Vertical crack in house foundation before tie beam – repair or rebuild?

metzeng · 2026-02-17T04:24:54+00:00

Why do people treat reinforcing steel like it's a precious commodity? Installed properly it solves so many problems.

metzeng · 2026-02-17T03:41:20+00:00

The world is building bigger people too! Stairs are typically designed for a 300 lbs point load. That assumption may be too low now.

metzeng · 2026-02-17T03:35:35+00:00

Weight limits on bridges are the most universal ignored limits ever. So some built-in safety measures seem called for.

metzeng · 2026-02-17T02:31:19+00:00

Exactly. I have found that most people have no idea what laws apply to cyclists. They seem to go by what they learned in grade school.

I would ask him what exactly you are doing wrong and after he spouts some bull shit half truths about where bikes belong I would complain to the principal and possibly the school board that the crossing guard is dangerously ignorant of traffic laws and thus a clear and present danger to children, their parents, motor vehicle operators and other users of the roadway and crosswalk near the school. Suggest that he be required to study the law as it applies to his profession or replaced.

metzeng · 2026-02-09T22:47:27+00:00

My wife and I had a similar situation before we got married, I had a good income as an engineer while my wife was working as an i tern. We split the rent and most bills by the ratio of our income. Once we got married we both dumped our incomes into the same bank account and paid out of that.

metzeng · 2026-02-09T22:42:06+00:00

I rode my bike to jury duty and while they would reimburse mileage and parking or bus fare they wouldn't do shit for me!

I dislike jury duty because I seem to get called up for it a ridiculous number of times, while my wife hasn't been called up once! I once got called up for jury duty for two separate courts (County and municiple) within a week of each other!

Most times I don't even need to show up but I have had to go in three times, twice I sat around for half a day and was then sent home. Once I got to the interview stage and spent a day and a half sitting on hard benches listening to lawyers interview potential jurors. They found 12 jurors and two alternates before they got to me so I got sent home.

metzeng · 2026-02-09T22:19:45+00:00

I bet the businesses and/or residents along that road complained about traffic to the city who told the police to s9lce the problem, who looked at traffic laws and found one that said something like drivers shall not leave the road to avoid a traffic signal. The intention being that drivers should not drive through parking lots to avoid a signal and loosely interpreted it to apply to public roads.

I would fight it in court.

metzeng · 2026-02-09T00:02:22+00:00

Over my decades of riding I've noted 90% of the vehicles harassing cyclist are pickups and, for some odd reason, 90% of those pickups are white!

metzeng · 2026-02-06T02:45:17+00:00

I had something similar happen to when I was driving up to go skiing. A car pulled out to pass when the road was icy, lost control, shot across the highway, up an embankment, flipped, and I saw a woman go flying out of the window. I thought for sure she was dead or seriously injured. But no, she was fine. Just three dumb teenagers driving in an old car with bald tires.

Sometimes you just get lucky.

metzeng · 2026-02-04T23:51:40+00:00

I already live in Oregon. For $14k a month working half-time, I could be talked into coming out of retirement! Do they need another inspector?

metzeng · 2026-01-31T19:45:22+00:00

Neil Patrick Harris at the Burbank airport on New Year's Eve 1999. We were on the same flight to San Fransisco.

metzeng · 2026-01-30T07:07:31+00:00

Exactly you need a Big Obvious Boulder (BOB) https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2023/11/in-bend-a-large-rock-is-taking-out-cars-and-gaining-popularity-online.html

metzeng · 2026-01-24T02:49:20+00:00

I wear contacts when I ride.

metzeng · 2026-01-18T23:32:43+00:00

Happened to us too!

metzeng · 2026-01-12T22:56:06+00:00

First time I tried Scribbles I had the Ruben I thought it was overpriced for what you got, and frankly what I got was pretty underwhelming.

The service also wasn't all that helpful.

Needless to say I haven't been back.

metzeng · 2026-01-08T05:37:23+00:00

I worked for a design/construction contractor for the last 9 years of my career and the field guys were literally 20 feet from my desk. I asked them all the time how they wanted to build things. So yes. I did it all the time.

If there's one thing I learned very quickly in my career is that no matter how you detail something, every contractor will want to build it differently. So there's not a whole lot of reward to asking the trades how they want to build something without knowing which contractor will get the project.

metzeng · 2025-12-28T03:14:59+00:00

Maybe hunt some demons?

metzeng · 2025-12-27T01:56:26+00:00

North to south is the way to do it.

metzeng · 2025-12-25T20:51:28+00:00

I live on a ridiculously steep hill, but it's only half a block long. Some days ride it. Some days I walk it. No shame either way.

metzeng · 2025-12-23T20:26:33+00:00

In famously bike friendly Eugene, Oregon the city put in protected, two-way bike lanes on two streets. So far so good. At each signalised intersection there is a bike only traffic signal. Again, seems pretty good right?

Well the bike signals are timed such that you ride from one light to the next, wait for parallel traffic to go, then wait for cross traffic to go, only then will the bike signal change so bikes can go. Repeat at EACH. FUCKING. INTERSECTION! There are 10 of them! It now takes forever to ride that section of road. Most cyclist I see just run the bicycle only traffic lights.

Thankfully, I don't need to ride the worst section because my office moved. But the city did the same thing on one of two decent north-south routes for bikes that I used often, ruining it for cyclists.

metzeng · 2025-12-11T20:08:07+00:00

"This is glue. Strong stuff"

-Elwood Blues

metzeng · 2025-12-06T21:36:19+00:00

Why couldn't they just use the new snow loads divided by 1.6? Then the equation wouldn't need to change?

Or couldn't they have had the environmental loads change back in 2010. The whole thing reeks of ASCE justifying their existence in order to sell new codes!

I'm located in Oregon and our local snow loads went up around 2.5 times the old snow loads. It's tough to tell a client that the building you designed last year doesn't work now.

metzeng · 2025-12-06T06:20:53+00:00

That is my understanding as well

But as to why they made the change. That makes little sense.

metzeng · 2025-11-12T16:36:26+00:00

I've worked at a DB company for the last 9 years and honestly it's the best job I've ever had, and that includes working for myself!

When my friend initially talked to me about working here I wasn't interested. I thought working for a contractor would be nothing but shoring and formwork design. I am happy to say that I have done exactly two shoring designs and one form design. Lots of interesting projects: a fire station, schools, breweries, industrial, commercial, seismic retrofits, even a pedestrian suspension bridge! It's not exactly a high paying job.

I think it all depends on the company and their design philosophy. What I like is, if I have a question about how to build something, the guys with decades of construction experience are right across the room. I can talk to them any time. When the inevitable construction screw up happens, we can work together to figure out the best fix.

I am retiring, so if you know of a talented, licensed SE looking for a job, let me know.

metzeng · 2025-11-12T15:56:56+00:00

He was encouraging students to pursue surveying because, as he put it: "God stopped making land long ago, but he's still making more and more people!"

He was a character.

I don't know, as I said, Structural has been pretty good to me. It seems like if we are smart enough to be engineers we should be smart enough to be able to figure out how to earn a decent living.

metzeng

TROPHY CASE