I never cease to wonder about the operations and efficiencies of the different municipalities.

The thing I marvel at the most is the utter lack of communication between the separate departments and also the utter inability to make a decision.

Now I understand that a city employee is prohibited from telling you how they think something should be done and they are tied to city guideline, however a little extra effort to point a citizen in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

I am wondering what causes these poor people to become absolute minimalists? I am sure that they start out ambitious but something at some point sucks the life out of them and they bend into a lifeless wet piece of paper.

I have had some great experiences with most city folk, but unfortunately as humans we have a tendency to focus on the less than good times.

The two I deal the most with are Phoenix and Scottsdale. For the most part I have great success and really like everyone I deal with, but ever so often I get that curve ball that throws it all into a tail spin.

I can only imagine the shit that gets blown at these people on a daily basis. 

I am a very chill person and I am thinking that's why I get along with most that I encounter because I am always respectful and grateful for the help even if the result takes me in circles.

I know dealing with the public is tough especially when you get a belligerent numskull in front of you breathing hate.

I also know that everyone is different and piling all of you into the some category is massively inappropriate. Sometimes a guy just has to bitch a little.

So hey city employees. I am here so say thanks for doing a job that I would never be able to do.

Keep up the good work.

So there I am yesterday morning in an intersection in a quiet residential neighborhood that is not quite ghetto.

I look up and here comes a cop blazing down the street. He passes by me, stops jumps out of the Tahoe, draws his weapon and points it at a guy in a car that is in a driveway.

Needles to say I immediately vacated said intersection and went behind my truck in case gunfire ensued.

The cop holstered the weapon and grabbed him and dragged him out of the car while the guy (a great big white supremacist looking fella) proceeded to scream like a little girl. It was actually sad.

By then two other cop cars had arrived and the suspect was subdued and the friend on the front porch was being spoken to by one of the cops.

Exciting? Kind of in that this happened at 5:30 am.

So I was going around a block doing a boundary. I get to my lot and this old guy from next door (Nick) comes out and talks to me for a bit. He keeps an eye on things and the property that I was surveying was vacant. Great guy, he even let me go into his yard.

I was asking him about some of the neighbors because I had to trace some adjoining monuments and he told me that I should probably watch out for the guy on the other side of the subject, that his kid is a heroin addict.

I looked at him and asked if I should lock my truck. He chuckled and said "he's to dumb and to slow to steal your stuff, he's just unpredictable".

Comforting?  WTF?

All in all the job went smooth and I actually made some money on it even with the results of survey that I had to prepare. I'll wait to file it until I have a few to do.

Keep your eyes open out there surveyors. You never know what might land on you.

OK Boys and Girls I am back on the air wave.

You want to know the worst thing about coming back from vacation? COMING BACK!!

Much has changed for this kid over the last month or so. I have been working on several projects (not all revolving around surveying) and yes working on survey things to.

I have gone and changed the name of my company. I am now the proud owner of "Arizona Surveyors Incorporated".

You may be asking yourself why on earth did you change the name?

Simple. Marketing and SEO. That is the only reason and the old name is that of a dead guy. (I think I mentioned that before.)

So now I have a lot of work to do revolving around the new name. First is bank accounts and informing clients and vendors. Second is a website.

The website is something I am jazzed about. This site will be built on new technology using word press and this blog will be embedded in the site itself.

My dusty old RJR site is just that, old and dusty. I will be letting it go into the cyber sky shortly.

Out with the old and in with the new.

I hold a philosophy that when a person becomes to comfortable they will stagnate and fall behind. In many ways I have done that in my equipment and technology. Mixing it up and changing is key to my life.

Cash flow and billings are on the rise again, so I will now blast like a big red rocket of love into the forward motion. I will be an unstoppable machine with a constant increase flowing my way. Business will expand and things will fall back into place.

Then will it be good enough? Good enough never crosses my mind. No matter how good it gets it can always get better. No, it's never good enough.

In case any of you though I did this job for the glory? Ha!!!!! You would be incorrect.

OK. Much is coming on this blog. I have a lot of cool survey things to talk about and also a lot of biz.

Stay tuned!!

OK. It's summer again. This is the time of year when my mind really starts to wonder off to places other than work.

I obviously still have a lot of kid in me.

All I want to do is hang at the beach or anything that has nothing to do with surveying.

Yes business is really starting to pick up and I have some people moving (mostly on construction) and May has been a great month even though I can't really remember any of it, oh and with all kinds of other distractions happening, I still managed to crank some great receivables.

Biz is good and getting a lot better.

OK, now here I am again back in summer mode. Yes I am going to the beach. It's a must. My mind is already there and I am grinding the days and doing it well until I get there.

I am on a blog hiatus until Mid July. By then I should have all kinds of interesting things to spout about. I have been doing a lot of thinking about content and have a lot of things to write about.

Until then I hope the following photos can be as influential on you as they are on me. They truly make life worth living. I have a little something for everyone.

Peace out surveyors. Make it a great summer. Be sure to play a lot, love a lot and whatever you do please remember that there is a fun loving kid in you too.

How many of you got that envelope from Leica Geo Systems with the words "For your eyes only" stamped on it with the special email invite to check it out?

Well I did and I have to tell you that Leica did a great piece of marketing with that.

I immediately went to my computer and typed in the address and waited with anticipation as the page loaded. I sat there just wondering what it could be???

Then the anti climax thing occurred. It was an invite to Vegas to check out their new shit that is being released next moth. 

I have to admit I was a tad pissed off. I have such a huge imagination that I was sure that this was it, my life was about to change as I know it and off to the races I was going to go like a bullet at 3000 feet per second. However that did not occur.

Now I am sure if I decided to make a sudden change to Leica all of that would come true but those chances are small.

So here I am again on a Sunday with that haven't done my homework feeling and I am facing down a Monday unprepared and all alone. Yes that's right boys and girls a modified version of one of my favorite quotes from Eddie Spaghetti.

OK, enough of all that. I have something much larger to discuss.

A week or so back I went and met with a guy about designing my new website. 

I really liked this person, he was professional, well spoken and cut through all of the BS and set me straight about what was what. It was absolutely refreshing to have someone tell me the truth and tell me I do not need an lot of unnecessary stuff.

The guy told me he would get me a cost by end of day or no later than the afternoon of the following day. That was a Thursday.

I did not hear anything from him until Monday afternoon. Not even a message telling me he was running behind or anything.

Needless to say this person lost my account even though I liked him the best. His cost was very good and he was a pretty awesome guy.

So now I am curious how that kind of thing seems to have become the norm in business?

When did it become OK not to communicate when we are in the age of ever rising forms of communication?

Yes, ever so often people are going to drop the ball myself included. The difference between me and others that I have observed in, is that I tell the person that I dropped the ball and then politely ask if they still want me to do whatever. It just happens, but I have noticed this particular trend as of late and frankly it is very irritating.

I know I can only speak for myself and conduct business the way I think it needs to be done, however when I need something, I usually need it right then or at least a call or message.

It is a curious thing this new way of doing things. Yes I know the world can never stay the same and I would never want it to. I love change, but this one I am having a hard time swallowing.

Make it a great week surveyors.

Ever notice how you can shoot some monuments and so can 10 other people and they will all come up with different results?

I am of the opinion that it is impossible to take any measurement without a certain degree of error.

Remember the old days as an eyeman when you had that old crew breathing down your neck while you were rapping angles with the good old T2? There were times when I would rap 10 different sets because the mean closure was not good enough.

Fortunately I was honest. I used to be so good with these angles that I could give a false reading so the crew chief would move along. It's all simple math when you think about it.

Which brings me to the point of all of this.

Today's newbies have zero clue what it really means to measure. They will never know a chain for what it really is, they will most likely never rap angles and most likely never run 3 wire levels. Yes there are some exceptions depending on where they work and what they are doing.

So my questions is what will became of the basic fundamentals of survey measurements? 

Is the robot or total station more accurate than the GPS? I think absolutely in verticals. Horizontal who knows? I will tell you that I often use steady sticks with the gps, especially when obtaining control and I let it cook a little longer, at least 30 senconds.

There was a time in my life when all we did was run level loops all day long. Yes that's right youngsters loops.

The guy that I spoke about a couple of posts back Howie went to some on site welders and had them make these turn plates that were made of 3/8" steel with bolts in the top and those were the turn plates that we toted from station to station and then back again and again. They had 3 angled legs, were 6 inches tall and then the bolt and were about a foot by a foot and we would drop them and then stomp them in. They weight about 20 pounds each.

We ran some tight stuff and if we checked in over 5 thousandths we did it again. Why? I'm not sure.

I am wondering if the newbies know how to read a rod to the thousandth or if they even know to rock the rod? I'm sure some do.

When I was with Howie he made us use a calibrated deluxe rod bubble and only a 2 section wood rod.

I am wondering how many know how to run levels up and down hills and keep the turns balanced?
Simple. You and the rod man stay exactly 100 feet apart and parallel on the slope and work your way up and down.

Anyone pre 90's probably knows this.

I find it amazing that different companies can shoot the same section with the same character in monuments and come up with significant different results. Tenths, not hundreths. I actually think part of it may be an incorrect grid to ground scale factor. But who knows. It could just be a case of lazy head up ass.

So what is actually happening to measurements? Are they improving though technology or getting worse from button pushers that have zero idea of the basics?

It's a good question.

What say you??

Make it a great week surveyors.

In the post below I mention a rail road issue in which I developed the center by a series of 3 points arcs.

Since I am a diligent research monkey I kept digging and finally found a document with a definite radius call on the south right of way. Yes there are spirals but one course goes through my entire project area.

I jumped all over it, added 33 feet to it for center, drew it in on my points and that thing fit amazingly well.

The client loses another tenth or so to the RR, but I felt all warm and fuzzy knowing that I had something definite to work with.

I would have stood by my first method had this document not been recovered, however it is nice when something pops up that truly brings it all together.

Last week I got a tricky boundary survey in the door.

This particular boundary is in an old industrial area and has a Rail Road on a portion of the north.
I asked one of my contract guys who lives a lot closer to go out and shoot the section on Sunday morning because this is in a very high traffic area.

Upon receipt of the data I immediately dove in head first.
I pulled maps and documents and I also received a description and some easement doc’s from the client. No title report seemed to exist but they got all of the paper work from the city in which they are thinking of purchasing the 2 lots.

The description was partially written in Rods and it made some very distinctive calls that were just not adding up according to my section breakdown.
I did some further review on some very old subdivisions in the area and quickly discovered some non-nominal  1/16th corners that everyone since the dawn of time has been using.

So I jumped in the truck and went out to do my own search and destroy mission.

The first thing I discovered is that the 1/16 corner is not on the mid-section line. The next thing I discovered is the 1/16 to the west which is an old pipe (which is in character with plats) is still there and checks awesome to the brass cap in hand hole 1/16 that is previously noted as a stone.  Oh, the pipe lands in the railroad right of way between the main line and a spur.

Right then I jumped all over those 2 monuments and started running around the subject boundary and man stuff started fitting like no one’s business.

I found some monuments in character with some older surveys and it all started fitting together.
I brought it back to the office, tossed it into cad and re-calc’d it all and soon discovered that the North East corner is clipped by the Rail Road right of way.

I am sure that no one has really ever considered this one, upon looking at all of the documents anyway. So now here we are with that little thing. It only takes a tiny chunk that should never make a difference to anyone.

The track is funky as well. (I love straight track!!). It is in a curve or I should say a series of curves. I could stand there a see that it was obviously multiple curves, most likely spirals.
I took a bunch of center shots all the way past the tangent and in the office I drew a bunch of 3 point arcs and then offset the 33 foot half right of way.
There is a map that is quite illegible but I could still make out the 33 feet and adjoining plats confirmed it.
I will do some more research before making a final determination on that North East corner. I think I have buttoned up but want to be sure.

I like these kind of jobs. It's what makes surveying good and breaks up the day to day drag of the same old stuff.

Just the fact that this thing was written partially in Rods makes it unique along with the obviously long history behind the 1/16 corners.

Make it a great week surveyors.

I was on a job site Saturday morning and I got to talking with this mason that I have known for a bit. He is in my age bracket and we starting talking about the old days when everyone was not so sensitive, people settled things with fists, we could call each other names and ride the green horns hard and then drink beer together at the end of the day and all that real cool stuff of days gone by.

It was a great talk. It reminded me of all the Cowboys and Oldsters that schooled me and would not survive in today's work place.

Below is a story that I first posted in 2011. It's about a guy that used to ride me like a donkey, give me shit from sun up to sun down and then buy the beer. Enjoy.



This is about Howie.

I was thinking the other day about this guy, one of my first crew chiefs, he went by a certain name but when I found out his middle name was Howard I immediately dubbed him Howie. (He hated it).

Howie was a nasty son of a bitch.  He chewed Copenhagen, smoked generic cigarettes and drank coffee all day. At night it was a 6 pack of Old Style and the cheapest TV diner he could find. He was a connoisseur of prostitutes and had the clap 11 times that he knew of.

He would go to Saudi Arabia for 2 year stretches and sleep in the back of his Land Rover to avoid housing bills and then vacation in Thailand every 6 months, get baked out on Thai stick and bang hookers for 2 weeks, hence the clap so many times.

He carried a 270 behind the seat of the truck just in case he saw a wild burro. He would shoot them on site claiming that they would pull out stakes. (Note: This is true, I have had it happen and they set them neatly over a hill and crapped on the nails.) I suspect that he was part burro himself that’s why he hated them so much.

He avidly hated anyone that worked in the office and referred to them as “office pukes”, he had zero use for anyone wearing a white hard hat or white shirt and was convinced that anyone that wanted to work in an office had a vagina.

While he was all of this, he was an awesome field surveyor (only) and passed his LS the first time. (Early 70’s)
This nasty Mofo made me tough. I was already pretty tough and still am but he would go out of his way to make things very hard on me. He was an agitator. He would mess with your physical and mental status, he had a way of making a person continually question themselves, therefore I became a check freak. I still am.
He had a method to his madness and his training. Those with a weak mind or the PC pussies of today would have never made it with him. They would have quit and cried to mommy.  I actually witnessed people quit on the spot because of him.

Bottom line is that he made people good surveyors. That was his main goal with youngsters and he accomplished it well. He was a living breathing survey machine and he wanted to teach. He loved it, but only on his terms.

Today, he would be written up, fired, sued and have the book thrown at him.
But that won’t happen because one day he was on vacation with his mail order Philippine wife in an undisclosed location, he smiled at her and dropped dead from a massive heart attack. Death was quick for the old surveying donkey.

If you were on his good side he would treat you well after hours (I was), but on the job it was take no prisoners. If you were on his bad side you were total shit and he wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.
Speaking of fire he had an eye-man burn one of his trucks to the ground. Imagine how the rest of the time those 2 spent together was. My question is: how the hell do you accidently torch a truck?? What goes through your brain before and during that??

I know a lot of you my age and older were brought up by similar guys of the older generation. I personally loved these old guys. They were tough and the work ethic was hardcore.

I would love to be able to send these new/young guys back in a time machine and give them 6 months of Howie. They would come back much better having done it.

So let’s all take a moment to remember the guys that trained us. Good, bad or ugly, we all learned a lot.
Because of them, I am who I am today, just a whole bunch more refined.

Last week was one of those times that an overly active person such as myself dreads.

It was the week where there is a bunch on contracts out, the work is boiling and of course you know it will hit all at once and there was not much to do except admin.

Admin as mundane as is it is happens to be a huge part of business. Back in the days of many employees my office manager took care of all of that and I never had to deal with it. However today things are a lot different especially since I am an army of 1 now.

The whole admin thing consists of filing, catching up on doc's such as waivers, stuff for the cpa, field folders, bills etc. and the most important part, Quick Books.

I had failed to reconcile anything in over a month so Thursday was bank day. 

I have to tell you that over the last 5 years my accounting skills have sky rocketed to a level it never would have if things had remained steady and we avoided falling into a sucking vortex from hell.

I have always thought that the most important thing about a business is the cash flow because it is truly the life blood. I also have always wondered how these guys get by having someone else do all of their books and never looking at a thing. I often think they are most likely getting ripped off because they fail to pay attention. It actually kind of scares me.

Even when I did not do all the other stuff I always paid attention to the books by requesting daily balances, monthly P&L's, weekly out going and receivables. By doing so I ensured that I was always ahead of the game and could make split second decisions if I had to. Another thing I have always done is have the bank statements sent straight to me and always be the first to review even though the office manager would do the reconciliations.

So as a business man I have adapted to all of it, boring or not it must be done in order to be effective.

I had an excellent teacher who was a surveyor but also a business man that made a fortune in other areas. He always told me that no matter what anyone tells you most small business are 3 months from going under and the second I take my finger off of the life blood pulse it will kill me.

He was right. There where times early on that I failed to pay close enough attention and almost wiped myself out. Fortunately he was still with us and I was able to ask for advice.

I was taught early that people who are older by virtue know more and I should listen especially if they have had the same type of things happen. Sometimes that statement is false but for the most part it is right.

Because of that, I have been successful and will continue to be in every venture I step into.

Oh and the lack of trial and error fear helps a lot and the occasional get your own ass handed to you really helps to

It takes balls to run a business and anyone that speaks to the contrary is obviously very naive.

Here's to all of the Cowboys and Oldsters that spent time schooling us Youngsters.

Make it a great week surveyors.