GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Artifacts

  • ERP fun (or life as a User)

    A few years ago, I was roped into assisting with the state’s transition to a new Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP), updating our ancient web-software backbone to link all our HR and financial information.

    Anyone who has helped implement an ERP can attest, it’s a complicated effort — enough that this initiative has been put on hold for a year.

    I’m an architect, not an accountant. But as a project manager, I’m now accountant-adjacent. A big part of my job is preparing and moving documents around. As the division’s representative, my goal was to make sure that they didn’t set up the system in a way that make our lives as Project Manager 2’s harder after implementation.

    It was an enlightening experience. I’ve always been the Architect-Consultant who is hired to fix a problem. Things shifted a little when I joined the state and became the Owner.

    This was the first time that I was just a User.

    It’s hard! These consultants swoop in with minimal knowledge of how I do my job. They shove my needs into a their workflow for their brand new, opaque system. They don’t know what I do, and I barely know what they do. In this case, I was doubly ignorant — of both software and accountant-speak. Amidst the confusion, I was keenly aware of the high stakes because we were gonna be stuck with this program for the rest of my career.

    I’d like to think I was a reasonably humble architect, but being a User is humbling at a whole other level! I was powerless, just praying that the experts listened to my pleas and followed through on their promises. I appreciate that a new software platform presents opportunities for positive change, but it felt like they were following their own standard playbook without addressing our specific concerns. It didn’t help that as a project manager, I was extra-sensitive to how they were mismanaging the process. It was so frustrating that I lost my temper a few times, once in a large meeting!

    Aside from that shameful embarrassment, this effort gave me a chance to build great relationships with our accountants (nothing builds comradery as an uncaring outside force).

    And in a moment of inspiration I threw together this diagram showing how the new system will allow to analyze our project finances along multiple dimensions.

    I’m inordinately fond of this diagram, maybe because it melds my current work with my old life. I doubt a non-architect would have realized that an axonometric drawing could sell the potential of the new ERP!

    Alt Text: Axonometric diagram of the ERP tracking project funds on multiple dimensions. The different funding sources are shown as different layers on the vertical axis, with cost categories on the X axis and project phasing on Y axis of each spreadsheet. I suspect my early experience as a hand draftsman is why I love axon’s.

  • Over dinner, we surfed the film of Negatives and Positives.

    One minus One is Zero!
    One minus One is Zero!
    One minus One is Zero!
    He’s been watching Numberblocks

    The next day, he exclaimed
    One minus Two is Zero!
    Momma sat him down to explain negative numbers.

    He spent dinner enthralled in this new realm of arithmetic.
    Three minus Five is Negative Two!
    One minus a Hundred is Negative Ninety-Nine!

    His sister chimed in
    Negative Two minus Negative Five is Three!

  • 小宝宝去睡觉!

    The girl was an awful sleeper as a baby.
    This lullaby emerged over hours of trying to walk her to sleep.

    小宝宝去睡觉
    (little precious, go to sleep)

    It never worked.

    Not for her.
    Not for him.

    It just riles them up.
    So I sing it at every opportunity.

    Last year, I transcribed it into Flat.io so you can now hear it as a round, because I doubt I’ll ever convince anyone in the family to sing along with me.

  • He found gender and status on faces of metal, plastic, and glass.

    We walked by a Chevrolet.
    He pointed at the golden skewed cross.
    医生车! (doctor car!)

    He said our Odyssey is a 女的车 (girl car).
    Headlights with long curved eyelashes,
    Like his sister’s cartoons.

    ䷆䷜

    chase the pheasant
    grab the illusion

  • Another encouragement to make your website.

    I’m part of a small group on Post.news who posts old work under the hashtag #SundayShare. This was going to be my suggestion for a “lunar new years resolution”…until the tragedy at Monterey park. I still think it’s worth sharing, so I posted it today.

    ~

    In 2008, I planted a flag on the interwebs with www.grizzlypear.com. (We came up with the name as a twist on our bunnies Badger and Peppercorn.)

    I quickly lost interest in the webcomic, but now I had a domain to build upon. It morphed into the repository of my random contributions scattered across various forums.

    Even though #PostCreative / #CreativeCollective is going strong right now, who knows how things will go?

    Let this new-new year will be the one when you start your own site. Build a library that stands apart from these social media bazaars that come and go.

    Your place might have few visitors, but you’re the only one that counts. Maybe you be digging into for next week’s #SundayShare in 2033.

    If you don’t know where to start, I recommend getting the domain name on Hover.com which I’ve really enjoyed using. I don’t know which web-host is best, but I’ve been using the cheapest plan on Hostgator for a decade with WordPress for my blog engine.

    Alt Text: A black and white ink drawing of two rabbits in a rectangular vaguely urban landscape with two rabbits hopping down the street towards the vanishing point. The dot pattern for the sunset was added on the computer and I still can’t decide which is better.

    This is what I shared last week in the face of that tragedy.

    A simple #SundayShare diptych of Badger and Peppercorn ferociously consuming Bok Choy in our old apartment in Houston.

    Alt text: two photos, showing a pair of rabbits eating veggies on the floor. The black and white harlequin steps away after she yanked a luscious green leaf out of her albino partner’s mouth.

    Taken with a Nikon D40 with the 18-35mm kit lens. Fifteen years later, the gear doesn’t matter all that much. Glass and metal tubes sit in the a box while the heart is warmed by the glow of bygone days, occasionally rekindled by pixels on a screen.

    Here’s to the New Year!

    Let’s make many great memories and maybe some photos too.

  • Happy Year of the Rabbit!

    Alt text: an outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “R”, in black ink with red ink wash using the kids cheap square watercolor brush. I wasted way too much time thinking about good materials and tools when I was younger.

  • Work at Office, Week 1

    Day 1, Back in the Office!

    …and my first meeting is on Microsoft Teams, even though the three of us are within fifty feet of each other.

    (screen sharing > face to face!)

    Work at Office, Day 2

    Sure is nice chatting in person after almost three years apart. I’m very blessed to enjoy the company of my colleagues.

    At the end of the day, I realized that I’ve forgotten where the light switches are scattered around the building.

    The delighted squeals of the kids when I came back home was a nice bonus.

    Word of the Day 3

    Solutioning.

    This meeting is only for updates, we will address solutioning at future meetings.

  • 9 Coins

    an ignoramus tips the Tarot

    Black ink (Flair Pen) drawing on a yellow steno pad. Colored in Pixlr. Collaboration with the kids. She did some of the coloring this time.

    A black ink sketch on lined paper with a pile of nine gold coins with square holes. The coins are marked with a yellow house, an invisible face, a strange oval thing, green icing, and a peachy "DADDY BAD!" warning. Around the stash float two grey locks, two pink hearts, two smiling faces, two purple something-randoms, a blue-red spike ball, three purple hats, four windows, and a tomato-tomato head. This time, coloring didn't last beyond the weekend...then again we didn't go up to Mount Charleston to play in the snow this week.
    A black ink sketch on lined paper with a pile of nine gold coins with square holes. The coins are marked with a yellow house, an invisible face, a strange oval thing, green icing, and a peachy “DADDY BAD!” warning. Around the stash float two grey locks, two pink hearts, two smiling faces, two purple something-randoms, a blue-red spike ball, three purple hats, four windows, and a tomato-tomato head. This time, coloring didn’t last beyond the weekend…then again we didn’t go up to Mount Charleston to play in the snow this week.

  • Parking Garage Apartment Parks

    15 years ago, I presented my thesis project, so let’s relive the past!

    It started in the Spring of 2007 when I was studying abroad in Rice’s Paris exchange program. For thesis prep, I explored the idea of increasing density in Southern California which suffers a simultaneous lack of housing and paucity of public parks. Looking back, I suspect my brain was a mix of wonder at living in a real metropolis and a nostalgia for home.

    I focused on the suburban city of Alhambra when I visited my grandfather that summer. I sited the project on a parking lot in front of Ralph’s Supermarket, proposing a big new structure along the street. I added new shops at grade level, moved all retail parking below-ground, and built a multi-story suburban landscape of apartments on the upper floors of the parking garage (the gimmick is that you get to park next to your apartment!). The remainder of the old asphalt parking lot was converted into a large public park, daylighting the buried storm culvert and connecting the adjacent school and church.

    I’ve always been a luddite as an architect, so I finally learned Rhino and rendering for this project, only to never use these skills again. This was also the last time I made a physical model in my career. And as with most other architecture students, this thesis got me a degree and hasn’t seen the light of day outside of the occasional job interview.

    There are more images and the thesis book for download on my online portfolio.

    A series of diagrams showing the relationship of the project to the site. In the 00's Rem Koolhaas was king and Rice was more of a diagram factory than a design school.
    A series of diagrams showing the relationship of the project to the site. In the 00’s Rem Koolhaas was king and Rice was more of a diagram factory than a design school.

    PS. After writing this, I texted some old classmates who I haven’t contacted in years, it was fun catching up!

  • 10 Cups

    an ignoramus tickles the Tarot

    Black ink (Flair Pen) drawing in a yellow steno pad. Collaboration with with the kids. Colored in Pixlr.

    A black ink sketch on lined paper with a rainbow of ten goblets with a green girl square monster, cyan space star, pink donut, and a blue red spike ball. Blue clouds float above with a red warning “Daddy Bad” with a mushroom house and random shapes from the future. Under the rainbow is a vase with space flowers, a square daisy, two gold clouds, and an alien puppy with five legs, two tails, and a pair of antennae.