Bluebeam's Website features some comic relief from paper.

It’s always nice to see some creativity in the realm of marketing messages, even if it might be a little corny as in, “Battlin’ broomsticks Batman did you see witch way it went?”

Bluebeam Software tames the paper we all love to hate in construction by making it easy to use PDFs for everything, (except maybe as paper in the porta john).

So at AIA Miami in June the company is unveiling a monstrous super hero booth. Here you can get a look at the the company’s latest efforts to rid us of paper once and for all.

The company’s booth (#2387) is going to be a whopping 600 sf. This is all designed to showcase its new technology, and also it appears to be showcasing its artistic and story telling talent.

Good stuff here. I would definitely recommend this one.

Yea nice Work

Nice Reading. Thanks

Do you make money out of this blog? Just curious

Very informative text. I’ve found your site via Bing and I’m really happy about the information you provide in your posts. Btw your blogs layout is really messed up on the Chrome browser. Would be really great if you could fix that. Anyhow keep up the great work!

Hi. Very interesting Post. Not really what I have searched over Google, but thanks for the information. Can you email me back, please. Thanks so much.

Please pardon my not good English. I make an effort to keep track of industry related web sites. Theres just a handful of interesting ones. Found yours on Netscape search. Thank you for your point of view.

Now when I’m feeling down I just sit around and keep hitting the “Check For Spam” button.

A Metal Safe for the Laptop: This one is designed so you can bolt it down to a desk, wall, or other solid surface. The bolts are on the inside of the case so they are not accessible. It holds up to a 17″ laptop and accessories and has a combination lock. This would be great for securing computers in job trailers. Except that perhaps the ready availability of crowbars might make it a little less secure than its intended use in dorms.

A Mini Refrigerator/Range: You can heat up your lunch, or cool down your afternoon drink in this 20 Liter capacity unit. It also works in vehicles and comes with the adapter. Set the temperature you want and wait a bit. It chills to 44 degrees, and heats up to 140 degrees. It’s 12.5″X13.5″X17.5″ and comes with three shelves.

Especially For Plumbers: Hey, this might even be helpful on the job to find out which side of the faucet the hot was hooked up to. Water takes on a new glow when it turns color coming out of the faucet. In this case, it even matches the temperature by turning blue for cold and red for hot. You can also get it ONLY in blue although that seems a bit boring. It comes with the batteries (thank goodness, if it was a plug-in model you’d only enjoy the colored water one time), and includes some spares too.

Especially for Everyone EXCEPT Electricians (they probably already have their own): Find out what any electrical item is costing to operate. Plug the unit into the outlet, plug the appliance into the unit. You can input what you pay per Kilowatt and find out costs by week, month and year. It also counts how many Kilowatt-hours the appliance is using.

Mini Laser Tool Set: Based on the tried and true concept of trying to put a number of functional things into one compact unit this one includes a laser, level, ruler and screwdriver bit holder. They say it will work for leveling shelves and pictures and for taking measurements and marking lines for cutting materials. Oh, and it comes with the screwdriver bits, one slotted and two Phillips.

Digital Measuring Tape: Perhaps a little light-weight for many construction pros, but nontheless handy. It’s a tape measure that displays the measurement digitally on its top. For those carpenters who can’t remember the dimension from the time they take it until they get back to the saw horse to mark the cut, this solves the problem by allowing them to click a button and save the dimension. It works in feet/inches or metric units and displays fractions down to a sixteenth of an inch. It measures up to 16 feet. Now, if they’d just add a calculator that helps with figuring rafter cuts and concrete volumes then we’d really be cooking.

Once again it’s the time of the year to wander around the Internet and find some unique gifts for people who work in construction. I tend to focus on useful construction gifts ever since a gift I once gave to someone came back to me as a re-gift the following year. There is more than one reason construction gifts are re-gifted, but I think the main reason is that they are useless to the receiver.

Construction people turn building plans into three-dimensional objects. So, they need and like all kinds of tools. Not just screw guns and cut-off saws, but reference tools and calculating tools as well. Construction people also work in all kinds of conditions. Day, night, rain, fog, snow, ice, dazzling sunshine and in and around structures that are in all stages of completion. So, they need things that help them stay comfortable without sacrificing flexibility, safety and mobility.

Some construction people work for companies, while others are the company. If your giftee is a self-employed contractor, carpenter, plumber, electrician, or painter (just to name a few) then the number of appropriate gifts expands significantly since there isn’t a company supplying tools of the trade.

There are also many different kinds of construction people. Some drive the nails and finish the concrete, others estimate, plan and schedule, while others manage. Buying a screw gun for a project manager is like buying a typewriter for a CEO. They probably aren’t going to use it, and if they need one they can probably get one, or already have one. Which brings me to the final caution when buying gifts for construction people.

There’s no point in getting them things that would normally be supplied to them as part of their work. One exception would be personalized items. So, for what it’s worth, here is a directory of sites that will hopefully give you some ideas about what gifts might be useful to the construction people, or person in your life.

Code books, construction management books, how to books, construction cost guides, digital takeoff tools, construction calculators, electrical meters, distance measuring devices, and more technical references and tools are here and here.

Clothes, boots, gloves, safety equipment, tool belts, knee pads, heat packs, cooling gear and much more for keeping construction people comfortable and safe are here.

Watches of all kinds are here, with two of special note here, and here.

Power tools, air tools, hand tools, tool accessories and an interesting “Build-A-Kit” option can be found here.

Promotional Items: Although these are not what I would consider to be true gifts (since they advertise your company) many of them are nontheless quite useful, attractive and durable. These aren’t your grandfather’s novelty gifts and certainly have their place in the holiday scheme of gift giving. See the many options here, here and here.

Money Clips, Business Card Holders and Keychains with construction themes can be found here.

Just for Fun: These include custom imprinted items with some pretty funny cartoons like you find here.

If you know of a unique gift idea for construction people, leave a comment. Of course, some construction people may not want anything construction-related. For that, you’re on your own.

There is already talk underway to construct a pipeline from the moon to the earth. PVC is apparently the preferred material. The end of the 72inch pipe will stick through the atmosphere somewhere over the south Pacific and pour millions of gallons of water into India every day. From there the water will be bottled for shipment to other continents while trucks will carry the water throughout Asia, Africa, China and the Middle East. During monsoon season a huge diverter will be fitted to the end of the pipe causing the water to shoot over to Egypt where the bottling and hauling efforts will continue. Eventually oil tankers that no longer have any oil to carry will be scrubbed up and they will begin hauling the water across the globe to thirsty populations.

The picture here shows the basic construction document that will be used by many companies to formulate their bids. All 195 countries on earth are participating in funding the project. It is expected to cost a trillion dollars, but skeptics say that estimate is ridiculously low.

The Census Bureau claimed in a press release today that there are 155 million people in the workforce with 10.5 million of them being self employed. Five percent have more than one job, eight percent work more than 60 hours each week, and six percent work from home. The Census Bureau also claims it was Peter McGuire who organized the first Labor Day in 1882, although if you read last year’s post linked above you will see there is still some controversy about that.

Yet doesn’t it seem this holiday has little passion and labor-related interest associated with it? Where are the parades? How come TBS doesn’t have a 24-hour Labor Day marathon featuring shows with capitalist thugs exploiting children, the weak, and the suffering in their factories from hell? Why is the biggest news of the day about the President’s speech to the country’s school kids? How come the labor unions aren’t holding job fairs? Shouldn’t every city park be the center of rallies demanding a stop to the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy? And how come there aren’t any demonstrations calling for the disbanding of the Federal Reserve, the one entity that guarantees the money earned by the workers is devalued annually? Of course it also wouldn’t hurt to get some protests going over the illegal income tax that all the workers are forced to pay.

If the only reason for the day is to make everyone think their labor is valued, while it is being continually devalued, then perhaps it’s time to call it quits. Last year I suggested we keep the holiday, but switch the day to have it focus on consumerism. I didn’t get any takers on that. So, maybe next year we should rename the day to – Going Back To School Holiday – and then just quit all our complaining about our collective economic plight and settle in for some hot dogs, beer and potato salad.

But I’m not sure about combining the two. Stanley has come out with an application that turns an iPhone or an iPod into a level. The user downloads the app and calibrates it with a regular bubble level. Once complete they can start using an iPhone or iPod to check the level on all kinds of things. Stanley recommends using it to hang art, or shelves.

So I guess while I’m talking on my iPhone with someone and I sense they might not be be telling me the whole truth I can check to see if they’re “on the level.” Hey, it just happens. I have no idea where those thoughts come from.

Stanley says you can get your own Stanley Level from the Apple App Store. So get one, calibrate it, and then get out there and do your “level best.”

I was perhaps the biggest fool several years ago when I showed up at a safety meeting only to discover nobody else was there, or would be there.

Then there was the time I had the first aid kit opened and was ready to apply bandaging to a carpenters hand only to discover the red stuff all over him was ketchup. But revenge was sweet. The following year I announced he was getting an incentive bonus in the pay check for that week. Payday fell on April Fool’s Day.

No one warned me about how ruthless these pranks could get but I found out for myself one year when my boss told me the project schedule I turned in for a large commercial job needed to be redone with completely new resources assigned. I guess he was going to let me stew for awhile but awhile turned into hours. I was an hour into the redo when he finally showed up to say “April Fools!”

I suppose there is a lot of lost productivity on April Fool’s Day. But then, measuring everything in terms of productivity ignores the other aspects of life – like having some fun.

Over at Reed Construction Data there is a handy index of U.S building codes. You can click on a state name and get the links to the online codes and code official contact information, including even municipal codes. The other handy links on these pages include the contact information for other code stake holders – people like the environmental departments, historic preservation districts, and forestry and parks offices.

For Wayne Engebretson, the person at Reed who corrals all this info, the biggest challenges are the lack of national standards related to what format is used to make the data available to the public, and getting the information to keep the data updated. Building officials are busy, he notes.

What you may not realize is that Wayne also gets to field some building code questions from time to time, and they are stories all unto themselves. Here are some examples:

• A request from Tokyo for a “printed” copy of the Indiana building code.
• Who to contact if a person wants to have a haunted house in a building.
• How high can a structure in a neighbor’s back yard be, and the answer is needed quickly before any more progress in building is made.

Wayne also explained that it isn’t uncommon for people to ask questions that deal with the “minutiae of local and state codes to which I don’t have access.” He has some examples too.

An individual in North Carolina quoted the exact code and description of a warning regarding the use of pilings for a structure built on a beach. He wondered if we (Reed) could explain the issue and tell him if he was in violation. You would also be surprised at the number of people who email with city code specific questions without providing me what city, or even state, they live in. Fortunately, they usually do list a phone number; Google is my friend. I think what we offer is good, listing the model codes and contact information for Authorities Having Jurisdiction. But if I could assign a motto to our site, it would be along the lines of ‘Research via Reed, Verify via Local’.

The winner, called “An unBEARable Truth,”was built by the New York architectural firm Butler Rogers Baskett. This showed two stranded polar bears trying to share one piece of floating ice. The jury thought it provided a good metaphor for global warming. Indeed. Like all entries it was completely made of cans.

Dubbed “the most unique food drive in the world, Canstruction challenges engineering and architecture firms to build structures completely out of full cans of food. Since its inception more than 10 million pounds of food have been donated to fight hunger. There are now more than 135 individual competitions that take place.

Here is a link where you can see all the current and past winners.