General | Eric Colburn, PLS

Professional Land Surveyor Top 10 At Ten

April 26, 2012 in General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Top Ten At Ten Guaranteed

Top 10 at 10

Here are today’s Top 10 trending posts as of 10 tonight:

Tags: 2013, 3D, AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Autodesk, Business, CAD, Civil, Continuing Education, Design, Education, Engineering, Geospatial, GNSS, GPS, Land, Land Surveying, Land Surveying Business, Land Surveying Software, News, Professional, Professional Land Surveying, Professional Land Surveyor, Professional Land Surveyor Source, Software, Survey, Surveying, Surveyor, Surveyors, Surveys, Technology, Video, YouTube
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by EricColburn

Land Surveyor Wins Record 640 Million Mega Millions Jackpot, Invests In Land Surveying Business

April 1, 2012 in General, Land Surveying by EricColburn

Land Surveyor Wins Mega Millions!

Land Surveyor Wins Record $640 Million Mega Millions Jackpot, Invests In Land Surveying Business

In a stunning turn of events for a Gunter County land surveyor Rod DeLenker, last Friday, he won the record $640 million Mega Millions jackpot!

I was fortunate enough to interview Rod this morning. Here is my interview with Rod DeLenker:

Eric:

Rod, first off, congratulations on winning the Mega Millions jackpot on Friday! Could you tell us what that day was like?

Rod:

Thank you, Eric. Well, Friday is kinda a blur for me, but one thing I do remember is being pissed-off because I couldn’t find a parking space at the local Tini-Mart. If that’s not bad enough, after parking Bertha, that’s our survey rig, off the blacktop, then I had to stand in line to buy a can of BMI-Plus Cola, a bag of Nunions, and some Atherosclero-Jerkey – you know, lunch – all the time listening to this yocal go on and on with his girlfriend over the phone on what he’d do if he won the lottery. As bad as it was not finding a parking spot, then standing in a long line, it got worse when…

Eric:

….Rod, whoa!. Hold on, let’s get back on track. How did you come to play the lottery that day, and did you use any special techniques to win?

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Tags: Fiction, Interview, Invests, Jackpot, Land Surveying Business, Land Surveyor, Lottery, Mega Millions
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by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Weekly Roundup March 25, 2012

March 25, 2012 in Business, General, Land Surveying, Links, News by EricColburn

Iron Pipe Below Ground

Professional Land Surveyor Weekly Roundup:

A Few Older Posts, Too:

Professional Land Surveyor Archive – Last 3 weeks:

Updates Around The Interwebs:

Tags: AutoCAD Civil 3D, Being Civil, Between The Lines, Business, CADcaster, Eric D. Colburn PLS, Kung Fu Drafter, Land, Land Surveying Business, Laser Scanning, Links, marketing, Marketing Strategy, News, Premium, Professional, Professional Land Surveying, Professional Land Surveyor, Professional Land Surveyor Source, Roundup, Surveying, Surveyor, Surveyors, The State Journal, Weekly
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by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Weekly Roundup September 18, 2011

September 18, 2011 in Business, Business Videos, Carlson, General, Geomatics, Hemisphere GPS, Land Surveying, Land Surveying Equipment, Land Surveying Videos, Links, News, Surveying Software, Technology Videos, Trimble, Videos by EricColburn

Pictures from the Field - WPA Plaque

Professional Land Surveyor Weekly Roundup:

Professional Land Surveyor Archive - Last 3 weeks:

Tags: 18, 2009, 2011, 2012, 3", 3D, 900, Achieves, AD, Adds, Against, Announces, Archive, Automated, Aviation, Better, Brian Kemp, Carlson, CEO, Chairman, Coding, Collection, computer, Content, Debunk, Defense, Department, Engineering, Exam, Examination, Facts, Five, FS, Fundamentals, Geomatics, Georgia, GNSS, GPS, Handheld, Hemisphere, Historical, House, Independent, Interference, IP68, Just, Land, Language, Letter, LightSquared, Managing, Map, Monitoring, more, Myths, NCEES, NET-AX, Network, New, Nomad, Now, Online, Operations, Options, Out, Popular, Professional, Professional Land Surveyor, Propaganda, Protect, Provides, Rating, Rebuts, Released, Releases, Review, Roundup, Rugged, S320, Secretary of State, Seeks, September, Series, Several, Sokkia, Solo, Solution, Stations, Subcommittee, Survey, Surveying, Surveyor, Surveyors, Thrown, Tips, Tom Petri, Topographic, Total, Trimble, Twitter, Updates, USGS, Video, Visualization, Volunteers, Weekly, Workloads
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by EricColburn

Fisherfield Mountains Re-measured by The Munro Society

August 14, 2011 in General, Land Surveying, Links, News by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor News

The heights of three mountains in the remote Fisherfield Forest area were re-measured during July by members of The Munro Society.

Two of the mountains were found to be less than the given map heights. The re-measured heights as processed by the OS are as follows.

Beinn a’Chlaidheimh, 913.96m previous map height, 916m

Beinn Dearg Mor, 906.28m previous map height, 910m

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Tags: Corbett Tables, Fisherfield, GPS, Heights, Land Surveying, Leica, Leica Geosystems, Leica NA730, Links, Mountains, Munro, Munro’s Tables, News, Ordnance Survey, OS, Re-measured, Satellite, Scottish Mountaineering Club, Society, Surveying
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by EricColburn

Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations

January 28, 2011 in General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Follow Eric Colburn, Professional Land Surveyor on Twitter

Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations

Here are this week’s Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations:

@wkfd – WKFD is the Twitter account for the Kung Fu Drafter blog. They are drafters and geeks trying to share information with people with similar interests. I highly recommend visiting The Kung Fu Drafter blog, as it is a fun site and full of information too! If you get a chance read W2W&W: Joss Whedon’s “Firefly” Smuggles a Bit of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” Part 2 … I didn’t find Part 1, but that’s typical of me to put the cart before the horse.

@iPinda – Edward’s Twitter bio says “CAD specialist, AutoCAD & AutoCAD Civil 3D trainer. iPhone and iPad addict.” and if you visit his Civil 3D Peanuts blog, you’ll discover that he’s also a part-time freelance AutoCAD trainer and full time CAD application administrator for an international AEC company. If you get a chance, read his Appending or Merging Service Packs with Civil 3D 2011 blog post.

@Gatewing – Gatewing is a Hi-tech start-up in the unmanned aircraft and geomatics industry: high resolution terrain mapping for geo-information purposes. Based out of Ghent, Belgium, Gatewing designs and sells the world’s fastest and easiest to use remote sensing solution. Based on their revolutionary X100 light unmanned aircraft, they built a solution for rapid terrain mapping. It consists of an image acquisition field operation and a fully digital and automated image processing. Learn more on their product page or through their white paper. You can also see a video I posted here »» Gatewing X100 Light Unmanned Aircraft Remote Sensing Solution.

@standortanalyse – Founder and CEO of gb consite GmbH, are the IT consultant Malte Geschwinder and Knut Büscher. They provide consulting, conception, development and operation in the environment of individual and standard software. The technical focus is on the sector location analysis / geo marketing, the sales management and data warehousing, often in combination with geographical information and methods. Check out their plans for 2011 here »» Preview of 2011.

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Tags: #FF, #FollowFriday, @cad_notes, @EricColburn, @iPinda, @Lyme_Warrior, @standortanalyse, @surveygis, @wkfd, AutoCAD, Autodesk, CAD, Civil 3D, Eric D. Colburn PLS, Follow Friday, Gatewing, GIS, Land, MicroStation, Professional, Professional Land Surveyor, Recommendations, Surveyor, Tweets, Twitter
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by EricColburn

Surveyors, Symbols, Crosshairs, Targets, Bullseyes & Sarah Palin

January 10, 2011 in General, Land Surveying, News by EricColburn

Surveyors Crosshairs on Tower

Surveyors and their symbols are getting a lot of attention in the press today. Rebecca Monsour, Sarah Palin’s media aide, said that the geo-locational images shown on the electoral map Palin posted on her Facebook page last March are not rifle sights, but are actually surveyor’s symbols. This is in response to the recent shooting of 18 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Tuscon, Arizona, with some blaming the Palin electoral map as a possible incitement for this horrific crime.

I picked up on this industry-related turn of events on Twitter. Several tweets I read were about the images in question supposedly being surveyor’s symbols and then more tweets reluctantly tongue-in-cheek willing to acquiesce to them being surveyor’s symbols but not to “reload” being a surveying term. Wow, surveyors and their symbols are now topical in the news!

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Tags: Bullseyes, Crosshairs, Land, Land Surveying, News, Palin, Professional Land Surveyor, Rebecca Mansour, Sarah Palin, Surveying, Surveyors, Symbols, Targets
2 Comments »

by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Links This Week

October 23, 2010 in Business, General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Links This Week:

Tags: AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Bill, Business, Engineering, Job, Land, Land Surveying Business, Land Surveying Software, Land Surveyor, Lines, Links, Mapping, Media, News, Pakistan, Professional Land Surveying, Professional Land Surveyor, Professional Land Surveyor Source, Property, RSA, Sandwich, Social, Social Media, Surveying, Surveyors, Technology, Unemployment
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by EricColburn

Sometimes It’s Time To Clean The Works

September 5, 2010 in Business, Business Practices, General, Land Surveying, Premium Membership, Professional Land Surveyor Practice by EricColburn

Cleaning Out The Works - When a perfectly Good Ink Cartridge Goes Bad!

Week in review, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This past week was, for me, both productive and frustrating all at the same time. While I accomplished a lot of what I set out to do, by weeks end not everything on my To Do List got done.

In fact, a few of the tasks that I did complete only got done after overcoming many unexpected challenges and at a certain amount of mental anguish. Well, at least it felt that way at the time.

The picture in this post relates to one of these unexpected challenges. You see, one day I had planned on finishing a couple of survey plans, in addition to several other tasks, when my plotter acted up. With the first survey plan nearly complete, I printed a check plot. All went well. I then made some revisions and corrections, and plotted another check print. Again, all went well.

When unexpected “Stuff” happens. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Business, Clean, Delays, Eric D. Colburn PLS, Land, Land Surveying, Land Surveying Business, Management, Organization, Planning, Professional, Professional Land Surveyor, Schedule, Scheduling, Surveyor, Surveyors, Time, time management
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by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Links This Week

August 28, 2010 in Business, General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Links This Week:

Surveying: It’s official: Mt. Rainier is still as tall as we thought | KOMO News |

komonews.com — An expedition used new GPS technology to fine-tune measurements of our area’s largest mountain and confirmed Mt. Rainier is indeed 14,411 feet tall. more…
Surveying: High cost in land survey to blame for farmers’ poverty

thecitizen.co.tz — Tanzania News: By Anthony Kayanda, Kigoma High cost in land survey has been termed as an impediment to farmers’ economic development in the country. Speaking during a meeting with agricultural stakeholders in Kigoma on Thursday, the chairman of Kanyovu Cooperative Union of coffee farmers from Kigoma and Kasulu districts, Mr Yahaya Mahwisa, said most farmers in the country could not afford the cost and are therefore left out from the current means of raising capital. more…
Other: GIS, RPLS, geospatial, land surveying, profession | GPS World

gpsworld.com — This is a question that has been tossed around a lot in the past few years. I hear it both from GIS folks and from land surveyors. Are you a professional? What constitutes a professional? Do you refer to yourself as a professional? If so, why? more…
AutoCAD: AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 for Land Surveyors: Curve Calculator

youtube.com — This video shows how to find and use the Curve Calculator in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 and is brought to you by http://www.EricColburn.com Professional Land Surveyor Source. more…
News: The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS – TIME

time.com — A controversial ruling could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell more…
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Tags: AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Business, Land, Land Surveying Business, Land Surveying Software, Links, Professional Land Surveying, Professional Land Surveyor, Professional Land Surveyor Source, Surveying, Surveyors, Technology
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by EricColburn

Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations

August 27, 2010 in General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations

Here are this week’s Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations:

@Lyme_Warrior – Misdiagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis for 10-years, Jo-Ann reassessed her condition, care, and treatment, taking the bold step of questioning her supposed “health care” and sought alternate (but logical) explanations for what was happening to her. Long story short, Jo-Ann has recently been diagnosed with Lyme Disease, rather than Rheumatoid Arthritis. Now she is a Lyme Warrior and the driving force behind the new and innovative LymeWarriors.com, an informative website, social network, forum, and support network for all Lyme Warriors.

@artpetty – Arts Twitter Bio says, ”I help professionals develop as senior contributors & I help firms solve vexing problems in marketing & strategy. Management & Leadership author/blogger/mentor”. This week I read a brilliant article Art wrote and posted a linkt to his article here: Leadership Caffeine-Give Your People Room to Run | Management Excellence.

@CADRelations – CAD Relations website is an “Engineers Online Portal” for CAD, Engineering, Architecture, Community, Motorsports and Design, including Autodesk and Bentley software, which they proudly shout from the rafters “that is what we love and live for!!” I love the passion that they bring to the industry. Check out their AutoCAD Back to the Basics: Opening drawings by Drag’n Drop post.

@wkfd – WKFD is the Twitter account for the Kung Fu Drafter blog. They are drafters and geeks trying to share information with people with similar interests. I highly recommend visiting The Kung Fu Drafter blog, as it is a fun site and full of information too! It’s an older post, but a good one, so visit The Kung Fu Drafter to read the CAD: Untie Your Favorite Commands from the Map 3D 2010 Ribbon … blog post.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: #FF, #FollowFriday, @artpetty, @C3DReminders, @CADRelations, @EricColburn, @haubert, @Indydrafter, @iPinda, @JohnEvansDesign, @KSA_Engineers, @Lyme_Warrior, @ryanpconnolly, @thecadgeek, @wkfd, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Avatech Solutions, Bentley, CAD, Civil 3D, Eric D. Colburn PLS, Follow Friday, Land, MicroStation, Professional, Professional Land Surveyor, Rand Worldwide, Recommendations, Surveyor, Tweets, Twitter
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by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Links This Week

August 20, 2010 in Business, General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Professional Land Surveyor Links This Week:

Link Avatar Surveying: New surveying business finds perfect niche near courthouse

wpcva.com – The Aaron A. Dooley Land Surveying office in Rustburg has found the perfect home in the old drugstore building across from Campbell County Court House. “I thought it would do well in Rustburg since it’s close to where everybody comes for building permits or looking for plats at the court house. It seemed like a good location for a surveyor,” Dooley explained about his decision to set up in the county seat in February 2010 more…

Link Avatar Surveying: In the Know: Many Naples area roads named for land surveyors » Naples Daily News

naplesnews.com – Q: Who is Thomasson Drive named after? I was told that it was named after Ed Thomasson, a surveyor, from whom I bought the house I used to live in. more…

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by EricColburn

Spotted Turtle Found While Land Surveying

August 4, 2010 in General, Land Surveying, Pictures by EricColburn

Spotty The Spotted Turtle

Yesterday I was cutting line for a roughly 40 acre survey I’m working on when I came across this Spotted Turtle. He or she – we really didn’t get to know each other that well in the short time we visited together – turned out to be the shy type.

Spotty can’t be blamed for being defensive and shy; a six foot tall humanoid carrying a machete would be reason enough. Two woods travelers crossing paths, a few words exchanged, a couple of pictures snapped, and then we parted ways. OK, so I did all the talking, but I could tell that Spotty was warming up to me and was just about ready to open up.

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Tags: Cutting Line, Field, Pictures, Professional Land Surveyor, Setup, Surveying, Traverse, turtle
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by EricColburn

Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations

July 30, 2010 in General, Land Surveying, Links by EricColburn

Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations

Here are this week’s Twitter #FollowFriday Professional Land Surveyor Recommendations:

@wkfd – WKFD is the Twitter account for the Kung Fu Drafter blog. They are drafters and geeks trying to share information with people with similar interests. I highly recommend visiting The Kung Fu Drafter blog, as it is a fun site and full of information too! If you get a chance read the CAD: Leap Over the Bar of System Requirements … blog post.

@iPinda – Edward’s Twitter bio says “CAD specialist, AutoCAD trainer and Civil 3D addict” and if you visit his Civil 3D Peanuts blog, you’ll discover that he’s also a part-time freelance AutoCAD trainer and full time CAD application administrator for an international AEC company. If you get a chance, read his Bentley’s SELECTseries 1 reading Civil 3D DWG blog post.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: #FF, #FollowFriday, @C3DReminders, @CADRelations, @cad_notes, @envisioncad, @EricColburn, @Indydrafter, @iPinda, @JohnEvansDesign, @LivingRheum, @ReedConstrData, @ryanpconnolly, @wkfd, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Bentley, CAD, Civil 3D, Eric D. Colburn PLS, Follow Friday, Land, MicroStation, Professional, Professional Land Surveyor, Recommendations, Surveyor, Tweets, Twitter
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by EricColburn

Microsoft Research Street Slide View Video

July 30, 2010 in Business, General, Land Surveying, Technology Videos, Videos by EricColburn

Here’s a neat video I came across showing Microsoft Street Slide browsing of street-level imagery.

The Microsoft Research YouTube Channel has this to say about this video:

“Street Slide is a novel browsing interface for street-level imagery that combines the best aspects of the immersive nature of “bubbles” with the overview provided by multiperspective strip panoramas, figures to attract significant interest, in large part because of the ingenious way in which Microsoft Researchers tackle problems with current street-side imagery on the web.”

After the Jump, Watch the Video and Read the rest of this entry →