Coastal Tidings

Amy and I took a short trip to Newport Oregon this last weekend where we met up with my parents. Our hotel allowed dogs, so we brought Ruger and Riley along with us. This was the first time we had taken dogs with us to a hotel, and as we are weird dog people now, we really enjoyed that. The weather was great, a real rarity for the Oregon coast. With only a few shots of that famous coastal rain and a large share of sunshine, we were able to enjoy quality views of the rugged coast line. The dogs enjoyed the sand and let their humans enjoy some sweet barley nectar.

Speaking of barley nectar, you didn’t think I would go to Newport without visiting one of the world’s top breweries, did you? Well, I didn’t miss this opportunity. We toured the Rogue brewery on Sunday. The tour wasn’t the greatest, pretty quick and dirty, but I guess not everyone in the group was an engineer wanting to climb in to tanks and discuss their material handling. The beer we bought from their store however, was top shelf. My mom bought a Mom hefeweizen, dad bought some John John beer aged in a bourbon barrel, and I had some of their mocha porter as well as some Double Dead Guy Ale. I think I might have succeeded in turning my parents into beer snobs! Well, they have at least passed “Intro to Brew Snobbery”.

Touring Rogue brewery made me think a little bit about engineering philosophy. This brewery was not high tech, using a lot of repurposed equipment and in some cases insulating tanks with non-clad foam. The plant layout appeared to have been given little thought. Despite all of this, they produce some of the finest, award-winningest beer around. This focus on product quality is something I think some of the biggest companies have lost. Product quality is your public face, and regardless of how good you are at making a bad product it is still a bad product. Now, couple this quality with solid manufacturing technique and you really have something.

Another stop on our trip was the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Being the nerd that I am, I was uber-stoked to walk amongst some of the strange creatures of the ocean. This is the closest I will ever get to these animals though. SCUBA is not for me, something that is reinforced with every episode of Shark Week and every visit to an aquarium. You can tell me odds all day for getting attacked/bothered by a sea creature, but I prefer land. Humans swimming was obviously a design afterthought, added at the last minute. Probably at the last human design review someone said “oh, and we should probably give them some way to get back into the boats they will build” with the lead designer saying something along the lines of “web their hands a little bit and call it good”. The best among us, Michael Phelps, would become a nice treat for a fat, full, and lazy shark.

Engineering seems to be integrating more with architecture at a crazy pace. Lately it has been a hot topic here at work. Has anyone else in the field experienced this? BIM, Integrated Project Delivery, AIC, other three letter acronyms. Anyone digging into this stuff? I wonder…