It is fascinating that highly technical, but non-surveyor folks keep an eye on this forum.
Who fits this description, and why are you here?
Simple, they want to hang out with the cool people.
Maybe they're the real smart ones.
Math Teacher is obviously one. I'm another.I was an electrical/software engineer.
I grew up with Dad always checking who was selling land to whom via the published list in the county paper, so I learned townships and sections. I got interested in reading local and state history and happened on the story of Burt's survey in the 5th PM so learned to read GLO notes in chains.
I've always found the subject of measurement interesting. I kept Davis, Foote, and Kelly at my bedside for years. I've done a hobby project where I took some known locations and made transit/theodolite observations of the red lights on towers to transfer to a spot in my driveway.
I got interested in reporting bench mark conditions and turned in 450 reports to NGS. I found the then-current forum. With the help of @rankin_file I got a Trimble 4000 and did some GPSonBM submissions. The GPS also checked my triangulation result within 0.1 ft.
So yeah, its fun to hang around the pros. Besides annoying them here, I go to some of the Surveyors Historical Society gatherings.
Maybe they're the real smart ones.
The really smart ones have retired early and are sitting on a beach in Hawaii drinking Pinacolada
When I was at NMSU, we had a non-traditional student (well, I was, too) who had taught physics for years at TCU. He was interested in surveying and decided to get a degree for fun in his retirement. He was a fantastic help for our physics classes, and Dr. Reilly was the only one on his level of mathematical acumen. They had some interesting debates!
I was able to find his obit, so I thought I'd share it here for prosperity. Thank you Charles Blount! You got me through Calc based Physics, for sure!
Adobe Indesign set-up (observerenterprise.com)
I highly appreciate what Math Teacher has brought to this forum!
Too long a story to tell, but math and surveying were first woven into the fabric of my mind by elementary trig in high school and B-grade western movies that included surveyors and land offices and often involved disputes over the "North quarter-corner" or something similar. We didn't have land offices in NC, at least that I could find, and none of the few quarters in my pocket had corners.
The seminal events were my purchase of a Garmin Etrex (without WAAS, which I had no clue about, but it cost more), the discovery of a volunteer point-gathering group sponsored by USGS, and tripping over NGS data sheets.
Unlocking the math that connected lat/lon and Northing/Easting became my dominant down-time pursuit. The biggest key to that door was James Stem's NOS NGs Manual 5 which showed me how to duplicate Lambert state plane projections in spreadsheet form. It was a short leap to creating LDPs; it's the same spreadsheet with different parameters.
I found Surveyor Connect while searching for something else, was a lurker for a good while, and then joined. In those days, I would have killed for a reply from Shawn Billings. Replies from Kent McMillian, though not always pleasant, were plentiful and instructive.
My work career spanned three careers (financial services economic forecaster, clinical trials computer interface development, and high school math teacher) and my role shifted from corporate executive to mid-level leader in trials and teaching, to a combination of teaching students and supporting other school leaders.
And that's what I want to do here: Share freely what I know (misconceptions and all) and hopefully provide some anonymous support.
I consider it a privilege to be tolerated by this group and I tell my family that my best friends are people that I've never met.
Partially for work, and partially for personal knowledge. I always loved maps and would navigate my dad to bookstores and motels when my family traveled across the midwest and west on trips. I did Physics as an undergraduate because I liked it the best of my science classes (I loathed my bio and chem teachers and didn't take them in college). I knew I wanted to go to grad school but didn't want to continue in Physics.
I saw an ad for the geodetic science department at Ohio State in the campus newspaper (my mom worked there, and I'd taken a few classes there post-undergrad) that listed their 4 concentrations at the time: computer mapping, geodesy, photogrammetry, and land information systems. They all sounded cool, but particularly the computer mapping master's. I focused on the computer mapping, but had classes in all 4 areas.
I managed to escape the main surveying class (sorry!) and did a shorter, quick orientation to a total station later. I ended up TAing the map projections class twice which helped me get a job at Esri after graduation. I'm still at Esri (29 years on May 9) and have always focused on coordinate reference systems and transformations. I'm not on the surveying/engineering-focused teams but collaborate with them. My team deals with the crs/tfm definitions and the algorithms for the map projections and transformation methods.
I periodically run into ground-based or locally-defined coordinate systems so I hang out here. I really enjoy the 'ring-ring' and ask-a-surveyor questions.
Thank you, everyone, for giving me insight into the land surveying profession!
Melita
Everyone who contributes to the site assists everyone in general. Thank you. I have learned so very much here despite the many years of my prior experiences. We all can learn more. We all may be influenced to correct certain little things we may have not been doing in the past.
SC seems to be popular with the electrical engineer types.
What's the attraction? (Please don't say magnetism...)
Electrical engineers must have an internal interest in physics and calculus or they would never obtain their degree. Geodesy would attract people with such interests.
Based on witnessing many electrical engineering majors it generally involves the study of dynamic and kinematic viscosity of liquids containing varying levels of alcohol during personal consumption thereof.
At my school, we called that Calculus.
Each weekend was a "lab" to study the "rates of change" for various sized containers of "liquids".
Each weekend
Lightweight...
Right?! Splitting a six-pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler malt beverage with two buddies was far-out, man!
Right?! Splitting a six-pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler malt beverage with two buddies was far-out, man!
I remember in particular when a handful of us all got Negaunee briefcases and watched the superbowl together... that was pretty wild.
I wouldn't know, he said innocently, about that. I was married and had a young child that required every penny I could lay hands on. Total $ spent on "good times" were few and far between.
I consider it a privilege to be tolerated by this group
Anyone who is tolerating you lacks the ability to recognize knowledge and wisdom when it kicks them in the ass. There isn't anything to be tolerated from you but rather very insightful views.
