This is what I’m gonna do when I retire in 40 years.
6. Cartographers and photogrammetrists — $25.29/hour
Cartographers and photogrammetrists analyze and map geographic data provided by surveys, satellite information and photographs.
Annual salary: $52,600
Growth through 2016: 20 percent
Industry: Architecture and engineering
If you grew up playing with playing with Tonka trucks as a kid, here’s a little trivia you might find interesting. I always thought that “Tonka” conjured up the image of toughness and it’s a great brand name for the trucks. Coincidentally, “Tonka” is the Dakota-Sioux for “Great” or “Big.” The first trucks were produced in 1947, with the first Tonka dump truck coming out in 1949. The metal toys lived up to their name and the design idea “that a toy should be durable and provide the child with as much play value as possible.”
The company that produced the toys was founded as a metal-working company in Mound, Minnesota. After some early failures making garden tools, metal tie-racks, etc., they reinvented themselves as Tonka Toys. Their new name and logo (featuring the name above waves) were obvious references to nearby Lake Minnetonka. Mound is located on the north side of the western end of Lake Minnetonka.
More Tonka Toy history on Hasbro’s page “The History of Tonka Trucks / Tonka brand history” and the Tonka wikipedia page.
Briefly looking over results for old Tonka trucks on eBay, you’ll find that vintage trucks are going for well over $100. For example, this Gambles delivery truck sold for $1426 and this 1950′s Carnation Milk Van sold for $814!
Makes me wonder if I have any Tonka trucks to sell…
According to this AP story, two sisters from Virginia finally made some money using their skills of identifying food items shaped like states.
Copycat items have popped up on eBay, including corn flakes shaped like Hawaii and Virginia. There’s also been a potato chip shaped like Florida, and Illinois corn flake paraphernalia, including T-shirts and buttons.
I’d love to go see the Festival of Maps exhibits in Chicago. Events are scheduled through January 2009!
Excerpt from this Chicago Tribute article about the festival:
If you want to know how to get from Canal and Washington Streets to 5th and Jefferson Streets in Huron, Ill., the only map around to consult was drawn in 1836 by a young surveyor named Abraham Lincoln.
His plat map of a town that was never built will be available for reference starting Nov. 2 at the Field Museum as part of the city’s “Festival of Maps,” billed as the biggest show of rare and important maps ever assembled. Thousands of maps—among the rarest, most important and beautiful ever created—are to be featured in coming months at 30 institutions.
The unusual collaboration of so many cultural organizations around a single topic was the brainchild of the Field Museum, the Newberry Library and private collectors who for years had dreamed of launching an exhibition of history’s “100 most important maps,” said Chicago industrialist Barry MacLean, a map collector.
More on the festival in another Tribute article here.
I’ve had the opportunity of using a GPS navigation unit on two trips in the last year or so and found that most of the time their directions were very helpful. However, here are plenty of humourous examples why you should always doubt your GPS aggravator (signs are already up warning motorists: “Ignore your Sat Nav”).
And here’s a word of advice to anyone using a GPS to find a quick meal near an airport – they obviously don’t filter the restaurants inside the airport terminal from the search results. Maybe they think you might need to use your GPS to navigate the airport to find the shortest route from concourse A to B via Chili’s? Our team in MN found that out when the GPS unit tried to steer us to the McDonald’s located inside the Minneapolis airport while we were driving around waiting to pick up a co-worker.
More on bad GPS directions at The Map Room.
-7 just doesn’t feel as cold as it used to (when the wind isn’t blowing). I saw lots of hard packed snow on a lot of the roads tonight. Expecting a couple more inches of snow tomorrow in addition to the inch of snow that fell over the weekend.
Did you know… the Memphis airport is the world’s busiest cargo airport. The airport owes it’s status to FedEx’s “world hub” in Memphis.
Minne-Etymology lesson:
The word Minnesota comes from the Dakota language name for the Minnesota River: Mnisota. The root Mni (also spelled mini or minne) means, “water”. Many locations in the state have similar names, such as:
If you are looking for a new place to spend the afternoon hiking along a bluff overlooking areas south of Chattanooga near Lookout Mountain or enjoy the sights from the waterfalls nearby, check out Lula Lake Land Trust. The private park that a friend of mine manages is open to the public every other Saturday from 9-5. Check their web site for more details. If you have a handheld GPS unit, be on the lookout for some geocaching sites on the property.
Find it on WikiMapia.
Lula Lake (not the main falls), view north of Lookout Mountain, geocache site
View west from the bluff
What do you call a soft drink?
The south predominantly says Coke; the northeast, California & Arizona use Soda and the rest of the northern US call it Pop.
There are some irregularities where Soda is used around St. Louis & eastern Wisconsin.
It is common to use Coke as the generic term in other countries, such as India.
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