super-cooper

So I wrenched with this simple calculation at work for about a day and a half. Something to do with soil test phosphorous input for one of our SWAT models. If I tell you any more than that, you’ll either stop reading this or fall asleep. So I thought I was attempting to convert something from milligrams to kilograms, but the result was just wayyy outta line. Finally I broke down and asked my officemate to look at it. She asked me “Shouldn’t that be megagrams, not milligrams?” My reply was simply “Oh yeah, maybe that’s why the “M” is upper case.”

< calls himself a dumbass >

So kids, today’s lesson is this: Mg stands for megagrams, mg stands for milligrams.

My officemate earned 2 points for that one. Yeah, we keep score.

To quote the old man from the movie “A Christmas Story”: “It’s here, it’s here, hot damn it’s here!”

My new second monitor finally got here today! Now I have dual 18-inch LCDs, and it is truly a beautiful thing. Except now I just have figure out how to get twice the amount of work done.

<scratches chin with right index finger and thumb> Hhhmmmmm </stops scratching>

Tags: computing

So I broke down and got a new toy the other day. We needed a camera to get pics of the youngin’, and my old digital wasn’t cuttin’ it anymore. I was kickin’ it old-school, big time. So the decision had to be made — film or digital?? I wanted an SLR for the features, but couldn’t really afford the one I wanted. And my other reason for not going digital SLR is that the prices of digital SLRs will keep going down while the technology only gets better, just as the case has always been with digital cameras. Hell, five years ago, I paid $500 for the Olympus D-450 Zoom. That camera would coast about $150 now. Also, I found that with my digital point and shoot, I had tons of pics that were just crap. Crap, really. Now, with the 35 mm, I feel that I take more time and put more thought into composing my shots. Maybe I know in the back of my head that I can’t afford to process three rolls a week either, huh? At any rate, the Nikon N75 is really nice so far. However, I am a novice, so my opinion might not really be worth that much. Shots to come soon…

Tags: photography

I had a post a few days ago about data, and how it made my happy, and how that was kinda pathetic. And that got me to thinking - What’s the largest raster I’ve processed?…..Hhhmmmm. Well, here it is:

I needed to make shaded relief maps for our site at work, like the one seen here. In order to do this, I needed a DEM that covered a very large area. Read more »

Tags: gis

We went to the Rodeo of the Ozarks tonight for the first time. It has rained here everyday for the past two weeks, and looked like it was going to clear up for this evening. Wrong. It started getting very black to the north around 8:00, and conveniently around intermission, they announced that everyone had to leave the stands and “…go to the safety of your car”. Yeah, they actually said that. Granted the stands are giant lightning rods, but …safety of your car? C’mon. And they waited until the very last minute to announce this, for it started pouring on us before we even got to the gates. Needless to say, we got a little wet. But we’re not about to melt.

The rodeo itself was rather slow-paced; lots of time between riders and events. It barely held the attention of our kid. But it was still fun to watch. What a rush that must be riding a bronco bareback. I really wanted to see the bull riding, but we weren’t about to hang around and wait out the rain. Hell, we were soooaked.

So we called it a night and stopped and got some Chic-Fil-A on the way home. Man their lemonade is good, and so is life.