North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

Rambling

Do it this way

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The nice thing about having a “blog” besides the occasional ridicule that blogging is so 90’s…or was it 2000s….is no one in my family reads it. Heh. We are an internet phobic group with Dad possibly being the more active user besides me.

Anyway – It’s Fathers Day. I’m not a father through a twist of fate…or a twist of my winning personality. Anyway – Yesterday I finally FINALLY got my jeep back on the road. I bought it in 2000. For the last 2 or 3 years it’s not been in great shape so I’ve not went far in it. Yesterday I finished getting new tires and a new soft top and a tuneup. I’ve another small list of things to do but overall I drove it all day yesterday for no other reason than I could. About 10 years ago I put an overhead cargo rack believing that it wold be pretty awesome if I ever got to Africa in it. I could sit up there and take pics of elephants and rhinos and be safely 10 feet off the ground. What that did was prevent me from taking the soft top off….well actually it didn’t. For several years I followed the directions on how to do it. I lost the directions. Then for 7 years I didn’t. That left me needing 4 hands vs 2 yesterday. So I called Dad.

I think Dad probably thinks I’m horribly incompetent – but what I’ve found is the one thing we can both get together on is car repair. So when a good friend died and his car decided to stop working on his girlfriend off we went. Turns out it was a starter issue. 3 hours to figure out the starter had been rigged into place vs replaced properly. We replaced it properly…well he did:

When I couldn’t get the jeep top on yesterday:

 

If you trace back to when I was 18 it was a need – I had to get him involved in any car repair project as most of my cars early on were pretty bad. I don’t have that skill set. I sorta have it now – BUT – it’s fun to get him involved because to watch his problem solving on a bolt that won’t come loose or a “thingamajig” isn’t “clunking right”. So it’s more of a learning experience on watching him at 75 still trouble shoot a problem. It’s not horribly different than watching me work through a Geo problem.

Oh yeah – and the lawnmower died. So I got a 2011 motor on a 1973 Body:

So today if it all works we’re grilling burgers out. Knowing him I’ll show up to do it and he’ll do it to keep me away from the grill. Which will give me more time to go break something on my car to get his advice on fixing it.

12 years?

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Some posts are way harder to write than others. That’s how I know I’m thinking too much on the subject matter. Thinking too much has given me writers block up to a degree for the last few weeks. I redid this one three times.

I started getting Linkedin Messages last week that were “Congrats on the Anniversary”. So I’ve been “working” at North River Geographic Systems for 12 years now. Technically  It was late April that I finally filed all the paperwork to start a business 12 years ago. I know – what’s a month? It had been a running fantasy since 2001 and it morphed and changed as life happened. So in 2006 I pulled the trigger and in 2008/2009 I transitioned to this being a full time thing.

I was trying to think of a way to sum up the last 12 years. I was trying to think of milestones or noteworthy things that’s I’ve done. Every year about March I start thinking about where I was 12 years ago and where I am now. I was trying to think of one giant phrase to sum up owning a business in 2018.

I’m never bored.

There. Done.

I didn’t have a great plan starting out. Back in 2006 it was enough to own some ESRI Software and look for work. In the By 2012/2013 I ended up leaving the ESRI Business Partners program and started focusing on Open Source. Towards the end of those “middle years” I ended up shifting focus to just about 90% open source. As of right now I’m 100% open source, dealing with data, and have customers calling me as opposed to me having to track them down. You know what – I cranked up a copy of ArcGIS 10.6 last week at a clients office and enjoyed that (weird right).

I’m happy. Mostly. It’s taken me a long time to get to that point. Happy will cover stuff at work and stuff not at work. I’ve adopted more of a “live and let live” attitude about everything. There are things I do well. There are things I don’t do well. I hope it’s all reflected accurately on the website so people know when/why to call me (which reminds me I need to update some stuff on the website). I hope I don’t run down what makes you happy. It may not make me happy but that’s fine. Just don’t hurt anyone in the process. I’ve been pulling back more and more from social media. I don’t want to know everything about you. Just that you are happy or you need help. That’s all.

For a good long while I just sorta existed from month to month. If you’re services oriented (like I am), services can come and go at the drop of a hat. As of right now I’m busy. I’m not looking at starving next month. Hopefully it continues. There is some merit to “spatial is special” still. I know it’s fun for us to scream and go “GEO IS EASY EVERYONE IS DOING IT” but they aren’t. I started in geo accidentally 26 years ago. The software changes but the science remains the same.

Anyway – I thank you all for the good thoughts. Thank you for enjoying my lunatic ramblings up here. There are more coming as life on this end continues.

 

 

 

FOSS4GNA 2018

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I love a good road trip. FOSS4GNA was in St Louis Missouri this year. Close enough for me to get in the car and tune out for 5 to 6 hours.

First thing on the Agenda – QGIS.  I did the 4 hour “Intro to QGIS” for about 60 something people. You had people who had worked around gis for a good while and were curious about this Open Source desktop. You had some people who had been using it and had questions. Overall it was a bit much with that many people – but worth the effort. I hope everyone walked out with something new they didn’t know. I was inspired – 4 years ago you’d scream “QGIS” and there were a few who knew. I think this year I’ve taught the 4 hour class to about 100 people. This is going well – watch for QGIS Part II coming shortly. I’m hopeful to do the 8 hour one at some point. Seriously – I know you people love 3.5 hours of me talking but the 8 hours of me talking is magnificent (it’s actually not).

I did a really technical “Copy and paste” of the paper abstracts as listed on the website and filtered out a few words that were throwing everything off.  You could pick and poke and over analyze this very happy looking word cloud a bunch – I wouldn’t. Do notice the giant work “DATA” in the middle of it though. There is a very small word: GIS. So I’ve gotten the question several times over the last bit “Why go to this one?”. My consulting life has taken a very data centric turn and to deal with that data I use open source tools. So I spend a lot of time talking to people at the conference. I spend time talking to the developers who make the software I like…at this conference. This one scratches an itch for me. There are a lot of smart people. It’s a good thing. if I go to an event and have all the answers what’s the point in going. So what I walked out with is this following:

  • I never heard “Big Data” – it was just data. The implication was there for it to be big. Hence you hear a lot of Machine Learning. I have only used machine learning in terrible Terminator Jokes and being snarky. It’s time to give it a look. It’s also time for all this machine learning to do a proper reboot of the Terminator franchise..
  • Python is my nemesis. I need to spend more time with it. If I heard that one word once I heard it half a dozen times. Which – no big deal it’s a tech conference but for me it stuck out more than usual. Maybe I’m more self conscience about it these days. If I count every programming thing I’ve ever done that has stuck – so far it’s been bash shell scripting from 26 years ago (that’s not even programming so much). I’ve just got to force myself into more cases where I have to use python.
  • All this machine learning is turning it’s collective head towards imagery. In a conference where I don’t hear a ton of “Raster” or just ignore it – suddenly raster was in my face everywhere.
  • Geopackage    – I feel like I’ve spent over a year going “PLEASE DON’T LET ME BE WRONG ABOUT GEOPACKAGE”. After this conference – I found it mentioned multiple times and the over arching theme seemed to be “it’s a thing now so deal with it”. With QGIS switching to geopackage as the default data format – I expect this grow over the rest of 2018.
  • I found myself walking in and out of conversations constantly. Sometimes I meant to stick my head in – sometimes the conversation found me. I missed several talks just for the fun of talking to other users/developers.
  • The nice thing with this open source software – there are smart people working on it. So what happens when you need improvements to the software? GDAL Barn Raising.   How much hay did they raise? 140k worth. So there are much needed improvements coming to gdal. It’s noteworthy looking at the companies that contributed. Yes ESRI is in there. So if you ever wondered – they see the value of the improvements. Open source GIS touches a lot of software.

Other noteworthy things:

  • Someone said “there’s a line at the women’s restroom”. If you stopped and took a look around – there were more women at this conference. I don’t have a number. There were more. There were about 527 total humans registered at the conference. I will guess higher than 35% for women. No numbers to back me up so deal with it.
  • The second thing I do is go look at a mirror and walk out and look at the crowd. I’m tired of seeing white middle aged balding bearded glasses wearing people at conferences. There were people of color at this conference. The colors varied. Not everyone was like me and that was a good thing.

If there was a keynote that stuck out – it was the final one.

Chris Holmes brought the conference to an end with a discussion…of….well….Deep Learning…Machine learning….imagery……..the idea of a queryable earth.  In other words there’s enough imagery being taken you should be able to “ask” it questions. Planet Labs it pulling down something like 10 terrabytes of imagery a day. One snapshot of the earth. A DAY. So train the computers to classify the imagery and start asking questions.

There was a lot more that happened. Walking across St Louis at night. Food. City Park. Talking to total strangers. Meeting random people I bump into over the interwebs and hassling them. I stuck my foot in the Mississippi River. I got to play Geohipster for a day and tweet random insanity.  Having served on multiple conference committees – I find I’m happier not on them.  This was a good event. I enjoyed it. I walked away feeling overwhelmed and hopeful for the path I’m barely scratching after 26 years. So where is FOSS4GNA in 2019? Stay Tuned.

Prayers and Hay

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I know – it’s been a while. I’ve been busy.

I think this first quarter of small business has been the best I’ve had in quite a while. I could point to a lot of things on why I think this has happened but I often find it’s just guessing. When you’re a one man show running off services and support there’s nothing tangible like product sales or earning reports that make sense. Some months you’re busier than others. Some months you aren’t. You form business partnerships and sometimes those fade. Sometimes they get better.

It’s a dance on what you can/can’t do and learning what jobs you enjoy and what jobs you don’t. One thing I have noticed is QGIS and “being different” has taken me more and more into the backwaters of what I consider my service area. When a small municipality/company is faced with the juggernaut of changing software and ever climbing support agreements the whole idea of different sells itself. I have entered several “one stop light towns” to discuss open source software. It’s towns the big guys can’t touch and won’t. I’m OK with this. Sometimes good things happen and sometimes they don’t.

Consulting is sometimes more stressful than it needs to be. I’ve been known for getting agitated so I do my best to not let things bother me these days. Church is also stressful for me. When you grow up in the south you get dragged to church more often than not. I spent my fair amount of time in a church setting singing hymns and worrying over your position in the Universe. I tend to find a lot of humor in religion. I may poke at things like Christmas and Easter in jest – but there is a cut off line and I try to not cross it. When I was 2000 miles south working at the equator that turned into a thing you had to constantly be aware of. Sacred cows make the best hamburger – BUT – there’s a time and place for joking.

I noticed the other day  was getting prayed over a lot. I go to lunch  at a clients location and someone blesses the meal. Sometimes I get thrown in for good measure. I say afterwards “thanks I can use all the help I can get”. It’s interesting. Usually I wouldn’t think twice about it but I was at a clients location and they had easter eggs out. I grabbed one. It was an invite to the biggest church in town for Sunday morning service. Sunrise service followed with regular service and dinner. I will say fried chicken in a church setting is probably some of the best fried chicken you can get.

Not even thinking I opened the egg and there was not chocolate.

Me: Oh man.
Employee: What’s wrong?
Me: I was hoping for chocolate.
Employee: Better than chocolate it’s an invite to church – you shouldn’t miss church!
Me: <thinking Crap> Hey – I might show up. Thanks. I was just overly hungry this morning and looking for a snack.

I think in February every meal I ate with clients was prayed over. The first half of the month I didn’t notice. The last half I was wondering if the streak would continue. Which shouldn’t be a worry – but I like averages. Last week I was driving back from a client meeting and thought “You know I wouldn’t even be here except for the community effort of open source. The only reason I’m here is ripping out ArcGIS and replacing it with QGIS/PostGIS.” Business is dragging me back into a setting from which I’ve disappeared.

Not that I’m looking to dive back into an organized religious setting. For those of you outside the US – if you haven’t noticed it’s stressful times for some of us over here. Maybe not for all – but it is for me. So – I’ve decided to turn these meetings into my own “Peace Love and GIS” type of outreach. Don’t stress and don’t worry about politics. “Hey maaaaan do your thing and I’m doing mine over here. Hey lets talk about your data.” Last week I learned what “tractor and hay bale making machine worked better than another tractor hay bale making machine”.  Which had squat to do with Geo – but it was a conversation that started out of “Can you make a layout in QGIS for me?”. The client enjoyed telling me and I enjoyed hearing about it. We talked about church. We talked about sewer lines. We talked about dump trucks. We talked about his kids and vacations.

Anyway – I know this is just a rambling post BUT – it’s more stories I seem to build up from this small business gig these days. A few years ago I found myself standing at a small town corner thinking “I don’t have time for this”. These days I don’t spend enough time standing still so I’ll spend 5 extra minutes taking it all in today. Maybe 10 and I might find some random person to talk to for a bit. Maybe I’ll eat lunch there but I’m not spending all day standing around talking. I have things to do and people to worry over.

I will most likely sleep in on Sunday. For those of you not and heading out with your family – Enjoy the day!

I think I hit your car

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So today I pick my car up from the repair place – 3rd bumper in 6 years. First time it happened I was mad. Second time I just sorta stood there. This time I laughed and went “whatever” and pushed it back into place.

Consultants/Businesses with large clients drive me nuts. You see some people and they just scream “OH YEAH I WAS A CONSULTANT FOR 3.5 MINUTES AND LANDED GIANT INTERNATIONAL ABC COMPANY AND I’M KNOCKING DOWN 6 FIGURES”. I’m not quite that lucky. I’ve had some large clients. I’ve more small ones than large ones. I even have one that will argue over a $20 dollar charge on the invoice.

A few weeks ago I found myself trudging up a driveway to a possible client. House calls can be the worst.  I had been referred to someone through someone else who had heard I was good with computers. This person had called in a panic as there were multiple things wrong with her computer/gis setup. She’s a one person shop. I’m a one person shop. I get it. Since we were in full “holiday season” swing I had decided I’d just make a trip up and as a “Happy Holidays” sign of love for my fellow man – no charge. The problems I was presented with were 15 minutes total. Maybe 30 if we traded stories about things.

As we stood there I caught her husband coming home out of the corner of my eye. He walked past her office carrying a lunch pail. I kept working and talking. He passed again with a drill. I kept working. He passed again with a screw driver. We kept working. I was done – 17 minutes total. Which I should have a standard charge for walking in the door BUT – I don’t want to fix computers. A few years ago I was fixing a friend’s computer and stumbled upon a set of photos that were not meant to be seen. I closed the lid and gave it back. That ended the joy of computer repair.

We were sitting there talking and her husband yelled “BLARGH HOLY CRAP”. I was putting cords back up as she left and I said “NO CHARGE Merry….Chris….” and she bolted. About 20 seconds later she ran past the door. 10 seconds after that she ran back in and “Randy I need your help”.

Her husband was laying in one direction in the driveway. His ankle was more or less pointing 180 degrees in the opposite. The truck he drove home wasn’t sitting in the driveway anymore. It had rolled over him, over the mailbox, and into my car – specifically the bumper. He had been under the dash when the brake turned loose with a screwdriver banging on something. He was lucky. Oh so lucky. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been working on my car with it not properly secured. I’ve been crawling under transmissions. Pulled rotors.

“Randy I think I hit your car”.
I’m not worried about the car.
“How does my ankle look?”
I’d prefer to not talk about that now – it’s different.
“How different?”
Well…it’s – probably OK…….It’s 2017 they can do anything these days with feet.
“I’m sorry about your car”.
I’m not worried about the car.

We shoved him into his wifes car and off he went to spend a few weeks in the hospital. Broken this and some broken that. Me and a neighbor shoved his truck out of my bumper.I threw my laptop into the passenger seat and just sat there. Had my car not been sitting there it would have most likely run over the neighbor’s Nativity scene. Which made me chuckle more than it should have. “Yes Baby Jesus – two camels, 3 wise men, and a 99 chevy long bed came to visit you this fine Christmas morn”.

I went back up last week to do some GIS work for her last week and the complaint was “You have to let me pay you”

I’ll invoice you – don’t worry about it.

“…but last month….”

I’m not worried about last month, or the car, or whatever I’d charge. That was on the house. Seriously. Think of the stories we now have.

We meandered up stairs to see her husband. It’s amazing how they can wrench an ankle back into place.  He’s walking next month hopefully.

Which was how I picked up another client in January. Not a 100,00k a year deal. Not a deal where I’m breaking new ground on GIS work or running some weird docker python virtual environment and slinging code. I’ll most likely been making points, calculating acres, and making sure the GPS work. Overall not bad. More clients are a good thing even if they are small.

When I get the car back I guess I’ll have to wash it since I’ll have this nice new bumper.  The fun never ends in the small business world.

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