Category Archives: Advice

go with what you have

April 8, 2015 6:36 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Back when I was just starting out in my career I worked for a small company of consultants. This was in the mid-90s and we still weren’t fully digital.  My main job was creating maps.  Maps of rivers, maps of forests, maps of roads.  Just all sorts of maps.

Since we weren’t that big we couldn’t afford the fancy mapping software of the day.  Some software packages ran up to $25000 and had $5000 a year maintenance fees.  Nothing that my bosses were eager to pay.  So we did what we could.  I would first hand draw all the maps from paper satellite images and then laboriously digitize these lines on a digital drafting tablet using some cheap $99 software package my boss had bought out of the back of some trade magazine.

I would then hand encode each and every line using the USGS Digital Line standards guide.  A phone book sized book of codes and categories.

Once all of this was done I would turn over a floppy disk over to our computer specialist who was coding and refining his own homemade mapping software and after countless edits and hours and hours of misery we would end up with a digital computer file like one generated by an expensive software package.

So what’s the benefit?  I mean other than saving money which in and of itself isn’t the most compelling reason.  I mean you could easily bake in the costs of new software into the project budgets and get yourself the new software over time.

I found later on in my career that having to do these things by hand and really delving deep into the esoteric issues of codes and hand digitizing that I got a better appreciation for data quality and for resolving issues with data from other parties.

Whereas before if I had a problem with data I would have to go through files line by line to find a glitch, after a while I developed a sense of what the problem was with a piece of data and how to resolve it.  Something that I probably would not appreciate if I would have had access to the fancy software package.

Using the tools at hand makes you more resourceful.  It allows you to get a more technical feel for the processes and the practices that govern your field, whatever that may be.

I am totally for working with the best of equipment, the best people, and the best established practices but I also think there is a lot to be said for making do with what you have and having to be creative to engineer a solution for yourself.

Posted in: advice, business

True friends

February 1, 2015 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[One cold and frosty morning in early Spring a young birdie lay on the ground shivering and nearly frozen. A cow saw him there and decided to help the poor birdie out, and promptly covered him with a huge ‘cow pie’.

The cow pie, while warm, was also very smelly and soon the birdie was yelling at the cow for doing that to him. The warmer he got the louder he yelled.

About this time a coyote,attracted by the singing, jumped out from behind a boulder and snatched the birdie from the pile and brushed off all the mess from him.

Little birdie was relieved and promptly thanked the coyote for helping him out and was promptly eaten by the coyote.

The moral of the story is that not everyone who shits on you is your enemy, not everyone that pulls you out of the shit is your friend, but most important of all, if you find yourself neck-deep in a pile of shit keep your mouth shut.]

 

One of my favorite Old West folk stories.  It helps illustrate today’s topic.  What happens when you make a bad decision and you really can’t face up to it?  Who stands there and lets you go down the wrong path without stepping in and setting you straight?

A true friend, that’s who.  Your acquaintances, some family members, even your regular friends may let you go down the wrong path.  They may let you get away with doing the wrong thing.  But the people you should be listening to will criticize as well as praise you when needed.

Let’s face it.  We’re not perfect.  Not one of us.  It’s easy to look at a person and list his or her faults.  But getting a person to face those faults and acknowledge them?  Now that’s tough.

The best friends you can have are those that will take the time to point that out to you.  They know that their observations may not be well received or appreciated but their concern will override this concern for their social well-being and they will put their friendship on the line to care about you and tell you the truth.

Now, you may not always understand where they’re coming from and you may not even appreciate it in the moment.  No one likes to be criticized.  It’s human nature after all.  But once the anger or humiliation subsides, once you realize why they said what they said, go back and thank them.  It’s never too late.

True friends will always stick with you no matter how bad you smell.

 

Posted in: advice, friends