a little community, a little service

when i was starting my first grade year at J. H. Gunn Elementary School, my parents made a decision that would forever alter who i am as a person and, ultimately, my future as a whole. they decided to enroll me in Cub Scout Pack 144. this was my first extracurricular activity. it was also my first experience of true community, something that the other Sunday school kids or regular school kids couldn't really offer. you really need a group of people who you can hang out and joke around with or, in my case as a 6 year old, run around and play with without getting in trouble or camp on the USS Yorktown with (still one of the coolest things I've ever done).

luckily, i liked my experiences in cub scouting enough to stay with it and, in the sixth grade, i moved up and joined Boy Scout Troop 144. boy scouting is much different from the parent-dominated, parent-led, arts and crafts session with the occasional camping trip that is cub scouting. we went camping in our boy scout troop about 8 or 10 times a year including a week-long summer camp at the ever-so-wonderful Camp Grimes and a cold-weather camping trip.

but rarely did we do any service on camping trips. my first experience (or so i recall) with true community service was when our troop woke up early on a Saturday morning every three months and got together for a roadside cleanup. a roadside cleanup for our troop was to meet at the church, put on a beat up orange vest which never stayed on because the ties were broken, wear gloves that looked and smelled like a dumpster in Mordor, line your pockets with huge orange trash bags, and pick up beer bottles, McDonald's bags, torn up newspapers and the occasional adult smut along Lawyers Rd between Wilson Grove and Hwy 51 in Mint Hill.

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it was annoying and awkwardly educational (kpdub knows what i mean). yet, it didn't really feel like service. maybe it was because i didn't really know what service was yet.

it wasn't until i got into high school that i really began to understand and experience what service was and what it meant. at the end of middle school, i signed up for the IB (International Baccalaureate*) program at Independence High School. one of the requirements is to complete a certain number of community service hours over the four high school years. even though it was a requirement, i didn't really mind doing the service. it was very easy to complete those hours because of scouting. i mentioned the roadside pickups, but we also went to homeless shelters and places like the Charlotte Rescue Mission to serve meals and fellowship with the people there. this is when i really experienced service. experiencing service involves human interaction with those you serve.

in college, i had two main communities and one minor community. the minor community was with ResNET, an on-campus computer troubleshooting service for other students on campus. here i got to meet frustrated people and, hopefully, be able to calm them down by fixing their problems. it was a simple way to serve, even if i did get free housing. the two main communities were Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (IV) throughout all eight semesters and the Appalachia Service Project (ASP) for three summers. all three of these communities provided me (1) opportunities for service and (2) opportunities to interact with those who I am serving.

in IV, i had the really fun job of being an IV band roadie for four semesters. i served not only the band, but the students who attended IV on any given night (that's most likely you). the part that i slowly realized i liked about it was that i was behind the scenes and the average IV goer didn't know me or what i did (i don't write this now to toot my horn, but to give you an idea of the type of service that i really enjoy). with ASP, i got to help extremely impoverished families in Central Appalachia who are in need of emergency home repair. because it is a volunteer based organization, i got to serve not only the families in need, but also the volunteers who willingly (or sometimes unwillingly) stepped out of their comfort zone to come to a strange place and get dirty for five days. it is, of course not about the volunteers, its about helping the families, but again, the volunteers didn't know that we (the staff) were serving them. there were times when we couldn't even see that we were serving them. it is the idea that God was using me to do His work and I had absolutely no control over it, is what I grew to love about that job.
and now scouting is over. high school is over. college is over. more importantly, all of the community and all of the service that came with those, are gone.

now is the first time since i was 6 that i do not have a true community and the first time since i was 12 that i do not have a service opportunity readily available for me to take advantage of.

until now, i have never seen community or service as things that i need or even want to look for. they have just been there, ready for me to be a part of. and now that those things are not readily available at my fingertips, i am thrown for a loop. i long to go camping with a large group. i want to help someone with their eagle scout project. i want to do home repair projects around my house. i want to fill my Saturdays with something other than hanging around the house. i want to help someone who doesn't know i am helping them. i want to help someone, period. i want to be behind the scenes.

i know that if i really want to do any of these things, i am certainly resourceful enough to find a place to do it. i guess this is just one of the many shocks associated with the shift from my young life to my young-adult life. resolving this problem will be one of my many new years resolutions (which i [1] haven't ever really done and [2] will post about later).

feel free to give me your thoughts on community and or service. thanks for reading y'all.

Blig of the Christmas Season: O Holy Night

Best Christmas song of them all (again, don't confuse Holiday and Christmas music). Hands down. Maybe its because of the 6/8 time signature, dramatic chord progressions and awesome melody, or maybe its because of its ability to kick the butts of all other Christmas carols. We may never know.

Jam of the Day: the raw emotion with which Alicia Keys sings her new song "No One"

I personally thing this song is awkward. I thought it was horrible the first time i heard it, simply because i thought she was over-doing it. i thought she was doing too much with her voice compared to the music and the beat. i still kind of agree with that. but the emotion with which she sings the lyrics grabbed my attention unlike any song before. sure there are other vocalists who belt it out with similar emotion (mariah carey, whitney houston, celine dion, freddy mercury just to name a guy) but alicia keys grabbed my attention with this song like none of those others could. now, whenever i hear the song on the radio (which is like every 5 minutes on 3 or 4 different stations in Charlotte) i usually listen to the whole thing just to hear her vocals. good stuff.

Junk and a half of the Holiday Season: Happy Holidays from David Hasselhoff



*for those of you who don't know and don't want to figure it out from the website, its an overrated version of AP with an international standard for tests which tricks young students and parents into thinking they will learn valuable life and time management skills because of the greater course load they will have to complete as compared to other high school kids. i don't completely regret that i did this in high school. i didn't get any credit at Carolina from my IB test scores (some of which were superb, but were only for standard level, not higher level, which UNC looks at). i do however, believe that my ability to show near straight A's in a course load with the IB name greatly helped my acceptance into UNC. the fact that my father is an alumnus and i am an eagle scout were the other two things that got me in. it certainly couldn't have been my SAT, ACT or essay performances. so i do not think i am better than you because i did IB.

A Mormon Q & A

while procrastinating at work today, i stumbled upon a Fox News article called "21 Questions Answered about Mormon Faith." I personally do not know the differences between different denominations of faith, be that between Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Catholics, Messianic Jews and Hasidic Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example.

with the presidential race in full swing and the recent attention that Mitt Romney's religious beliefs have raised, i thought that this was an interesting article. it is a list of questions drawn from public conceptions (and misconceptions) about the Mormon faith and the beliefs of the LDS Church as a whole and answers to those questions provided by the Church.

just a little light mid-day (or whenever you may run into this) reading for y'all.

holler

a bit too sarcastic

so i suck

i apparently don't know how to not be sarcastic when i talk to my mom. tonight was the second time in recent days where i got myself into trouble because of my tone and presentation. its certainly not intentional. i always have considered my self to be Courteous McGee, and certainly am with people i don't know, but i guess there is a filter that just isn't present around people i know, and more importantly, my parents.

so let me take this time to say that i apologize to any of you who may have been offended by my sarcastic tone and presentation. it truly wasn't and isn't my intention to push your buttons or rub you the wrong way.

but what a great time for me to be reminded of Grace. the Lord doesn't take days off.

amen y'all

Artsy, Fartsy Gain Foothold?

first of all, i enjoy the way that newspaper headlines truncate the titles of their articles by using a comma. it is so awkward to read sometimes.

second of all, i don't consider my self artsy-fartsy (as should be obvious by the use of this term). i never have, and if i have my way, i never will.

hold up. define artsy-fartsy for me one time...

well my definition of artsy-fartsy might differ from yours. i will use an example to define it. whenever people can "see" the pain of the world's children, for example, in a piece of "art" consisting of a shoelace and a length of barbed wire, for example, i would consider that to be artsy-fartsy with the emphasis on the fartsy (no i have not seen any piece of art consisting of shoelaces and barbed wire. but i bet i could make millions by making that piece and saying that it represents the pain of all the children in the world. do you doubt it?). another example comes from Mrs. Rogers' (no kinship to Mr. Rogers the friendly neighborhood... well... neighbor) 11th grade IB english class at the Big I. as you can imagine in any higher level english course in high school, many literary works were read and discussed in class. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Homer's Odyssey, etc. But the one which sticks out in my mind (because i wrote what i thought was a darn good research paper on it) is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. as you may or may not recall, this work (along with every other work ever by anyone if you want to take the artsty-fartsy route) has a ton of symbolism in it. this symbolism is rooted mainly in Christianity and Christian themes. Jim Casy (sacrifices himself and his body for the salvation and safety of his family and friends - JC - Jesus Christ). 12 members of their traveling party (12 tribes of Israel). the book's title (Battle Hymn of the Republic - Revelation 14:19-20) even the character Rosasharn (Rose of Sharon - Song of Solomon 2:1). The artsy-fartsy part of this ramble-fest is how Mrs. Rogers discussed said symbolism. Like any good teacher (and she was a great one - i simply disagree with this one thing) she asked for class participation: "What could this be representing?" The obvious answers that i laid out above were said. But that wasn't enough. "What else?" Students began throwing out anything and everything under the sun, and as long as it kinda made sense, Mrs. Rogers nodded, agreed and said "What else?" And this happened with any and all works that we covered in that class. NOT ok. That is artsy-fartsy. (paintings made by elephants and sold for way too much is also artsy-fartsy.)

despite all of that, i do have a few chinks in my anti-artsy-fartsy armor. the main reason for this post is to briefly analyze the song on that ipod touch commercial which says that music is a bunch of different things like significant others, comfortable things and, shall we say, more intimate things which gives the song by CSS its title "Music is My Hot, Hot Sex."

if you know me at all, you will know that music is very important to me (if i were to even begin to explain why, you would be reading this blig post for another 30 minutes - i am sure i will write a blig or two on music in the future. something to look forward to..). i was a music minor at UNC and took a few classes which required me to analyze different pieces of music and i quite enjoyed it. usually these pieces were either sans lyrics or i was analyzing the music as it related to the lyrics, not the other way around (because, after all, lyrics are poetry, not music. usually those lyrics are given a melody which has musical qualities, but this still does not change the fact that lyrics and music are not equatable).

i am, however, intrigued by the lyrics to this song and would like to give you some of my opinions on it.

the word "is" can be equated to, well, an equal sign. so wherever you see "is" you can safely put an equal sign in its place without the meaning of the word changing. so when the vocalist says that music is her boyfriend or girlfriend, she is saying that music = boyfriend or girlfriend. she is dating music. whoa... now that's kind of artsy-fartsy. that mean she holds music's hand, buys music things and makes out with music. now that's really artsy-fartsy. that's so artsy-fartsy that it's not possible or even practical (traits artsy-fartsy things rarely possess).

here are the other things that the lyricist equates to music:

(drugs, junks, boys, ladies, dead end, imaginary friend, brother, great grand daughter, sister, favorite mistress, shit (stuff, not poo), jobs, drinks, bitches, beach house, hometown, king size bed, where i meet my friends, hot hot bath, hot hot sex, back rub, where I'd like you to touch)

think of how a human being would interact with or do those things. now imagine interacting with or doing those same things to music.

is your mind blown yet?

see, its not about the fact that one could not possibly drink music, sleep in music or be akin to music. music isn't an actual, animate or inanimate thing we can interact with through our senses (what we hear and feel is vibrating particles in the medium through which we hear or feel the effects of the music, not music itself). its about the thought process of the lyricist while he or she wrote the lyrics to this song.

the idea that someone could be close to marriage with, bathe in, have infidelitous relations with or go home to the unearthly, completely God-designed phenomenon that is music is impossibly awesome*.

we would all agree that those things cannot actually be done to or with music. duh. easy. but many of us would differ on the opinion that these thoughts are beautiful, provocative and challenging thoughts about music. some might even say that such thoughts or such a line of thinking is artsy-fartsy.

i would not be counted among that group.


Dip of the Day: Google Earth

ok so google earth (not google maps) has been my dip for a while now but I was super-duper impressed with it for two (2)** reasons the other day while procrastinating at work.

(1) it now has the option of looking at the universe (or at lease what we can see of it). you can search for and zoom in on galaxies, constellations and stars. there is also a little application where you can track the orbits of the planets and the moon. needless to say, its out of this world.

Hubble Space Telescope photographs are laid onto the
celestial sphere in the correct places. Here are
the Pillars of Creation near the Eagle Nebula.

(2) terrain and tilting. goodness gracious. turn on the terrain layer and tilt the view down and all of the sudden the mountains and hills rise out of the computer screen. you find yourself zooming through valleys and dodging mountaintops. GREAT for exam time.

Grandfather Mountain anyone?

Junk of the Month: Ace & TJ's Breaking and Entering Christmas

an awesome example of doing good works behind the scenes (my next post topic). Ace & TJ are morning radio talk show hosts here in charlotte and they accept nominations for families who are planning to spend this holiday season without a Christmas and none of the cheer that comes with it. They get a bunch of volunteers together and break into the house, stock the cupboards and fridge with food, redecorate the kids' rooms, put up a tree and put a HOARD of presents under the tree. they have done three so far (1, 2, 3) and have 3 more left this season. they have already donated a car!

the best part about it is that they (Ace & TJ) go to great lengths to keep their identity hidden. the family has no idea who or why someone or something has given them all of these presents. thats what i'm talking about.

thanks for reading such a long post. let me know what you think.

*awesome meaning 'inspiring awe', not 'very impressive'
**why do legal documents and disclaimers have to put the number in parenthesis after stating the number in letters? seriously...

The Battle of the Seasons: Christmas vs. Holiday

when early november rolled around this year, it brought along with it the first tastes of winter. you know what i'm talking about...

you get out of your car at the end of the day and are reminded that the cold, dry air outside has a sharp edge to it. you pull the two sides of your jacket together and shrink your head into your shoulders in an innate reaction to keep warm. you then smell the smoke from wood burning in a neighbor's fireplace and catch the sun magnifying the golds and the reds of the poplars and the maples as it falls behind the treeline much earlier than you are used to. walking around the corner of the house, from the driveway to the sidewalk, you halfway expect to see a douglas fir illuminated with tiny lights and a james bond movie on Spike through the front window. for a short time, maybe even a split second, smells like, looks like, feels like... must be... Christmas

but its not. its not even thanksgiving. its barely past halloween. why then do i feel like i should turn that corner and see the Christmas lights on the Christmas tree and Christmas in The World is Not Enough? because i skip over it on the radio. i wade through it in the stores. i see it in countless commercials on TV. as far as society is concerned, november 1st is the beginning of the Christmas season. i will take this forum to firmly object and say "nah son."

the title of this post alludes to a discrepancy between the Christmas season and the Holiday season.

wait... aren't they the same? well i guess on some level i always knew they weren't really the same. i just thought that non-Christians (and all schools, places of business, governments and public places who wish to be politically correct) preferred the term holiday. that way they can get Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Eid-ul-Adha in there (just to name a few) without giving special treatment to Christians. wow they really aren't the same are they?

no they are not. this begs the question, how are they different? well that's a matter of opinion. while some people would like nothing more than to equate the two (focusing only on Christmas from mid october to the day their tree dies), i would much rather draw the line at black friday. black friday (among others) is the day after thanksgiving and has earned such a name because it a) is generally the day that retail stores see their numbers move into the black (from the red) and b) is always a friday seeing as thanksgiving is always a thursday.

why draw the line at black friday? why not get into the spirit earlier than that? what's the harm in getting excited about Christmas?

no harm in that at all. its a personal thing. i, personally, choose not to listen to Christmas music until thanksgiving is over. i, personally, would not want my abode (be it with my parents, my own apartment or my future house with my future wife and kids) to be decorated for Christmas before Thanksgiving is over* and certainly not before Halloween**.

don't get me wrong... i thoroughly enjoy Christmas music and i also enjoy a nicely lit tree and the occasional jar of Holiday themed Hershey's Kisses (even though they are colored silver, red, green and sometimes gold which are primarily the colors of Christmas... but see Hershey's is a big corporation and they should play it safe so that people wont get offended that they are Christmas candies. Jews and Muslims like chocolate too...).

i just feel like each holiday that you choose to participate in needs to have its own time frame for build up, execution, and wind down. more specifically, in today's "Holiday Season" there are four sub-seasons: halloween, thanksgiving, Christmas and new years (five if you count NCAA Bowl season). i am all for calling this roughly three-month period of time the "Holiday Season." no problem. but i, personally, impose boundaries on those four (not necessarily five) holidays so that i do not celebrate one before another is over.

keeping these boundaries helps to focus on the holiday at hand. thanksgiving is about being with family, being thankful and giving thanks for the things that you have and have been given in this world. Christmas is about recognizing and remembering the birth of Jesus Christ. notice that nothing (except for Christmas music, not Holiday music) that we see in the media has anything to do with those things. its all about saving money at 4am on friday (Kohl's will be open at 4am in case you wanted to know), eating turkey in front of the TV watching the Lions play, and buying and obsessing over material things whilst sippin' on a little Jack and nog.

i'm not trying to preach to y'all. all i'm saying is that i would like to challenge you to get the most out of the holidays (plural) this season. and i don't mean just going through the motions of thanksgiving or asking for more than you usually would for Christmas. i challenge you to think about what these holidays mean outside of the media. if you do that, i think you'll pick up what i'm putting down.


i am going to start to put a new item at the bottom of every post. it will be my "Jam of the Day." it will not necessarily be a song, although it could be. it will be something during the day or week that i have found to be exceedingly excellent. this thing could also be labeled "Junk of the Day," "Blig of the Day" or even "Dip of the Day." really, it could be anything of the day. just know its a good thing.

Jam of the Day

Rihanna ft. Ne-Yo - Hate That I love You

surprised? i've become a sucker for anything with a good beat and an even better melody. this song has both. don't worry, i'll have some other erich-like jams of the day in the future. just thought i'd start it off with a bang. let me know what you think.

see y'all later. take a nap after the turkey.

* i may eat those words some day. i am kind of a pushover...
** not that much of a pushover though

a brief update...

its been a week since i have bligged on the blog. a brief update...

i haven't been blogging at work because things have picked up dramatically. they have given me access to the email account where people (mostly engineering firms) email in to ask for the as-builts for a certain section of road or for a specific land parcel. i can now answer those emails whenever they come in which is at least 2 or 3 times a day. the bigger thing at work is that we are now working with the data that the other firm that we hired has delivered to us. we are checking that data against what we know to be true as represented in the as-builts and then flagging errors wherever we find them. CMUD is essentially using a database of those errors as proof of the other company's failure to meet or complete the agreed upon criteria. still waiting to see how all this will play out, but the important part is that i have stuff to do all day at work. no more reading the DTH...

i haven't been blogging at home because i am in the process of repainting my room. i have moved everything out (which is tricky in a small house) and am now repairing a section of drywall that was removed years ago to do some repairs. i will then wash the walls, fill in 25 years worth of nail holes, then paint the room a nice shade of Marsh Green* by Behr from the Home Depot. i am sleeping in the living room on an air mattress (which i am kind of excited about), don't have much free time, and don't even have my computer hooked up. kind of hectic around here...

i am going to stop putting the next blog topics at the bottom of my blogs. i am finding that, in everyday life, i think of things to write about and have started writing them down, but am being stopped from writing about them because i have to write about what i said i was going to write about. I'm still going to write about waiting until black friday and the itouch commercial. a rather unimportant point, but just letting you know.

gotta go - holler back


*looks much worse on computer screen

A Contract With Manish

Manish Patel and I are bound by a contract.

Manish was a friend of mine in high school and he was (and i'm sure still is) a huge movie buff. he could name the director of most any modern movie you threw at him. we would talk about movies and he would always be baffled at the movies that i had not seen. everyone has movies that they haven't seen that most people in the world have, and when you mention that you haven't seen that movie, those around you say "I cant believe you haven't seen that!" Manish said that with nearly every movie.

our senior year ('02-'03) he finally got fed up with me not seeing certain movies. he wrote on an index card some of the movies that he thought i should see and made me sign it certifying that "Before I Die" i would see the movies on this card. we added to the list up until we graduated in June '03. of the 28 movies that made the list, i have crossed off 9.

here are the movies. those in italics, i have crossed off the list.

1. The Matrix (The Wachowski Brothers - 1999)
   
2. Fight Club (David Fincher - 1999)
   
3. Signs (M. Night Shyamalan - 2002)
   
4. Se7en (David Fincher - 1995)
   
5. The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer - 1995)
6. Annie Hall (Woody Allen - 1977)
7. Clerks. (Kevin Smith - 1994)
8. The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont - 1994)
9. JFK: Director's Cut (Oliver Stone - 1991)
10. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Kevin Smith - 2001)
11. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock - 1958)
12. The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers - 1998)
13. Ben-Hur (William Wyler - 1959)
14. The Cell (Tarsem Singh - 2000)
15. Friday (F. Gary Gray - 1995)
16. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarentino - 1994)
    
17. Chasing Amy (Kevin Smith - 1997)
18. Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant - 1997)
19. A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard - 2001)
20. Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh - 2001)
    
21. Payback (Brian Helgeland - 1999)
22. Brotherhood of the Wolf (Christophe Gans - 2001)
23. Memento (Christopher Nolan - 2000)
24. Training Day (Antoine Fuqua - 2001)
25. Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott - 2001)
26. Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese - 2002)
27. Frailty (Bill Paxton - 2001)

what do you think of these movies? agree? disagree? would you like to help me cross off one or some of these? holler back

NEXT POST TOPICS:
- black friday or bust
- music is my ___ (from the iTouch commercial)

see y'all soon

what i do(n't do) at work

i have told many of you what i do for work. i haven't explained what i do for work but to a few of you because it would be one of those conversations where you just nod along and pretend to understand when you really don't because you have already lost interest. it's ok. i would do it too. also, it is a pretty unusual workplace environment right now. allow me to explain a bit.

i work for the City of Charlotte in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department (CMU or CMUD). i am an intern; a temporary employee. they (we, i guess) are currently in the thick of a very large and state-of-the-art project. this project is called the CMU GIS* Foundation Project. it is currently in Phase IV. the goal of the project is to convert our old data on water and waste water utilities into a new, more computer-friendly and spatially accessible format. what the boof does that mean? therein lies the problem of me trying to explain it to you in person...

the old data for these projects (by "projects" i mean every water or waste water line, sewer, manhole, valve, reducer, meter, and fitting serviced by CMUD... think about that...) are housed in paper documents called as-builts. an as-built** is a blueprint-esque document which is made to represent on paper exactly what the project looks like as it is built underground. as you can imagine in a constantly growing, expanding and transitioning city, there are thousands of these as-builts, some dating to the inception of utilities in the city.

the as-builts are scanned to the network using a huge scanner (as they are about 2' x 3' and are stored rolled up). then me or someone else will draw into the GIS (the computer program which is essentially a virtual map with layers such as parcels, aerial photographs, streams, roads, etc.) where the pipes, etc. from the as-builts go in the real world. to simplify that a bit, we digitize the paper map and use that image to draw into the computer the water and sewer lines that are on the drawing. all of these lines and attributes for the lines are stored in databases on servers on the network.

the vast majority of this work was already completed when i got here (as it was part of a previous phase). like i said before, with a changing and updating city, new projects and repairs are always being completed. when they are completed, the as-builts for those new projects need to be processed and added to the existing virtual map. so that's what we do... when we are given as-builts. right now we have no as-builts and haven't had any in days.

so why did they hire you when there are plenty of other people who can take care of this task?

the 4th phase of this project is happening now. that phase is a bit complicated. the as-built drawings don't contain nearly the amount of information that is available on water and waste water utility projects. for example, as-builts do not always list water meters for each house, sewer service lines for each house and do not list GPS coordinates of anything. therefore, when the as-builts are draw in by us here, they aren't necessarily correct because we just kind of eyeball where the lines go.

CMU has contracted with an outside company to go around the county and collect GPS data on all of the utilities along with a long list of attributes for those utilities. these are examples of a few attributes which would be collected: intake and outtake elevations (above sea level) for manholes, manhole cover diameter, water and waste water pipe material, and in-field availability of manhole covers (ie covered over or not). lots of detailed stuff. and that's just a sampling.

this company specializes in going out into the field and collecting raw data. they do not yet specialize in manipulating that data into special formats, such as the format CMUD needs it in. they think they have the ability to specialize in such data manipulation, and being able to put a successful conversion project with the City of Charlotte on their resume would effectively prove that to future clients.

they do not yet have such abilities.

CMUD has rejected the data that they have delivered (for only the very first section of the county) twice now and is starting to wonder if it is even a good investment of time and money to continue to do business with them.

i was hired, along with another intern, to work with this data that has now been rejected twice and has an ominous future.

so, erich, what do you do at work?

the internet is my friend. this is what i do at work (seriously):
- Ace & TJ on Kiss 95.1 until 10AM
- Gmail
- Google Talk
- Pandora
- ESPN
- CNN
- FOX News
- The Daily Tar Heel***
- Tar Heel Blue
- Inside Carolina
- The Weather Channel
- NOAA
- Intellicast
- i try really hard to avoid this one and this one
- anything that you suggest i read

that's usually a pretty good day's work right there.

am i frustrated with not having any work to do? yes. i get bored very easily there. i would gladly do something other than stare at two very nice LCD screens all day like filing, organizing, moving boxes, running errands or anything like that... anything to be productive short of custodial work. but they don't really have anything for me to do. it is to the point now that no one in my area has anything to do.

hey... i'm getting paid for it...

NEXT BLIG ITEMS:

- A Contract with Manish
- Why I Wait Until Black Friday

see y'all soon and thanks for reading the long post


*what is GIS?
** here is an example of an as-built. this is not one from CMUD because i am bound under a confidentiality agreement not to release any of the files i have access to because, understandably, they are sensitive materials.
*** for all you Carolina alums out there, i read the 2007-2008 UNC Basketball Preview in the DTH on friday. good stuff. and yes i know i can use other symbols as footnotes. i choose not to.

how to experience a life

much like the song "How to Save a Life" by The Fray, i will now present you with thoughts which will probably not help you experience a life.

the people in the Blogger department at Google need to change something. when signing up for a blog, the second step requires the would-be blogger to choose (1) what the blog will be called and (2) where the blog will be located, or the web address. as someone who has decided to try his hand (or hands... because typing is much easier that way) at this bloggin' stuff on a whim and has established the precedent of being less than creative, these were tall orders to be undertaken all at once.

tackling the first task, i reviewed some of the blogs of friends or acquaintances to get some ideas. i saw that in some cases, blog titles were smart, witty and said something about the writer*. good stuff. i also observed that blog titles need not necessarily be those things, or anything really, to be good titles.** also good stuff.

these very empirical observations got me nowhere. so i scrapped that line of thinking and decided to make it something about myself or something that i like. my first idea went to my favorite quote which happens to be from a hymn but was first made aware to me through a song by Anathallo. the quote is "all the fitness He requires is to feel your need of Him." so i wanted to do something like "Thoughts on Fitness" but i thought that there would, inevitably, be someone out there who didn't get the allusion even if it was explained and come looking for tips on vitamin supplements.

i also thought about using a favorite song title/lyric (other than the previous) in the title-creation process and since my favorite band is the Dave Matthews Band, i entertained ideas like "Life on Grey Street" or "Under the Dreaming Tree." i discounted those ideas on account of them not being authentic and representative of me.

which brings me to my final line of thinking which began with camping. y'all know i love camping. i have often thought, and recently said, that camping (or doing any activity) is not always fun unless you have the right group of people at the right place at the right time. even still, those people and those circumstances mean a hill of beans unless the experience that you have with them is a memorable one. therefore i believe that it's the experience which we should treasure. so that's that.

oh and it was also hard to pick out what goes before the ".blogspot.com" in the URL. but that isn't nearly as important as the blog title. i was always taught that, in writing, if you have one argument that is stronger than another, you are to present your weaker argument first so that you can end on a strong point. i will have none of that tonight.

see y'all later

holler back

NEXT TOPICS TO HOLLER ON
what i do(n't) do at work...
a contract with Manish
"Christmas" iff "Thanksgiving" = past

*Ben Humphries and Brad Phillis (finding theoPHILUS, by brad PHILLIS... think about it people) are probably totally unaware that i have pubbed their blogs. also, is it me or does the asterisk look awkward inside of the period at the end of a sentence? is that the correct placement?

**neither Jenn nor Casey know i pubbed theirs either. i put the asterisks on the outside this time, just for kicks (on route 66 perhaps?)

Me? Blog? What? An explanation...

i don't usually do this.

i don't count creativity as one of my strong points. i don't keep a journal. i draw stick figures. i am prone to awkward silences and then have trouble breaking them without repeating something already said in the conversation. even though i love to play the guitar, it is beyond my ability to put individual notes together to form a unique melody (never mind my tuneless-bucket syndrome). i took an intro to poetry* class at UNC (to which i had to present clearly sub-par work... it was an interesting semester), and still nothing flipped the creativity switch to the "on" position.

so why start now? why keep a blog? why should i make what would most likely be a feeble attempt at creativity, and do so on such a public medium?

call it me wanting to imitate the maturity of the friends i have who use their blogs to express thoughts and teachings on Christianity, to offer interpretations of the wild world of sports, or to share insight into a time of service for those less fortunate. or call it me wanting to get into one of the fastest growing new internet things. call it me wanting to have yet another thing that i can keep updated. you might even call it me trying to understand how i am now earning a weekly pay check, paying car insurance and no longer relying on a piece of plastic with my face and school on it to eat anymore when i so hugely miss the days spent on a hill with a well and a bell.

i'll call it a mix of all the aforementioned. i will not, at this point, call this a means for me to practice being creative (as if it is a skill to be learned). i aim to serve myself by doing something new and different in keeping this blog.

know that i do not look to "wow" anyone with this blog. if you get something out of it, excellent. let me know. we can talk about it and be happy for one another. but please don't expect to.

i ask that you remember throughout my bloggings that i value your opinion. seriously. be neither hesitant nor timid. i don't know where this blog junk is going to go for me but if it merely serves as a way for me to maintain some form of communication with old friends, then i will be content.

thanks and ill see y'all soon

NEXT POST TOPICS
what "it's the experience..." means
what i do(n't do) at work...


*it must be noted that ENGL 25W fulfilled the upper level aesthetic perspective which provided the sole motivation for me to take such a class. it must also be noted that at the end of the class, after all of my poems were critiqued, edited and recompiled into a final portfolio, i was proud of what i had made... even if it really wasn't all that impressive in and of itself. if you're really nice, i might let you read one of them.