracking program. the main change is implementing a more robust scheme for determining which grid cell the particle is in (which will in turn to a better job of keeping particles from wandering offshore), but i am also generally upgrading to a fortran 90/95 standard, using dynamic array allocation and other cool things like that. it may be too much to hope for to get this thing finished today, but i will try.


Tuesday, November 22, 2005

what went wrong - your grades were good


well there is nothing like a 15-mph tailwind (gusting to 25) to get one's ass in motion. going home will be a different sort of experience.

today our fair city picks up the leaves in our neighborhood. high time; passage along red oak street is, as you can see, becoming restricted. i didn't take a photograph of mixtwood, which is even worse, because i don't actually ride down that stretch. this year the city announced it would begin enforcing an old ordinance restricting the placement of leaves onto the street until 24 hours before the scheduled pickup. this unworkable concept met with considerable resistance (particularly from the lawn service contractors), so the city laid themselves down, as they so often do, and let us sweep and rake at our own convenience. the idea behind keeping leaves out of the street, of course, was to demonstrate a "best management practice" for reduction of nutrient load to the huron river as per the state's phosphorus TMDL. although it's tempting to think of leaves as being "natural", there is in fact nothing natural at all in piling them onto a network of impervious pads, and routing their decomposition products directly to surface waters via an efficent system of storm sewers. in the woods, leaves are for the most part incorporated diredtly into the soil matrix. on the other hand, i'm not sure how detritus-based loads of nitrogen and phosphorus in november and december actually contribute to eutrophication issues (it's a little cold for algae right now) but i didn't do the modeling; the reduction targets are annual in nature, seasonal processes notwithstanding.

did i mention the risk of vehicle fires caused by persons stupid enough to park their blisteringly-hot catalytic converters in a pile of leaves (there are such persons)? and then they are just kind of ugly. they blow around and stuff. i'm like - leaves? ick.

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note: the pool with the stones is part of a bench outside our office, placed in memory of paul rodgers, who was a vital force here right up until his untimely death in a helicopter crash while on the job. i walk by this bench every morning after parking my bicycle, and last winter i noticed how it provided its own interpretation of the weather conditions. so i decided to take pictures of it this year.

Friday, November 18, 2005

ice ice baby


yeah the cold weather is suddenly, completely here. just over 20 °F this morning (down here by the airport); i went straight for the tights and neoprene booties this morning, no hesitation. balaclava with regular helmet, however; saving the ski helmet and goggles for sub-20s. the 15 mph south wind was a little odd, though. usually i associate southern winds with warmth, but this morning it just slowed me down, way down. if it keeps blowing this way, however, the ride home will be a treat.

of course, any ride is a treat these days, especially with that excellent new rear wheel (thanks again to steve of great lakes cycling). i makes me realize, unfortunately, that my front wheel is ass. i should probably just bite the bullet and get a matching front made up, plus a pair of nokians as long as i'm spending money.

i really want to write an account of that trip, now two weeks distant, to algonquin. but that would require some time that i just don't have today, what with these big piles of work, and these friday morning urgent needs for technical justifications for cutting off the model domain of our lake lanier model at bla bla bla (the durn thing has 2883 cells in the horizontal already, not to mention at least 23 layers) but anyway i will leave y'all with a picture of maggie lake, so just try to imagine the overall quiet of the area, except the occasional gurgle of the wavelets breaking on the rock beneath your feet...

Friday, November 11, 2005

eleven november

today is veteran's day in the united states. we honor those among us who fought in our many wars. we might also wonder what it is about a person that inspires him or her to volunteer, or to answer a call, to fight in a war. certainly there is no simple answer; people are complex. but our veterans' sacrifice is profoundly deep, and just being respectful of that could easily fill an entire november day.

so today there will be no stories about my morning commute, or my recent backpacking expedition in algonquin, or any comments about today's weather beyond noting the temperature of the moment, which is 33 °F. here's to the vets.

--->crunchy bug

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

it's okay if you don't know everything

a rainy night, followed by a dark and blustery morning. that is, a perfect day to ride to work!



i am still a little blown away by the publication of a draft wastewater blending guidance by NACWA (the National Association of Clean Water Agencies) and NRDR (the Natural Resources Defense Council). the proverbial fox and goose have lain together, and look what they brought back! and EPA is at least tentatively saying they like it; OWM anyway, if not OECA. for me it is a little vindication, and even a very slight thawing of feeling toward the enviros, who really earned my contempt with their relentless onslaught of disinformation on the subject.

i was genuinely depressed last may, when EPA withdrew its draft policy, faced with the preposterous efforts of bart stupak and others in congress to ban "dumping" of "partially treated sewage", concepts they couldn't have possibly come up with on their own but which were clear reflections of the enviros' (wrong) take on the topic. it doesn't surprise me that the average member of the sierra club doesn't understand the technical details of wastewater treatment, to say nothing of the regulatory framework for water quality standards and discharge permitting, but i'd like to think that average member would at least be open to learning a thing or two about it, before unleashing a barrage of ignorance-fueld invective and criticism. they kept talking about how "biological treatment removes pathogens" - this is fiction! i fully understand that my work is arcane, but i would be delighted to explain it to anyone willing to listen. the scary thought is that if they are half as wrong about their other impassioned causes as they are about EPA's draft blending policy, then they just basically don't know shit. and yet they are so proud of themselves anyway.

but i managed to put a lot of this misery behind me, after the whole "swimming in sewage" debacle and my (anonymously contributed) refutations of the "katonak-rose paper" attached to nrdc's comment to epa...that was a blow, too, to have the good dr. rose lend her name to that misinformed piece of work. and i had productive arguments (all professional, of course) with dr. haas, who along with dr. rose wrote comments submitted on behalf of the american society of microbiologists, which got at the technical issues concerning pathogens remaining after various stages of treatment, and risk, but still fell somewhat short of recognizing the need for authorizing blending in npdes permits. but i was getting over that crushing feeling i got when i read that congressional record, and those politicians blathering about sewage and dumping and regulations...regulations! EPA wasn't promulgating any new regulations! if our lawmakers don't understand the difference between an agency policy (which is not enforceable) and regulations (which are) then we are in real trouble. anyway i had let it go, wondering where we would go next exactly, when nacwa/nrdc (two acronyms that one does not ordinarily connect with a forward slash) put out this revised, suggested guidance. and it's very good. it distinguishes between "good" blending and "bad" blending, and lays out what would be required in the "no feasible alternatives analysis" that permittees would have to submit with their application before their permits could authorize blending. it will not go over well with the "black box" crowd ((as long as i meet my permit limits you can't tell me how to run my plant), and it could possibly be challenged on the basis of the NPDES regs ("new" requirements that must go through rulemaking) but it is something positive nonetheless. and it shows that the enviros can be educated on the subject. nancy stoner saying that blending can be approved as an "anticipated bypass" per 40 CFR Part 122.41(m)? better check the temperature of hell...

i would link the proposed guidance but it is in a nacwa members-only part of their website for now. stay tuned.