September 5, 2006 – Anything Geospatial

I had to laugh.. well actually, its kinda sad… I just ran into an ad for a GIS intern (proficeint with ArcGIS 9.x, geodatabse knowledge etc…) and the hiring county is actually offering up a whopping $11 hour for the lucky candidate. I have no idea how someone is supposed to live in Ann Arbor Michigan on $11 hr let alone cover EDU costs etc… but really, $11.. is that what an inntern is worth? Geesh… I made more (much more) babysitting a plotter on one of my first internships way back when. Of note, the job ad I saw was just posted and has a closing date of Sept 11 (that’s in several days) so obviously the interest hasn’t been that great.. for obvious reasons. I think the people at Washtenaw County need to open their wallets a bit wider anad maybe take this a bit more seriously. Are any of you working for $11 hr for a countyas a skilled GIS Analyst… I sure hope not!

I’ve always been an NBC news guy but now that Katie Couric has taken over the lead anchor on the evening news at CBS I may have to try switching that dial at 6 o’clock. Add to that, I can now access CBS headline news updates using Google Earth as they are now streaming KMLs to users… sweet!
On a side note, kudos to my GISuser friend Warren Vick over at Europa Technologies… way cool seeing that company credit front and center when you fire up Google earth…nice stuff Warren! Google has licensed Europa’s International borders and place names for use in Earth – check out their global Discovery vector data product at http://www.europa-tech.com/gd.htm – this is THE dataset for small scale mapping projects and those needing a Global database