Geology

It is nothing short of awesome to be using knowledge I acquired in college classes in the work I'm doing. I honestly never expected to get the opportunity to interface with geology again, but now every day I'm looking at maps with my boss and pointing out anticlines, relating structural contours with isopachs (formation thickness maps), pouring over geologic maps, and checking out well logs.

This past week I made four or five maps, and this next week I hope to churn out a good 6 or 7. I've been trying to build up a repertoire of map layouts to go to when I'm under the gun and need to prepare a map in 15 minutes instead of the usual 4-8 hours.

The work situation is really great. My boss is a character and purposely brings up politics and actively seeks out my opinions on different events. After a few discussions we've reached the point where our differences can be summed up as relating to our age differences. He is a 56 year old man with a lot of money to protect and I am a 24 year old with lots of money to pay. Right from the beginning, though, it was clear that we would get along, he isn't a social conservative, doesn't thump the Bible at me or anything, and is really genuinely curious about the world.

I'm also going to become an official employee of Jayden Consulting starting next month, instead of a contractor, which is something I'm looking forwards to (among other things, non-work related).

Oil!

I have a job now, I'm using my GIS skills to make maps for an oil geologist. I'm already having a lot of success with finding and organizing heaps of data. I'm really proud of me. This is a great experience and I'm really getting a chance to flex my muscles in an area of my expertise.

Also, I'm now a very tiny part of something that people don't really like, the oil industry. But, oil is something we all use a lot of. It's in tons of the products we use every day, and gas is made from oil, so there is that. There is lots of oil in the ground still, and we need to find it, alternatives are years off and even with them we will still need oil for lots of things. Also, with the rising price of oil, it's more and more feasible to get at oil that is more costly to find and remove.

I'm also not really opposed to increased offshore drilling. I do like that my boss won't work in areas that he considers beautiful.

So that's that. I'm in geology now.

Mystery Maps

A new game I'm playing with friends. I create a map which depicts some phenomena the game is to guess what phenomena is being mapped. It is a test of geographic knowledge to an extent, but also spatial reasoning skills. Essentially the map presented is as if the map were made but presented without a title or legend labels, i.e. take note of color schemes and different ramps. Just two so far, we'll see how long this stays fun.

Mystery Map 1


Mystery Map 2