Blog from March 2011
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There are 2 blog entries from March 2011

Civil Engineering Firm Selected
March 25th, 2011 | View Post
As of today, we have selected Nobel Surveying and Engineering Works, LLC to be our civil engineer for the Axel project. This firm came highly recommended to Preston Graham (my general contractor and president of Fig & Co. Builders). We had a few different meetings with the founder of Nobel and had his firm run a few different site-plan ideas for us - really just to get an idea what we’re looking at.

To those not familiar with this process, the civil engineering firm is required by the City of Austin for commercial development projects. They will design and oversee dozens of city-required outlets such as water hookups, parking lots, erosion control, landscaping requirements, impervious cover laws, and on and on.

The civil engineering part of commercial development in Austin can unfortunately be a very expensive piece of the puzzle. The sad part as a resident of Austin and small-business owner, is that the civil engineering cost structure of a million dollar building is roughly the same as a small facility like ours. Nevertheless, it is a required component if we’re going to move forward.

We are hoping that they will be able to design our property in such a way that the City of Austin will not require us to have water retention ponds, but that remains to be seen.

The three images above show three different concepts for how a simple warehouse could be constructed on the land. In particular, they consider the amount and type of impervious cover that would be needed (given parking requirements, sidewalk requirements, and etc.) and figure how large the retention ponds theoretically would be.

The plan will now be to alter the building in such a way so that we can avoid those requirements.
SkiLudlow 2011
March 22nd, 2011 | View Post
For the past 6 years, my good friend Jason Kujda has put together a marvelous ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado for he and all of his friends. He handles every component of it and even lets people pay in installments. Since he has been busy this year building up his career (namely saving money so that he can finally get married), he decided that he was no longer going to do the ski trip.

After some discussion, I finally decided that I would go ahead and take it over and last October announced to everyone that I would be handling it this year. The following is the text that I sent out to everyone:

The rumors that you have no doubt heard by now are true. The annual SkiKujda trip has been successfully hijacked in a carefully planned and executed coup d'etat. 2011 promises to be bigger and better than all other years combined.



Front of the skiludlow card everyone was given
But let us not forget the many years of wonderful rule by Jason Kujda. From overseeing the great fight of 2006 to his blessing laid upon the conception in 2007. Perhaps the introduction of Catchphrase in 2008, or the engagement that would soon follow. And let us not forget the Banana-Man-Skier of 2009, the diplomatic relations with Tyler Canon of Missouri, and of course "SkiKujda the Movie" which premiered in 2010. Only time will dictate this man's place in history.
The Basic Plan


Back of the skiludlow card everyone was given
Most everything has already been explained to people individually, but for anyone still on the fence, here are the details and a breakdown of what is included. We will fly into Denver on Wednesday March 23rd, 2011. Depending on the flights available, we will try to arrive between 10am and 1pm MST. We will pick up our rental cars, head into the mountains, and get settled into our condos at Sawmill Creek. Thursday morning we will pick up our ski rentals and then plan to ski all day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Per our previous few years, we'll likely try to organize a group trip to Vail on Friday for anyone who is interested in going (our lift tickets will include this in the price). Each day after skiing is usually met with some relaxation, a social hour in the hot tub (with plenty of beverages), and a dinner on the town. For the super-human, Keystone also offers night skiing. As per our custom, we will be planning a large group outing at The Dive Bar on Saturday night. On Sunday morning we will check out, drive back to Denver, and fly back home.
What the trip includes

For about $650 (probably less), you will be getting 4 nights in a condo, basic ski rentals for 3 days (upgraded skis and snowboards will be more), a 3 day lift ticket (also good for one day at A-Basin, Vail, Beaver Creek, and Keystone), and a rental car (with gas included) to get you to and from the mountain. There is a good chance of a few additional surprises too.

As always, any excess money will be refunded appropriately. There is no attempt to make any money off of this trip.


And since there has always been a t-shirt for the occasion, this is the outlined version that I sent off to the printer of the first skiludlow shirt.


The periodic table of elements with some slight modifications