Beach Haven

My family had an interesting experience last week. We had a family reunion at Avon, NC which is located on the Outer Banks (OBX). We were there Saturday through Saturday. Early in the morning on Thursday I was woken up to our various phones and tablets lighting up and pinging the alert noise you get when it is either plugged in or unplugged. I quickly fell back asleep. An hour or so later I woke up, looked out the window of the upstairs bedroom and noticed that all the lights were out in the area except for one or two businesses across the highway. It was obvious we were in a power outage. Later that day we learned that the construction crew working on a new bridge north of our location had driven a footing pylon through the underwater electrical mains supplying power to the islands south of the bridge. Cell coverage was still up thanks to generators, as were a few key businesses. Our real estate management company kept us informed by email.

















Casa Del Mar (home we rented)

From the perspective of project management this event could make for an interesting study. I am led to ask some questions. What was the process to avoid the risk of electrical interruption? Was there a risk plan in place for how to respond to this sort of event? From the perspective of an uninformed vacationer (a stakeholder perhaps?) it would seem like these were lacking.

Aside from the obvious fact that the plan to not hit the cable while sinking the pylon (if there was a plan) was a failure, so too were the reaction and the communication afterward.

Let’s talk planning first. Was there only one electrical cable supply? The water where the bridge is going in is only maybe ten feet deep. Surely there could be a second cable in place. If there is a second cable, was it physically right next to the main? That could explain a single pylon knocking out both the main and back up. Twenty feet of separation between the main and secondary cable might have been enough to avoid the total loss of power and the long recovery time.

Now for the reaction. We were initially told it could take days to get the power fixed. Then we were told they were trucking in backup generators, but that different islands would be supplied by different generators. It was not clear which island would be served when. They told us they would move the generators around and supply different islands at different times. That never happened. Instead on early Friday afternoon the power suddenly came on, and stayed on for the rest of our time there (one day more). We were instructed in email to not turn on our air conditioning so as not to overload the generator. For us this was no big deal. The temperature outside was comfortable. We opened all the windows and used the downstairs bedrooms. We also spent more time outside, which is why we were on vacation in the first place. A trip to the store to pick up ice bags for the fridge and freezer, and we were fine even before we got power back.

Since it took so long to bring in generator trucks from wherever they came from, I am guessing they were not specifically planned for. Where and how to deploy them seemed confused at best.

There was also a perception issue on a smaller scale. At one point on Thursday afternoon, my daughter and her family decided to go swim at the community pool at the realty office. When they got there, it was closed. The reason given by the office for the closure was so as not to use electricity for the pumps. That made sense. Unfortunately, when my daughter walked into the realty office to ask, she quickly noticed that the office air conditioning system was on. The staff said they thought guests might like to come there to enjoy the cool air. Hmmm. To us, allowing guests to enjoy the cool water in the pool might make more sense. Even if their intentions were in the right place, this seemed like a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do sort of situation.

My PM brain questions the risk management to this project. Was the risk identified beforehand? Was there a mitigation plan? Was there a response plan? I’m sure now that there are all sorts of lawsuits happening by local businesses losing valuable revenue during the height of the busy season, others are asking similar questions. We weren’t told to evacuate (and probably wouldn’t have), but as we were driving north on Saturday morning there were temporary signs up along the highway leading to the bridge that said “Mandatory evacuation for non-residents.” Just north of the bridge there were law enforcement officers stopping southbound cars and turning them around. The week we were there was probably not too bad for the local businesses, but the week after (this week, now) would be disastrous.

I had a few chores to knock out over lunch today. As I was out and about I noticed a car parked along a street I was walking on. On the side of the car was a graphic of the company in whose service the car was dedicated. The name of the company was "Holy Health Care". No sooner did I read this name then my mind immediately added the word "Batman". I chuckled.

I since looked up the website - http://www.holyhealthcare.in/ - to see what they are about. Of course this is a serious business with an important mission. Then why did I feel compelled to change their name in my head to a tagline from an old TV series, "Holy Health Care, Batman!"?

It makes me think about how much our individual experience within the culture we grow up in influences our perspective. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are older than me such that they paid no attention to the old Batman show. They would never have thought of that line. Just as likely there are plenty of people who link the word Batman with the franchise of movies that have been released over the past decades. None of those movies had Robin using the phrase. If younger people were not exposed to the old TV show, they also would not have made the leap I did.

Another example of this issue would be in the culture of baseball fans. There is a joke in baseball that the last two words in the national anthem are "Play Ball!" Outside of attending a baseball game, at the end of hearing the Star Spangled Banner I sometimes jokingly utter that phrase to see if it brings a chuckle. It usually doesn't, except when I'm actually in a ball park with other baseball fans.

Perhaps having a phrase "stuck" in one's head is a function of how often the person has been exposed to the idea. If we are in a certain culture, we hear certain phrases more often, and perhaps use them often enough ourselves. The result, like any habit, is to strengthen neural passages in the brain (synapses) which strengthen the association we have with the phrase. The more we are exposed, the more we associate the pattern.

I ride a commuter train into Washington DC most days for work. Its call the Virginia Railway Express (VRE). On my morning commute I tend to say my morning prayer and focus my reading on gospel topics. In the evening my focus is typically more related to work or just books I'm reading for fun.

A few Thursdays ago, while riding home, after a little reading, I got focused working on a crossword puzzle. I seemed to get maybe a little too focused. Before long the announcement came over the speaker that we were pulling into my stop. I quickly shoved all my stuff into my backpack. To my chagrin I was not finding my eyeglasses. I remembered putting them on the seat next to me, but they were not there. I checked all my pockets just in case, and a quick look into the backpack with no luck. I assumed they must have fallen behind the seat or something. The train was now fully stopped and the doors were about to close. If I didn't get off I'd have ended up riding to the next stop where I had no car to get home with. Exasperated, I gave up the search, and got off the train. After I got home I broke the bad news to my wife.

Neither of us were overly concerned. I have been having a little trouble focusing my eyes lately, so it was time for a checkup anyway. In the mean time I would find my old pair and use those. As it turns out, the old ones seemed to have vanished as well. We went to the optometrists on Friday only to find that they were closed that day. I was home because I had a doctor appointment that day and wasn't feeling all that well anyway.

Saturday we called the eye doctor to set an appointment, but only got voicemail. We drove in only to find that they couldn't fit me in for another two weeks. I scheduled the appointment and looked forward to a month without glasses. This is because the appointment is two weeks away. Then with prescription in hand I'd have to order new glasses. That would take another week or two. I had resigned myself to squinting and eyestrain.

The next Monday morning I boarded the train as usual, only not as usual. My normal perch is on the upper deck on a car with the seat backs toward the front of the car. I ride that way in both directions (to work in the morning and home at night). I get a better view out the window, and if there is ever a train wreck I won't get tossed from my seat. As I boarded this morning, the car was abnormally full. Every seat on the upper deck on both sides of the car were already occupied by passengers. I resigned myself to the lower deck on one of the side facing seats close to the entry door.

The ride went as normal. Several times I thought as a conductor passed that I should ask about a lost-and-found for my glasses. I didn't. Finally as we approached the final stop, my destination, one of the conductors literally sat down on a seat two feet from me on the first row of front facing seats. This means he was just to my right with nothing between us. I noticed the name on his badge, Robert Easley. He had pulled out a form to start writing something. I interrupted him and asked about a lost-and-found. He told me how to get in touch with them at the VRE offices. Then he asked where I lost the glasses. When I told him, he smiled. He reach to a latched cabinet a few feet directly in front of me and pulled out my glasses. He had found them on Thursday and had put them aside to turn in, but had not done it yet.

Now think about this. Each train has two or three conductors. Each conductor rides a train into Washington each morning, then rides another out of Washington each evening. They are occasionally rotated so they are not always on the same train schedule. I don't always ride the exact same train schedule either or sit in the same car. The train I take each way depends on how my work day is planned. What are the chances that all of these events would fall into place to put this specific conductor next to me in that exact moment in front of the very cabinet where he had placed the glasses. These little miracles I take as personal reminders that a loving Heavenly Father is watchful over us. I have had many similar experiences over the years. I am thankful that God recognizes when we need to see how he is mindful of us individually. Thanks also to Robert Easley for being a good person and conscientious VRE conductor. Clearly he was open to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, whether he understood it that way or not. After I thanked him he said, “It was meant to be.”

Yes, I still went in for my eye appointment and now have new glasses, but until then there was less squinting.
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This post was originally published in January of 2016 on another platform:

Innovation is often defined as the introduction of new things or methods (see http://dictionary.reference.com). Another way one could think of innovation might be combining existing things or methods and using them in new ways; case in point, parking meters.
 
This is a topic I really had not thought about in a very long time, if ever. For more than twenty years we have lived in areas where there are no parking meters. On occasions when we went to visit a city where they have meters we would just park in a parking lot or tower. If we did have to use a meter on the street there was nothing novel about them. Put in your quarter and be sure to add time before the meter went red.
 
Now that I work in downtown Washington DC and have more opportunities to park in the city my experience has changed. Generally I don't park at all since most days I ride the train into the city and walk from the station to NPR. When there is a reason for me to drive to work, I usually just park in the underground parking facility at the NPR building, but sometimes there are off-campus evening events that take me out into the greater parking world. Several of those experiences caused me to get to know the more innovative approaches to street parking metering that have evolved as of late. Those experiences caused me to look around on my daily walk between Union Station and NPR. The result is a recognition that some smart innovation, in the sense of combining disparate technologies, has brought the world of street parking meters a long way from the simple coin-op days.
 
The first step-up in metering technology I see looks deceivingly like the traditional coin-op parking meters. In fact they are backwards compatible (geek speak) in that they actually will take change if you so desire that payment method. What's new is that they have more apps (geek speak again) available. For instance if you don't have coins in your pocket you can swipe your credit or debit card. Additionally, set up an account on the city's metering web-app, and you can update the parking time with a simple text. No credit card required in your hand, just in the account. What I like about the texting version of payment is if you have to renew your time you don't have to leave your meeting, event, etc. to run down to the meter and add time. You just send another text with the number on the side of the meter and instantly you have averted the threat of a ticket from parking enforcement.

The electrical power to do all this is furnished through a small solar panel and the connectivity between the meter and the network is done via wireless. Just a few years ago all of these technologies would not have been available in such a small package as an average-sized parking meter. What a smart way to combine different technologies that were not developed for anything like this sort of application.

Another parking advance is even less hardware intensive. Instead of a block lined with individual parking meters, some locations have shifted to something akin to paying for a space in a parking lot. Somewhere within the city block a driver is trying to park on is a single kiosk. At that kiosk, as with individual meters, there are multiple ways to pay. The driver can park anywhere on the block, then interact with the kiosk through a touch screen or touch sensitive pressure buttons. Again the kiosk is powered by a small solar panel and interacts with the network by wireless connection.
 
I have seen two different versions of how a driver can show they have paid for their time via a kiosk. The first is what I think of as likely the earlier version. In this case the kiosk kicks out a small receipt on paper which the driver then places in the car dashboard. When the parking enforcement people come by they can read the receipt (typically with a bar-code reader) and determine if there is time remaining or if they should issue the bad kind of ticket. The negative to this version is, like the old coin-op or credit card swipe payment, a driver would have to physically go back to the kiosk and their car to pay for added parking time. On my motorcycle, the ticket is accessible to anyone walking by and another driver could adopt my ticket for their car.
 
What I consider the most advanced of all of these options is the kiosk that does not issue a receipt, rather it requests the license plate number on your car. Once entered, the parking enforcement people simply connect with the parking database and look up the license plate number to see if there is still time on the meter. Like the text option on individual meters, a text can be used to recharge this virtual parking meter saving the need to physically go to the space to recharge the time.

This new kiosk arrangement would have made Cool Hand Luke even more frustrated than he already was. You may recall the movie that starts with a Paul Newman, playing the drunken protagonist. He cuts off the heads of a bunch of parking meters. Then he sits down and waits for the police to come by and arrest him.

The remainder of the film is about his experience in prison. It is likely that the most well-known line from the movie happens when Luke is uncooperative with the prison guards. The lead guard (or maybe it was the warden, I don't remember) bellows out in a thick southern accent, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." The guard then proceeds to make Luke's life more miserable than it already is.

Drivers who park on city streets may view parking enforcement a bit like prisoners view prison guards. Unlike the prisoner and guard communication problem, these new parking technologies make for better communication between drivers and parking enforcement. Well, OK, if it's not better communication, at least it is easier communication.

This post was originally published in August of 2015 on another platform:

A week or so ago the day was just perfect outside. I felt inspired to make another roach coach run. I even had a little cash in my pocket. For me that is highly unusual. I decided on Yummy...Yum Food. It specializes in Persian food. I had the Lamb & Koobideh Kabob. The food was good. The lamb was nice and juicy. The koobideh (beef) was a little dry. The sauce they poured onto the meat and rice was quite tasty.

It wasn't cheap. I spent slightly more than I tend to at the brick-and-mortar restaurants across the street. I had to walk across the street to find a place to sit down, but that didn't take long.

They don't seem to have a website, but the truck lists their Twitter and Facebook sites.

It was a literal mom-and-pop. "Mom" was in the back cooking and "Pop" was in the front taking orders and money.

This post was originally published in April of 2015 on another platform:

In the late 1980's I was serving in the Navy, home ported in San Diego. When we were actually in our home port, my ship, USS Duluth (LPD-6), would usually dock at the 32nd Street Naval Station. A few times we needed upgrades or repairs which resulted in a few months at a civilian ship yard. A daily ritual in the ship yard for many, ship's company and contractor alike, was to wander out to the head of the pier at lunch to visit the food truck, commonly called a roach coach.

I assume that most reading this have some idea what I am referring to, but for the overly sheltered I'll explain. A roach coach is a decent sized box truck. They come in various sizes. Inside the truck would be some sort of refrigerator, a grill or other cooking device, and an assortment of cooking tools. You read the menu (usually painted on the side of the truck, or attached to it), place your order, pay the bill, then get your hot lunch handed to you in some sort of to-go packaging.

The nick name might lead you to believe the quality, or at least sanitation, of the offerings is risky. In some cases this could be true, but not always. You might think the food would be cheap. In some cases this could be true, but not always. A food truck is all about convenience and getting a hot lunch you don't have to bring with you or cook in a microwave.

Back in my Navy days there was pretty much only one truck that showed up at the pier, and the food was always Mexican. Fast forward to now when I work in the heart of Washington DC. The area around my office is called NoMa, meaning the area just north of Massachusetts Avenue. Not many years ago it was thought of as a less-than-desirable part of DC. Recently it has been gentrifying. There are plenty of arguments for and against that sort of gentrification effort, but that's not the point of this article.

The process of gentrification has created a few blocks where a person can walk about and pick from a number of lunchtime restaurants. In one block the restaurants line one side of the street. On the other side are other kinds of businesses. With the increased lunchtime foot traffic from new office buildings like mine, food trucks have begun to line the street just opposite of the brick-and-mortar eateries.

I have seen them in the past, but had not partaken of their offerings. Today, maybe the temperature was just right, or the gleam on the shiny trucks caught my eye, or maybe there was a solar flare. Who knows? Whatever the reason, I decided to check out the trucks for lunch.

What I found was that the roach coach of my Navy days has come a long way. The premise has not changed, but the variety is striking. I'm sure this is not really new, but this one city block on 1st Street NE between M Street and Patterson Street is like a mini UN of the roach coach. Most of the trucks listed a website and social networking sites on their sides. A look at the trucks that were out there today will serve as an example. The specific trucks that show up change from day to day. Here's today's list:

• Jamaican Me Crazy (Jamaican Cuisine)
  • http://www.jmccurbside.com/
• Big Cheese (grilled cheese sandwiches)
  • http://www.bigcheesetruck.com/
• BurGorilla (burgers)
  • No website listed, but they are on Facebook and Twitter
• DC Latino Grill
  • Twitter account only
• Just Steak & Cheese (think Philly cheese steaks)
  • Couldn't find a web presence
• DC Greek Food
  • http://dcgreekfood.com
• Crepes Parfait (various food served in a crepe)
  • http://crepesparfait.com
• Healthy Fool (Vietnamese)
  • No luck finding an online presence

Yes that last one is call Healthy Fool and not Healthy Food. I chose that one for my adventure into lunch. The food listed on the menu didn't seem all that healthy, though it didn't seem all that unhealthy either. I chose grilled steak and vegetables on rice noodles with spiced soy sauce. I had to get a drink somewhere else. They had water, lemonade and tea. None of those sounded good to me. Anyone who knows me will have predicted that I picked around the broccoli. I did. The rest was tasty. I did find a hair in the food (apologies to the squeamish). The "chef" was not wearing a hair net or hat. That said, I didn't have any sort of tummy rumblings after lunch like I sometimes do with Asian food.

Next Friday if the temperature is just right, and the gleam of the shiny trucks catches my eye, and there happens to be a solar flare, perhaps I'll venture towards the trucks again to sample a different part of the mobile UN. If not I'll probably be at one of the brick-and-mortar-based lunchtime hangouts within a few blocks of this recently gentrified section of NoMa.