Monday, December 06, 2010

Lexus like Texas

My father and my mom got their new Lexus (renewed the lease and upgraded, however the ridiculous deal works). So the guy at the Lexus dealership says "when you get the number plate try getting Lex 7345" (or something of the sort, however it did have LEX in it).
My father retorted "It's a Lexus, everyone can see it's a Lexus, why should the plate say Lex? I will get whatever I want for it".
Now notice many Lexus cars have Lex as a number plate? Do they want to iterate it so badly because the big L on the front and back of the car are not enough. Let's get our customers to advertise for us even more, yeah?
Tsh!

I will upload pictures I take of real silly plates etc soon.

Here's one!

Another one!










Winter Wistfulness

Everyone was saying it is an unusually warm November, but we Ohioans know the weather can be very erratic. So we cling enjoy the warm weather, and hide the fear of the long, bitter-cold, depressing grey winters. The first day of December brings us our first snow that sticks to the ground, just a few days after thanksgiving. The coldness begins. The trees are seemingly lifeless, the skies are grey as usual, and previously mentioned... the atmosphere is all round gloomy. Around the 5th the snow storm or whatever begins, and dumps snow all over us, not very kindly either. Hour after hour, minute after minute, relentless, no breaks, watching it is scary. We know the roads will be dangerous, commuting time will be longer, the traffic will be awful. It's holiday season so everyone will be out Christmas Shopping, inevitably there will be extra traffic. We can only hope for other people being mindful and kind during this time... we are all under stress, we are all in a hurry, we are all frustrated by the snow.
Outside the world is just white. Snow White. The tree branches are laden with white fluff, the roads are deadly, the cars are buried under, the Canadian Geese are huddled in the snow, they weren't expecting winter so soon either.
As beautiful as the snow is, it is destructive, deadly and dangerous, also very depressing. There is no color but white grey and black in the environment. Death's own creation, and thus the beginning is the end, is the beginning.
The bright spot is knowing there will always be a spring. Lush green will reside once again in the trees, the birds will come back and chirp their wooing songs to their mates, life will come back, and we humans shan't be the only ones bustling about the earth.
The little joys of this winter weather is that it is great for bundling up, spending time with loved ones and cuddling, and then some nice hot chocolate. On a side note, Cricket loves and hates winter, she loves prancing about in the snow and being utterly silly, however she dislikes the cold to the point she won't go out, and she won't sit on the ground outside (for her little butt gets cold).



Cricket enjoying a nice wintery walk with her little pink winter coat on. She was sticking her head and digging up the snow, like a silly dog! Also she seems more alert that its all completely white outside.

Watershed Delineation Using ArcInfo 9.2 and LIDAR Data


This watershed analysis was done for Cleveland Metroparks using their primary datasets. LIDAR was acquired from OSIP.

Watershed Delineation

1-     Add reservation boundaries layer. Select a reservation. Zoom in.
2-     Add Hydrology layer and detailed streams layer from H:\temp\Mosaics-10000\1-STREAM ORDER SHAPEFILES-10000
3-     Add watershed layer from
4-     Draw rough boundary of watershed around the reservation with draw tool.
5-     Load the DEMS first by copying into V: drive and then decompressing the files using the command lines.
6-     Mosaic the “filled” DEMS
7-     Create subset of the entire mosaic
8-     Use the special “other tools” watershed delineation tool. Set output destinations.
9-     This will refill the filled mosaic. It will take a long time to run.
10- Infer the rivers from the “streams” output
11-  Convert selected streams into new shapefile
12-  Convert watershed raster to polygon
13-  Use “select by location” or ‘select by attributes” to select the watershed polygons that contain the selected streams.
14-  Create hillshade from the mosaic-ed raster DEM
15- create 2 ft and 5 ft contours from the mosaic-ed DEM
16- dissolve the polygon layer
17- DO NOT delete any of the intermediate layers
18- To correct errors put shapefiles into Geodatabase and set topology rules. Run.



For Urban Areas, Sewers, Storm Water Data, Pipes, Culverts etc.

1-     First add the infrastructure network layer on to the map
2-     Then activate Arc Hydro Tools 9
3-     Under Terrain Preprocessing find the DEM manipulation
4-     Under DEM manipulation find DEM Reconditioning
5-     The Mosaic will be the Raw DEM
6-     The AGREE Stream will be the network
7-     AGREE DEM will be the output (name wisely)
8-     Stream Buffer -5
9-     Smooth Drop/Raise (DEM z unit) -10
10-  Sharp Drop/Raise (DEM z unit) – 1000


I will update this later with step by step images, fails, and final product picture later.

Shortcut Keys for Special Symbols in ArcMap

Character

Keystroke

Unicode

Notes
Degree symbol
Alt+0176  
°
00B0
°

Minute or prime symbol


2032
′
Do not use quote key
Second or double prime symbol


2033
″
Do not use double quote key
Copyright
Alt+0169
©
00A9
©
Should not be used in a narrow or condensed font
Plus sign
+ key
+



Minus sign


2212
−
The dash key or the minus key on the numeric keypad should not be used
Plus/minus sign
Alt+0177
±
00B1
±

Tilde
~ key
~
007E
~

Small tilde
Alt+0152
˜
02DC
˜

Hyphen or dash
- key
-



En dash
Alt+0150
–
2013
–

Em dash
Alt+0151
—
2014
—

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Crush

He looked at me and smiled, in a flirty way. I looked away, because I didn't know him, and I didn't do "flirting". He was just a guy in the crowd and I was there to watch my friend's show. I hung out with my sister and her friends waiting for the band we knew to go on. and this guy looked at me a few times. He was cute, even handsome, despite his bizarre outfit. My friend's band went on, and they played well, I rocked out. I did not know the main band playing but I stayed around to watch. Lo and behold, the flirty guy got on stage. He made eye contact several times, and I felt like an idiot. Apparently they were pretty big in Cleveland, for their day.

Local band, but a huge local fan following. I met him later thanks to my friend and his band. I was wary but he was cute, especially the smile. Connection, and then I was communicating with him every now and then. However I slowly found out more about him, and he seemed like the kind of guy who likes to have fun, but never get serious. Or why would he want to get serious with me?

He had a lip piercing, he was tall and handsome and played the bass guitar damn well. I once went to his concert and I can swear we almost kissed, but I think I had gone with someone else (who I did not want to be there with).

I realized after a while that I should keep my distance, it's like was like all the fatty sugary foods, tempting a heart patient. Luckily he left the country to go teach English, and whenever he visited I had this urge to go throw everything away, just to have that one kiss, or night. However I wouldn't be able to deal with just that. So tempting though. However I would want more than that. Why should I settle to be that random one girl, I was better than that. I deserved someone who could see how "Awesome" I was. He would never see that. I made sure we stayed friends, and that's just that. I think I've known him longer than any of those girls who just enjoyed sex with him for one night.

:-)

I'm happy with myself for my decisions.