Patrick Beseda

“It’s pure creation.” That is all.

I’ve got my eyes on the University of Colorado’s MArch program. In my experience, the graduate school for an engineer isn’t what makes the engineer distinguishable. Is that true of architects? Can an school make or break a designer?

My creative portfolio is a little unbalanced. I take a lot of photographs. My schooling has hardly allowed for creative outlets.

The GRE, recommended for GPA under 3.0. That’s a relief.

The F.E. Not intimidating, but an obstacle nonetheless.

Fall 2010 at CSM. Starting some interesting classes. Starting a Design Build Professional Society Student Chapter with DBIA. Starting the ASCE Steel Bridge Competition. Busy busy bee.

To all the Field Techs out there. Take good notes and do your CMT correctly. If you don’t, and you get sued, and I have to look through all your poor attempts at stationing, testing and otherwise filling out a relatively simple form, trying to figure out where you went wrong and what it was you actually did, I will have no choice but to come find you. Don’t think I won’t.

Shouldn’t we be celebrating new architecture that works, not new architecture that is just cool looking? My $0.02 is that cool looking architecture is not necessarily good architecture. Not only that, it could be bad. Negative. Harmful. Think about that. There’s architecture out there that is holding other architecture back. Its holding back architects, owners, builders. It holding the whole world back. Because somebody thought it looked cool.

This is tough. I like coffee. I like coffee a lot. I drink it almost every day. I don’t feel addicted to it. But its true that after a few days without coffee or soda, I get headaches for a day or two. I feel like I should be more particular about what kind of coffee I drink, but I’m not. I like all coffee. I like it strong, and black, but other than that, I like most coffee. Some people only drink certain kinds, and scoff at people who drink Folger’s, or Starbucks, or whatever particular brand they don’t like. Listen, I make Folger’s in the morning, get Starbucks on the way to work, and make premium roast at my office. Does that make me weird? On the same subject, I like all beers, I like all soup. But I can’t stand cherries.

The biggest tragedy has been the loss of 11 human lives on the Deepwater Horizon.

Does it suck? Yeah, the oil spill sucks. Loss of life, loss of resources, loss of some nice animals.

Is it the worst thing that has ever happened? No. Is it even close? No.

Will some animals die? Yeah, they will definitely suffer. Will some animal species go extinct? Probably, theres a lot of oil out there and its not very conducive to breathing or swimming in.

Have animal species gone extinct before? Yes. Have for billions of year, will billions of years from now.

Will the humans be alright? Yes. Will the Earth be alright? We’d have to be morons to think that something like this oil spill could drastically and catastrophically harm the planet. So, yes, the Earth is going to be just fine.

Is our president handling it well? Probably better than I or most other people could.

That is all.

I read a pretty interesting and almost compelling article. Its long but you should give it a good skimming.

In summary Mr. Shumacher makes a case for “parametricism” as the next enduring style in architecture. He says that there will be a style war against modernism hiding in the disguise of minimalism and that a generation of young architects are the new army adhering to the dogma that is parametricism.

And he uses a lot of long words and long winded paragraphs to make his case for a unified style. We really could have been spared a page or two, but it wasn’t unbearably boring, just almost unbearably boring.

My $0.02 is that as with any other kind of style(clothing, art, cars, hair, etc.) people are just going to do what they want. And they should; they shouldn’t do anything other than that.  Some styles will be popular and lasting (classical music) other will be fads that fade away(Furbies).  Shouldn’t architects just do what they want without worrying about the Do’s and Dont’s of some unified style? Some are bound to be better than others, but its important that they are diverse. I don’t ever want someone to tell me how to design something because it is whats “in style.”

Go ahead, fight the war.

I had a dream a few nights ago. It was set in the future; I was older, but not very old. I had just finished building a house for myself. It was modest, and simple, set onto a valley side in the foothills of Colorado(at least it looked like Colorado). It was a very normal, small sized home, but with no driveway, and no garage. In my dream, this was normal because there was no road nearby. What does that mean? Was it an illustration of my subconcious desire to live separate from modern, urban society? Or was it a premonition regarding the future of our transportation? What would it be like if we had no need for garages, driveways, or roads?

Good work Gary. Incredibly expensive, and maybe not so “eco” but very cool. Excellent work.

It’s brewed. It’s an Austin Homebrew extract kit. Came in the mail a few days ago and Lance and I sent it to primary yesterday. This morning it was really accelerating, with 2-3 inches of krausen and a pretty fierce hop scent.

At OG= 1.074 it is pretty heavy stuff. Looked extremely dark, and pretty thick. This was our first time preparing a starter with the yeast, so hopefully that will yield some benefits?