So here's my new shape file of downtown Canton. The bright green line is the boundary I drew that delineates "downtown" Canton. Never knew there WAS one, didja? The blue is railroads and the red are parcel boundaries. I tried to follow roads and existing boundaries as best I could, but the information we had to go on was a pencil line on a xerox copy of the aerial photo that some lady in the planning department drew for Pete. "Welcome to the real world," he says.

Feel like I did OK on the exam tonight, considering how much of a slacker I've been. It could have been a lot worse--seems I lucked out on some guesses I made, but I should keep my mouth shut until he grades them. I don't want to jinx myself!

Poor Edward lost all the arduous tracing he did for his outline. I was right next to him and witnessed the moment of panic when digital technology determined his destiny. He pulled through it pretty well, and I plan to check blogs more diligently in the next week.

We also talked about the next GIS course being offered at AB Tech this summer--on weekday mornings of all times. Hopefully by then I'll be working for Equinox, but a morning class would still be hard for me to pull off.

Catching up

Felt a little remiss for missing class last week, but I think I'll be Ok. Won't have the same kind of time free to study for this test like I did the last one, but I've learned all I can about editing in one night. Had a little chat with Edward about my beltsander blog and discussed some LP business with Pete. Oh yeah, I made this little Rapid City map thing, too, which as Edward pointed out, was decievingly quite arduous to complete. Found out there's some happenin laundro-mats in that SD town. Never know what kind of information you'll come out of a GIS class with!

Man! The computers tonight were S...L...O...W..... or, at least mine was. It was so slow, I had to drive the unit in the front of the class while Pete directed us through the steps, or else I'd have another nifty watershed map, too. And Edward gave me some kind of computer crasher complex and it turned out his flash was full. My oh my, whatta night. But here's my buncombe county land use map after it was appended, clipped, dissolved and buffered. All these tools from the toolbox and I'm feeling pretty handy. Speaking of tools, I felt girlscout-prepared when Pete inquired, "Does anybody have a screwdriver?" and I whipped out the mini-leatherman like it came out of ARC toolbox. Never thought I'd need a screwdriver for GIS class. Now I'm anxious to rummage around in that little red box and do a little experimenting--maybe a little modeling one of these days. I'm having visions of community mapping and habitat suitability and restoration design. Now THAT will be exciting. Not as exciting as the belt-sander I got for Valentine's Day, but that's a topic for another blog.