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Never Forget
On the morning of September 11th 2001, a normal sunny autumn morning, I was on my way to the office (Fidelity Investments) at the World Trade Center Boston. I was stepping off the shuttle bus from the Subway (Boston refers to the underground transportation as simply the T). I heard the news broadcast announcing the first plane had hit the World Trade Center New York. I was taken aback as stepping off but figured I head wrong or hadn’t sunk in yet. I made my way inside and the trading floor was like nothing I had seen in there before. Usually quiet and traders staring at screens had become a…
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Heel Analysis
ARCHITECTURE Heel Analysis Methods. When I design heels for a truss, I try to not use more wood than I need. Throwing wood at a problem doesn’t always fix things. For example, I have a slider on this heel as the heels are high. The top chord doesn’t specifically need them for stability or deflection. I have a pinned bearing and I can analyze the heel with a few different methods. In these two illustrations the red line represents the analog of the truss. I analyze with a single analog on the heel and my slider is several feet long as the next joint is the web. In the right…
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Post Holidays Recap
Happy Fesitvus! I trust everyone had a delightful holiday season. My wife and I in the Vandelay homestead had a beautiful Christmas. Our electricity had gone out from an abysmal storm the day before and a flooded basement with a few inches of water. It had taken the local power company roughly 24 hours before it was restored. We had a nice time anyhow with other fuel sources and much love and patience. We ducked out of our own home fore a little while and spent time with our loved ones who did have electricity before us in New Hampshire. Our New England family was pleasant company on a cold…
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Happy Thanksgiving, gobble gobble!
Have a great Turkey Day! This year Regina and I will not be going anywhere. From the comfort of our home we are hosting dinner for my in-laws. Regina’s folks are fantastic company as we usually attend their Thanksgiving out of state. My beautiful and charming cousin Katrina graciously extended an invitation to attend their Thanksgiving with other cousins, but we sadly had made other arrangements. Although she did share her recipe for twice baked potato casserole which we could not get enough of several years ago. And thank goodness Pennypacker and Varsen can’t make it! Regina and I have much to be grateful for. We survived our first year…
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NewsLeak
NewsLeak is a creation I designed in my spare-time. An online news article magazine called NewsLeak. This webpage was the inspiration of a hobby when I was a small child. An old childhood associate and myself coauthored NewsLeak probably 35-40 years ago. I would write articles of the latest happenings on my manual typewriter and we would pass out the crudely made paper to friends of the family. NewsLeak is reinvented for the 21st century. I currently have NewsLeak scrape RSS News articles from across the internet and then have an Artificial Intelligence rewrite the articles. The photos are also drawn by artificial Intelligence. So check out a work in…
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The Architect
IRONY The Architect. Despite my long career in technology and finance, I’m also an architect for a company in Idaho. More specifically I design rooves all day. Roofies are my thing. It’s a simple job, but someone has to do it and I don’t think they could live without me. Snow in Maine gets heavy and deep and the rooves need adequate structural engineering to withstand the harsh winters. I don’t think this job would transfer well to Egypt or some other climate. I didn’t even ask to be an architect. They said they needed help with Oracle and software development and when I got to the interview they pulled…
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Mr and Mrs Vandelay
Mr and Mrs Art Vandelay were Married on May 21st, 2022 in Destin Florida along the shore. The Guests The Marquis and Meier Families had finally met and mingled at the day of the wedding. Adrianna, the bride’s maid, drove all the way down from Kansas with her beau. What was sweet is my cousin’s husband Jonathon offered to be my best man at the last minute. However, there were a few notable missing guests as Mr Pennypacker was not able to attend the wedding and Varsen was a no show. The Event The wind was blowing off the ocean and the waves were huge that day, several feet high.…
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Vandelay Industries BBS
With Corona Pandemic still on the loose and my travel stifled. I’ve had a trips to Israel and another in Bahamas canceled. Here I am stuck at home forced to watch TV. I did buy a new home as that apartment was miserable, but not the point of this, I digress. Lives still in danger I’ve had more time at home with college and old hobbies. I have started Vandelay Industries BBS for nostalgia. My first job as a kid in the 80s was working out of a garage as a CoSysOp for Prodigy BBS. On the weekends I would hang out at this guys house in the garage and…
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In the beginning… Vandelay Industries
Welcome to ArtVandelay.net 2.0, I apologize as my inner geek had gotten the best of me and I had changed hosting providers and several portal frameworks and a few languages later here we are. If you’ve ever run a search on the world wide web for Art Vandelay you may have seen references to Seinfeld and a character in that series. A very funny comedy about nothing I would recommend though if you have nothing else to do. I was given permission many years ago from NBC and Sony to change my name to the likeness of the character. This webpage ArtVandelay.net is about my public blog, travel vlog, and…
