Allen Worthington 17 February 2020/March 2 2020

I am beginning this blog post since the server at my firm is down, at the moment. The days seem to fly by lately; I don't know about you guys. I haven't gotten as much practice time with varieties of software lately but I'm definitely honing my CAD skills. It is pretty interesting to see how a new site is approached, by the firm. With residential work, they don't seem to need things like program diagrams, models, and perspective drawings. Sketchup usually takes place of those programs here.

It's pretty cool how they gradually got me more involved in projects without me realizing it. I was tasked to draw some sections which had to be detailed enough to be used for the sections and detail drawings in the CD package. I didn't even realize I had basically drawn 8 details all-in-one. It made me think how I spent so much time when we had all those detail drawings due for materials class.

I saw that Austin shared an awesome nighttime render, which inspired me to look up a vid. to learn. Here's my try at one this morning:

You guys seem to be learning a lot of new useful tricks and software. I look forward to getting you all to teach me during 5th year.

My firm had a retreat last Monday, which was very fun. We Spent the morning touring a large nursery, where one of my firm's principles introduced me to a shrub called texas mountain laurel. It smells like bubble gum. I took some of the seeds; maybe I can get one to grow back home.

The rest of the retreat consisted of BBQ, another tour, and a meeting on the direction of the firm's past year and future year. This was very interesting because they discussed the types of projects they wanted to go after and gave out spreadsheets listing all the yearly earnings and losses on projects. 

I've been trying to keep up with reading everyone's posts. It looks like y'all are having some good times and learning a lot. An interesting project I've been working on is a segment of trail around the Colorado River. We are exploring construction methods used by the forest service as sustainable and cheaper alternatives to maintaining the trail. Here's an example of a common trail technique:

Rolling Grade Dip 

We'll also be testing alternative materials for use along the trail, like rubber paving, geocells, and porous concrete. I was in charge of ordering samples, and I made sure to get some glowing aggregate(throwback to Conner's materials presentation).

Reading everyone's posts, there's a lot of similar questions and concerns. Similar to Charlie, I don't like sitting all day, and I'm glad my firm has a "Piss-up" tally (weird name) where we compete to have the most exercise reps. by the end of the week. Lucky our building has a gym. This breaks up the day with some blood-flow. I also second Emily's Plant FX comment. It's super convenient. 

I still have to catch up on a lot y'all's blogs, fun reads. So has your experience so far helped you get any significantly clearer idea about having your own firm, or what types of work you'd want to do( residential, civic, etc)? There's some people in my firm who have studied for and taken the SITES exam, have any of you been more or less eager to get licensed or certified in any areas? 

It's fun to see how different everyone's experiences are. I hope everyone is doing well.