The credit belongs to the …

Theodore Roosevelt speaking at the Sorbonne in 1910

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Marc Cenedella, CEO of upladder.com

Those critics, those naysayers, the nags and the negative people in our lives who want to tell us: "No. It can’t be done. Don’t try. Give up. Why do you have to stand out? Why won’t you just be sensible and give in to the inevitable?"

They don’t count. And you mustn’t mistake their words for truth.

Don’t buy into their message of settle-settle, underachievement, and muddle-along-now.

Because you’ve been blessed with talent, because you’ve had the fortunate happenstance to be born in this great country (or emigrate, or visit!), because you’re one of the leading professionals in this land, you have a higher calling.

Use the great gifts you have been given, find the forum where your talents will shine, discover that place where your spirit soars and the work smells like… victory in the morning.

It is something we think about here at Walker Engineering

Walker Engineering Helps Wunderground Hone its Forecasts

Walker Engineering maintains KORPORTL71 on Wunderground in an attempt to record local data.  It has been interesting to us to use it to compare data sets from the local area along with the official PDX information.  It has also been extremely useful in supporting local bike commuters via the Wundermap which is one of the all time winners in online weather information whether one uses the Chrome PlugIn, the iPhone App, or just the site itself.

Now, as reported in the NYTimes, we are actually going to provide the kind of information that will allow for improved weather forecasting locally.  Amazing Engineering Feat!

Users Help a Weather Site Hone Its Forecasts

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK, NYTimes, Published: March 20, 2011

Kevin Bleier, an amateur meteorologist, lugged a weather station up several precarious ladders to reach the peaked roof on his 40-foot-tall house in Alameda, Calif., then mounted it on a 15-foot pole to capture data for his personal weather site.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Alan Steremberg of Weather Underground, which collects data from amateurs and professionals.

But the data is not for Mr. Bleier’s site alone. His station and over 20,000 like it worldwide are part of the largest network of weather stations ever assembled, according to the meteorological Web site Weather Underground.

The network is part of an audacious plan to crowd-source weather measurement and, Weather Underground hopes, to snatch viewers from its larger competitor, the Weather Channel’s Weather.com. In the last six months, Weather Underground has averaged about 14 million unique visitors a month in the United States, while Weather.com attracted about 42 million, according to Quantcast, an online metrics company.

John Walker, PE moves to enginerve.com

As WEngineering grows, John Walker, principal engineer, founder and president of WEngineering has relocated his web presence to enginerve.com to improve the focus of his consulting work in information technology and engineering.  John continues to be active throughout WEngineering practices; however, the web presence for WEngineering needed to be directed towards the Industrial Engineering consulting practice.  The goal is to reduce the clutter and confusion on the web site.