Author: John Walker

Engineers and Squirrels

I didn’t know what an Engineer was or precisely what they studied when I left High School. Nobody was an Engineer or spoke like they knew what an Engineer was.

In college I heard the folklore statement that “an engineer can do for a dime what any fool can do for a dollar” or something similar. And that really didn’t really encapsulate a workable definition or promote an understanding of the analytical approach, ethical care, and problem solving hubris that defines the Engineers across disciplines that I have known and cared about throughout my career.

And so we have the squirrels and Mark Rober and while Mark is undoubtedly one of the Engineers in this video…well, there may be some analytical skills in Phat Gus as well.

Time well spent designing and building the backyard maze, or any project.

Tidbit: Determining How The World Ships

Vesselfinder, https://www.vesselfinder.com/, is not the only ship tracking site out there. I reached out to someone in shipping and they use another site and so it goes. Still, the idea of watching ships at sea, or navigating the great lakes, or rivers, provides a sense of where cargo goes and how the material in the world actually travels. This should be required for everyone to know.

Tidbit: Snowman Calculator

With a possibility of snow > 0% I immediately happened upon this calculator https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/snowman which

As winter is coming again, it’s time we started thinking of our snowy friends ⛄⛄⛄ This snowman calculator is here to assist you in designing the snowman of your dreams based on the principles of science and postulates of mathematical beauty!

https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/snowman

…and having sent this around to folks to test today the primary complaint is that where it the fun of creating an overly large base that is so large you can no longer roll it around the yard.

Feel free to ignore the calculator and simply consume 80% of the snow in your yard making a giant snowball. That said, I do recall this article from years gone by where a “giant runaway snowball crashed into a Reed dorm….” https://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/sallyportal/posts/2014/giant-snowball-batters-reed-dorm.html