Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Lath
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I agree with that. When we set witnesses it’s a steel bar in the ground usually an even meter or 2 from a lot corner that cannot be monumented due to a tree or anything that makes it not possible to set. At least that’s my experience here with other party chiefs I’ve worked with.
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Lath vs lathe
Cemetery vs Cemetary
Boundary vs Boundry
Instrument vs gun (some correct terms are long and un-spellable)
Plumb vs plum
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Lath is a thin piece of wood.
Lathe is a machine for turning metal.
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I??ve known and engineer or two that were plumb Bob crazy. Haha
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I’m shocked that someone from the northeastern part of the country is outraged that everyone else doesn’t use words the same way he does.
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Sometimes; it doesn’t matter…
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will! -
You are missing the point here.
I want my clients to understand what happened when I surveyed their property. To me that is a large part of what I do in my service to my clients.
It doesn’t matter if I don’t impress other surveyors with my ability to speak their language.
We don’t call the instrument “the gun” or use any other of the sometimes vulgar expressions either. There are no cryptic, non-standard abbreviations on any of the maps we publish or give to our clients.
Historic Boundaries and Conservation Efforts -
I always try to use words that I think the client will understand, or words I already heard them say even if it’s different than the term I use….
Sometimes I catch myself though when I can’t quickly think of a layman’s term way of saying it….I told a woman today i would “shoot her shed and garage” etc so they would have an easy time discussing with the office where they would like to put the house”. Not sure shooting is the best term, but she seemed to understand.
Or I could tell her “I will take observations on the corners of your shed and garage”
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We don’t call the instrument “the gun” or use any other of the sometimes vulgar expressions either.
Hey, you better reserve the term “instrument” for those of the string, brass, woodwinds or percussion categories. It’s a “total station“.
Wait, no, this one is robotic, better make that term “RTS“.
Hold on, this one over here also does scanning, so it’s a “scanner“, not any of the above.
But now that I think about it, we don’t really use the scanning functions, so let’s just stick with “electronic theodolite“.
Now I’m confused…
OK, that was a little tongue-in-cheek. I try really hard to not use slang terms like “gun” or “hat”.
But the above terms aren’t really slang, and neither is “lath”.
I have yet to see any confusion over what “lath” is in the half-dozen states I’ve worked in. It’s pretty much universally understood to be a flat piece of wood that, in the surveying world, is used for writing on and is used in conjunction with another more permanent marker, and occasionally by itself to mark very approximate positions.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
I call it “the robot” because that’s what I usually call it and it seems like most clients would get that. If people actually ask what it is I tell them it’s a robotic total station.
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I’d like to think that the vast majority of my fellow professionals have the ability to use both stake and lath were necessary and not operate under some system of vocabulary Manichaeism where stake is good, and lath is evil.
Most have the subtlety of thought to tell their helper to “get half a dozen stakes/laths from the truck as the job dictates and still tell the generally public that we will set stakes along their line.
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You are missing the point here.
I want my clients to understand what happened when I surveyed their property. To me that is a large part of what I do in my service to my clients.
It doesn’t matter if I don’t impress other surveyors with my ability to speak their language.
We don’t call the instrument “the gun” or use any other of the sometimes vulgar expressions either. There are no cryptic, non-standard abbreviations on any of the maps we publish or give to our clients.
No, I’m not missing any point. You arrogantly think you know what the clients in the rest of the country understand. Not everyone uses the same vernacular as New England yankees, and thank God we don’t.
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I’m not picking sides but as an example of this most of our customers (especially older guys) refer to the iron bars in the ground marking their corners as “stakes”. So if I say “see that stake there?” They’re going to be looking for iron and not wood. That’s where we have to get specific and this is completely a regional thing.
Just hanging out in this forum taught me how different the language we all use is.
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Most have the subtlety of thought to tell their helper to
who or what is a helper thanks to all the great engineers in the world I get to do everything alone with my robotic Total station or as Rover said the RTS
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Definitely not. We’re an elite group. Don’t even ever try to talk like us
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I’m not picking sides but as an example of this most of our customers (especially older guys) refer to the iron bars in the ground marking their corners as “stakes”. So if I say “see that stake there?” They’re going to be looking for iron and not wood. That’s where we have to get specific and this is completely a regional thing.
Just hanging out in this forum taught me how different the language we all use is.
That’s sort of my point here. All that matters is that we are able to communicate with the clients. As long as we understand each other, what difference does it make?
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Definitely not. We’re an elite group. Don’t even ever try to talk like us
Trust me, I try to avoid all of y’all.
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