I've Thought It Over. Measurement is Alive
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2014 6:43 pm
Not that I'm disagreeing with Mike Pallamary's premise about surveyors promoting themselves as professional expert measurers, but I would put the reason differently...
Measurement is not dead. It is very much alive. It's everywhere. It's active. It's promiscuous... it'll now get down with anybody and everybody, sharing it's precisions and accuracies that it used to share only with us surveyors. We've been cuckolded people!
A week or two ago, I posted in the "Measurement is Dead" thread about hearing a Big Box Hardware ad on the radio about a handheld EDM available to the masses.
Well, this past Sunday, I was at one of the Big Box Hardware stores in my little burg in the foothills getting materials for my daughter to play interior decorator (she's going to paint her room - should be interesting to see what else gets painted), and remembered that ad.
Long story shortened a bit, for $150, I am now the owner (not sure if "proud" or "scared" is the appropriate adjective) of a Bosch GLR225 Laser Distance Measurer. (See attached photos).
It's just a bit smaller than a pack of cigarettes, has an effective range of 230', and has a fairly impressive array of measurement functions. It reports distances to a precision of 1/16 in, so has nearly 5 times the range and twice the precision of the unit they're advertising on the radio. Don't know why they don't advertise their best, but whatever. It can even be mounted to the same tripod as a Brunton Pocket Transit, so the backyard surveyor can turn angles, remove his "transit" and mount the "EDM" and measure distances (anyone else having flashbacks to the early 80s, Beetle or HP3800?).
I haven't figured out just what all I'll use this thing for. I have a few home improvement projects in mind, inclulding replacing most of our 2000+/- sf of decks, some other landscaping projects and such. I'll probably use it as a rangefinder while bowhunting, and may even use it as a laser pointer the next time I give a presentation - maybe on how measurement is leaving us out in the cold.
In my early days of surveying, I thought measurement was ours, exclusively, forever and ever. We were beyond going steady, or even betrothed. Surveyors and measurement were wedded to each other. We cared for her, kept the rust off the chain, held her gently with just the right tension, housed her in expensive electronics, wrote down the data she gave us as if it were poetry to be cherished forever. In short, we treated her like a new groom should treat his bride, with great care and pride, as no other could. We were hers and she was ours.
But now, I've come to realize that this is just another one way relationship with a faithless lover. We need measurement, but measurement is very clearly showing that she does not need us.
Maybe if we still wrote down her data in books we keep forever, she might still be ours.
Measurement is not dead. It is very much alive. It's everywhere. It's active. It's promiscuous... it'll now get down with anybody and everybody, sharing it's precisions and accuracies that it used to share only with us surveyors. We've been cuckolded people!
A week or two ago, I posted in the "Measurement is Dead" thread about hearing a Big Box Hardware ad on the radio about a handheld EDM available to the masses.
Well, this past Sunday, I was at one of the Big Box Hardware stores in my little burg in the foothills getting materials for my daughter to play interior decorator (she's going to paint her room - should be interesting to see what else gets painted), and remembered that ad.
Long story shortened a bit, for $150, I am now the owner (not sure if "proud" or "scared" is the appropriate adjective) of a Bosch GLR225 Laser Distance Measurer. (See attached photos).
It's just a bit smaller than a pack of cigarettes, has an effective range of 230', and has a fairly impressive array of measurement functions. It reports distances to a precision of 1/16 in, so has nearly 5 times the range and twice the precision of the unit they're advertising on the radio. Don't know why they don't advertise their best, but whatever. It can even be mounted to the same tripod as a Brunton Pocket Transit, so the backyard surveyor can turn angles, remove his "transit" and mount the "EDM" and measure distances (anyone else having flashbacks to the early 80s, Beetle or HP3800?).
I haven't figured out just what all I'll use this thing for. I have a few home improvement projects in mind, inclulding replacing most of our 2000+/- sf of decks, some other landscaping projects and such. I'll probably use it as a rangefinder while bowhunting, and may even use it as a laser pointer the next time I give a presentation - maybe on how measurement is leaving us out in the cold.
In my early days of surveying, I thought measurement was ours, exclusively, forever and ever. We were beyond going steady, or even betrothed. Surveyors and measurement were wedded to each other. We cared for her, kept the rust off the chain, held her gently with just the right tension, housed her in expensive electronics, wrote down the data she gave us as if it were poetry to be cherished forever. In short, we treated her like a new groom should treat his bride, with great care and pride, as no other could. We were hers and she was ours.
But now, I've come to realize that this is just another one way relationship with a faithless lover. We need measurement, but measurement is very clearly showing that she does not need us.
Maybe if we still wrote down her data in books we keep forever, she might still be ours.