Taking Stock

Happy Holidays and all that stuff.

The final quarter of 2007 grinds to a close here in Our Nation's Capitol, with the squawk boxes trained on the primaries of early 2008. In the high 80s on the radio dial, I found the community station, so at least I get Amy Goodman in the morning and eclectic music programming the rest of the day. The last few weeks of the year proves to be a slow down in my world, with a family trip to an island off the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico for my father's 60th birthday.

And now, for a long overdue, much-needed update to my world:

Back in July, I got an email out of the blue from a recruiter for NAVTEQ about a job as a Content Developer with Map Network, a company that does custom interactive and print maps. I had a quick interview, and I was essentially offered a job on the spot.

But first, I went on a trip with Kelly to northern California for her 30th birthday. We drove from San Francisco to Trinidad, with the mission of visiting some friends from Colorado.














After than, I felt a need to put an emphatic end to this chapter of Colorado and did so with an double exclamation point.

First, a climb of Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park with my brother.















Followed by a hike to Lake Isabelle in the Indian Peaks Wilderness with Kelly.















Saying goodbye to Colorado was certainly bittersweet. It was a place we felt was home, and there were many wonderful things about living there. My brother, the house, the mountains, the sun, my aunt and uncle in Castle Rock, The Park, and so on.

At the end of August, Kelly and I packed up the house into the garage, and she went to Oregon for training with Home Power, her new gig. I bounced around the Front Range for a few days while she was gone, and then we packed up the truck the first weekend of September. We waited out a few days before hitting the road, and then we slept in a different state for five straight nights to arrive in South Jersey two days before I started work at Map Network. I've been trying to see her as much as I can, and get her down to DC whenever possible. Battling I-95 north and south gets exhausting, but we've found the Chinatown to Chinatown bus an affordable option for the regular visits. It's tough being apart, but we've done some time apart in the past. It's an understatement to say that none of this move would have been possible without the support and love of Kelly. She's been the one that made it happen, I just drove the truck.

Being a part of NAVTEQ at a time when the location-based services (LBS) industry is a hot topic is both heady and busy, mostly at the same time. The work I put into learning GIS is paying off, as GIS is a major part of our production process. GIS is becoming firmly embedded into the wireless ecosystem, and my continually evolving skills provided a good platform. Nokia's acquisition of NAVTEQ made for an interesting first month here at Map Network, and the bid war between Garmin and TomTom over map data provider Tele Atlas caused normal people to take notice. LBS is not just dorky tech, it's increasingly the way we'll interpret our daily lives. Navteq's Maps: Finding Our Place in the World exhibit at the Field Museum proves that point, and Map Network's virtual tour of the exhibit takes it another level. (Note: the virtual tour requires Flash and might not work in some versions of Firefox. The developers have been notified, and are always working @ performance status.)

As for the day-in of the job, I am the first stage of our production process, so I am often charged with the task of pulling the most current data from Navteq, our parent company, and making a base map of municipal data, road data, hydrology, and land use (and a few other features). Or, I am doing content development by digitizing satellite imagery and researching new content. I am also trying to learn some terrain modeling and how to work with Adobe Illustrator to make the finished product. Map Network's product suite encompasses online and print maps for three major topics: destinations (official visitor's map of DC), special events (the Super Bowl), and venues (like hotels, museums, and zoos). The opening weeks at my new job were characteristic of any beginning: different people and new challenges. By now, I get a fair amount of the process, and I am trying to teach myself some of the next steps to conceptualize and actualize our entire workflow.

Otherwise, I try to ride my bike as much as possible, but the temps have dropped and the winds have picked up. To keep mind interested in the world, I get cool pics of the day and cool graphics on my iGoogle page. I've been reading Down the Great Unknown, the classic story of John Wesley Powell's 1869 expedition through canyon county down the Green River and The Grand Canyon. Overall, the last few months have been somewhat of a blur, and I look forward to 2008 to really settle into a routine and make the most of this life out here...

Off to the Yucatan.