With all the Facebook and LinkedIn sites nowadays, I thought I would look up an old employee who, if anybody would, would be into that sort of thing. Before anybody I knew had Autocad, Andrew was in the local Autocad Users Group back in the early '80's. He was my best draftsman and threatened to quit if I didn't get with it with the computer technology so I did. When we first loaded it up, I was so un-cad-oriented, I was about ready to lay a scale on the screen to check the scale. Andrew gave me a few quick lessons and I stayed till all hours for many nights clicking buttons to find out what they did. My other employees flocked to Andrew for guidance on the new tool with their notebooks in hand waiting for step-by-step instructions on how to draw on a screen what they were currently doing with a pen. Andrew didn't give up his knowledge freely and challenged them to learn as he had, the hard way.
Andrew's father had an extreme case of bipolar disorder that I heard about every so often. Andrew eventually started displaying symptoms of a similar disorder when he worked for me. He could function just fine if he could show up whenever he got up after a fitful night of annoying birds chirping outside his bedroom, but if there was a deadline to be met, that could spin him into a locked-up panic.
Finally, after a few days of not showing up at all, he came in to the office, wild-eyed with lack of sleep and presented me with a manifesto, many pages long of how I was a crook because a project we were working on involved variances from zoning code standards and that our client was just playing along with us to bring the hammer down with a huge lawsuit. The project, by the way, was ultimately approved with all the variances accepted by the local agency. That was about 15 years ago.
That afternoon, after changing the locks on the doors and watching out the window for his prized Acura to show up, we called the Sheriff to do a "welfare check" on him and I guess he was OK. That was the last I ever heard from or about him. Yesterday, I looked him up on the internet and found out he died 5 years ago in his parents' home town in BC, Canada. No cause of death mentioned, but he was 45. It said something like "died suddenly" so I suspect suicide, is that what they say euphemistically?
Sorry to hear about that.
I learned AutoCAD R10 in roughly 1990 by getting a book and drafting a subdivision map in it. I had used DigiCAD a little before that so it wasn't completely baffling but it was still mostly baffling for a while. I pounded the desk a lot during that ordeal.
ye gads... Sorry about that...
I know of a guy who did not agree with his employer/boss. He ended up quitting his job, and then started to stalk his old boss. I think he then was caught throwing rocks at his house. A nutcase. I'm not sure how it all played out.
I took a class and learned basic AutoCAD 10, and built on that. I looked at the newest version and yuk. There is a learning curve to it. Time to hone my skills with Microstation....
Sorry to hear that, Steve.
My old boss said of someone once: "sometimes the more creative, artistic guys are closer to the edge."
It is always a shock to learn that someone you once knew quite well has died and time has passed. It tears at our inner self which prefers to think that the world at large will be much affected upon our own demise.
I had a friend like that, was a great field hand and friend until he stopped taking his meds.
We started noticing some tweeks going on with him, not sleeping was the first sigh and then mumbling to himself.
One day we were doing a topo and I had to get on him because he was not tilting the prism to the gun and he snapped.
He said something about me telling lies about him and walked off and caught the bus.
The instrument man said, "What the hell just happened?", but I really did not know.
I never have been around him since then and I knew him since he was four.
It really was sad to see.
My goal is to set as many BIG monuments with my license number on them as I can so I will have some form of immortality. That is the main attraction of field surveying for me.
