I hate site assessments

[Dan]

I'm the only one in the office this New Year's eve. When I'm alone, I think that I'm going to get more work done, with no distractions to break my concentration.

Nope. The days I'm alone also seem like the days the office is swamped with people performing site assessments: environmental appraisals of some parcel. What do they want from me? Aerial photos of the site, going back as far as we have them. That means I have to make copies of aerials. Aerials from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

The parcels always seem to be on the edge of the photo, no matter what the scale -- it varies from decade to decade, as does the indexing scheme and coverage area -- so I often have to make copies of two aerials to cover one site.

The photos aren't digitized, so I have to drag huge sheets -- every decade being some different non-standard size -- to the photocopier, and copy them there. Copying 36"x36" mylar sheets or brittle 50 year old poster-sized photographs on a photocopier is all sorts of fun. They're never happy with the results, even after I spend ten minutes fiddling with different settings. Sorry, but 1'=200"-scaled photos are NEVER going to look that great.

The Powers That Be don't believe in hanging files, so I have to drag everything out of flat map drawers. The sites always seem to be pictured on photos that are at the far bottom of the drawers.

Paper cuts? Nope. Inevitably, I'll get at least one mylar cut.

I like my job, bot on some days ...

[mendelman]

Hah....when we get assessment requests from people, we don't charge them, but we give them little if anything - ie zoning, ordinance approval #, yes/no on active violations, and many "not to my knowledge".

That part of your job does seem to suck, Dan.

[Maister]

I'm the only one in the office this New Year's eve. When I'm alone, I think that I'm going to get more work done, with no distractions to break my concentration.

Nope. The days I'm alone also seem like the days the office is swamped with people performing site assessments:

Dang, is there something in the water? I too am here alone and am getting swamped with these types of labor intensive requests! In fact, Miss Arcana just left here a few minutes ago!

[Gedunker]

These people never, ever make appointments -- they just show up and expect someone to take immediate care of them.

Our oldest photos are b/w contact prints from the late 50s and early 60s, at a scale of about 1:2000 -- not much help, but they still want photocopies.

We've just put our first hanging file on-line: I've got about 30 flat file drawers to go through when I have time and decide what to archive and what to hang. Joy.

[Planit]

Dan - take those old aerials and have them scanned. Spin it that you have a grave concern about their safety and being an historicla document that can be replaced, all efforts should be taken to preserve them (yes this worked for me).

I've had two calls today, one from my boss, otherwise fairly slow.