POOLZILLA

Presentations

2008-02-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

I HATE folks that stand up before meetings to "present" and proceed to read from their 10 point font that they have placed on slide after slide.

Not only is this "death by powerpoint" - it serves the presenter poorly since no matter how dynamic they might be - most people over the age of 7 in the audience can READ their slides faster than the dman fool can drone through them.

A presentation is an opportunity to tell someone something useful - to give them information that they did not already know - help them avoid a trap they are already walking into - or show them how to do something they can not accomplish today.

A fantastic book regarding one of the great communicators of the last 25 years is JACKED UP by Bill Lane - former speachwriter for Jack Welch at GE.

GE's culture was about learning from best practices - not a cliche that I still associate with a former colleague known as Best Practice Brad that figured his lunch order, hair gel and fingernail cuttings should be collected and stored in the company archive with the same reverence as the Magna Carta - but the real opportunity to share something that IS working with others in the organization as quickly as possible.

Lane's point is that being ON MESSAGE - being consice - being on topic and being USEFUL should the the focus of EVERY presentation....

and he is right!

Pentagon's new map

2008-02-07T22:26:00.003-05:00

Most of my friends know that I was a huge fan of Thomas Barnett's book "The Pentagon's New Map" 3-4 years ago when it was released. I probably gave away 10 copies over the last couple of years.

Barnett's work IS important - and is probably to first really interesting blueprint for american foreign policy since George Kennan sat in the basement of the US embassy in Moscow in the 40's and banged out the "Long Telegram" that eventually became the Doctrine of Containment (or at least the first iteration of that strategy as it morphed over the next 40 years)

Above is a link to a TED talk given a couple of years ago by Barnett.

For those of you who are not yet familar with the TED talks - run! don't WALK to their web site for some of these extraordinary 18 minute presentations.

Another amazing journey...

2008-01-16T21:19:00.000-05:00

While one person I care about is out pedalling across Africa - other dear friends are taking their lives - shaking their environment like a rat in a terrier's mouth - and moving to Qatar to start a new adventure.

Mike is one of my oldest and dearest friends. Other than Derek, another swimming buddy from junior highschool - and a couple of others like them - he is the person I have known longest, and best for almost 30 years now. Not content to be acting Dean of a college department - Mike has decided to sell his home in Victoria, give up his job and move to the Middle East to teach so as to "live a little - and get a chance to try something new".

Man that takes some balls.

His wife Janice is also someone i have known and loved for years - and if MIKE has some stones for being willing to try a new career on the other side of the planet, I don't know what superlative one uses to describe a WIFE willing to pick up and support someone who wants to do so!

Janice has started publishing a blog detailing what it is like to start a new life.... check it out.

Folks like Mike and Janice / Spiros and Maria - these guys are taking "big bites out of life".... me? I think I got a repetitive stress injury a couple of weeks ago from my TiVO.

An Amazing Journey

2008-01-12T18:09:00.001-05:00

A dear friend and former colleague has just started out on an amazing adventure.... she and her husband are biking 12,000 kms from the mouth of the Nile to Cape Town - across Africa.

They are participating in a ride called the Tour d'Afrique.... 100 days - more than 100kms a day across a route that I would feel uncomfortable FLYING over.

God bless them - they are not doing it merely for the adventure but to help raise money for two interesting and compelling charities...... please take a look at their blog - (Maria writes really well - and her husband takes amazing photos)... and if you can please think about helping them with the fund raising.

http://cyclingtheroadlesstravelled.com/journal/

Colossus - a look at the American Empire

2007-10-08T19:07:00.000-04:00

The follow up to Empire (outlined below) - Ferguson applies the same model he used to evaluate the impact of the British Empire - and now examines the limits and magnitude of American influence in the post cold war world.

No one - including Ferguson - can argue that there is another power even remotely as wide ranging as that demonstrated by America. Culturally, economically, politically, militarily - America is currently without peer. Given that level of influence, Ferguson makes the case that this hegemony is both necessary and beneficial to the world.

Ferguson's argument is not that the U.S. should try to copy the British Imperial model - but instead that America should learn from their predecessors and in effect quit trying to rationalize the fact that the US is not an empire (as both politicians and the media are inclined to cite) but rather to exert that influence effectively and benevolently.

Ferguson argues that despite the ability of the United States to be a force for good in the world, the American "empire," demonstrates serious weaknesses due to its three "deficits" - its financial deficit, its manpower deficit, and its attention deficit.

The financial deficit comes not from military spending, but from the estimated $45 trillion in unfunded liabilities from Medicare/Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, Social Security. The manpower deficit comes not from a lack of population, but from an unwillingness of Americans to serve abroad, either in the military or in civilian positions. The attention deficit derives from the American desire for instant solutions - and the lack of "stomach" for long difficult jobs including national rehabilitation of regions with NO history of democratic or even civil rule.

His argument in the end is subtle but I think accurate. We do have a model for "nation building" in places like Sudan and Iraq - but not a willingness to make the long term commitment necessary to overcome those three fundamental deficits - and to act as a true leader of nations.

Ferguson's book seeks to outline and explain - not to create solutions for US policy makers. It provides a perspective lost on most Americans and is thus very much worth reading - especially as a counterpoint to his work on the British Empire.

books ......

2007-10-04T18:33:00.000-04:00

I am not for a moment going to pretend that there was a chorus of angst at the thought of this blog ending - but I did hear from a couple of folks... and I am not sure that they were being completely sarcastic.

One in particular suggested that since I was always passing him books to read - that I might want to post links to some recent "reads" for those like me whose tastes lean towards history / politics or to some epic craptacular book involving special ops troops or a darn good "whacking".......

In that light - I invite you (one of my 7 readers) to take a look at a couple of rather fantastic books by Niall Ferguson - now a professor at Yale who writes these fascinating economic histories.

The first - EMPIRE - is an analysis of the effects of the British Empire. He asks candidly if the empire was overall a force for good or ill in the world and what its lasting impact has been on the current global balance both militarily, politically and economically. His convincing argument is that while NO empire is by definition universally benificent, that never the less the overall impact of Britain's overseas empire was largely positive.

Ferguson points to the significant benefit that has come to those who are now part of the Commonwealth - in particualr the rule of law and a tendency towards largely stable parliamentary democracies and federal systems. Interestingly, his economic analsysis demonstrates that investment and "profit" from the empire largely went in the direction of the imperial possessions (colonies having become something of a bad word) not the "mother country"..... England's investments IN the new world, India etc were substancially greater than the direct economic benefit at home.

A crucial section of the book looks for example at the tax rates within Great Britain, and the costs of Empire bourn by those tax payers, versus the security benefits and the real tax levels in the colonies. The supposedly "crippling" levels of taxation in the American colonies was actually significantly smaller than the tax levies of the voters in England itself!

The link to Amazon is at the right - I really recommend this one.....

A quick review and link to the follow up book Collosus will be posted in the next day or so.

Coming to an end

2007-09-06T18:07:00.001-04:00

This should be one of 2-3 final posts to this blog.

The screen is indeed up and completed, the stereo system was installed today, and next week the final landscape lighting will be installed.

I will be posting pictures this weekend of the finished product - then one final set of "night" pictures once the lighting is in - and then we will bring to a close the 8 month process of getting the pool designed and built.

More soon before the final sign off!

Screen is actually complete

2007-08-23T13:34:00.000-04:00

I am still in Vancouver - looking forward to lunch today with some old friends.

As I was sitting in the hotel this morning I got a call from wife.com - in a little over a day and a half the contractor actually installed the screen around our pool.

It has taken almost 4 months since we first signed the contract on this simple little piece of engineering - but it is up and complete.

Photos will be coming once I return to FL on Monday.

In Vancouver....

2007-08-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

After a weekend spent with wife.com's parents outside Toronto - I flew into YVR last night.

I will spend the next few days visiting my mom, taking a couple of meetings, and catching up with some old friends. It really is the first time I have been back home for more than a day in about 4 years

This afternoon I am heading out to my old country club to play a little golf. A little in the sense that I am awful.

On the other hand the scenery is spectacular at Westwood Plateau - and I really do miss it! If I shoot under 110 it will be a good round!

Best of all - there is a Chinese restaurant at the bottom of the mountain this is also a required component of the day. Hon's makes these little pot stickers that I dream about while on the other side of the continent.... hmm BBQ duck and potstickers....

Finally a freaking screen... almost

2007-08-19T13:19:00.000-04:00

After receiving the variance to install a screen around our pool on the 23rd of July - the contractors all made noises about being able to get the damn thing completed quickly.....

Of course once a variance is granted - it appears that there is a 2 week waiting period to issue the permit... then more waiting etc.

Regardless - it finally sounds like next week the constuction will finally begin on this last major element of the pool.

Jihad the Musical.....

2007-08-03T12:15:00.000-04:00

Our friend Kelly from Seattle sent me a link today for a musical running in London called appropriately enough "Jihad the Musical".... even better than the fact that it makes fun of the wacky islamo fascists - evidently it has a number that mocks FRENCH Islamic Fascists - how can one NOT like that!?!

There is a YouTube video of the song "I wanna be like Osama" posted below(coincidentally that title would still rhyme if you changed it to "I wanna be like Obama" - but that would be a different post....)

I take what these folks (the muslim fundamentalists) say seriously - they tell us they want to replace western democracy with Sharia - OK - that means I GET TO LAUGH AT YOU at the same time we watch out for you and hopefully send SpecOps teams to "deal with" you!

Feel free to download the audio to the song Turned and Ran - the ode to French "youths".....

I don't remember if it was St. Thomas More or Martin Luther who said that the Devil is a proud spirit and can not abide to be mocked - well let the taunting begin.

Swim system video

2007-07-29T18:57:00.000-04:00

So we have had the swim system in place and working for a couple of weeks now.

I LOVE IT!

YES - the movie above is of our pool. I took this clip this afternoon - it is difficult to see clearly - but when the remote is activated you can literally see this wave of water come out of the rotors and move down the pool. When running at speed you can see three distinct currents - the main flow down the center of the pool that one swims against, then the return streams on both sides as the water is pulled back to the rotors.

I am managing to swim just about every day that I am home - while that has not yet been as much as I like, I am still hoping that it is going to help.

So far it has not been me that enjoyed the system the most - it has been the folks who have visited us! With the FASTLANE pushing water at its maximum rate, the pool effectively becomes a water park. Our friends Greg and Jaemi and their five kids spent a really fun evening with us - and between riding the current towards the shallow end - then floating back along the sides as the water is pulled back into the jet - the kids had a blast.

At its maximum the swim unit is designed to push out a current that is the equivalent of swimming the 100 yard freestyle in about 58 seconds. Yes I can "beat the current" and swim from one end of the pool to the other against the flow - but that is NOT to say that I can maintain that pace!

I am turning the "flow" down sustancially from its max - and then swimming about 18 inches away from the rotors... the slower current reduces a lot of the turbulence in the pool (remember that at max it is pushing 5000 gallons a minute - effectively turning the COMPLETE water contents of the pool over once every 5 minutes!) and allows me to try and swim for a few minutes at a time before I allow myself to coast back to the shallow part of the pool.

My fitness level is SO LOW that I expect my "continuous" swimming is only 50-100 m at a time - but starting where I am I think ANYTHING is positive in terms of benefit.

And yes - I have purchased the swimp3 player - looking to get it loaded this week on the road and try it out next weekend!

SCREEN MOVING FORWARD

2007-07-24T05:58:00.000-04:00

What a relief...!

Last night the county commissioners granted us the variance to move forward with a screen over our pool and deck.

TODAY the screen company will come by and complete the final engineering work, and the structure itself should be completed by the middle of next week.

I am not sure who is more relieved, me or the pool builder.... but I am just happy that we can get the final steps moving now. That ability to sit outside without the bugs in the evening is one of the principal reasons we started the project 6 months ago

U-Tube blog posts ARE Lame......

2007-07-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

IF one worked for - say the number three (and falling) producer of cell handsets in the world one would probably not get to carry an IPhone around the office - but it is nice to see Colbert's take on his new device.

Posting a You_tube video in lieu of a proper post is lame on my part - I need to admit that up front.

Lots of progress

2007-07-16T06:22:00.000-04:00

I am behind on posts - hope to get caught up by the end of the week.

Salt Water chlorination system was installed at the end of last week and is now working.

Counter Current Swim system was installed on Friday and should be commissioned today.

Generator (to keep it all going if there is a hurricane) was installed and should be tested by tomorrow.

Landscape Lighting Plan was formalized last week - first component will be installed this week - final "aroud pool" phase will go in as soon as the screen is built.

Sound system quote scheduled for tomorrow.....

Finally - we are a go for the council meeting on July 23rd to get the variance to finally BUILD the screen around the pool.

More details and lots of photos as soon as I can.

Thanks!

I think these will be REQUIRED

2007-07-02T09:06:00.000-04:00

First - I am not at all convinced that wife.calm would be in favor of a purchase such as this - but I see NO choice. This is a necessary TOOL for assisting in my health plan. Plus the name itself is too clever.... SWIMP3. Brilliant!

I have tried a couple of different underwater music systems over the years.... ear buds, some of the early underwater "radios" etc and none have ever worked terribly well. Either the sound sucks - or the sound of the water itself overwhelms the sound of the music. This on the other hand is based on using bone induction.

What - sounds painful!?!

No - instead the sound wave is carried through your cheekbone into the water inside your inner ear... thus supposedly making the sound quality vastly improved over other attempts. The unit is small and just slips under the band of your goggles...

10 hour battery (more than enough for me - hell 20 minutes is going to be a stretch) and 256Mb of RAM....

Now wife.calm will I am sure make a variety of objections to these.... all reasonable - all rational - so I had best make a couple of points right now. First this is not NEW technology - bone induction for sound has been used for years.... and more importantly this is version 2 of the product... that means a purchase of these is NOT an early adopter acquistion.

Gotta get me some of these!

I miss Vancouver....

2007-06-26T06:42:00.000-04:00

Will we go back to live? Not unless suddenly the tax structure changes.... but I do miss home.

My friend Paul is very clever and writes VERY well. He has been working on a blog for a couple of years now. He has a book inside screaming to get out (think Alien) and someday we are all going to be bragging about the fact that we knew him before Oprah made him famous.....

This morning he posted the following video on his own blog - I had to steal it. Sometimes it is just nice to remember where you are from!

physical plant

2007-06-24T20:03:00.000-04:00

We are almost completely "built out" - so thought I would share an image of the physical plant entailed in a modern pool.

From right to left (thanks Paul - I understand now which is which) we have the hydraulic motor for the "swim system" - a small 2 HP pump for the water feature - the larger 6 HP pump for the pool itself - the filter - and finally the heat pump.

The gray box above the heatpump is actually the automation controller that will regulate the system, and you can also note the wireless system installed on the side of the house above the swim system on the right side of the photo.

The automation system was SUPPOSED to have been working last week - (and parts of it were) but there have been some programming challenges and a tech rep from the factory will be on site tomorrow to pull one of the boards and finalize the implementation

Back home in the northwest - except for the hottest part of the summer, a heater is necessary even to maintain a nice pool temperature.

Here in FL however - so far the notion of heating the water is somewhat ridiculous.

When we filled the pool using the backyard hoses, the water appears to have come out of the tap in the high 60s'. Sitting in the sun, all 20K gallons were at 80 degrees within 5 days. Now the water is consistently in the high 80's without anything but the sun inserting energy into the system.

We had the pool plumbed to accept a solar heating system as well as the installed heat pump - and I am thinking about getting the solar installed much more quickly than planned if only to run it at night as a means of DUMPING heat from the system to keep the termperature in a more "comfortable" zone for swimming.

Automation now live....

2007-06-19T22:23:00.000-04:00

Today the builder completed the installation of our pool "automation" package.

Many of the elements that will eventually be controlled are still to be installed (the swim system, the salt/chlorine generator, solar heating etc) but by tomorrow we will at least be able to control that equipment already on site.

The device at left is our "pool digital assistant" - a waterproof wireless controller that communicates with the automation center installed with the physical plant beside our home. This handheld gives constant readings on pool and air temperature / salinity and chlorine levels within the pool, and allows us to adjust the color of our lights, turn on the waterfall, pumps etc.

More on this and the individual elements as we get used to using them.........

we be swimming!

2007-06-17T16:54:00.000-04:00

There is still a good bit of frustration over the fact that the screen is not built (awaiting word on the variance application at the County Meeting on July 23rd) but at least tonight we had the chance to get in and use the pool for the first time.

Water has been balanced (and now is not green!) chlorine is in the system - and we are able to enjoy the pool itself.....

Once the PebbleSheen liner has had 28 days to cure - we can install the salt system and the counter current generator - so the pool itself is not yet complete - but we can at least get in an cool off!

Counter current swim systems

2007-06-13T20:26:00.000-04:00

Ok - so as I have talked to friends about the pool this is feature that is either laughed at the most - or appreciated depending on the geek quotient of the one asking the questions.

When we designed the pool I wanted to ensure that it could be used not merely for splashing about - but also as a place where I might be able to exercise. ( I hope) Unless it was going to be 15 m long - the only way to actually be able to swim in a backyard pool would be to put a current in the pool that I could swim AGAINST.

We have all seen the ads in the "in flight" magazines for Endless Pools.... but these are approx 6 foot by 10 feet and while very cool as a swim machine - not really appropriate for a backyard recreational pool.

There are several systems that would allow one to create a current in a full sized pool - but of the available options (Riverflow, Badujet) only one really looked like it would provide the type of current that one actually wants to use as resistance from a swimming perspective.... a new system from the folks at Endless pools called the FastLane.

Badujet is effectively a couple of hose nozzles that push a jet of water - very turbulent and not very strong - and while the Riverflow system LOOKS smooth - it also looks slow and underpowered.

The Fastlane system is a 6 HP hydraulic motor that pushes an impeller capable of pushing almost 5000 gallons a minute. The system is rated to be able to sustain a sub 1 minute 100 yard pace - so in my current state of health that is MORE than I need from a current generator.

The swim system can not be installed until the pool surface has had 30 days to cure - so we are still 3 weeks away from installation - but I am really looking forward to seeing it in action.

Green water?

2007-06-11T22:22:00.000-04:00

Some friends commented by private message that the water in the pool sure looks green.

They are right!

Turns out the water in central FL (surprising no one who thought that the tap water here smells awful) contains lots of copper particles - tons of chlorine and lots of other dissolved minerals.

I left town this afternoon - but wife.com told me that the crew was back blowing the air (and construction crap) out of the pipes today - and that the filter system has been completed and is now running. Various chemicals (likely a muriatic acid) was added to the pool water to bring the PH into the range we want - and the "balancing" of the pool chemistry is underway now.

We will eventually be using a salt water system to keep algae and bacteria out of the pool - but these can not be started until after the PebbleSheen coating has had 30 days to cure - so by Thursday the goal is to have the pool chemistry balanced and have chlorine in the pool.... that means we will be able to swim by the weekend!

Just as the salt system can not be installed until the lining has had 28 days to cure - neither can the counter current swim system be installed until that period has passed.... More on that system in a post when I return home later in the week.

dissapointment... but not from the pool

2007-06-10T22:10:00.000-04:00

As I write this I have just spent the last 5 minutes thinking I was going to have to throw a shoe through my television.

The Sopranos series finale just ended - and the "fade to black" ending was more of a disappointment than I want to admit..... what the hell was David Chase thinking???? ... all the tension mounting in the last few mintues - then NOTHING. If there is not a movie to close the loop then the man simply has no soul.

water in the hole!

2007-06-10T11:17:00.000-04:00

After the child fence went in yesterday morning - the PebbleTec crew returned and completed the interior finish.

We spent the last 24 hours filling the pool (and even were able to watch our first shuttle launch since moving here while doing so)

So here it is - not yet a pool - for now merely a 20,000 gallon collection of water set to grow algae and bacteria in the warmth of a FL summer until the circulation system gets commissioned in the next couple of days!

child safety fence installed

2007-06-09T23:07:00.000-04:00

Friday morning the child safety fence was installed. As mentioned in an earlier post - it is a law in FL that there need to be two different means of securing a pool so that children can not accidentally gain access to the area.

As our screen is still likely 60 days out (assuming we DO get the variance) our two methods of protection are the temporary fence around the backyard - and now this child fence.

Holes are bored into our pavers - and the posts are placed into these to secure the fence. It is the work of only 10 minutes or so to take the fence down or install it - so once the screen is in place we will be able to store the barrier unless we have nieces and nephews visiting.