Cartography/GIS

My job, for most of the past six weeks, has been to align cryptic old maps with existing digital data, so that points labeled in small, blurry fonts can be entered into a database. I am not going to show actual screenshots of my work - even if I gave away no useful information to the opposing legal team, it would be bad luck - but here is an artist's impression: Extracting information from this pathetic excuse for a usable map is, in fact, a learned skill. I only realized this a couple of weeks ago, when I sat down with the company's graphic designer to show her how to do what I was doing.…

Dear Environmental Geologists, Engineers, and Technical Illustrators of 20 Years Ago: Please remember that the real audience for your work - the mind-numbingly detailed technical reports over which you have slaved many hours - is not the board of petty bureaucrats who commissioned your investigation. The real audience is someone like me: A data-entry and verification cog in a giant lawsuit that will one day, far in the future, bring your paperwork out of cryogenic storage. I mean, you were working on a project at a large industrial facility. Did you really expect your figures to snooze…