2001-03-13 - 02:26:36

Work: I spent the entire day today trying to figure out how somebody else created a spreadsheet (think massive accounting paper on a computer) model for a series of wetlands that I am going to model in my office's simulation of the delta.

OK, sounds boring ... well it isn't, but it is frustrating. A private engineering firm was contracted to create a simple accounting of water going in and out of these wetlands. But they seem to have either left out some critical data for my project (evaporation data I suspect) or they goofed. The inflows don't balance with the outflows.

To put this in human body terms. Imagine if you eat and eat, but don't burn off the food or send it down a toliet. After a while you'd get pretty big.

My wetlands got really big. They put more water in the wetlands than they theorectically could store.

So tomorrow I have to either fix their work or document their error and continue moving. Right now I'm leaning towards doing it their way and just reporting it as is. It bugs me that I may have to do this, but I do feel a tremendous push to put out a new pilot study.

Apparently my forecasting work has proven to my superiors that I'm pretty good at testing out new and interesting studies that aren't just rehashes of old work. I like this too. I guess it is because I am capable of finding mass balance errors and just saying "Well, that was wrong, and we can fix it or just be up front that somebody did this."

Heck it might turn out that they just forgot to send me some evapo-transpiration data. I'll find out, as I have to run 4 different simulations: (1) hydrodynamics, (2) salinity, (3) disolved oxygen content, and (4) something about a UV related thing. I don't feel comfy with the last one, but #3 and #4 will be the first major studies my shop has put out using these two environmental "constituents". It is pretty exciting to think that my name will be circulating on the documents about the first studies.

The truth is I love running environmental models. I feel good about myself when I do it and find mistakes like in the wetlands.

Now I just hope Grover can join Spring, Redwood, BunnyStomp, and myself this weekend. And I have a seedy Jedi outfit to put together.

-=-

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