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.

The GDAC program. As I have said many times it is the greatest tool we as surveyors have ever been given and it will continue to be for as long as I will be doing this job. That can be said for certain.

Since most of the published work was done several years ago there have been significant changes to the existing monuments due to varies conditions of construction, goofy people etc.

GDAC still remains the greatest tool for positional research and recovery but since things have changed so much especially in the city areas extreme caution needs to be upheld. 

I have been noticing a change in the monuments in character also horizontally and especially vertically. 

I use to jump all over them but now I have backed off and always check into another, especially when establishing elevation.

There have been instances when I have found monuments to still be in character but have changed vertically, once again due to construction or goofy people.

I have gotten into the habit of hitting those NGS points in the can before I go any further as a start point. Those have a tendency to stay accurate.

A program such as GDAC no matter how awesome it is can not survive accuracy with humans. Consistent updating would need to occur and the cost would be astronomical.

So the question is how does the inventory stay current? I am sure that there is a plan in place and I would like to know what it is.

Do we as the private surveyor need to report a change? 

I am curious to see how well the maintenance will go in the future. I am hopeful that it will continue to be updated and remain current.

Make it a great week surveyors.

You ever have one of those weeks that when it is done you wish you would have followed your childhood dream of playing guitar for Ozzy or becoming a Jedi Knight or a Dragon Slayer or a Nascar driver or anything instead of becoming a surveyor?

Welcome to my world boys and girls.

Aggghhhhhhh!!!!!! Here we go, here we go, here we go again.

Make it a great week surveyors. 

I will have something much more interesting as soon as I get my brain back.

There must be something in the air or I am in attract weird shit mode.

I was working on a job a while back and I approached a patio area. Going along the patio was this strap stuff that looks like Mule Tape.

I needed to locate the patio corner and it was under a tree so I whipped out old Mr. Pocket tape to pull 2 swing ties. I flipped the tape across the strap and got hit with a massive Zot of electricity, I dropped everything including the gps that got tangled in the tape.

I backed up blurted several swear words and then grabbed the rod by the carbon fiber part and got the gps out of the tape as I was hearing "zap, zap,zap".

What the hell man? Who puts electric fence around their patio? I was dazed and felt like my heart stopped. Luckily I did not have to check my pants.

I immediately set 2 traverse point and came back and detailed the area with the reflectorless TS.


Next I mentioned in my last post about doing a job in one of the more colorful parts of town. Well I returned last week to set the property corners and guess what I found that was not there before?
A brand new constructed Hobo Village under a tree right where I needed to set a corner.

I approached the lean to and was stopped by the sound of a gravely voiced female and a male with like voice arguing, about what I have no idea.
I have to admit that listening to it was majorly entertaining, however I did feel less than inclined to knock on the door and tell them that I have to set an iron pin in their living room.

I set all the rest, called the client and told him that when he serves an eviction notice and chops down the tree I'll run back and set the last pin.

I packed it up and was sitting in the truck, I looked over and the female came out of the village. She looked like Slash the guitar player, she was wearing headphones and then proceeded to do an amazing little dance that lasted for a couple of minutes while she was lighting and smoking what appeared to be half cigarettes. I was amazed and mesmerized all at the same time. If I was shameless I would have taken a video and posted it here, however I decided to keep this one for my own memory and not exploit the lady.

I do love an early morning survey in the ghetto.

Make it a great week surveyors.

I did an ALTA the other day down in a very old part of town.

The monuments I recovered reflected a change in right of ways and things were just wrong.

I contacted the City of Phoenix and they quickly sent me some quarter section maps that cleared a lot of things up. My measured monument distances were close to them and the block broke down great with a surplus and the interior monuments came in nice as well.

I finally got the title report and that confirmed everything.

There is an underground tunnel easement running through the area. I have the description of it from the title report and I plotted it but it looked extremely wrong. 

I contacted the city again and they sent me some ADOT maps that assured me that I had it plotted incorrectly.

I beat my brain out looking at this thing every which way and could not figure it out. It had a POB that started 34' +/- from the south quarter corner and was certain that I was starting there.

I got so frustrated that I walked away and left the office.

About 8pm I was still thinking about it and kicked me like a donkey.

I had this thing starting in the right place according to my field points, however I was tied into the monument line of Central Avenue and not the mid section line.

The next morning ran to the office, moved everything to the correct position and what do you know that easement was spot on according to all of the info I have.

I think the moral of this story is sometimes you just gotta choke the pooch before the light comes on.

OK. Last week was a strange week in many ways.

A couple of things that happened last week that really stand out are shown below.

First I was working in a guys yard running a topo and out of the corner of my eye I see something jump, I look over and see a dog standing on a block wall staring at me.

I've seen this before but this one was pretty cool. He actually watched me complete the job.

And then Graupel.

You may be asking what the hell is that. Well that is what fell on us last week. 

Per Wiki:

Graupel (German pronounciation: ['gʁaʊpɛl], also called soft hail or snow pellets)[1]refers to precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm (0.079–0.197 in) ball of rime. Strictly speaking, graupel is not the same as hail or ice pellets, although it is sometimes referred to as small hail. However, the World Meteorological Organization defines small hail as snow pellets encapsulated by ice, a precipitation halfway between graupel and hail.


There is more but I think you get the idea.

A couple of week ago I found a significant error an a plat that was done by one of the big machines.

I promptly brought it to their attention and they looked into it.

It took them about 2 weeks to get an answer for me. It turned out that I was correct and they recorded an affidavit of correction and provided me a copy.

I get a little impatient when there is a problem and I want it fixed right away. I have absolutely zero understanding of corporate culture and their procedures, it's like the government in many ways, it all has to be done through process.

The beauty of being a small business is that we can most often do things right away, there is little wait time and we are able to jump in with both feet and find resolution.

Through no fault of their own the big machine I was dealing with had to grab that job out of archive which apparently was a whole deal and then verify what I said etc.

I understand all of that, it was just the time factor. As a small biz that is something we do not have the luxury of is time.

While a big machine can take 2 weeks we as small guys have to be in the now and on top of customer service at all times, that is what keeps us going. 

My client was getting extremely agitated and kept can the big question, "can't you just??" and of course my answer was no.

At the end of the day the problem got solved and my client was grateful for my sharp eyes.

The big machine was awesome and I am very grateful to them for working with me. They were gracious and thankful that I had brought the issue to their attention and the people I worked with were attentive and kept communication going.

I the past I have been told by similar companies that it is my problem and deal with it and they are finished.

That is the utmost in non-professional behavior and the company I just dealt with are all pros and I will never hesitate to contact them again for any reason.

I know one of the people I dealt with checks this blog out from time to time, so I want to shout out big thanks to you for all the help.