July 31 2010:  El Nido del Halcón,  Ballena, Costa Rica

July 30 2010:  El Nido del Halcón,  Ballena, Costa Rica

July 29 2010:  Juanita's House,  Jimmy, Costa Rica

July 28 2010:  Hotel Verdemar,  Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

July 27 2010:  Hotel Verdemar, Manuel Antonio,  Ballena, Costa Rica

July 26 2010:  Nido del Tucano,  Platanillo, Costa Rica

July 25 2010:  El Nido del Halcón,  Ballena, Costa Rica

July 24 2010:  Dan's Pad (Nido del Tucano),  Platanillo, Costa Rica

July 23 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

July 22 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

Before	After

Now I have only two bridges to go to be all back to dental ground zero.

July 21 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

Heading west out of Platanillo	Bridge pillar	Another view	Piecemeal progress	Another view

	Never trust a blue-tongued chow	A bridge of perception	The El bases dot the hillside	The khan man is oblivious to heights.

July 20 2010:  Dan's pad,  Platanillo, Costa Rica

July 19 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

July 18 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

July 17 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

July 16 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

July 15 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jamestown, Costa Rica

July 14 2010:  Hotel Verdemar,  Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

July 13 2010:  Angelus Hotel,  Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica

July 12 2010:  Hotel Verdemar,  Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

A day for the record books.  Up at five a.m. to cook breakfast and pack lunch for my crew (pinto, fried chicken, salchichon, scrambled eggs, and coffee).  A job site survey, a meeting at Hacienda Uvita to smell the hydrogen sulfide and change the filter, delivery and counting of another 1500 pulgadas of wood in Hatillo, culminating in a rendezvous with Erick and Pepe at Verdemar to get a good night's rest for the morrow's kickoff for the giant commercial grey water rehabilitation project . . . three projects, three paychecks.  That's the idea, anyway.

July 11 2010:  Bunk House,  Uvita, Costa Rica

July 10 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Port Jim, Costa Rica

Alrighty then, tourists are back in town, CafeNet full to the rim and Juanita's hopping.  Lazy day in the Nest.  Great soccer game.  My Uruguayans did not pull it out, but I was not deflated over it; the Germans were truly worthy.  And it was just a great game, good sportsmanship, good referee-ing, both sides playing full of heart.  And since third and second place in the World Cup have no meaning, the losers of today's game are still winners and nobody had to feel bad, no grown men bursting into tears. 

In the Crow's Nest it is capresse salad and Cabernet, with a half rack of succulent ribs sitting over in the refrigerator, awaiting their turn.  On Jango it's Leon Russell and in Jimmy, the streets are peopled by the young and old, the thin and stout, the besotted and teetotalling, the children and aged, all moving forward in a cadence of life that has me by the big toe, one hand inside a tornado, the other chained to an anchor, and as I am ripped apart what rises into the air are neon flowers and major seventh chords, memories of things that have not yet happened, prophecies from the garden of forking paths of the alternate realities seeded from yesterday's fits and turns and innocent passage.

Everywhere is pulchritude and flesh, every warm body ponied up to a bar the latest fricking genius in a push-me pull-you game of life where cheaters turn out to have simply played by the real underlying rules after all and the fallout of a hard day's honest labor is a spilled overpriced happy hour beer on a hardwood counter and a bored beer maid chewing gum and setting up a fresh coldie with a jaded smirk.

July 09 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Port Jim, Costa Rica

I have never before baked pork ribs, so call it a trial run.  All I did was slice one kilo of ribs into three strips that would fit without folding or crunching into a casserole dish and applied enough juju that it touches everything but not enough to drown the ribs, at least not until the oils emerge.  The juju was a mixture of:  lizano, hickory-flavored barbecue sauce, French's mustard, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, the juice of one mandarin lime and more Tabasco sauce than most would probably approve of, mixed in with a slightly excessive amount of chopped fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, and an Italian spice mix.  We're 45 minutes in at 300 degrees but they still have at least as long again to go from checking a few minutes ago.  I'll try to remember to get you a picture.

Am thinking about compiling a list of exotic recipes for world-class dishes and knocking them down for sport.  Last night I made Carpaccio again, only this time it was the best ever, hands down, even with half wilted stalks of celery left over from my last round last week.  The trick was to slice the tenderloin while still frozen, which enabled me to get thicknesses down to as little as about construction paper size in some cases.  Anyway, I have that dish now firmly down, and it is so easy.  My secret ingredients are shallots, capers, and mandarin limes for the tart.

My plans were dramatically changed today when Luis decided he needed to take the day off tomorrow.  He left the final decision up to me, and it looked like it was going to put a dent in my plans but it works out best.  I was headed up this afternoon and to the job site tomorrow and then likely on to San Jose and a costly two nights in a hotel with restaurant meals and then a return to Quepos with equipment and possibly batteries.  But now I will sit at home all weekend, watch both world cup games, and head up Sunday afternoon.  I will have the equipment shipped straight to Quepos and get a full day Monday onsite at the El job site, sleeping at Verdemar to begin the grey water job there on Tuesday . . .

Got my truck back from its third trip to the shop, this time a $600 replacement of the rear differential and brake pads and a full lubing and oil changes in the transfer and front end also.  I now have around $2500 in recent repairs but am told that I am now good for a long time.  And I must admit that the truck has been reliable and never let me down and has made so much possible for me these past four years.  Race on, Ruby.

Got paid by one colleague today and get paid by other clients tomorrow and expecting a deposit for a third job and have a nice payday up the first part of this week from the El.  Am hoping that the June capital hemorrhage for Juanita's will be stanched by an uptick in business and expect to pour some of the upcoming revenues into road signs and advertising in general but am hopeful that I can set back twenty grand or so for savings and another sink another ten in panels. 

The looker passed on Juanita's, and a part of me is relieved.  I am growing a bit affectionate, even if it remains more of an albatross about my neck than any sort of financial engine.  What I must do is to put in and get out a lot of love and satisfaction between now and December and market it aggressively and get it in someone else's hands sometime in 2011, even if it means little more than walking away.  

The Khan Man feels the change rising on his horizon . . .

July 08 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Port Jim, Costa Rica

I am now a Miami fan.  I can't wait to root for the heat against the Laker's in the 2011 NBA finals.

My rear differential is in the ditch, the mechanic doing a late double overtime shift to get me hoisted back into high gear for hittin the road tomorrow for the blaze to Hatillo and the highlands and apartment shopping and the wider universe of chepe belong if half my heart leans on my spleen and I get chomp happy with the mountains standing in between.  Can such a challenge be merited by a sallow night in a presumptively exotic restaurant and entirely serviceable wifi and CNN on cable tv? 

Ugh.  It's okay for awhile, I guess.  Still better than a lot of alternatives north and south of the dirty middle.

Am smug and fey with the El in full upstart swing.  It's a good time to getting all the kinks out of Ruby with the next three months spent largely out of Jiminy.  So it is on this Thursday evening

July 07 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Port Jim, Costa Rica

Tonight is the wake for Mainor Reyes.  He drowned off Hatillo the day before yesterday when the jet ski he was riding with his common law wife broke down.  The report is that as he tried to fix it in the water a wave came along and knocked them off.  The woman was rescued, but by the time they got back out, Mainor was drowned.  Ironically, I was with Alex at Villas Manu when somebody called him to inform him of the accident.  A bit of an ugly coincidence.  Living in a small town for so long makes death more intimate.  It skips around, favoring the elderly but beyond predictions.  Freak accidents and old age.  Fast-moving cancer and suicide.  I liked Mainor, and he worked on my first truck a couple times.  His brother (also a mechanic) and I have been dancing around a possible partnership for him to work as a mechanic out of my shop and pay part of my rent and bills and give me great deals when I need a mechanic . . .

No inclinations toward the morbid.  While we are celebrating the memory of Mainor (and Germany) let us celebrate the ascension of Spain to the sport's world's highest stage for the first time in that nation's storied history.  I am torn between my fondness for the Dutch and my debt to Spanish civilization and culture.  I am pretty much decided to be happy no matter how it plays out so long as the refereeing is good and both teams play with all their hearts.   We'll see Sunday.

In the meanwhile, it is back to Hotel Verdemar on Monday or Tuesday for repeat work there, a small job, but something to get Erick in the coin loop.

July 06 2010:  Nido del Halcón,  Uvita, Costa Rica

Steady light rain outside, has been raining steadily since one this afternoon, nearly eight hours, heavy at times, torrentially at the project.  Got a first round of materials bought, orientation on site, coordination with the site manager, all bases delivered, but the heavy rain is a bit of a damper, particularly with the three river crossings to get in and out.  This project is not like any other before.  It is going to require me to be close on a day to day basis through the end of August.  I am simply going to have to find me another nest . . .

I went all out tonight with pork ribs, home fries, broccoli, rice, and beans, with tons of leftovers so lunches for tomorrow are already in the bag.  I got them basic stocked.  I am going to buy a fridge and have it in place before next week plus a one burner stove (which I have, somewhere) for coffee on the job site.  Cope brought a washing machine.   I have to remind Pana about the tv to return the borrowed one.  Also flesh out the amenities with bigger plates, more silverware, an odd here, an end there.  It is a fine little bunkhouse.  Now it's time to outfit a modest command center.  At $30 a night, the Nido del Halcon is going to get a bit pricey and remain impersonal.  My first thought is to take up residence in the roofed in graveled shop front yard and may end up doing it, with a black plastic rollup privacy curtain for the street and to deny the raging morning sun a bit.  One AC apartment is out there that gave me the idea:  $260 per month.  If it's fully furnished I think I will have to take it . . . 

Better anything new than sameness.

July 05 2010:  Cabinas Gato, Uvita, Costa Rica

July 04 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

Our nation's birthday was marred here in Paradise by periodic rains all day long, hard enough by fits and starts to knock out Sky TV for periods. 

I made the most of the day before deployment tomorrow to Uvita in putting the final wraps on the design and engineering report and sending it off with a bill.  For those curious, I will spare you a link to the entire report, but here is one of the juicier paragraphs of the fifteen page report:

1)     Column design and tolerance LRFD/ASD Steel Construction Manual 13^th Edition

a.       LRFD:  Load and Resistance Factor Design

b.      ASD:  Allowable Strength Design

c.       From weight calculations in Section 2 and loading assumptions, determine dead and live loads

                                                               i.      Dead Load = 12,885 pounds / 1000 = 12.9 kips

                                                             ii.      Live Load = 7,500 pounds = 7.5 kips

d.      Connections types for the columns are FIXED-FIXED (i.e. with respect to translation and rotation), hence effective length factor (K), by convention, = 0.65.  Assume analysis for longest column (hence the one most susceptible to buckling) of 4.5 meters, i.e.  177.1 inches.  Effective length (KL) = (177.1 in)(0.65) = 115.1 in.

e.      Determine if column is COMPACT by calculating the Slenderness Ratio (λ)

                                                               i.      λ = KL/R_y, where KL is the effective length and R_y = radius of gyration for weakest axis.

                                                             ii.      R_y = [(I_y)/A]^0.5 , where R_y = Radius of gyration for Y-axis, I_y = moment of inertia for Y-axis, and A= cross-sectional area of beam. 

                                                            iii.      Using steel member characteristics taken from published tables (Section 1-e) and solving, R_y = 2.01

                                                           iv.      Therefore, λ = 57.26

                                                             v.      57.26 < 200, hence column is COMPACT.

f.        A W beam is by definition DOUBLY SYMMETRICAL.  For a column that is also COMPACT, the following design parameters apply for the values of the coefficients of design compressive strength (φ_c) and allowable compressive strength (Ώ).

                                                               i.      φ_c = 0.90 (LRFD), and

                                                             ii.      Ώ = 1.67 (ASD)

g.       Determine loading criteria for buckling analysis

                                                               i.      LRFD:  P_u = 1.2D + 1.6L, where P_u = Compressive load, D = dead load, and L = live load.  P_u = (1.2)(12.9k) + (1.6)(7.5) = 27.5 kips

                                                             ii.      ASD:  P_a = D + L = 20.4 kips

h.      Calculate Elastic Critical Buckling Stress (F_e).

                                                               i.      F_e = [(π²E)/(KL/r)²]^0.5 , where E = modulus of elasticity, 29,000 ksi.

                                                             ii.      By convention, since calculations prove the beam to be COMPACT, assume slenderness ration (KL/r) = 50

                                                            iii.      F_e = 114 ksi

i.         Perform test to determine which formula is appropriate for the calculation of Flexural Buckling Stress (F_cr) and then calculate F_cr.

                                                               i.      Since F_e > 0.44F_y   (114 > (0.44)(57.3); 114>25.2, use:

                                                             ii.      F_cr = [0.658^(Fy/Fe)]F_y, or [0.658^(50/114)](50); F_cr = 41.6 ksi

j.        Column Sizing Analysis

                                                               i.      LRFD Analysis

1.       φ_cF_cr = (0.9)(41.6 ksi) = 37.4 ksi

2.       A_REQ = P_u/(φ_c)(F_cr) =  27.5/37.4 = 0.74 in²

                                                             ii.      ASD Analysis

1.       F_cr/ φ_c = (41.6)/1.67 = 24.9 ksi

2.       A_REQ = φ_cP_a/ F_cr = (1.67)(20.4)/41.6 = 0.82 in²

                                                            iii.      Conclusion is that for such low loading, a very small beam is theoretically capable of supporting the anticipated load without buckling.  The actual cross-sectional beam areas calculated are not accurate since thin beams have higher slenderness ratios, invoking different formulae for analysis.  Nevertheless, the exercise reveals that the W8x31 beam (A=9.13 in²) certainly exceeds requirements. 

k.       Test the resistance to compressive buckling using the W8x31 column that has been selected for this structural duty.

                                                               i.      From the steel characteristics in the chart presented in Section 1-e, A= 9.13 in², R_y = 2.02 in.

                                                             ii.      LRFD

1.       φ_cF_cr = (0.9)(41.6) = 37.4 ksi

2.       φ_cP_n = φ_cF_crA = (37.4 ksi)(9.13 in²) = 341.8 kips

3.       341 > 27.5:  OK!

4.       Safety margin:  341/27.5 = 12.4 TIMES

                                                            iii.      ASD

1.       F_cr/ Ώ = (41.6)/1.67 = 24.9 ksi

2.       P_n/ Ώ = (F_cr/ Ώ)A = (24.9)(9.13) = 227.4 kips

3.       227.4 > 20.4 :  OK!

4.       Safety margin:  227.4/20.4 = 11 times

                                                           iv.      CONCLUSION:  The W8x31 beam selected for the columns used to support the El has a safety margin against buckling from compressive loading in excess of 10 times and is adequate for use as support columns.

Ha ha . . . though you'd get a kick out of that.

Spent most of yesterday touring Ed and Chris around to see properties in the Tigre and giving them the old Juanita's spiel.  I scared myself a bit with the efficiency of the Juanita's presentation.  I gave him a plateful of documents to mull over and did not draw a blank on any question or consideration.  In leading up to the meeting with a spate of attention to operations and accounting and recipes and portioning and miscellaneous managerial tasks, I was left with a sense of achievement and pride.  Juanita's was already pretty close to good grades on all counts and the work involved was not much, and everywhere I look I see things that make me feel contented rather than dejected.  Formerly I was afraid to lift any corner of the operation lest I might stumble upon a wormhole into an anti-Juanita's dimension where rats swing on trapezes and liquor vanishes into vortices and everything is illusion.   But not anymore.  Lately, I have been searching those corners out to lift the rug . . .

Also yesterday got the Ruby Racer back from the shop and its replacement of the carburetor and windshield wipers.  The new vroom blew the muffler to pieces, so he had to replace that as well.  I am led to anticipate greater fuel economy and perfect operation.  I have yet to take it for a spin, but tomorrow it gets a bit of a work out.  The fridge tech finally came, so the Hausers will get their fridge tomorrow as well as their security doors, and Erick will make a C-note.  If Aracelly muscles through the receipt checking, I may be able to get the Phase I final accounting and billing submitted tonight, which would leave me sitting pretty on duties, free to take a step forward tomorrow on any reasonable job I might scare up on the side in the Uvita-Dominical corridor.  Now that I have Luis full bore, I need to get Erick full bore on a parallel project and capitalize a European vacation for myself . . . or something.

July 02 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

We celebrate today the Netherlands and Uruguay.  And we can't help but excoriate Brazil.  Melo's unconscionable stamping foul reveals the moral playing field and undermines the nation's pretension to anything.  It is SO vile and reprehensible that it somehow for a moment brings the whole game around until the necessary mental constructs are done to get down to the fact that it was really just a single person, not an entire nation, that committed the unconscionable foul.  The Colombian defender that made an auto-goal against the United States in the 1996 World Cup elimination round was assassinated upon his return to Colombia.  The Juventus player now brings unwarranted attention to Turin, heretofore known to the world masses only for its famous shroud . . .

But the Uruguay Ghana match was epic.  Ghana did not want it bad enough.  What a tragedy to be that far along and to really own the game and to just yield it up and crumble to the pressure and under-represent on a human scale to somehow represent the under-representation of the continent as a whole speaks volumes to the complexity of being human and fallible and subject to the imagination's limitations.

July 01 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

Am growing increasingly repelled by the hardcore populist smoke and mirrors of Anderson Cooper on CNN everynight.  Formerly an anchor and reporter for whom I felt a comraderie and affection.  He seems to be a shill anymore, out to skewer anyone out of public favor without any balance or hesitation and then to lampoon them when they decline to return to be on his show.  Who is the bad guy?  Maybe the bad guys come in all shades of grey.  Makes me wonder at my own particular hue.

Celebrate a verbal agreement to proceed on the El, big day in Paradise, big day in the history books of Osa Water Works and Osa Power and Water.  It is a big day for the khanster and the funny thing is that I have not left Juanita's nor Cafenet nor Osa Pen Realty behind this time in my little OPW rush.  Au contraire, all enterprises are tripping the light a bit, nudged into the fore by your irascible correspondent.  Katiana accused me of being unwilling to be happy with the best they were doing yesterday on messenger, and I called her on it, and it is all asses and elbows around here 24 7 while I am on the juice and everybody here walks around on pins and needles lest I might wander into their jobs and start micro-managing their professional lives.

But you know what?  If you don't do that, they never learn what work actually means.