Day 29-30; 4/30/14;5/21/14

              Wow, I haven't been here for a while. Sorry about that, but I have been testing in school and have been unable to go to internships. So, ya nothing could be done about that. The last time I was here, it was a different month. And i'll be honest, I don't remember what I did 3 week ago. Sorry. As for today, I worked on excel and CAD, the usual.

Day 27-28; 4/16/14, 4/23/14

So there was quite the break between posts right? And here I am doing another double day post after so long. Why? Well, I did stuff on the 16, but I didn't on the 23. On the 16, I was simply edting drawings and adding things to them like tables and such. All my actions were to help move along a project that was happening in Langan. I would saw more, but its been a while since the 16. Ha. And on the 23, I was out sick.

Day 26; 4/9/14

               So for this session, I did two different things. The first was to play around with GIS. GIS is a kind of program that lets you mess around with maps in order to figure out what a build site might look like. If you need an example, think of google maps but add in a civil site feature. The other thing that I did was to edit some autocad drawings. Nothing complicated, just messing around with some data and editing some charts and data points.

Day 25; 4/2/14

  So today, I only did one thing during the entire day. The reason? Well, today I made my own drawing specs that would help in the real world. You see whenever you build something, you have to see what the ground is like. This is done by doing some test holes in several locations to see how far the ground extends, or when there is rock or is their rock and the like. So, that is what I was doing. Getting locations of said holes. And it took a while.

Day 24; 3/26/14

                        For this week, I did three things. The first was a project for Ko that took pretty much the entire day except for the 3 or so hours that the other things took. The project for Ko was a blank project map that I had to zone out. By the way, that is a phrase that I just invented. Basically, I had to sketch out on the map, with autocad, all the properties and roads and trees and the like on the drawing. The reason is that so we can easily manipulate the properties and so we have the dimensions of said properties. The second thing that I did, was to watch a "webinar" for a program called survey ops or something of that style. Its purpose is to do that thing I did automatically. You open up the program and it would do the thing I did for you. The final thing was editing some data in a atuocad drawing. You see, on a particular sight, a whole bunch of test sights were taking in order to see what type of matierals there are there. What? Well, when you do work somewhere, you have to see what type of ground or dirt you have. Then you have to know how far done that dirt goes before it hits something like rock or water. So, I was editing a drawing to include date from a recent set of test pits. The test pits by the way are exactly what they sound like. You get to the sight and you just dig a hole until you can't dig anymore or you get to a certain depth. That was pretty much it. Thanks for reading.

Day 23; 3/19/14

                Once again, this day featured the did two things today thing. The first thing was to help a project by making a contact list for a project. A contact list is a list of all the important people who were a part of a project and any important people for the future of the project. So people of the first catagory would be the head architect or head engineer who created the building and people of the other catagory would be people like the fire deparment or utilites. For the other part of the day, I just continued to work on the on AutoCad in order to draw out maps and properties to help my mentor. Nothing special however.

Day 22; 3/12/14

        Today was split up into two things. I started by learning some new commands in Microsoft Excel. The command was what is known as a if and statement. It works the way it sounds. Is a chosen value works with a chosen rule then you set some condition to be true. If the chosen value doesn't value doesn't work, then it picks another value. I also learned the lookup command which works exactly the way it sounds. I used these commands to work with some price charts and how much a client would pay if they worked with Langan. The other thing that I worked with was on AutoCad where I worked with some maps and lands partitions. I was trying to find out how large a piece of land was so that my coworkers could get some estimates regarding its difficulty to improve or build stuff on. At the end of the day I uploaded some site pictures on the Langan database, but that is barely worth noting. Other than those things, nothing else happened. Thanks for reading.

Day 21; 3/5/14

          I was tasked today with mapping some stuff out in AutoCad. Basically, there was a map that I had to make and put together in the program. Why? Well, we had a whole bunch of different plots of land that where being developed together but, we needed them all on AutoCad. So, I built them all, and them pieced them together. However, while it seems simple, it was a little long. As a result, it was the only thing that I did that day.

Day 20, 2/26/14

                  During the morning, my mentor was absent for personal reasons. As a result, I had some free time to do what I wanted. I choose to split up that time doing 2 things. The first was to continue working on the master zoning table. the second was to study some physics for school. My mentor came in during the afternoon however, and he did have some work for me. I was tasked to make a cost estimates sheet involing one of the projects. I did this by going through the drawings and compiling the amount of things in the drawings, and the unit prices of said things. That allowed me to make the cost estimates. But as it stands, not a crazy busy day. Thanks for reading, and I hope to have more next time.

Day 19, 2/19/14

               Once again, we are back to this. For this day in my internship, I did two things. Mostly, because they each took a large amount of time. As a result, I wasn't able to do much. The first thing I did was of course do autocad in which I edited some files and made some drawings. The second thing was that I did some more excel, database making. In between those two things, I had a lesson on how to accurately recreate drawings on autocad using a picture. But other than that, nothing much happened. It was a fairly boring day. Sorry there isn't more to talk about but as it stands, there isn't. In any case however, thanks for reading.

Day 18, 2/12/14

               So many of you may be asking why it took me so long to post another blog. Well, with internship canceled on the 5th and all the snow, I have been busy lately. But, I am here today to describe to you what I did on the 12. To start with, most of my usual mentors were absent for the duration of the day. So, I went and helped so other people. One of the projects that I was started on was to make a generic zoning table. Why? Well, I believe I talked about zoning tables before but just in case you forgot. Whenever you build something, you have to follow certain regulations set into place by the city and state. So things like certain amount of parking or green areas basically. So, my mentor wanted me to make one table that would have every zoning rule on it so that whenever a new job comes up, it can be used regardless of where the job is in. That way, one doesn't have to make a new table for every project. They can just go on this one and pick and choose what they need. Second, I working on autocad editing some drawings. Nothing special. Someone made a couple of spelling errors and formating errors on a CAD drawing and I had to fix it. Those 2 things pretty much took the entire day. Thanks for reading.

Day 17, 1/29/14

             Hello again people. So unfortunately, I can't say much about my activities during this week. Why? Well, I did 2 different things during this day of internships. The first one is confidential, so I can't actually say anything about it and the second was paper filing and sorting. So, I can't describe anything or introduce new things to you guys. Hopefully, next time will yield more interesting things that I can actually tell you about. Until then, I hope you enjoyed the super bowl if you are into that type of stuff. Thanks for reading.

Day 14-16, 1/8/14,1/15/14,1/22/14

      So you may be wondering two things. First, why my blog posts have been so late. And second, why I am choosing to do a post for three days. Well, the answer for the first question is that I have been swamped in work. The answer to the next question is that I choose to. I don't tell you how to live your life. Well, enough of that. Day 14 had me spending my time doing two things. First, I had to build a price estimate for a project at Stormking Highschool. For those of you that don't know; a price estimate involves someone going through all the proposed drawings and counting up how much everything will cost. So, if there are 5 trees, we would record 5 trees, put down the unit price and then get the final price. All of this was done in excel so if the drawings were to be changed later, then the number of certain objects could be changed easily. So, this other intern Matt and I spent our morning to do the price estimate. I was the guy doing the excel and calculating everything, while Matt was drawing everything on the CAD files. In the end, the project had a final cost that was in the millions, which amazed me because I am likely to never see that much money at one place in one time in my entire life. And as you may imagine for a price that large, the report took a while to do. Afterwards, I was asked to go through a subcontractor proposal in which they asked to use a specific type of material for a job. Everything they had turned out to be fine, and I just had to pdf the proposal. All they were asking was to use a specific type of paver, and sand. Day 15 had me working on autocad the entire day. That is it; I am not kidding. I was doing drawings of the digging heights for a building that was being put up. What do I mean by that you may ask? Well, when you have to make something where part of the building goes under ground, like supports for example, you logically need to have room for the workers to dig. So, the workers also dig out some extra space for equipment and the like. That was all I did. It was a large drawing that required quite a bit for work. As for Day 16... well I didn't go to work on the 16 due to what I like to call crazy weather. Due to all the snow, my school didn't want to force a whole bunch of "high schoolers" to have to drive who knows how long to work. So, they canceled internships for today. And that is the story of these three days. In any case, I hope that all my readers stay safe and if they have to drive, they do so carefully. I am sorry for the long wait between posts and if nothing else, thanks for reading.

Day 13, 12/18/13

            Since this was the tail end of my personal working trimester before break, it was pretty calm. I did a little of everything. Some autocad happened, price estimates, and research. As a result, nothing really worth bringing up. So, all in all not much.