Life of an Intern

Project: MS4 Analysis - Field trip(s)

2007-06-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

For a project I'm working on right now, I had the chance to go out and look around the Nelson Complex and Mill Creek Plants.

Pump station at Mill Creek

Trickling Filter at the Nelson Complex

Event: weather

2007-06-07T14:00:00.000-05:00

The large windows here at the Sunset building provide an excellent view of coming storms.

Event: Govenors visit, Landscaping out front completed

2007-06-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

The landscaping out front recently just got done, just in time for our VIP visit.

Event: Intern blog (along with everything at ravenengineering.net) is back!

2007-05-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

For reasons unbeknown to me, the ravenengineering.net (A/E) and eravens.net (E-comm) sites have been unavailable/offline for several weeks now, only to mysteriously come back to life. To make up for the long absence in blogging, I'll be going back and writing post-dated blog posts, so watch for the months of April & May to fill in some!

General: School Year Schedule

2005-08-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

For most of the school year, I plan to try and keep as close to the following schedule as possible:
Tuesday: 3:15-6:00
Thursday: 3:15-6:00
Friday: 3:15-6:00
With some time on the weekends doing some additonal flash work
Also, hopefully once block schedule begins for this year, I hope to be able to come in at 2:30 on either Thursday or Friday

Event: Visitors from Turkmenistan

2005-10-07T08:15:00.000-05:00

This morning, I gave a short synopsis of what I do at JCW to visitors from Turkmenistan. Other interns also shared their expiereinces as well (The students were: Erin Waggoner- from Honeywell, and Colin Smalley- from Johnson County AIMS department)
(Event held at ONW)

Field Work: GPS with Jim Bills Part II

2005-10-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

Today Jim Bills, Nazar Albarghsh, and myself drove to Mission, Kansas to do some training and checking of certain manholes. Jim and I went over using the GPS reciever and "popping" manhole lids to check that the number of pipes and direction they travel match what is on the maps. Then Jim and Nazar walked around to check other aspects of the map for accuracy while I "ran" the GPS reciever. Operating the GPS reciever is a relatively simple process. First you set up and level the tripod. Then on the GPS touchscreen you open the Mapping software and watch it acquire satellite signals and the WAAS beacon. Once its ready you select, create new waypoint, JCW sewers, and click start. It will then begin to log as indicated by the top right of the screen (you will see a number counting up from 0) You wait till it gets to 600 (seconds, which is 10 minutes) and then click stop recording and move onto antoher manhole. While the GPS is running on the second manhole return to the first, lift the lid with the hook and compare the number of pipes to those on the map.

Field Work: GPS with Jim Bills

2005-06-13T12:00:00.000-05:00

Today I started to work with Jim Bills (JCW GIS) on some GPS stuff. Very interesting.

Event: Office Closed, Friday the 11th

2005-11-11T15:00:00.000-06:00

Today the office was closed, which was nice, since it meant I didn't have to come in after school today.

Opening of Second Blog

2006-06-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've opened up a new blog called "ArcGIS Methods and Madness" where I post questions/problems and solutions to things I come across in ArcGIS.

Event: Happy Birthday to me from JCW!

2006-01-27T16:22:00.000-06:00

Thanks to everyone at JCW for the birthday/Eagle scout award 'party'. It was fun, and a great change in my oh so normal day up till then.

Cake Picture:

Event: Graduation time

2006-05-19T14:00:00.000-05:00

Today/yesterday marked the last day(s) of my K-12 schooling career. This sunday is graduation so I will be coming in late Monday due to the late nature of the districts "project graduation" program ending at 4am Monday morning/Sunday night. Next week I will resume wokring "mostly full time" at JCW throughout the summer, starting with going to Belton with Jim Bills to get a little more training on our new GPS unit from the Trimble representitive.
In other news, student Kyle Purdon will be joining us at JCW as the new student intern, working closely with the Engineering department. Kyle is currently finishing up his junior year at Olathe Northwest High School and is a part of the Aerospace Engineering department. Kyle's exact starting day here at JCW is currently unknown.

Event: Surprise Graduation Cake!

2006-05-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I came back from lunch today and was called to see Carolyn and Jim. Come to find out it was for a suprise party for me for my high school graduation! Thanks a bunch guys!

(click any of the images to make them bigger)

Card:

Event: Holiday

2006-05-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

On Monday, May 29th, 2006, the Johnson County Wastewater offices will be closed due to the Memorial Day Holiday

Meeting: GPS Training/Refresher

2006-05-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

Meeting in Belton with Jim Bills and Kevin Figge at Seiler Instrument to go over the new Trimble Xh (we used to have an Xt) we have at JCW. Took it outside and tested it compared to their known GPS benchmark. We got within 1/2 foot I believe, which is better than needed accuracy for us to mark manholes.

Field Work: GPS benchmark comparison

2006-05-24T15:00:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, Jim and I took the GPS unit out again to test it against some known benchmarks. Using several surveying monuments and section corners, we put our GPS unit and error correcting to the test. Most of our test points came from here:

Map on official JoCo AIMS mapping page

Field Work: GPS testing at Sunset

2006-05-23T14:30:00.000-05:00

In conjunction with yesterday's meeting, I took our GPS reciever out around the building plotting the nearby manholes to see if we were getting the same good data we got yesterday in Belton. One thing we changed was instead of post processing with 1 base stations data, we set up a 'triangle' of base stations around our area so that we can get even better honed in data.

Project: Coupling GIS with GPS

2006-06-05T15:10:00.000-05:00

Today Jim Bills placed ArcGIS 9.1 on my computer so that once I start bringing in the new GPS data from the Leawood sewer area I can go and correct the old manhole positions to the new GPS plotted points. For now he has my expirementing with GIS, adding and managing layers, working on varying label types with the Maplex label engine, getting layer data, changing the point label/symbol and more. I thought I'd post a screenshot of some of the data I had imported.

Imported into this view are the following layers:
-addpt - includes the address point database, can bring up house #'s property ID's, etc
-co_cent - street centerlines
-indx_arc (off) - 10 foot topo contours
-co_cov -"section" markings
-soils (off) - soil quality/type map data
-Ortho2005_NE (off) - includes the aerial photography for the NE part of the county
-Ortho2005_NW (off) - includes the aerial photography for the NW part of the county
-Ortho2005_SE - includes the aerial photography for the SE part of the county
-Ortho2005_SW (off) - includes the aerial photography for the SW part of the county

The reason several of the layers are off is that everytime you move the map it has to redraw all the layers (you can set zoom thresholds, one is set for soil, but soil is off anyways) so if your zoomed out at the city level and move to the side just a little bit it redraws thousands of polylines, points, etc which can take quite a while.

Project: Prarie Village GPS

2006-06-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

Today, Kyle Purdon, the new intern in the engineering department, and I went out to Prarie Village in the 77th and Belinder area to do some manhole locating for the GIS database. Initially of the first 6 we attempted to find, we found 1. After that it became significantly easier to find the next few manholes. A few attempts had to be aborted because of angry dogs, etc. The area has been partially covered by Peridian Group, and we are going in to locate the manholes that they couldn't find.

This map is just some of the area we/I will be covering in the next few weeks.

Project: Prarie Village GPS day 2

2006-06-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Went out again today to do some more GPS locating and extended my area I covered out to Mission Road and as far south as 79th. Nearby some of the manholes I was locating, Insituform was doing a pipe lining. It was pretty interesting to see the little bit I did. This GPS project should lats quite a bit fo the summer, as some of the manholes are difficult to locate and may even require bringing out a crew with metal detectors, poke rods, and even maybe the line TV truck. Most of the morning had poor satellite reception, which made it slow to keep progressing, because the GPS reciever kept pausing to gain enough satellites to keep logging data.

Project: Manipulating the GPS & Sewer data in ArcGIS

2006-06-13T10:05:00.000-05:00

Today, I started lining up the existing sewer profiles with the GPS points using the ArcGIS software. The process is relatively simple, set the snap onto the three different GPS datasets and then snap each manhole and sewer line onto the GPS point. This process is visible in the picture below, the light blue/highlighted line shows where the currently selected sewer was on the map, and the thin green line is where the sewer will be after the software redraws the image. Down at the bottom, at manhole 38, you can see a set of sewer lines & manhole that are waiting to be snapped into place onto the green GPS marker. The green GPS markers are the data points collected by Peridian, while the not visible "salmon" and pink colored crosshairs are the two data sets that Kyle Purdon and I have collected over the first two days of this project.

Info: Spring 2007 college schedule

2007-01-03T13:00:00.000-06:00

Spring 2007 Semester Schedule:

	Monday:	Tuesday:	Wednesday:	Thursday:	Friday:
8:00	Calc II (JCCC)	Calc II (JCCC)	Calc II (JCCC)	Calc II (JCCC)	Calc II (JCCC)
9:00	Engineering Physics (JCCC)	Engineering Physics (JCCC)	Engineering Physics (JCCC)	Engineering Physics (JCCC)	Engineering Physics (JCCC)
10:00	Intermediate Spanish I (JCCC)	Driving Time	Intermediate Spanish I (JCCC)	Driving Time	Intermediate Spanish I (JCCC)
11:00		Digital Logic & Design (KU)		Digital Logic & Design (KU)
12:00		Digital Logic & Design (KU)

Project: GPS Leawood

2006-07-13T13:00:00.000-05:00

After returning from vacation on the 10th, I have gotten back to GPS locating in the Leawood area. Today, Brandon and I were working around the 83rd and State Line area. Had quite a success locating manholes, although a few remain unknown, either hiding in flower beds, under sheds, or unexistent. Talked with a City of Leawood Public Works guy who was out doing some utility locating as well and he said there were a couple of JCW manholes they tried to find to spray mark for construction in a couple of areas to the South where I have not reached yet. Hopefully I will be able to resume editing the GIS database again once the database switch and what not is completed.

Project: leawood GPS and the "Hot Week"

2006-07-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

This week being out in the field has been hot. Really hot. Today it is supposed to be around 100 (deg F). Lately, I've been out in the area immediately to the east of 88th and Nall ave.

This area is much easier to GPS than it has been, because every manhole is located in a front yard or in the street.

Event: Happy New Year

2007-01-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

Happy 2007!