Hey People!

I’ve been out here in the Vale Office for a few months now and have really found myself enjoying my time out here. I’ve faced some pretty cool challenges and am proud to say that I have come out on top … until a couple week ago, where I suffered a pretty terrible loss.

STORY TIME!

Back during my first week of work, I went to a workshop for S1 Mobile  for Android Training. S1 Mobile is this really interesting GPS app that might become a big deal in the future for federal agencies like BLM and FS. It puts you in mind of Collector. Anyway, my mentor asked me to learn all that I could about this app, from downloading data, to collecting it, to making maps for the app, uploading and sharing. She wanted me to learn about each step in the process, so I could help others in the future. It was, and still is a pretty big challenge. Naturally, everything doesn’t go as smoothly when you’re exploring something new on your own, compared to doing it in class where only the basics are covered in detail, but I could handle it and took pride in my growing knowledge of this application.

Fast-forward to June, and I finally think I have a good understanding of most of the important concepts and techniques with using S1 Mobile for Android. It was good timing too because, the office just received a ton of new mobile devices that I was told to prepare for both general and GPS use. Set up involved, updating the devices, downloading S1 mobile, installing SIM cards, putting on their cases … and their screen protectors. Easy enough, right?

Installing those screen protectors was a literal nightmare. No matter what I did, or what method I used, perfectly installing these screen protectors on 10.1″ screens was impossible for me, so I settled for installing them with as few bubbles as possible. I mean who cares if there are one or two small bubbles in the corner, but NO, some of these literally have dozens of small bubbles ALL OVER the screen.

I’ve never felt like such a failure. It was terrible, defeated by flimsy screen protectors. My only saving grace was that no one else in the GIS office, seemed to be able to do a great job with it either, though it was clear that the worst of the worst screen protector installations were done by myself.