The Final Day

Wednesday, December 5, 2013

6:30am - Breakfast

Not wanting to make the long walk to the breakfast hall I opted for a bagel and coffe around the corner, it also allowed me to sleep in 30 more minutes

8:00am - Introduction to VBA for Autocad

This class covered the basics of getting started using VBA with AutoCAD. I was hoping to learn something here but the class discussed the IDE in detail and basic programming with VBA. This was a remedial class for my skill level.

10:00am - Digital Design Management

Another change in class. After further review of Autolisp Strategies for CAD Managers I decided I knew most of what might be covered in this class so I decided to take a different class that might give some insight on better management of data. DDM - Digital Design Manager is similar to CAD manager they handle installations, standards, etc.. The DDM needs to stay active and relevant. 

A good slide on goal setting

11:30am - Lunch

Oh I feel my arteries clogging, Mark and I went back to In and Out Burger and indulged in scrumptiosness again. Yummy (again)!

1:00pm - Intro to Android Development

I got a little lazy in my note taking for this class, mainly because the instructor was French and hard to understand and because he was covering a lot of information fast.

The instructor knew his stuff, unfortunately I don't think this is something we are ready for until we start considering mobile as a viable tool. 

2:30pm - Going on a Bug Hunt Debugging Autolisp

Good class on the visual lisp IDE and ways to use it for debugging lisp files. 

    

4:30pm - Closing Session

Finale with Autodesk senior VP of Product Group. This session tied together ideas and trends that Autodesk is heading. I thought this year was more of a showcase of Autodesk's new products rather than an education event of their products. The main topics I took away from the conference was a better understanding of laser scanning tools and a sense of how the industry is headed. A trend I see that could be hitting our industry soon is collaboration via cloud and the 360 products target this area. My challenge is how to introduce these ideas to our organization in a way for serious consideration.

Conference Continues

Wednesday, December 5, 2013

One word made this morning awesome, "bacon". I skipped the conference breakfast in favor if "reall" breakfast from the food court, yummy.

8:00am - A Recap on Plant Design

The recap product shows promise. It's suppose to come with any design suite at no extra cost, there is a basic and pro version and I'm not sure of the difference.  It is used to take raw scan data and convert into recap format for importing into Autodesk products.

The class also showcase a product by Kubitz which allows intelligent modeling from the recap file (scan data). The Kubitz  software is worth looking into but I think it only performs with Plant 3D, perhaps there is an option for autoplant.

As a side note, it appears the industry uses clash detection via review software or they perform visual clash detection. Need to investigate the navisworks clash detection.

10:30am - Exam Prep

This time slot was open so I decided to spend it studying for the AutoCAD exam. Wish me luck!

11:30 - Lunch

Mark and I took a ride to see the Pawn Stars place of business and have a burger at In and Out Burger. Pawn Stars was interesting to see and the burger was yummy.

1:00pm - Profuctivity Programming with the Action Recorder

Good class showing how the action recorder can be used for simple repetitive tasks. Will have to investigate how might be able to incorporate into work processes.

2:30pm - Making Use of Substation Design Models for Scheduling

I called an audible on this class, was suppose to take a class on lisp. After reviewing the course description for the lisp class I decide it would be remedial for me. I'm hoping this class will inspire new ways to visualize designs for our clients.

Navisworks can work with primavera but mapping from model to schedule activities must be done. It's a great visualization tool for construction but I don't understand how it could benefit engineering. Since model objectsust be linked to schedule if objects aren't modeled then no 4D would be available.

4:00 - Certification Exam

I was suppose to attend another class on AutoCAD 360 but class description sounded like the same class I took yesterday. I decided instead to take the AutoCAD Certification exam. I passed!!!

6:30pm - Exhibit Hall

The usual vendors you would expect was on display. There seemed to be quite a few number of vendors related to laser scanning either from source (scanning equipment) or final output (software). A promising vendor was Kubitz, their software is capable of modeling cad objects from laser scans using cad specs (using plant 3D spec format which autoplant specs can be converted) in a simple "pick and click" format.

The other promising software was recap. The basic version (free) will allow viewing scans and also converting to AutoCAD format which allow working with Autodesk products. The pro version will allow registering the scans similar to LFM software for manipulation. The expected price for the pro version is $3600, about half of LFM and flexible terms, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.

Conference Begins

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

I started this morning with the conference breakfast, I was number five in the breakfast line. the breakfast consisted of an egg and spinach bagel sandwich, fruit and yogurt. after a quick bite i made my way to the lounge outside my first class, Compelling Strategies for Passing the AutoCAD2014 Professional Certification Exam. sincewe are on AutoCAD 2012 at work, this may be a stretch in passing.

As always the conference always has behind the scenes giveaways, contests, etc. trying to participate in these extra activities is fun but challenging to do so with everything there is to see and participate.


8:00am - Compelling Strategies for Passing the AutoCAD 2012 Professional Certification Exam

The instructor has many years of teaching autocad. the eam will contain skills based questions where hands on skill is tested in a drawing. also included are knowledge based questions in the form of multiple choice. the instructor covered test taking techniques, hands on techniques, and suggested reading roadmaps and acad help for solutions. also available are workflows for taking the exam. instructor also had suggestions for setting drawing environment when doing hands on portion of exam.


10:30am - Keynote Address: The Answer is Outside
Penn and Teller opened the keynote address, way cool opening. The theme around the keynote was crowdsourcing and collaboration. The idea correlates to their direction, one of using the cloud and their brand of cloud software. Some of the more notable points made was reverse mentoring, having the younger generation retrain the older generation. Another concept was that of using the cloud, Autodesk 360, to get project input from outside the design team, sort of reverse innovation, end user input on final product. Lastly the concept of making more use of existing design/construction to save time, i.e. making use of reality captures or laser scans in the design rather than remodeling exist objects for design aid.


1:30pm - Best Practices in the Brownfield Case Studies in Effective Scanning and Modeling
This was not what I was expecting. there were two instructors for this class, the first talked about scanning from a service provider perspective, the second talked about scanning post data collection from the service provider perspective also. The class was geared towards scan providers, discussing scope of work, best practices, etc. from our perspective we are the customer of said service providers, their discussion had little to do with how we work with scans


3:00pm - How to Excel at Data Extraction
Short class but very informative. The instructor gave demo on how to create index drawings using data extraction wizard. Some other ideas ideas include data linking to spreadsheets with dynamic updates.

4:30pm - Autodesk 360

Jamuary 18 tech preview, must sign up to get on list. Resembles share point or Facebook for projects. Similar functionality to ipims which could be enhance with some features. AutoCAD 360 has Integrated viewer feature for files not just drawings, could ipims use the autodesk viewer that's free, true view? Who at work could I get to look at for enhancing ipims?

6:30pm - Exhibit Hall

The vendors had a lot to showcase. Took today to browse the vendors making note of the ones I'd like to visit with more later.

Breakfast line was short when you're fifth in line.

The crowd of people waiting to enter the hall for keynote address.

Keynote address

Penn and Teller opened keynote address

Lunch 

Departing Houston

Monday, December 2, 2013

Arrived at airport in Houston with not much to do except wait for the flight. Looking around at the people waiting to board the flight I wonder how many are going to the conference and how many are going for other purposes. Since it's a Monday I don't expect too many to be going for pleasure. I see a fair number of people dressed in attire that would suggest traveling for business. 

I arrived in Las Vegas and checked in at the Venetian, a very nice hotel. I dropped my gear in the room and made my way downstairs to the exhibit hall. I found the registration desk and got registered for the conference. There isn't much going on with the conference but there are a lot of conference folks hanging out in the area. I decide to grab some pizza and go back to the room to eat and relax. I'm also going to play with the AU app and see how useful it will be during the conference.

A Photo Summary

"Selfy" from airport

Leif Erricson's ship remains

Downtown Reykjavik

Reykjavik Lights

"Mini-henge" stone stacking, because there's nothing else to do

Church 

Brrrrr cold

Sheep!

c

Gullfoss waterfall

Not gullfoss waterfall

Glacier walking

Glacier Taxi

Mr Ed and guest

Blue Lagoon "selfy"

Look at the "white" rocks

Back in the USA

Friday, October 18, 2013
Arrival back in the USA at Logan international airport was awesome. Lines just moved, this was great!

Called the hotel shuttle to pick us up and right next to the place is an Uno pizza place. I love Boston!

After enjoying our pizza and returning to the hotel we noticed that it was raining in the bathroom. We are not sure what caused the water to drip from our ceiling but at 11pm we were changing hotel rooms.

Leaving Vikingland

Friday, October 18, 2013
Today we leave the land of the mighty vikings. Its been a fun stay, we have learned a lot about the country's history and culture. Mrs. Mcintosh never took us on a field trip like this in 7th grade history. Not sure what we wilk do in our final hours, perhaps trinket shopping and a photo safari.

Lunch was at fylgifiskar, a fish buffet recommended by our northern lights driver, Georg. The food was good and had a lot of local folks,  so we knew it would be good.

After our delicious lunch of pan fried fish and fish stew, we went in search of photo ops of Reykjavik.  Our first stop would be Pealan, an observatory overlooking the city. Took a few pics then we left for our own version of a city tour, "find the road to the airport".

After seeing many wonderful landmarks on our tour (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.) We manage to get on the road to the airport where we would have one stop before reaching the airport.

Our stop was the Blue Lagoon, where we had been the night before. We had to swing by and see the pools in the day light to appreciate them (and get photos). Look at the blue water!

Getting short on time we race out of the Blue Lagoon and towards the airport. With 1 1/2 hours before our flight we still have to turn in rental car. The "dude" at the rental car olace said it would be 10 minutes for the shuttle or we could walk it in 2 minutes.

We start the timer and start hiking to the airport. Where else could you walk in to the airport from off the street? I know we couldn't do it at hobby without being met by an escort.

Surprisingly we reached the terminal in 6 minutes. All that marathon training has paid off. Went through security, passport control, etc in plenty of time and still had time to shop for trinkets and onboard snack, in an hours time! Couldn't do that in a US airport.

As we settle in to our seats and finally taxi to runway, we bid farewell to Iceland as the wheels leave the ground and our honeymoon moves closer to an end.

Glacier Trek

Thursday, October 17, 2013
After much deliberation the night before we finally agreed to take a tour to see the glaciers instead of going ourselves. The tour will actually be able to drive us up to the glacier.

We arrive at the mountain that has the glacier, but we still have another 30 minutes to the glacier as we stop at the waterfall for a break and photo op.

The trek to the glacier looks like a wasteland.  The volcano erupted in 2010 which partially melted the glacier and flooded the valley, leaving behind volcanic ash and rock. The experience and remoteless was awesome!

The drive back was difficult as a 2 1/2 hour drive left me sleepy and nodding off.

After arrival we immediately pack up and head out to the blue lagoon, a geothermal spa and pool. With the temperature outside at 38F, slipping into the warm pools outside was welcomely warm. The blue lagoon is situated next to the power plant that extracts the superheated steam from the earth to spin generators. The spent steam and water is pumped into the pools. Perfectly safe and wicked good fun.

Golden Circle Afternoon

Wednesday,  October 16, 2013
Today we are on our own as we drive the much acclaimed Golden Circle. I will let you know what that is as we discover it.

Pingvellir National Park (the "P" is pronounced "th")
Wonderful time at the national park as we viewed the mid-atlantic tetonic plates and where the first parliament convened in 920. These vikings kicked ass!

Fontana at Laugarvatn
We stopped here for lunch, this place actually had geo-thermal pools,  but we decided to hold out for the famous blue lagoon pools later. Lunch was good and over due (tomato soup for us both).

Geysir
We stop at the information stop looking for the geiser, only to be looking in the wrong direction. We followed the people leaving the buses and found the geisars. This was amazing, as we walked up it went off three times. We waited again thinking it would go off again, but it took another twenty minutes to go off, we waited as the freezing wind turned our fingers blue. 

Gullfoss

The last jewel on the Golden Circle circuit. This town or location played host to a wonderful waterfall  which is about as amazing as I have ever seen. By now the wind had picked up and the temperature was 36F with the wind chill factor it could have easily been 28F. 

As we left Gullfoss the sun started to go down and we had a 1 1/2 hour drive still ahead of us to get back to the hotel. 

Back at the hotel we decided to dine in at the hotel restaurant. Brenda had reindeer and I had the local fish (plaice) a type of flounder. Both were delicious! 

After dinner we decided to chase the lights. We finally found them as we trekked 30 minutes away from the city into more desserted wasteland.

Thar' she blows - Geisar at Geysir

Gullfoss waterfall

Iceland Ready or Not

Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Reykjavik - After 18 hours of traveling we were not ready for Iceland. Arriving at the Hilton Nordica in Reykjavik at 7:30 am, we decided it was time to sleep so we could recharge from the traveling.

The sleep decision was a good one, five hours later we were ready to explore the city. The hotel clerk gave us some suggestions for getting to the waterfront district, and following his instructions we found downtown and embarked on our journey, finding food.

After some local Icelandic super food (sandwiches) we are off to explore down town and see the church in the middle of town, while doing some shopping along the way and taking in rhe city.

We make our way back to the hotel after our short day downtown. our search results on the internet didn't yield any interesting dining choices so we ordered room service.

After dinner we congregate in the hotel lobby until our tour guide arrives. A jeep adventure in search of the northern lights. 

Our tour guide shows up in this massive 4x4 jeep and we get going. IImmediately our guide takes us off road for some rock climbing in the jeep. We settle upon a plateau overlooking Reykjavik at night, awesome view!

With night having heavy cloud cover and a full moon our chances of finding some northern lights look bleek, I feel like a storm chaser as we travel back roads looking for clear black skies that will reveal our nights mission.

Okay three hours of driving around and the magic is gone. We were able to see the slightest bit of lights but not what we had hoped. We return home at 1:00 am tired and disappointed. the northern lights had eluded us this night.

Arrival at Hilton Nordica

Hallgrimskirkja, largest church in Iceland

Bluff overlooking Reykjavik

Honeymoon to Iceland

Monday, October 14, 2013
Houston, Hobby Airport. Arrived at the airport ready to go. I have glowsticks in my hand bag to mess with the TSA, is it liquid or is it solid? Is it harmless glow material or glowing nuclear waste.

Oddly enough I got no reaction from the TSA in regards to glowsticks. Bummer. We will try something else next time.

Today is strictly a travel day, our first leg takes us to Nashville and our second leg to Boston and our final leg has us arriving tomorrow morning in Reykjavik,  Iceland.

As luck would have it our flight to Nashville is delayed by 20 minutes, so what to do with the extra time? Eat of course.  Brenda got us some ddelicious airport food (burger and fries) whilewe wait out the delay. While we are waiting we started discussing the TV program, the Amazing Race and how those travelers have to carry everything on their backs. This flight Brenda has chosen the backpack carry on instead of her normal checked roller. We wondered if they were provided clothing for cetain legs of the race, otherwise how could you pack for tropical to artic  weather? A pondering thought as we sit and wait.

Nashville, International Airport. Guitars and Cadillacs, we are in Nashville or its airport as we wait to fly to "bawstin", one hour and counting.

Boston, Logan International.  One more flight behind us and the longest one yet to travel. We are gonna grab some dinner in the airport then go wait at the gate. Then for the next 5 hours we will tey to get some sleep on the plane. This has been a very long travel day.

Iceland bound couple - Houston

Asleep on flight to Boston

We are really doing this

Leaving Maine

Sunday, October 6, 2013
Early start this morning so we would have time to shop at the L.L.Bean store in Freeport.

After grabbing some breakfast and an hour and s half of shopping we make our way to the jetport in Portland for the voyage home.

Its been a good trip, learned a lot about my fellow trip mates and had fun with them. I am ready to get home back to the family and my beautiful fiancee.

Camden Excursion

Saturday, October 5, 2013
A morning surprise at breakfast, a tour bus arrived some time yestarday and suddenly the inn has more residents. This was very noticeable as I fight for bacon at the buffet :-)

This morning we make the hour long drive to Camden, Maine. We easily find a place to park and our tour boat, the Lively Lady, with time to spare.

We board the Lively Lady and begin our day job of collecting lobsters. Before we embark on our new temp jobs the captain gives us a tour of camden harbor and coast line.

About 45 minutes into the tour we start hauling up lobster traps and getting educated on the tasty creatures (no lobster races).

We return to port and our lunch spot, the waterfront, and all pile in for a cozy lunch. Since I haven't yet had my fill of clam chowderor lobster yet, I order the clsm chowder and lobster roll. Delicious! 

After lunch we stroll the town shopping and finally heading to camden hills state park for a birdseye view of camden harbor. After our day in camden we return to boothbay to prepare for our last dinner together.

Ports of Italy, our restaurant for the night. Arriving at 7:30 and closing the place down at 10:30. The food was wonderful and the company was great as everyone shared their stories and experiences from the trip.

Camden Harbor

Camden coast line

Day of Sailing

Friday,  October 4, 2013
9:00 am like clock work we leave for the Coastal Botanical Gardens, rated in the top 5, arriving at our destination in fifteen minutes.

Our guide, Becky, was actually a volunteer who called texas home. She gave us a breif history of the gardens before starting us on our hour long tour. After the guided portion of the tour we were left on our own to explore the gardens.

After an hour of self guided touring, it was time to round up the group and load up for our next destination, the schooner East Wind (www.schoonereastwind.com).

Arriving earlier than our departure time allowed us to walk the cozy downtown of Boothbay, with its charming small town shops.

Its time to board the boat and sail the bay area. With a four hour sail time we had plenty of time to see the Maine coast line, viewing lighthouses and lobster boats and learning about some history of Maine from Captain Bill and his first mate Jerry. 

Returning from our sailing adventure we had an hour to recoup before setting for our evening entertainment, the Carousel Music Theater (www.carouselmusictheater.org).

The Carousel Music Theater was a charming place, serving a soup and sandwich meal while the wait staff also entertained with songs from Barry Manilow. After dinner was served, the cast continued the entertainment with a musical comedy which wrapped up the evenings entertainment with laughs.

Coastal Botanical Gardens

East Wind Schooner

Arrival in Maine

Thursday, October 3, 2013
Today is a travel day; two planes,  a car trip and nine hours arrival at Spruce Point Inn in Boothebay, Maine.

After settling in to our rooms its time for drinks and socializing at the the bar before going to dinner.

After drinks we travel to the Boathouse Bistro, across the lake from where we are staying. The restaurant is a nice cozy place, a tappas style restaurant also serving entree type fare. What's on the menu? Lobster of course, and good lobster it was; for me it was grilled lobster in basil oil with a corn sauce served on top. All followed by a trio of creme brulee; baileys, grand marinier and ameretta.

After dinner its cigars and story telling of trips past.

Farewell to Switzerland

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Today was a souvenir and chocolate shopping dsy. We also explored some of the small towns in the area and gave our hiking muscles a break.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Travel day, to Zurich, so we will be close to airport for flight home. After checking into the hotel (which is in the airport) we went to the Swiss National Museum. We learned a few tidbits of informstion about the Swiss history and their struggles.

Saturday we will fly home, farewell Switzerland thank you for a fantastic vacation and wonderful memories