This is just crazy

Ballot Madness: Tipping the Scales in Minnesota's Senate Recount

Canadian Meteorite

I've actually seen 2 like this in the past - it's quite a sight to see in person.

It's wayyy to early for Christmas...

Americans are too afraid to visit bloody Juarez

Continuing problems south of the border in Juarez, Mexico. 1,100 murders this year along!! At this point in time, this area/region is way more dangerous than Iraq in my opinion.

Economic Crisis

A fairly good portrayal of what's happened thus far. I'd call this an expedition to Everest or something like that. I suppose part of the equation here is why should the employees of the rescue helicopter (us tax payers) pay to help out the expeditioneers? If we can break even or make money - I suppose it's worth the risk, but if the rescue helicopter is overloaded and doesn't make it back to base camp - then there's real trouble in the works. I suppose I'm still undecided if the "bail out" was the correct move, but I tend towards it only postponing the inevitable in that the banks and financial institutions will eventually have to pay up - the crevasses will keep getting bigger unless their memory gets better.

The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition from Marketplace on Vimeo.

A Bad Day at the Office...

No matter what your politics, that is a moment for the history books...

Incident Action Plan

Safety requires thinking out of the box - contingency thinking is imperative to avoid disaster.

Kite Surfing

Speaking of spills and falls, this is the same type of kite I've been flying although I haven't had the opportunity to fly it in a tropical storm. I think this guy has hit the ground one too many times...

This looks like it's got to hurt.

Ouch...!

It's been a While

It's been a while since my last post. Still trying to get the feel for this blogging thing and rethinking my goal here. Thinking.....

U.S. - Mexico Border Map

This is a cool link to an interactive U.S. Mexico Border Map. If you click on a cell, it will take you to an orthophoto of that area. The Otrhos are old, but interesting nonetheless.

ALTA Table A Item 11(b)

As a surveyor who performs many surveys that follow the American Land Title Association (ALTA) standards, I need to register my dislike with item 11(b) on Table A - as follows:

Item 11(b) Location of utilities (representative examples of which are shown below) existing on or serving the surveyed property as determined by:Observed evidence together with evidence from plans obtained from utility companies or provided by client, and markings by utility companies and other appropriate sources (with reference as to the source of information)railroad tracks and sidings; manholes, catch basins, valve vaults or other surface indications of subterranean uses; wires and cables (including their function, if readily identifiable) crossing the surveyed premises, all poles on or within ten feet of the surveyed premises, and the dimensions of all crossmembers or overhangs affecting the surveyed premises; and utility company installations on the surveyed premises.

In my opinion, this item is an attempt for the surveyor to take liability for something that is not really the purview of the surveyor. I always cringe when 11(b) is requested because there is a large amount of uncertainty associated with this request. As-builts are generally unreliable, and we really have no way of knowing exactly where the utilities are on site. We typically hire a utility locating company, but there is still a level of uncertainty. I always preface the utility mapping data with a note stating where the data came from, methodology used and limitations. Never will I certify that all utilities are shown (unless the client wants to dig up the entire site to some depth - and then only would I certify to that depth). Typically, this request is made by the Title company and/or finance institutions and it really does not benefit the owner much other than the title and finance institutions have some level of comfort as to where the utilities are. I believe their comfort is misplaced though and I try to sell 11(a) rather than 11(b). The cost difference associated between these two can often times be quite large.


I'm working on an estimate for a very complex and large site where HUD is insisting on 11(b) - I don't think the data will ever be used other than to satisfy a HUD requirement. I tried to convince them that 11(a) would be more appropriate, but no luck. Oh well - I guess the work must be completed, but it's going to be a mess and be quite costly.
I wish 11(b) would go away...

Quite the Busy Week

Sorry - I haven't posted for a few days - it's been quite the busy week. We probably put out about 15 estimates/proposals this week and I was also involved in signing 3 surveys plus dealing with 7 or 8 other projects. There didn't seem to be much time to breathe this week. I shall be posting more frequently next week...

Disciplinary Action

The following is all of public record. I've left the name of the individual but removed the company's name from the documents out of professional courtesy.
I came across the following plat (you need to click on it to see it enlarged) a couple of years ago. Quite interesting when you start looking closely. The short story is that this subdivision plat was stamped and signed by a structural engineer. Something for another post but why do structural engineers think they are something different than civil engineers - I'm not sure the distinction other than it is a speciality of civil engineering.

Anyhow, you need to read the certification he posted on his plat - (by the way - it is against the law for an engineer to perform a boundary survey - in Arizona and most other states that I am aware of).

To Quote:

I, MOHAMMED M. SIDDIQUI, HEREBY CERTIFY THAT I AM A PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER IN THE STATE OF ARIZONA THAT THIS MAP, CONSISTING OF 1 SHEET CORRECTLY REPRESENTS A MINOR LAND DIVISION FOR NEW HOMES MADE UNDER MY SUPERVISION DURING THE MONTH OF DECEMBER, 2005. THAT THE SURVEY IS TRUE AND COMPLETE AS SHOWN: THAT ALL MONUMENTS SHOWN ACTUALLY EXIST AS SHOWN, THAT THEIR POSITIONS ARE CORRECTLY SHOWN AND THAT SAID MONUMENTS ARE SUFFICIENT TO ENABLE THE SURVEY TO BE RETRACED. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS ARE THE MOST EDUCATED CIVIL ENGINEERS. CIVIL ENGINEERS SUPERVISE AND INSTRUCT REGINSTERED LAND SURVEYORS. THIS MAP IS INCIDENTAL TO NEW BUILDING CONSTRUCTION.

What gives??
Let's break it down sentence by sentence. First, he is a professional engineer in Arizona (or was at the time). It seems a bit odd to certify that you are licensed. He is correct in that this plat is one sheet and that it is a minor land division. A surveyor would probably call it a minor subdivision, but close enough. "True and Complete" - that is for the reviewing agency to determine, but let's say it is. Here's one that is not very astute - "that the monuments shown actually exist as shown". What if one is destroyed? What if there was an error or bust in a measurement. It would be safe to say they were found and located as shown, but I wouldn't certify to them being there now and forever. "That they are sufficient to enable the survey to be retraced"?? Says who? Well, he does, but what about latent ambiguities in his survey or the adjoiners? He states the monuments are there, but what if they are destroyed? What then? Is it still sufficient to be retraced??
The last two sentences speak for themselves. I know many structural engineers - some are good friends. The ones I know seem to understand where their expertise exists and that it is illegal for them to perform a boundary survey. That would be like a surveyor designing and stamping and signing a bridge plan set. I'm a Professional Civil Engineer and I would never take it upon myself to certify a structural plan set/design. That is way out of my area of practice. This guy seems to think that he is above the surveyors though and thus, is within his rights to do their work. Not to say engineers and surveyors are on the same playing field as surgeons, but for comparison's sake, I wouldn't want a neurosurgeon to perform an open heart surgery just because he thought he was better educated than the heart surgeon. I would want the expert in his field. Seems that the client here may have been taken for a ride as well - paying for services rendered illegally. All said, a bit of an ethical and technical misstep I'd say.
Needless to say, the board of technical registration made their ruling recently and this gentleman voluntarily relinquished his engineering license.

NSR: PC vs. Mac

This is kind of funny. I'll leave it at that....

Time in a Bottle

I haven't had the luck of finding a fully intact old bottle, but I keep my eye out. I suppose an old Coke bottle doesn't count (I'm not even sure how old this is - 2 years maybe).
Anyhow, bottle dating can be useful in determining the possible age of an old fenceline or monument when you are working far from civilization - problem is you have to find the bottle first and then be able to date it. Just a possibility I guess, but one worth considering enough that the BLM has their own web page dedicated to the subject. This is an interesting link to the BLM archeology site concerning hisoric bottles.

Find the Property Monument: #2

This one is a bit more difficult. The point is visible though and this is roughly what it looks like from the roadway. Here you have the benefit of the lath being flagged up - heading to the point, there was a standing lath but no flagging. I'd rate this one a 4 out of 10 for difficulty.

Find the Property Monument: 1

I was out in the field yesterday reviewing a topographic map of a house and snapped this photo. The challenge - see if you can spot the property monument in this photo - I'd rank this order of difficulty a 2 - 1 being in your face and 10 being Waldo in a sea of Waldo look alikes in a library of Where's Waldo books. You may have to click on the photo for a full view. More of these to follow in the future...

Searching for Survey Records

Seems that in Bernalillo County, NM, there is a bit of a gap between recording surveys (non-subdivision plats) and how they are indexed and located. We have for years had microfiche of all the plat books, but we've never received the survey book. The survey book is for plats of surveys, boundary surveys, ALTA surveys, etc. They are rarely reported on in Title commitments and I believe the reason why is that they really aren't indexed very well (or indexed at all for that matter). Makes one wonder which surveys are really found during the course of research and which are not. It is poor database management to index something such as S10, T4N, R5E, N.M.PM - if I run a search on S10, T4N, R5E, NMPM, it would probably not come up - depending on the search engine. The county (and area professionals) need to come up with a better solution here and implement it pronto! We're missing out on a lot of good data (I'm assuming) and every day that passes, is another day that legacy data is missed. At least the Clerk's Records Search is online - but I wish we could get to the level of Maricopa County's map locator. Maybe someday....

Nevada LS

Well, I've submitted my paperwork and application to sit for the Nevada LS exam. One of the three remaining states I intend to pursue a license in (the others being Utah and California). Of the states I've been involved with thus far, Nevada seems to be fairly organized. They are also populous enough to have 4 state specific exams each year, so that works well into schedule for a summer license try. BHI's regional effort is expanding nicely - in the past week or so, we had two guys in our Colorado office sit for Kansas and Wyoming and Rob here in the Albuquerque office will be sitting for Utah some time in June. That will bring our license coverage to NM, CO, TX, AZ, NE, and MI with WY, KS, UT, and NV within the next several months.

By the way, the Nevada Department of Transportation has some nice maps for free download (State Maps, Quad Maps, Area Maps and Historic Maps). A nice collection for getting acquainted with NV...

NSR: Busy Week

Not sure why it's been such a busy week. I've been working on several smaller type projects plus trying to get caught up on some administrative tasks. I suppose it all just adds up to a busy week. My dad sent me this old photo. As the caption says "image taken at Camp Dodge in Iowa and used eighteen thousand men." - all before the days of photo shop...

David Rumsey.com

I came across this map site about 7 or 8 years ago - a fantastic collection of historic maps. I haven't visited it recently but then just found this YouTube Video. Looks like David has been up to some cool innovation in the realm of historic maps.


This video is about 10+ minutes, but an interesting history of his map collection and some of the things he has done in a digital sense as of late. I have been doing some similar tasks with Bohannan Huston's plat database and we have also worked with similar geo-referencing of scanned images in conjunction with our GIS projects and Mapping projects. It is quite powerful to be able to pull up all the documents created for a given area - all of which are geo-referenced and layered so that you can at a glance, understand the history of survey and mapping for a given location. Very Cool!

NGS Datasheet "Tab"

Recovery for NGS point "Tab" got published the other day (scroll all the way down to see the last recovery for 2008). It's unfortunate that after the long hike (about 1 hr each way - shown on my post on March 17th) evidence was found. So I know I was in the right place, but after about 30 minutes searching for the actual point - nada. Officially the point is not destroyed unless you have photographic proof or the actual monument.

NSR: F-4 vs. Concrete

Some interesting footage of some tests performed out at Sandia National Labs in years past. I remember watching a rocket sled track test/show at SNL family day back in the 1980's - it's amazing how fast those puppies really go. My dad got to watch this one in person!


This one I'm not certain was done at SNL, but the terrain looks like the Sandia/Manzano mountains in the background.

North Arrow

Learned something new today (or at least re-learned it in the case that I knew it once and forgot). In older maps, a full North Arrow is intended to mean true North while a half North Arrow may indicate magnetic north with a east or west declination depending on which side the arrow is on. Everything we do here at work is true North / Geodetic North / Grid North so I guess I haven't thought about the north arrow in light of indicating declination. Luckily we our typical north arrow looks like this...

so it shouldn't matter much.

Daylight Savings x 2

I thought about it several weeks ago when daylight savings time sprung forward and then it happened Sunday morning. We have a clock radio that automatically adjusts for DLST each spring and fall - problem is that it was purchased before the federal government fiddled with things a couple of years ago. Since the spring forward/fall back day has now been legislated to something different, we have to manually change the clock on the actual date. The problem is that the clock adjusted forward another hour on Sunday (the old date) without us knowing and we got up an extra hour earlier. By we, I mean my wife did - at 6:30am but it was really 5:30am - I was too out of it to get up (now we know why). When I finally rolled out of bed at 7:12am, I looked out the window and noticed it was still dark. That's when it dawned on me what was going on. Needless to say, we were quite bummed about loosing our hour of sleep. Not only did we hit the early service, we hit it really hard. I tried to point out to my wife that not only did we loose an hour on Sunday, but we also gained an hour on Sunday as well when I reset the clock, but that didn't seem to help much. I think I'm going to have to use our clock radio as sledge hammer practice and get a new one - there's no way I'm going to be able to remember Daylight savings time every 6 months on the actual date and the old date as well.

Book Down: Profit With Honor

Finished up Profit With Honor. A fairly quick read advocating Stewardship Ethics as the path the future economy must take to regain trust lost in the recent scandals of the past several years. Of interest was a quote stating that then Eliot Spitzer was prosecuting relentlessly those companies and individuals with a lapsed sense of ethics - times they are a changin'. He also foresaw the bursting of the housing bubble created by the baking and financial industry and lamented the potential buyout that would be required similar to the S&L of the 80's. RE. the last week's sale of Bear Stearns.
One of Yankelovich's examples of stewardship ethics is the Hybrid vs. the Hummer.

vs.

Toyota's Prius being an example of the company's stewardship ethics in their willingness to realize long term profits with short term losses because the hybrid was the right thing to do - environmentally and economically. Contrast that GM's Hummer - a gas guzzling SUV that has shown short term profits, but is not necessarily the right thing to do environmentally or in light of current gas prices, may not show the long term profits that the Prius will because of the Hummer's MPG inefficiency.

A worthwhile read in the field of business ethics - I'd say about 3 professional development hours of literature review / ethics (although it took me longer to read because I'm a slow reader...)

Earthquake

Purple dots - places you might want to watch out for. They might be a good place to be from.

Drought Monitor

This is interesting to check in to from time to time. I don't think I have ever seen New Mexico not have some level of dryness - we are a desert though. The title link shows a 12 week animation (it would be nice to have it play a bit faster, but the trends are clear.

Cave LiDAR Mapping

This would be a great survey project. I'd like to figure out how to get some funding in place with the NPS to map Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. This would be fun!!

To Accept or Not to Accept

I'm working on a boundary survey in the east Sandia Mountains - being the NW 1/4NW 1/4NW1/4, S34 (Approximately 10 acres). The terrain is quite rough and very wooded. Turns out the county road isn't along the section line like it is supposed to be.

That's not too much of an issue (from a survey standpoint) - it is clearly not along the section line - Oops.

The preceding plat corner monuments are waayyyy out.

These will simply be rejected - they're just plain bad.

The fences (lines of occupation) in some places are right on, others are way off...

The terrain is so rough here that I really can rely on the fence/occupation as decent evidence. The fences predate the BLM survey in 1976, but the BLM apparently didn't put much weight on the fence line/occupation line.

There are some other monuments that are fairly close on.

These pose a bit of a problem. Are they acceptable? In terms of the terrain - probably so, but the section line is the section line. I really can't introduce an angle point in that line where it does not exist. The monument pictured here is not called for anywhere. In NM it's against the law to remove a property corner, so my option is to reject the point and set a new one (about 0.7' away) or to accept the old monument which is reasonable for when it was set, but not so hot for today's day and age. Thus the dilemma....

Mile High Tower

I don't know about you, but I don't think I could live or work in something like the Mile High Tower

let alone this building.


Structural engineering at it's greatest, but I think this is a waste of excess. Your (our) gasoline and oil dollars at work...

Seven Deadly Norms

I’m reading Profit With Honor by Daniel Yankelovich – I wasn’t real excited about this read for the BHI book club, but it is turning out to be quite interesting in terms of business and cultural ethics. So far, he has discussed the deterioration of the ethical norms both in business and in our society as a whole. He postulates that we are in the early cycle of a downturn in trust in the business environment and in the past century, the downturn lasted 10 to 15 years. If he’s correct, we’re only 3 to 4 years into this cycle which means the next 11 to 12 years may prove quite interesting in terms of ethical issues. For thought, he speaks about he seven deadly norms that are causing most of the ethical confusion in the nation as of late:
1. Equating wrongdoing exclusively with illegality
2. Win at any cost
3. Gaming the system is good
4. Conflict of interest is for wimps
5. The CEO as royalty
6. Twisting the concept of shareholder value
7. Free-market economies require deregulation

More to follow on stewardship ethics as discussed in this book…

Out of the Office

I'll be out of the office for a few days and won't have a chance to update the Blog. I will return soon...

Book Down : The Measure of All Things

I finished up the book The Measure of All Things. Interesting read on the history of the metric system. The last chapter speaks about the adoption of the metric system over the past 200 years and the difficulties of incorporation into any given society. Thoughtful quote from the last chapter

"America, in Jefferson's terms, has preferred to mold the law to its citizens, rather than its citizens to the law - at least where commercial interests are at stake"

From the standpoint of the USA, that is a unique quality of the country in how we progress and as Ken Alder argues, one of the reasons why the US stands alone in the world to the meter. While many bemoan the globalization of economy, especially those in Europe, the US refuses to globalize it's system of weights and measures.

Worth the read - a bit slow in parts, but thought provoking.

Easter!

Happy Easter! He is Risen!


He is Risen indeed!

Hats off to the Pilot

(Not Survey Related - NSR)
This is some pretty good flying by the pilot considering the crosswind conditions...

Going Metric

I had always assumed that the meter and metric system was a development of the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, but it turns out, that the USA narrowly missed going metric from the very beginning of the nation…

From the beginning, the French had expected America-their sister republic-to be the first country to join the metric system. They had been delighted when Jefferson dropped his preference for a pendulum standard at the 38th parallel (near Monticello) in place of a standard at the 45th (near Bangor, Maine), clearing the way for trilateral Franco-British-American cooperation. In 1792 a committee of the United States Senate even recommended this pendulum standard as the national unit of length. But when the French savants switched to a meridian standard that traversed France alone, Jefferson became convinced that the French show of internationalism was a sham. Congress put off any consideration of the legislation.

The French did not give up so easily on America, however. Soon after the passage of the metric law of 1793, they dispatched the naturalist-explorer Joseph Dombey to convey the new (provisional) standards to the United States in the form of a copper meter stick and a kilogram weight. In January 1794 Dombey set sail from Le Havre on the American vessel The Soon. Unfortunately a storm drove him to the Caribbean, to the fractious French colony of Guadeloupe. From there, his mission went from bad to worse. Local plantation owners imprisoned Dombey as an emissary of the radical Jacobin government. Released upon threat of violence by those loyal to Paris, he disguised himself as a Spanish sailor and boarded a Swedish schooner, only to be captured by British corsairs and escorted to the prison island of Montserrat. There he died of illness in April.

Miraculously; Dombey's papers and the precious copper meter and kilogram weight arrived safely in the United States (where they are Still preserved in the Museum of the National Institute of Standards And Technology) and the French ambassador took up Dombey's mission With enthusiasm. Ambassador Fauchet said he was delighted to learn of The metric reform and expressed his confidence that "an enlightened And free people would receive with pleasure one of the discoveries of The human mind, the most beautiful in theory; and the most useful in application." By this he meant the French people. He also hoped the adoption of the metric system in America would "cement the political and commercial connexions of the two nations." His hopes were echoed in newspaper editorials urging all Americans-or at least, all educated Americans – to adopt the rational French measures voluntarily.



For a time, success seemed within reach. Fauchet was friendly with President Washington, who was friendly toward France, and the President asked Congress to reconsider the metric system. Washington had stressed the great importance of uniform measures in all three of his earliest State of the Union addresses. Although this sort of repetition is almost always a bad omen, Fauchet still held out hope. In a coded letter sent back to Paris, he noted that American adherence to the metric system might well prove advantageous to France. "Would it not make the People here more French if they shared in our knowledge; would it not bind them closer to us with commercial ties if they were subjected to our System of weights and measures?" He did worry; however, that Congress, having learned that the measures were merely "provisional," would deliberate and delay "as they so like to do."

While Congress dithered and America began a diplomatic rapprochement with Britain, Fauchet recklessly supported the Whiskey Rebellion, as a prelude to a great Jacobin revolution in the United States. This infuriated President Washington and prompted Fauchets recall to Paris. Six months later the House of Representatives voted to adopt national standards based on a modified version of the English foot and pound. These were not the ordinary foot and pound, but standards fixed by scientific experiment, and divisible into subunits of ten. The Speaker of the House urged passage. So long as each former colony had its own standards of weights and measures, national commerce would remain uncertain. This time, it was the Senate that killed the legislation by inaction.

Ken Alder
The Measure of All Things

A mathematician, an engineer, and a physicist...

A mathematician, an engineer, and a physicist are out hunting together. They spy a deer(*) in the woods.

The physicist calculates the velocity of the deer and the effect of gravity on the bullet, aims his rifle and fires. Alas, he misses; the bullet passes three feet behind the deer. The deer bolts some yards, but comes to a halt, still within sight of the trio.

"Shame you missed," comments the engineer, "but of course with an ordinary gun, one would expect that." He then levels his special deer-hunting gun, which he rigged together from an ordinary rifle, a sextant, a compass, a barometer, and a bunch of flashing lights which don't do anything but impress onlookers, and fires. Alas, his bullet passes three feet in front of the deer, who by this time wises up and vanishes for good.

"Well," says the physicist, "your contraption didn't get it either."

"What do you mean?" pipes up the mathematician. "Between the two of you, that was a perfect shot!"

(*) How they knew it was a deer:

The physicist observed that it behaved in a deer-like manner, so it must be a deer.

The mathematician asked the physicist what it was, thereby reducing it to a previously solved problem.

The engineer was in the woods to hunt deer, therefore it was a deer.

This is a bit grainy, but shows a quick view of some property corner recon from last Thursday in the east mountains. This was quite dense forest with a ton of scrub oak under the juniper and pinon coverage. There was quite a bit of elevation gain to get to point 1 as well which was a recon of the NGS point TAB. It took about an hour to get there through the dense underbrush and to no avail - point TAB appears to have been destroyed. Nice day looking for property corners though.

Metric System??

The following metric cartoon was published on 1999 October 04 in the Buffalo (NY) News following the crash of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter into the planet Mars. The cartoon was reprinted in the 1999 Nov/Dec issue of Metric Today with permission of the newspaper.

Some points to ponder, as I'm reading the history of the metric system (albeit a bit long and not really action packed), it is somewhat interesting in it's origin. As surveyors, we use all types of units of measure, chains, varas, feet (US Survey foot and international foot) and of course metric as well. No mater how legislated the mater is, we have our history so firmly planted in the imperial system through the public lands survey system, that I would guess that commerce as a whole, in the USA, will never fully adopt metric. Attempts to do so have had mixed results - read about a costly Metric Mishap

Metric can be much more straight forward though. See below....

"BHI’s Chris Freeman Awarded for Survey Career Video
By Kris Toth on 3/13/2008
BHI surveyor and project manager Chris Freeman has received a Presidential Award from the Texas Society of Professional Surveyors (TSPS) for his work to produce a surveying career video for middle school students. As 2006-2007 TSPS Dallas Chapter President and a member of the TSPS Public Relations Committee, Chris was able to enlist a local high school media program, organize promotional efforts, and raise donations from area surveying firms to finance the video’s production. Bohannan Huston, Inc., was among the firms that made a donation to offset the production costs of the film. Students at Lakeview Centennial High School in Garland, Texas, produced the video, which you can view via the link shown below. The video is used statewide for career day activities and school presentations, and has received “thumbs up” reviews from students. Congratulations, Chris, and thank you for your contributions to the Texas survey community. "

There are 2 videos at the Surveytexas.org site, the second one on the page is the one mentioned above. One is about 10 minutes and one is about 5 minutes geared towards a high school or mid school audience.

What's the backsight?

This screen shot reminds me of a story told me by Jim Wheeler. Back in the day using total stations of setting out a proposed centerline for a road. There wasn’t much around so Jim set a temporary back-sight on a boulder near the horizon. Every two or three shots, he’d re-zero on the temp BS and after several rounds of this, noticed that his gun (total station) wasn’t holding it’s angle very well. Four or five more shots later, they began to notice that the staked centerline, which was supposed to be in a tangent (straight as an arrow) was curving off to the left. They kept going for a while until about 25-30 shots in, Jim noticed that the boulder he was back-sighting near the horizon was actually a cow grazing along. The centerline of the road was following the back-sight position of the cow. Oops…

Find That Monument

We don't have to deal much with the vegetation problem here in New Mexico. Looks fun...

BHI on the Front Cover of POB

BHI made the front cover of POB (Point of Beginning) on the March 2008 issue. POB is a national professional publication for those in the geomatics (surveying) profession. The article, Tunnel Vision, is written by Tim Jackson out of our Dallas, TX office and reviews our award winning scanning project of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit tunnels. Interestingly, the other lead article pertains to a NASCAR Superspeedway scanning project. BHI has also been involved with a NASCAR project from several years ago at Talladega. Cool technology with some high tech applications. Way to go Tim!

Back from ACSM

I'm back from the ACSM conference in Spokane, WA. Attended workshops on Wednesday and Thursday and thought they were worthwhile. The conference seemed a bit smaller than times past - probably because so many states have their state conference in March and Spokane is a bit out of the way on a national conference scale. One of the presenters in a workshop asked for a show of hands and about 75% were from the Washington area. It was a worthwhile time, however, and I got 2 years of Texas CEU's taken care of.

I attended a session on the Washington State Reference Network. Pretty impressive effort. I haven't had a chance to look at the web site, but this is the wave of the future - really, the wave of the present. New Mexico is about 7 to 10 years behind this, but at some point we will get caught up. There seems to be some valuable downloads at this site concerning RTNs - some light weekend reading I'm sure...

Historic Maps

If you like old, historic maps, there are some cool ones here. I'm off to the ACSM conference. Will be back on line in a couple of days...

RFID's

What do you think about RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification) Tags? Here's a recent article about RFIDs in the garment industry. They're in use all over and there certainly is an aspect of privacy and lack thereof by the use of these - especially without the person's knowledge to gather information on them. Just think, you could have an RFID tag placed in your clothing and every time you enter a certain store, you could be tracked. A wealth of information - say an owner of a Gap store wants to know how many shoppers are "return customers" all they would have to do is turn the system on. It would tell you what they are wearing when they enter the store - you could probably even deduce the age of the garment and number of wash cycles it has been through.


My idea has been to implant an RFID tag inside every property corner cap that surveyors place to monument a property corner. Over time, all you would need is a special RFID reader on your survey equipment and it could interface the monument to a state registry of surveyor corners. You could instantly know the plat/document the point is associated with, who set it, when it was set, the coordinate value information. You could help determine if the point is authentic or was reset by another surveyor. The technology is already here - it will just take some forward thinking by the industry and state boards to enact a statewide system and registry. I could guess there would be a lot of push back by some in surveying, but it seems to me that a comprehensive monumentation RFID database will be the wave of the future.

Charter Statement Update

We had, what I thought, was a very productive meeting last week in developing our Regional Survey charter statement. Good participation from all in the group and I think we're well on our way to putting together a charter statement and vision statement that will help us move forward in our team approach. Over the next week, I will be putting together a draft of the actual language as brainstormed in the meeting and then let the group review, dissect and rewrite where necessary. I think we will go to the point of finalizing it and requesting signatures from all involved - really drawing the line in the sand as to whether or not everyone intends to play by the team rules so to speak.

Garmin Colorado

I got a new toy (after saving up some birthday and Christmas Gifts and some wellness certificates) and bought myself a Garmin Colorado 300. I've played with the Garmin Rino's before and am mostly familiar with the survey grade Trimble equipment. This will be for fun and I'm looking forward to trying it out. More to follow....

Happy Leap Year!!

Happy Leap Year ! It's amazing how precise our calendar actually is, but what's even more amazing in my opinion is the ability to calculate leap seconds. Unfortunate for NAVSTAR that GPS doesn't have a leap second function, but it's interesting to see the world slow down its rotational velocity over time as GPS time and UTC diverge....

Degree of Precision

"It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible."
Aristotle BC 384-322, Greek Philosopher

This has come up recently in conversation with respect to precision and accuracy of survey work. With the advent of GPS surveying, accuracy and precision can be achieved to a level that is so far beyond the abilities of past survey era equipment. Something comparable to the Wright Flyer and the Stealth Fighter. But we can so overdo things now as well. Spending hour upon hour to eek out an extra hundredth or thousandth of a foot, in my opinion, really is a waste of time depending on the application (much of land surveying applications fall within this category). Sometimes approximation, especially educated and rigorously derived approximation, is just fine. Save those extra hours and spend them with your family...

Charter Statement

Although the survey operations at BHI has been operating as a regional presence over the past year and a half, I have had the realization recently that we are lacking some key items to our team. Those being a charter statement and a mission statement. When we embarked on a regional approach in 2006, we immediately jumped into an operational and administrative approach without really defining our charter. I believe this is part of our continued struggle to obtain momentum across the southwest region of the US. We're going to start today on our video conference meeting to write our charter and mission statement. It will be interesting to see how each office participates (or not) and who is truly interested in creating a unified team with similar focus and purpose. I hope there will be value in backing up to the beginning to try and work through some of these issues.

Fence Hopping

Regardless of your views on illegal aliens/illegal border crossing, I would think that everyone could agree that there are negative impacts involved with the ease of crossing the border. We've had survey crews working along the Columbus, NM port of entry area directly across the border from Puerto Palomas, Mexico. There are issues with the drug trade here and I'm sure with any border crossing locations, the drug lord activity south of the border here is flowing over into the US side of the border. (See my post from several days ago about Kevlar vests).



This photo shows the U.S.A. / Mexico border, a nicely kept barbed wire fence. My guess is that someone frequently crossing the border, most likely involved with drug traffic, was spotted by Border Patrol and was quickly leaving jurisdiction by crossing back over into Mexico. Problem was that there was a mud puddle at this particular location and he lost his shoe in mid stride over the border. Dilemma: to cross back into America to get his shoe and risk being tied up in the bureaucracy of being deported or leave the shoe. Apparently the shoe lost out...

Grand Canyon Flood

We recently did some photogrammetric mapping for the Grand Canyon. It would be an interesting before and after look to compare the orthophoto images of the third proposed Grand Canyon Flood. It would be even more interesting to raft down the Grand Canyon at 41,000 cfs. Maybe someday....

Beauty in Engineering and Surveying??

"There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection."
H.G. Wells

What do you think? I tend to agree, however, we are in an industry today where nobody wants to pay for aesthetics - or at the very least a pittance is paid or it is an afterthought. If ugliness is the measure of imperfection in engineering, then is beauty the measure of perfection? If it is, how should we as engineers and surveyors move along the spectrum towards perfection of beauty. While exceptions might exist, beauty isn't something that we as humans can command and it happens - it takes time and thought and focus.

The same can be said for surveying and mapping I believe. An "ugly" product shows lack of focus and thought, and a lack of ingenuity. A map or plat is something that can show beauty if given or provided the time to create. Something we strive to do here at BHI although there is always the tension of time and budget and the pull to show data as it has always been shown rather than try something new. I think we do an exceptional job at pushing the envelope to create and develop new ideas and develop a product that shows beauty.

I think it can be done…

Caught in the act

For those not familiar, from the standpoint of environment, survey crews often have a difficult job. They can work long hours (whenever the sun is up – and sometimes when it’s not) and they work in any environmental conditions – both weather and locale. Maybe not to the US Postal Carriers level (Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds), but they certainly battle snow, rain and heat plus some other weather phenomenon. They also have to go where the projects are, whether it’s in the urban war zone, or in the middle of nowhere miles from the nearest road. The project may be near hazardous materials or hazardous land owners – which is worse? Who knows. They work tough hours in sometimes harsh conditions. That being said, it’s always nice to catch one of our crews in the act of working hard. Case in point, here’s an aerial photo (taken from several thousand feet) of one of our crew members controlling an aerial control panel (ATV is in the upper right). This project cut it close, the last panel being set as the flight began but he met his goal and got the job done…

Which way is North

When creating a map of the north pole or south pole, which direction should the north arrow point on the map?? Not a problem away from the poles, but north pointing up on a map is convention only. Many of the oldest maps were oriented such that east was pointed up. And for that matter, why is 0° Longitude based on Greenwich meridian? Many of the older USA maps show 0° Longitude through New York City. Simply put - it is convention. An agreed upon standard that all can base their starting point from. While standards are important, I'd also challenge you to think beyond standard convention. North isn't always up...

Bohannan Huston, Inc. - Where I work

Thought I'd let you see where I work ... Bohannan Huston, Inc. I've worked here since 1994 - it's been a great company to work for and we have many great projects to work on. More to follow on BHI down the road. Just a quick intro.

Kevlar Vests

According to Mark Marrujo, our Survey Operations Manager in the Las Cruces Office:

"US Customs at the Columbus Port of Entry felt it necessary due to the kind of activity over the past few weeks in this area [on the US / Mexico border] that our field crew opt for wearing Kevlar Vests instead of Surveying Vests. Since our field crew was being escorted by Customs police with M-16s they made sure not to say “shoot it” to one another while collecting field data conventionally."

Shown is Johnny, one of our Surevy Crew Chiefs ready for action...

First Blog Post Ever

This is my first blog post ever. Pretty basic stuff here - I'm hoping that this will serve as a forum for ideas on the surveying industry and our business specifically as we embark on expanded regional survey services for Bohannan Huston Inc. More to come later - I'll leave with a parting shot east of Grants, NM.