Greener Pastures

It has occurred to me that my blog posts have been quite dull as of late. I feel that I have been setting off an incorrect image of how I feel about my job. I do enjoy my job, and while the work may be tedious at times, I can manage it, especially with so many coworkers that I get along with. Bobbi gives me respite from busy work with stories of her kids, Germean bought the apple cider for the kitchen that I enjoy everyday on special request, Eric goes out of his way to get us interns to survey water basins, Faye gives me heads up on any community deserts that the office is too polite to eat, and Guoqiang gives me an applesauce on request to go with my cider and will never take any pieces of oranges in return. Yes, I do realize that most of these are food related, but what can I say, they know how to win my heart.

Continuing with the upbeat tone, I have changed odd jobs again, and this one is quite active. My job is to reorganize the commercial filing cabinets, as during the move all of the files were moved to the bottom two rows. However, it is not as simple as just shifting them-- there are plenty of mistakes throughout the cabinets that will make the job much more acute. It is a nice change of pace to stand up and move around a little. I needed to stretch these old office bones. Needless to say, I had a pretty good week.

Diminishing Returns

The job of watching roads for bike travelers has returned as the title implies. However,  my work was also diminished as the title implies. My new job is only to go over the same traffic footage differentiating between bikes on the road and those in the bike lane. This then comes down to simply forwarding to each time point that bikes past, and evaluate. As thus, I got it done in only 2 work days. Hooray.

However, this left more time in the week for a new job, so my new job became to use the ArcMap GIS program to mark down or fix any sidewalks that I see on the program. It is a slow process, but I have made some good progress, but there is still a lot more to go. I have a feeling that I will need to hand the baton over to Connor Weeks at the job switch.

Fleeting Reality

In front of me is a road. Cars and pedestrians pass by at four times their normal speed. I pass the time by imagining stories for these people while always looking intently for any bicycles. The cars start to blur, their headlights have ghost images in my brain, the pedestrians look like bicyclists, bicyclists look like pedestrians, and the time slowly ticks away in the corner of the screen... then all goes black. When I come back to, I realize that I just watched 5 minutes of traffic footage, and only have about another 4 hours to go.

But enough about my gradual loss of sanity. The important thing is that this week I did complete those 4 hours of footage, and am entirely done with the traffic videos that I need to watch. A joyous occasion to be sure, but having just finished all of that, it doesn't seem like much of a victory. I still have the road flashing through my head, and look back with confusion of the excitement that I had once experienced in seeing a 14 large group of cyclists. They should have rehab clinics for this.

Change

First of all, before I tell you about the titular change that piqued your interest, I have made one change that was good. You probably noticed it already. Thats right, all the posts have non-robotic titles now- not all witty, but they have more life than a blog title that reminds me how long I have been working. Now they give the general mood of each blog post, as I am sure you have always wanted.

Now the change that has got me down is the always dramatic job change between Connor Weeks and I. He went back to scanning, but I did not have the ArcGIS to go back to-- that job had already finished. My new job is to count bicycle travel over certain intersections, and the only way that I can do this is by watching video feed of that intersection. The two roads that I am keeping track of are Murlen and Blackbob on the intersection of like 119th St. or something. In total, I have about 4 hours of sped up road to watch. Makes me wish that I brought some popcorn. From what I am told, my findings will be used in order to convince against building extremely expensive bike lanes on these roads. To be honest, what is extremely expensive to me could be a trivial matter to the City.

Bacteria and Me

This week was fairly simple overall. It was my last week of scanning, so I had a lot that I had to try to get done before the fabled job switch. I went through Monday and Tuesday without a hitch, but I woke up feeling quite unwell on Wednesday, so I called out of work for the third time in my life. All that left for the week was a short day on Thursday and a nonexistant work day on Friday. Needless to say, I did not get completely done with all the scanning.

I don't actually recall whether or not I have  fully described what I am scanning. I am scanning for a man in the traffic department named Guoqiang. And in that large shelf full of documents that he gave me there are traffic files for certain intersections. Basically they are a packet titled some intersection, and the subsequent pages show different traffic information for that intersection, like turning rates, volume of traffic, and many more complex things that I could not decipher. After scanning them, I pass the files by Guoqiang, and they go in the recycling bin. It is good at least to see tangible progress in the pile of papers.

Mistakes, Posters, & Smiles

This week I missed a day of work. Basically what happened, is that in my mind a Thursday and Friday off of school still feels like school and schedule should be there, and thus I remember that I have to work. However, when school is off on Monday, specifically Halloween, it is still very much the weekend in my world. I didn't realize that I should be in my cubicle until 3:00pm, and by then it was too late. It is a mournful passing, but at least I learned from it. Morel of the story, I found that I do not need to go to work on days off of school if I choose not to, but my supervisors would like it if I told them what I am planning on doing those days.

The actual scheduled event of the week- A&E Open House- went quite well. I had a booth with my fellow interns from the school, Connor at the Public Works Department with me, two from Black & Veatch, and one from Kiewit. It was nice to talk to people legitimately interested in what we do, but I got the feeling that the public felt that the other internships were more impressive than mine. Everybody's a critic.

Outlining the Future

This week of work was entirely normal, just back to the old grind. I have reached the milestone of passing the halfway point in the shelf full of scans behind me, but that is not cause for celebration yet. However, there was one significant happening for the week. The presentation for Aerospace and Engineering Open House was next week, and I had to complete the outline for that presentation with Connor Weeks. So we divided the work up and finished it all in one day. All that is left to do is to take pictures and assemble the poster board for the actual presentation by next Thursday.

Same as Always

This week was one of the mythic three school day conference week that is held every midterm. It as always, was awesome, but I get an added treat because I now am an intern-- I get two whole days of work. Don't get me wrong, this prospect excited me just as much as the next intern, but I had business to take care of on Friday. So I had a normal week of scanning and drinking apple cider Monday through Wednesday, and Thursday I had a full 8 hour day accompanied by my poorly prepared lunch. The meal tasted like success... hasty success. Then on Friday I took a day off work for the second time in my life. This post was basically just a wordy digression on a very uneventful week.

A Painful Leap

Same old grind on scanning, but two major milestones were reached today:

-First, because of the lack of school on Friday, I had my first full day of work in my lifetime. It was a very long eight hours, but there was a definite sense of accomplishment as I walked out the door about 70 dollars richer. Money is not everything, but it definitely makes you feel good regardless. However, I am not quite sure that I can stand too many full days in a row. Being an adult is tough.

-Secondly, (this will be much less salient to most other humans) I have scanned my first mega uber large sheet of paper. If I recall correctly, it was like a 30x48in piece of paper. It was the most impressive thing that I had seen all week. And yes, I was able to fold it seven times.

Mixing it Up

As stated during last week's blog, I was planning to spend another week on the ArcMAP project, but my plans were foiled-- as it turns out, this week was the fabled job change week for Connor Weeks and me. So on Thursday, I believe, we both taught eachother our new jobs for the next month, with him explaining consisely and helpfully, and I fumbling and forgetting many things. And then the deed was done: ArcMAP was now in his hands, and scanning was in mine. The future is bright.

My new job is quite simple really, and is the same job held by countless interns around the world. I have a massive shelf in my new cubicle filled with papers, and it is my job to take out projects out of the pile piece by piece, scan them, and then save them in their correct home on the city database. I then turn from the computer and sigh as I take another small chunk out of the pile. Rinse, lather, repeat.

One Step at a Time

This week was largely uneventful. As predicted, the deadline of October 1 for the ArcMAP project did not get done in time, so I am spending one next week on that as well, and then will hopefully be done for good.

Because nothing too major has passed in the last week, I will just tell about what the public works department of the City of Olathe (the one I work for) does overall. The department consists of 7 divisions, Administration, Environmental Service, Field Operations, Infrastructure Management, Planning Services, Strategic Services, and Solid Waste. I myself will probably be a floater between divisions depending on what needs help, and I am not quite sure if my current job applies to any of those divisions. Nonetheless, in general the public works department is largely about keeping city project blueprints and plans on the records, as well as doing plenty of customer service for whatever problems average people may have.

I most certainly did not do that description justice, but I still do not know too much myself about the public works department, so perhaps in the future I can offer a more complete description of my workplace.

Ah... Capitalism

Week 3 was not really too full of surprises, just more ArcMAP and drawing. I do believe that I have gotten the hang of it, and as a result being considerably faster. The project that Eric and myself have been working on is to mark up every house and driveway for the entire city of Olathe. Never have I disliked trees and shadows so much. The desired deadline for the project in question is by October. I am skeptical that it will get done that fast, but I will try my best until then I suppose.

On a different and much more joyful note, this week marks my first payday. I gladly took it, envisioning all the shiny toys and joys that it would bring.

Growing Strides

I jumped straight into the fray this week, already developing a pattern to my working. I leave school seventh hour, get to the Public Works building at about 2:30, walk into the employee entrance, say hello to Bobby, who is at the front, walk to the back end, say hello to Eric, a fellow intern, and sit in my seat and log in. Then it is two hours of ArcMap, while listening to a little music.

In addition, this week I had gotten my employee ID and employee number, so now I could punch in and out for work time.

It gets even better.

The employee ID clips to my pocket, so I now am an official office employee. One check off the bucket list. Otherwise, unfortunately, my week was pretty uneventful, though steady progress has been made on the ArcMAP project.

Baby Steps

My first week was spent getting adjusted to my new job.

I spent the first couple days on filing out paperwork, perfecting my signature through sheer repetition, and memorizing my drivers license and social security number. In short, I caught a glimpse into adulthood.

Past that, I learned that my fellow intern, Connor Weeks, and I would be taking two week shifts in duties. His duty starting off was to scan a whole mess of paperwork and save it to a City database, while mine was to use a program call ArcMAP to draw polygons over homes and driveways for City statistics and billing.

Not to much work actually got done this week, but I got the lowdown and was completely ready for a full week of work next week.