Below is a brief email exchange from this morning that I had with a former co-worker at my last place of employment. Provides an overview of my work situation.

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Hey X,

How’s everything going? Are you settled in yet?

Thanks,
Y

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Hey Y,

Getting settled. I am trying to get the GIS hosting infrastructure (ArcIMS/ArcSDE/Oracle/ArcGIS Server) at TNC's central office (Arlington, VA) in order. It has been poorly managed and grossly under used but I am finding lots of GIS people that have needs to share and publish their data. So, there is a pent up demand that I am having to contend with.Also, we are setting up SDE/Oracle geodatabases at TNC regional offices (Seattle, Boulder, Costa Rica, Minneapolis, Boston, etc) that will replicate data to the central office system. Pretty cool. Looks like I will be spending some time figuring the ins and outs of ESRI's geodatabase replication. Hopefully, I will get to travel to some of these offices but nearly all of my work can be performed remotely.

Working from home 3 days a week which is going pretty well. Am saving a lot on commuting costs and time though I have to be careful about distractions. I have a desk at the TNC office in Conshohocken, PA which is an easy commute if the traffic is not snarled on the PA Turnpike.

Baby is due at the end of Sept. My wife can't wait for delivery, she is about to pop! We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our 4th redhead.

Good luck with college this year.

Take care.

Regards,
X

Another Photosynth demo, which includes a couple of maps. If we could create super high quality map images from a traditional GIS (kinda like ESRI's map caching approach only more intense), they could then be served out to photsynth clients. Cool.

I heard an interesting factoid this morning. Certified GIS Professional, also known as GISP, earn 9% more salary than uncertified.This is especially interesting because I have never seen a job posting that requires GISP certification. It may be that people who go thru the trouble of getting certified (long application process) are simply better, more capable employees anyway. And therefore likely to be more valuable and in better paying positions.