Two Thousand and Ten in Retrospect - Looking Forward to the New Twenty Eleven

I remember last New Years Eve like yesterday, and then  again, it seems like a long time ago. My very dear friend Polloy came to visit me. It was a very fun time. I was playing a lot of Lord of the Rings online at that time, to keep my mind off things such as the severe economic depression sweeping the country. My grand parents were visiting, and my sister left to New York City for grad school. The trip to New York brought many issues to the surface, and I felt like something was not right. Before which I broke up with my boyfriend, it crushed me, but I needed to make some changes, there were compatibility and communication issues. I needed to be Priyanka, I met people a long the way who grew close to my heart, as well as I started growing out of my little girl shoes. I wanted to be my own person. I want to be my own person. There is the image or Priyanka I want to be (Ideal) and then there is real life. Then there is the person I don't want to be. These are clear in my head. They are for me only, and I want to attain this on my own.
(I don't like how this blog doesn't work properly sometimes, it's very glitchy, even MS word is better)
As Elphaba said in Wicked (Defying Gravity), "Too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost. If that's love it comes at much too high a cost." So I wanted to just be, love, and let it go. Be free.

I went to Mexico. It was good, I'd go back again, a lovely country. It felt like India (as a compliment), and I almost felt at home. We had a lot of awesome yoga going the whole year until a very busy summer began. Lots of visitors, it was nice, but exhausting. I just wanted one weekend to myself. Then again I live at home, so forget about a lone time.

The World Cup and The Grand Slams came around! How I love tennis and football! I will say the day of the final for the FIFA World Cup was very awesome! The game was almost moot, so I went for a bike ride. Fall came around and I worked hard, and became more determined to make bigger life changes, also realized more how I needed to assert myself as my own person. I went camping in West Virginia, it was lovely as usual, and a good change from the familiar Ohio-ness. I also began ballroom dancing which helped me so much, and I began finding different facets of this Priyanka person, and I keep growing - On my own, inwardly and outwardly.

For Halloween I was Elphaba, and then i dressed up as a Ravenclaw student. If I could I would cosplay in character everyday! Must be the love of art, creativity and theatre in me... I want to develop on this facet of me more this year. I got a new tattoo, learned how to play Texas hold 'em, and enjoyed Turducken (thanks to Anna), and saw some awesome bands play this year! I loved watching the real professional dancers dance at the Ohio Star Ball. I was star struck, and realized some sick feminine side of me that likes high heels, skirts and shiny things.

I met a awesome guy and began developing a nice relationship with him - enjoying the communication, the clarity, and perhaps simplicity, however it is almost as if I am introspecting more and being more aware of how I am. I like that kind of metacognition. I am very happy.

I met a bunch of new people, and also reunited with my very close friend Mandy and her family for new years. It was very much delayed and much needed. Last year was spent with a new friend and this with an old friend. I also had some good times with my friends Renee, Shelby, Amy (I miss yoga with you), Michelle, Miles (my animal lover/adventurer friend), Steve, Ramon, Nidia, Erin (my beautiful and loving friend), Donnie (always wierd friendly like), Chris (maverick the Ace), Becky (love you!), Oye Kakke (hey sexy), K Dawg (Whatever), Phil (The Pastros Captain, I love your fb comments to me), My little Sister (Peeeeeeg), Mandy, My Uncle Danny, Ryan, Deepti (I like our emails, and am glad you're still in my life!)... (if I forgot you, you know you mean a lot to me). I have said good bye to those who have hurt me, and realized although I do love them very much, the pain they cause me is far too much for me to contact them.

I love my family dearly, and I love my friends even more. For family is that which we are born with, however friends are people we pick ourselves. My friends might not be famous, rich, or rocket scientists, but what matters most is that they are loyal, steadfast, reliable, trustworthy, and most of all TRUE TO THEMSELVES.

Holiday season comes around, and I am burnt out. I want peace and quiet. A get away to South/ Central America would be great. However some unavoidable family issues come up, and it sucked the life out of me. Here I am drained, but I know that this can only make me stronger. Yes I will kick ass this year, or at least write more and travel more despite rising gas prices. After the last few years things can only get better.

Love and Sunshine!!!!
~Pree~

 Mandy and I on  NYE in Grand Rapids, Mi.

Studying Middle Earth

http://gozips.uakron.edu/~pb12/middleearth.html

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The epic story of good and evil, a little like star wars, except no outer space and kind of magical. I fell in love with it when my uncle took me to watch the movies one cold night in 2001. It was very near new years and I really wanted to stay in, but he said he loved the books. We saw the first part (The Fellowship of the Ring), and throughout the movie i kept saying "Danny I love it" and he kept telling me "sshhh". I was enthralled. He then made me read "The Hobbit" so that I would have context, and it was by far the best, somehow! However they were all good. Slowly I became obsessed with all things Lord of the Rings. I wanted to experience it in every way possible. It grew deeper and deeper in me like a seed. I have highly active imagination, however I could never get my fill of the Lord of the Rings, then I found Lord of the Rings Online. It consumed me. However in Massive Multiplayer Online Games there tends to be drama, so we need to take breaks from them ever so often. Also recently they made it Free to Play, which means they make money through a shop, and it has been a big killjoy.

This time of year is full of Christmas music and this and that, but this time I wanted to fill it with something I loved, so I am rereading all the books, watching the movies, and may play the games (as I write, Boromir just got shot, in the movie, by the Urukhai, and geez what a scene. Merry and Pipin get carried away, and Boromir is there with 20 arrows in his chest).

Above is a link to a project I did on Middle Earth, sometime soon I will put up the power point also. It was a presentation for a Landscape class I took during my masters at Akron. This kind of proves, that you can almost study anything when you are doing your "higher education".

If you haven't read the books or seen the movies... go do so. It is not for everyone however, but they are still some of the best made movies ever.

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.