Jame Flemming, While I am getting close to pulling up stumps, I trust you enjoy the ride as much as I have over the last 39.5 plus years
You can look forward to lower blood pressure and increased happiness. Wish you the best!
Prodigal Son, post: 428787, member: 12074 wrote: Nothing beats a small tight knit firm! I'll take a small 15 person firm over 500 employee stockyard any day.......
I was in a project kick off meeting the other day and, even before anyone set foot on the site, you could see the civil team, the landscape team, and the utility team already starting to set up fall guys in other disciplines if the job goes to s**t.
Congratulations James. Life is too short to work every day at a job you don't enjoy.
Hearty congratulations, and best of all possible good luck with this. While I'm writing, I'll mention that I have wondered whether you have any connection with a fiction writer from your part of the world named Steve Fleming. The Exile of Sergeant Nen is the only book of his that I can think of as I type along off the top of my head. Congrats again!
Henry
m & h taylor, post: 429283, member: 239 wrote: Hearty congratulations, and best of all possible good luck with this. While I'm writing, I'll mention that I have wondered whether you have any connection with a fiction writer from your part of the world named Steve Fleming. The Exile of Sergeant Nen is the only book of his that I can think of as I type along off the top of my head. Congrats again!
Henry
No connection that I know of...my Fleming's come from the area NE of Cedar Rapids Iowa (around Coggon & Castle Grove). Speaking of parts of the world, I'm going back to working mostly in Frederick and Carroll counties in Maryland, which look and feel an awful lot like the Goose Creek valley in Loudoun. Well returning, not really "going back"
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R. S. Thomas, Laboratories of the Spirit (1975).
Joe Ferg, post: 428792, member: 332 wrote: I left a big firm such as that, never happier!
Joe,
I think we left the same big firm. Much happier 20 years down the road although it was a great place to get a start but stranger as it got bigger. Hell I even met my wife there so there is that.
[USER=1188]@John Putnam[/USER]
You really shouldn't blame them for that.;);)
I think the reason my ex-wife stopped going to church was because we met at a church camp when we were high school age.
What, if any, are the tools and techniques in play at the "modern" big city shop that you plan on bringing or implementing at your new "classic tradition" office?
Adjusting his numbers down from million dollar jobs to $2000 jobs will take a little while.
party chef, post: 429310, member: 98 wrote: What, if any, are the tools and techniques in play at the "modern" big city shop that you plan on bringing or implementing at your new "classic tradition" office?
With any luck, the question will be: "How much time will will it take at the 'classic traditional' office to rid me of the notion that the answer lies in the tools and techniques"?
[INDENT]??Mechanised brushcutters are not used instead of scythes because they are better; they are used because their use is conditioned by our attitudes toward technology. Performance is not really the point, and neither is efficiency. Religion is the point: the religion of complexity. The myth of progress manifested in tool form. Plastic is better than wood. Moving parts are better than fixed parts. Noisy things are better than quiet things. Complicated things are better than simple things. New things are better than old things. We all believe this, whether we like it or not. It??s how we were brought up.?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kingsnorth&apos ;">?? Paul Kingsnorth[/INDENT]
That Kingsnorth fellow needs some experience with a scythe in areas where brushcutters are primarily used. A scythe will not begin to cut through the woody components of "brush". I have a scythe hanging in my garage. No matter how well-sharpened it wouldn't be good for anything tougher than grass.
Also, we all know mechanized is spelled with a z. Those silly people across the pond seem to have problems with many words. For example, I bet he ignores the r and the c when he pronounces the name of the town where he was born.
James Fleming, post: 429316, member: 136 wrote: With any luck, the question will be: "How much time will will it take at the 'classic traditional' office to rid me of the notion that the answer lies in the tools and techniques"?
[INDENT]??Mechanised brushcutters are not used instead of scythes because they are better; they are used because their use is conditioned by our attitudes toward technology. Performance is not really the point, and neither is efficiency. Religion is the point: the religion of complexity. The myth of progress manifested in tool form. Plastic is better than wood. Moving parts are better than fixed parts. Noisy things are better than quiet things. Complicated things are better than simple things. New things are better than old things. We all believe this, whether we like it or not. It??s how we were brought up.?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kingsnorth&apos ;">?? Paul Kingsnorth[/INDENT]
[MEDIA=youtube]hEzKwhDl5H0[/MEDIA]
Robert Hill, post: 429330, member: 378 wrote: [MEDIA=youtube]hEzKwhDl5H0[/MEDIA]
Are Geomatics professionals Geomaticians?
Furthermore, Frederick County MD and Loudoun County VA both drop Catoctin Creeks into the Potomac.
That is a fine poem. That's R. S. Thomas in your avatar, isn't it? I sometimes think he may be the more durable of the best known Welsh poets named Thomas.
Cheers,
Henry
James Fleming, post: 428772, member: 136 wrote: [SARCASM]I am surely going to miss the monthly automated emails from the accounting software when my utilization rate dropped below 80%[/SARCASM]
Ah, yes, I remember it well. Not fondly, but vividly. Bailing out of that horror was one smart move on my part. I doubt I could have survived another month without losing my sanity. So, from me to thee, you made the right move. I predict two years from now, maybe less, you will say to yourself: I should have done this years ago.
m & h taylor, post: 429349, member: 239 wrote: That is a fine poem. That's R. S. Thomas in your avatar, isn't it? I sometimes think he may be the more durable of the best known Welsh poets named Thomas.
Cheers,
Henry
I've had Larkin's 1973 Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse on my nightstand for the last six months and it looks like an introduction to about a decades worth of further reading. I tend to be anti-modern, somewhat curmudgeonly, Anglican, and Welsh in my mother's side...when I came across R.S. Thomas he was right in my wheelhouse.
The Welsh are famous for the use of first names as surnames. Occasionally you get the double name, such as Evan Evans. Some have various forms, such as David, Davied, Davis & Davies. One of my lines goes back to the Evans and Davies, of which there must have been many thousands in the home land prior to heading for Pennsylvania, then Ohio. I can't remember for certain but I think there is an Evan Davies (or Davis) somewhere in my ancestry. We are a bit weak on that line as Great grandfather Silas Davis died when my grandfather was only five and my grandfather died two years before I was born. It has been passed down that his early death was attributed to long-term ailments brought on from wearing a blue uniform for more than three years and walking across a great deal of gray territory.
James Fleming, post: 429358, member: 136 wrote: right in my wheelhouse
I'd never heard this expression until about a week ago and now this is the 3rd occurrence I've seen. Where did it come from?
(Total hijack, but this thread is already off topic.)