thank you, steve. :) things are fine. i think now that things seemed to mellow out (after give or take a year), i've finally gotten a moment to remember what the heck i was vaguely concerned about a year ago. just cluttered headspace i don't want to act on atm...
fuck Sent from my iPhone
I will eventually comment more on this. Energies are currently focused on resume/cover letter review for a friend who's on the chopping block at their left-leaning lobbying firm that's laying off 75%+ of staff.
S/O had a minor operation last Wednesday, then a minor car accident that Friday. She is fine, but the car is not. Been playing catch up since then, and not caught up on everything I’d like to be (including my post on FL politics here). Mostly commenting here to say I haven’t forgot about it.
I did have an on-going hubski post in a word doc from about two weeks ago that went through learning I wasn’t going to hear back from the employer I previously traded jobs from, despite emphatic thanks and mentioning a spot if things didn’t work out. There was also developments in there like paying for/going through commercial drone pilot certification (which was one of the false promises from the most recent employers) ‘cuz it’s something I’ve been wanting to learn. And on top of those, something about being excited to really get my hands dirty through PostgreSQL – finally piecing together a web app from this site to 3D data-enriched, interactive visualization through NASA’s open-source Google Earth Pro for developers. Finally, in the good news department, I’ll be an author on published research as of the end of the year. Since then, I’ve stalled fairly hard, lost the much longer word document, and having a hard time looking for a job of interest in my area for my current field (hence the drone pilot school). The S/O and I acknowledged that our town isn’t the best for career development… and its clear she’s fine with that. Me, not so much, but would rather secure a gig in the meantime to replenish savings before re-opening that conversation. For better or worse, there’s a non-negligible amount of items to unpack in said discussion, to top it off. All-in-all, the September hasn’t been the sweetest of starts.
veen Please excuse the delay. I've been in the middle of moving in with the S/O on top of a family visit that has thrown off my schedule without my full workstation... You've hit a loooooooooot of topics swirling on my mind for a few years now. Looking back on my certificate and MS in GIS. I've realized this profession could easily be taught in a trade school. A couple courses here (one on vector data and it's applications; followed by a course on raster), another there (types of data collection - in situ, remote sensing and its varieties). Maybe, just maybe some visualization via web dev (AGOL), storage/'big data' (SQL/PostGIS) or automation (ArcPy). That right there could get a solid 2 years' worth of 'full-time' schooling and be done with it. This isn't to say I'm happy to have a couple extra letters after my name, but - call it imposter syndrome if you want - I don't think the value of what I learned in grad. school significantly impacted the type of job or salary I got coming out. Even looking at the market now, there is very little in between from technician to developer work. From what I've found, most job descriptions don't have that much variation between Tech - Analyst - Specialist. Unless, of course, you're starting out as an imagery analyst. Which is a job that has its day's numbered. A shockingly small niche (over here at least) is the people who are good at writing queries and half-decent at GIS. PostGIS legitimately can replace 95% of the individual pre-made tools QGIS and ArcGIS has to offer. You can do much more complex things much faster. My largest project the past year ended up being 2300 lines of PostGIS/SQL code I wrote on my own. The first 30% is just data prep written in code - "make sure I properly join tables A thru G in the data type I want it to be without ever having to touch Field Mappings ever again". The rest is a bunch of clever geo-joins and a bunch of not clever regular joins of tables and features. Nothing special to anyone who already knows how to handle semi-long SQL queries; PostGIS is really just one new column type and a bunch of functions to do stuff with it. The tipping point at my last workplace was a senior GIS dev that replicated my 2 months of census analysis (via ArcGIS) under 2 weeks with PostGIS. Now, I adore this dev, they were the only mentor in that floor. It made me realize how much more there was out there in GIS (and how little I could contribute to the field with my current skillset). Most salient of the points made while watching said dev work was "You've done a great job grinding at this for the past two months, though QC'ing is not possible since ESRI writes fresh data every. step. of. the. way. Now scale that over the course of 2 months of troubleshooting, trial & error, etc." It's a no-brainer. Would you mind sharing the course you took by chance? My resources of yet are a couple textbooks by recommendation of the former GIS Dev co-worker, a 4 hour YT vid on PostgreSQL, and a coursera course on SQL.As a whole the GIS world is...surprisingly shallow. There are some technical niches for sure, but compared to what I've seen in other domains of engineering, one can get incredibly fast to a point where one can do 80% of all GIS work. Really, a basic GIS course combined with a modicum of data-wrangling chops and Google skills can get you very far. To speak from personal experience; I had 2 mandatory GIS courses at uni, took one PythonGIS elective
and learned enough on the job the past 4 years (all of ArcGIS Online PostGIS + ArcPy) that I can prolly apply for most senior GIS jobs out there. A lot of GIS work is just about getting the right input into the right GIS tool(s) and ✨presenting✨the result. I know people who have done nothing more than "load data into GIS, apply pre-made tools, visualize" for decades.
Goals Short-Term: - Revive passion projects as way to learn PostGIS - Regain employment by September (absolute latest) Mid-Term: - Scope out feasible new countries of residence - Lose the COVID 60lbs #WorkIt Long-Term: - Finish setting up my office - Shell away more emergency money - Contingent on 2024 election outcome
Bumping this thread 😎
I gotta set a reminder for these things.
I hopped jobs, traded in an ol’ clunker for a 2022, and am leaning towards moving in with the S/O by the end of June. Decision to move jobs was influenced by the decision to co-habitate. Last joint was data heavy (remoting into multiple live feeds, up/downloads of GBs) and the cut-off for good internet is a 5 min drive closer to the city from the S/O’s nice, quiet spot. The change in lifestyle from remote to in-person work is not welcome. More to the point, not a day goes by I wonder if I was ready to change jobs. The work and workflow was as engaging as I liked it to be. Plus, I was valued in a smaller pond that happen to attract much, much bigger clientele. Pay could have been better, but the lifestyle change was what I was after. Jury’s out on the latter (or at least, doing a bad job convincing myself of that). Regardless, I settled for a lateral move pay-wise with the interview-stage promise of development. Not the smartest decision of late. The new whip’s safety features are nice, though.
Imagine writing an article about Solar and Wind Energy, then not talking about Wind Energy. Smh. 1. bippity : Biden’s commitment to Wind Energy - specifically offshore wind. 2. boppity : The rise of a major player in American Wind Energy 3. blam : USGS’s database of existing WF. Doesn’t account for the rumblings of U.S. offshore windfarms 4. kablooey : Local Texan reaping benefits of converting his oil rigs to wind turbines.
Nice beard!!
That (very scientific) method adds a whole new layer of meaning to the phrase “pucker up”. On a serious note, I’m in the habit of flipping my pillow/changing its sheets when a certain house cat decides to sit upright on it. Maybe the fear of pink eye a la cat isn’t veritable after all. 🙌
‘Grats!
Florida man just wants to sell furniture.
WTF LOL These are developing into local news headings.
Wolf-girl stops industrialism.
Club owner helps his old girlfriend's husband.
Inception?
Animal reclaims his pride.
veen's answer has my brain, but this... this has my heart.
I think it's less to do with shying away from a comment (people can edit here no problem), and more to do with agency over your own information. It is our responsibility to be diligent about the detail we divulge in our lives. The de-activate button allows us a way to place another roadblock in front of further/future attempts to doxx in the event we don't want to filter through our own Hubski career's worth of posts/comments. It was a small miracle for me when I used it recently - if only for peace of mind. I would like to see it come back in some form. Hubski doesn't feel like an anonymous web site. I would be shocked if half the names I'm familiar with here genuinely believed this was a wholly anonymous space after the time they've spent here. Speaking for myself, discussing my life and interests (w/n a reasonable amount of detail) here sometimes is a good avenue to learn more of how others approach their interests. The people behind the keyboard would naturally bleed information of themselves in time given level of comfort. EDIT: I love edits. Mostly re-arranging thoughts and adding others.
Welcome to Hubski! YouTube links will automatically embed for you, now.
My city’s had curfew for a while now. They re-instated it specifically because of protests. Wording is the exact same, save a shift in hours. Wonder how high up the order came from. The initial university messaging when COVID shutdown down schools was copy/paste as well.
(I swear, there's rice under there) 10/10 recipe! Sesame adds a nice extra dimension to the flavor.
EDIT: Those screenshots look prettier if you click on them. You get the point without clicking on them, though. Project Goals: What I'm re-constructing: What I'm improving upon from last semester: Progress thus far: I've shifted my goals around to be more engaging. Turns out switching packages knocked out an extra goal or two. From a coding perspective, it looks like I'm doing less work compared to last run at it. Marking that down as improvement. The webmap is gonna be killaaaa.
Been a hot minute since I've cooked with butter. Will give it a go! Got any favorite vegetable pairings/sides to go with it?
I'm not as familiar with Zoom as Discord/Twitch/Youtube... Of those three, I'd use Discord for voice chat, map, and screen viewing, but it doesn't support streaming from your camera. SOoOo, here's my take: Discord lets can host your own private server, with each voice channel hosting 10 people watching a live stream. You can also create text channels to chat outside livestreams or place interactive games/links. Discord is what you're looking for in terms of a top-down, white-listed (or graylisted) approach. Creating and maintaining infrastructure of a Discord server is VERY straightforward. Another great benefit is the bots people have already made for Discord that could suit a variety of needs. For example, music bots are great for voice channel rooms where there are no live streams going, but people want to listen to music and chat in text channels (or have the music softly playing as others talk). It'd serve as a great place for the map you're looking for. As for video chats, Zoom is where I'd put my money on, and Twitch for shows. Twitch does everything you'd want out of YT livestreaming, but better - it's what it was made for. Discord was made for internet socializing, featuring a damn good voice option. TL;DR, Discord can work as a great nexus. A private server containing links for each show in chat/voice channels general voice/text hangout which can also serve as general chat/music/voice/screensharing hub. As always, there could be options out there that are worth exploring. Facebook Live, Mixer, and others.
Journey is phenomenal. They ported it to iOS recently. I highly recommend a play through. The company recently released a follow on of sorts called Sky: Children of the Light. Your daughter might enjoy that as well. There are more social interactions given its an updated game - but also has an updated 2010s freemium model as a result, so be warned. It’s not as immersive or impactful, but good for riding the Journey vibes out. You’ve got a smart cookie there. Maybe save that poetry for her later down the road.