What's New on the PRR Panhandle 2.0?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Because of cloud security issues a lot of institutions shied away from Office 365.

Fed Gov't mandated use of this horror and many of the features of Office that you might have relied on for years are either gone or so well hidden that no one can find them...

[chuck]

We had licenses for it but were cautioned to not use it for university business or to try to redirect the storage to something local.

User interface is an "enhancement" of Office 2013's "ribbon". The main difference being if you knew enough you could either shut down the ribbon or customize it enough that it behaved like earlier versions. No such luck with 365 or 2016. I punted and just switched to Google and only put something into Office for final formatting.

One interesting note about "the ribbon". This was only an issue for users of the older/classic interface of office. People that had never used Office actually found "the ribbon" intuitive while the classic interface was "awkward". The more you had used the classic version the harder it was to adapt to the new one.

[G3750]

Yeah, Office 2016 is an absolute pig, performance wise.

Partially because it's Office 365 with your computer acting as "The Cloud". When you install 2016 it also installs a baby web server that Office "talks to" (explicitly on a Mac, I believe on Windows it exploits/"enhances" the web service tools built into Windows Explorer (not the browser, the file management tool)).

Because of cloud security issues a lot of institutions shied away from Office 365. You could enable "local" storage in 365 to get around the long term cloud storage issue but the temp/scratch files were still being cached on the net.

You can also turn on Cloud storage in 2016. I suspect that the later is a compromise on Microsofts part when customers really balked at the fee for service model for 365. Better to collect some fee's for storage than to lose and entire segment of the market.

There's a lot I didn't know about 2016 before pulling the trigger. I suspect that I am stuck. The problem is really two-fold. First, the real cause of the issue was the corruption of the PST file. That was caused by repeated importing of e-mails from the server (think 13,000 messages repeatedly loaded), driving the size of the PST file past what Outlook 2007 could safely handle. The file got corrupted. Attempts to repair it were cumbersome and time-consuming, but ultimately successful. However, there were casualties - like the calendar. Calendars and e-mail messages are kept in separate PST files. I didn't even know the calendar PST was damaged. Anyway, my entries for the next 3 months (maybe longer) are just gone. I've got e-mails for things in 1969 (didn't know about them ) and a reminder to file my PA taxes in 2743!

Second, Outlook 2016 just seems to be very slow. A video I just saw comparing 2010 and 2016 shows that significantly larger amounts of resources are consumed by 2016. Wish I'd seen that on Monday. What a pig.

The bottom line is that the damage has been done. Even if I de-install Outlook 2016, I really need to shrink the PST file and update the calendar. My hope is that performance will improve. If not, then I need to pray that a reversion to Outlook 2007 will go smoothly and yield a running e-mail system. It's almost a lose-lose scenario.

And it's keeping me from doing much, if any, modeling. I really didn't count on doing this much IT support in my retirement.

BOT, piers really look great. Concrete/stone weathering is more an issue of what's in the concrete or the type of stone and what is the primary weathering agent. Runoff from rain water, rainwater that's carrying air pollutants, direct air pollution and what's polluting the air? The mill probably threw off a lot of sulfur/sulfates and carbonates. There was probably a fair amount of soot as well.

I think what you've done looks great/realistic. You can airbrush the air pollution with light misting and then uses vertical washes for "runoff". Runoff tends to be heaviest wherever there is a transition from horizontal to vertical. A flat or a fan brush can be quite useful, touch the edge and then drag downward removing pressure from the stoke as you move downward. Practice to get a feel for the brush/paint/surface.

What's polluting the air in the Ohio River valley? OMG, pick 'em! Let's see - coal fired blast furnaces, open hearths, power plants, coke plants, air-borne graphite, soot from steam locomotives. Here, take your pick.

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I appreciate the kind words, but I'm not yet comfortable with the look of this pier. I am pursuing a couple of alternate strategies. One involves the application of brick paper to the pier, possibly followed by a camo texture paint (that I used on the base of the stone arch). It's sort of grayish-green. Some application of streaking rust, scale, and soot might do the trick. The second skips the brick paper but does all the rest.

The more I think about it, another photo expedition focused on the piers seems to be required.

George

[G3750]

Because of cloud security issues a lot of institutions shied away from Office 365.

Fed Gov't mandated use of this horror and many of the features of Office that you might have relied on for years are either gone or so well hidden that no one can find them...

As I'm discovering, to my horror.

George

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Because of cloud security issues a lot of institutions shied away from Office 365.

Fed Gov't mandated use of this horror and many of the features of Office that you might have relied on for years are either gone or so well hidden that no one can find them...

As I'm discovering, to my horror.

Have no fear, it only gets worse............and I could tell you how it all ends, but you won't like it.

[chuck]

I feel you are being way to hard on yourself. The real layered cast concrete slabs of the piers show the joints quite well. You may need to use a dremel with a dental bur or a narrow V chisel to bring that out. Concrete surface texture is also different from almost anything else. Gesso may be a good base coat to try. You can even "texturize" it as it's drying. There are a lot of cases where we have to go "off scale" to get a desired effect. Our eyes (actually our brains) see things that really shouldn't. We see the suggestion of a detail and fill in the blanks. Model rivets are a perfect example whether it's on planes, trains or tanks. They are always oversized because scale ones would be impossibly expensive to produce and would disappear under paint. I've even painted in shadows to make something look more like the real thing.

[G3750]

I feel you are being way to hard on yourself. The real layered cast concrete slabs of the piers show the joints quite well. You may need to use a dremel with a dental bur or a narrow V chisel to bring that out. Concrete surface texture is also different from almost anything else. Gesso may be a good base coat to try. You can even "texturize" it as it's drying. There are a lot of cases where we have to go "off scale" to get a desired effect. Our eyes (actually our brains) see things that really shouldn't. We see the suggestion of a detail and fill in the blanks. Model rivets are a perfect example whether it's on planes, trains or tanks. They are always oversized because scale ones would be impossibly expensive to produce and would disappear under paint. I've even painted in shadows to make something look more like the real thing.

Quite possibly. Thank you.

I am going to bring out the joints in the piers using a Sharpie to highlight them. Here's a test panel with that technique as well as some tests of colors.

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OK, so this is another photo of the "shorty" pier, the one giving me trouble.

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It's clearly not that washed out yellow color like the other piers - more like gray / brown.

George

[chuck]

That's a much smaller pier in terms of width. It's also partially protected being on shore most of the time (I think I can see some water markings from spring flooding). The difference in light/vrs dark may also be an effect of reflected light from the river (acting as fill light) on the piers out n the water. Those white stains look a lot like bird droppings.

[G3750]

That's a much smaller pier in terms of width. It's also partially protected being on shore most of the time (I think I can see some water markings from spring flooding). The difference in light/vrs dark may also be an effect of reflected light from the river (acting as fill light) on the piers out n the water. Those white stains look a lot like bird droppings.

Yeah, we definitely need to get some eyes on it and figure out the correct coloration. I don't believe the white stains are bird droppings. That's a LOT of shitty birds.

George

[G3750]

Finally, some answers. Due to the large number of deep puddles, my wife and I hiked into the area just short of the former Weirton Junction location. Crossing over the tracks, we went south parallel to the river bank. We couldn't get very close because of swampy conditions, poison ivy, and dense growth. However, we did get enough close-up photos to learn that the short pier is poured concrete, just like the pocket and mid-stream ones.

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We had just hiked back to the car and were changing our shoes when 2 Norfolk Southern pick-up trucks rolled by on their way to Weirton Junction. They parked next to the tracks and these men were soon joined by some sort of track maintenance equipment on the track. As we had an appointment, we didn't stick around.

George

[MurphOnMillerAve]

This is so interesting, George. It's great that you keep us in-the-loop like this. Thanks!
Murph

[healey36]

I'd suggest that's some sort of efflorescence on the concrete piers. As the tops of the piers deteriorate/crumble, moisture is seeping down into the body of the pier, causing the soluble salts to leech out. Maybe...

[G3750]

This is so interesting, George. It's great that you keep us in-the-loop like this. Thanks!
Murph

You are welcome. I am glad to have friends along on the journey.

George

[G3750]

I'd suggest that's some sort of efflorescence on the concrete piers. As the tops of the piers deteriorate/crumble, moisture is seeping down into the body of the pier, causing the soluble salts to leech out. Maybe...

I agree. It is some sort of leeching action. The stains are too big to be bird crap. Or maybe they were from the pterodactlys circling over head.

George

[chuck]

I wouldn't rule out bird droppings completely.