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Whatcha doin', Mister?
Eating a nice taco salad (venison burger…mmm.mm.mmmmmh) whilst my receivers measure me a bunch of data… I miss Paul Harvey…
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9 Replies
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Measuring…
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Me too. Plenty of Best of Paul to be heard.
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Just finished writing up my review for later this week, and reading a proposal to start an international standard (ISO) on ITRS (including documenting how realizations are done).
My dad loved hearing “…the rest of the story!”
I’m just one of those evil GIS people. Bwah-hah-hah! Seriously, I do coordinate systems and transformations at Esri. -
One day, in Seattle, I am checking into a benchmark, blocks away from the site I was working on, and this guy comes out and asks me what I am doing. Standing there with an RTK unit seems pretty self-evident, but I tell him I am checking into this vertical benchmark…it doesn’t satisfy him. When I checked again at the end of the day, he harasses me again. I wanted to tell him that if it was his business to know, he would know, but since that isn’t the reputation I want, I didn’t. I never did satisfy the guy. “A lot, far away from you is getting surveyed.”
I tend to not offer what my client intends to do with the survey information, I figure that is their prerogative.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. -
In a local paper last week we discovered a fellow in that city had a very unusual name. The reporter for the paper was doing a little human interest story on a few places around the town where various people would gather each morning to socialize over coffee and solve the world’s problems. Nearly everyone he interviewed shared their name with him. It turns out that when he asked one fellow for his name he was told, “that’s My Business”. So, all comments attributed to that fellow were reported to have been said by My Business.
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Went through a drive through today with my R8 magmounted on the hood vs roof (better blue tooth for calcs). The youngster gave me my gnarly burger and smiled and just said “…I gotta just ask… what is that thing” I kinda chuckled, and said it’s my GPS. I’m a surveyor and didn’t want to move it to the roof. He kept smiling. I think it made his day.
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dmyhill, post: 355135, member: 1137 wrote: …I tend to not offer what my client intends to do with the survey information, I figure that is their prerogative.
A number of years ago one of the firms I worked for had a good client that was always buying and selling odd properties. Some were just old burned out warehouses down by the tracks, others were commercial spots that maybe just needed some tidying up. One thing was for sure; he bought them with low dollar and he always had a way of coming out with a high dollar sale. One of these properties was in a part of town (it’s actually its own 160 acre incorporated area) called the Oklahoma National Stockyards. A lot of old brick buildings with not so much value. There was even a “Jesus House” right down the block.
I was walking around with my shovel equipped helper sniffin’ up what pins I could find on a vacant lot for this client. One of the Jesus House fellas started following us around asking questions. I was nice as I could be, but when he got to the part about “who bought it and what were they going to build” I got a little firm with him and told him ‘even if I knew all those answers, I wouldn’t tell him because he’s not the man I was working for.’
He smiled and gave me his business card. It WAS the man I was working for…Quite eccentric he looked like a wino. When I introduced myself he recognized my name as the surveyor that signed everything on his work. We forged a good acquaintance right there on the spot. He said he appreciated my candor. When he got back to his car, I noticed it was a 15 year old F-100 with a different colored door and no tail-gate.
He used me for his survey work for a good ten years before he passed away about five years ago; it didn’t matter who I was working for. And he would meet me out on the job frequently just to gab.
So the next time a wino by the Jesus House walks up to you and starts chatting….be careful. It might be the multi-millionaire real estate mogul that hired you….
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Paden. As you know, there are a thousand stories floating around out there about the bum in a piece-of-junk-mobile who is very wealthy despite the appearance. It is so nice to hear that at least one of those stories is true.
My true story of that variety involves one of my neighbors. He owns in excess of 6,000 acres, rents a couple thousand more and they are loaded with cattle that are paid for. He is the biggest tightwad in the world. But, he works about 15 hours a day, seven days a week, doing whatever needs done despite being 82 years young with too much money in several banks. Nobody gave him a dime. He earned all of it. Most days you will find him driving his 1970-something Ford pickup about 15 mph, while not wearing the glasses he should be wearing, and wearing one of those funky caps with the tent flaps that remind you of some Lawrence of Arabia extra. He absolutely will not turn on the AC no matter how hot it is because it would take too much expensive gasoline. But, the man knows how to make money raising cattle.
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Several years ago I read an interview with Sam Walton. I don’t remember a whole lot of the interview but I do remember one question. “Mr. Walton, with as much money as you’ve made why do you drive this old truck?”, Sam Walton, “Because I want to”. You can’t argue logic like that.
Andy
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