Makai's Internship with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Well Friday was my last day, and I just worked on John's fish map and finished it up. It came out okay but if I had more time on it it could've been better.

I just wanted to write a little bit about my overall experience. Everything went really well, even though Mary was out of the office at least 1/3rd of the semester. It was a little frustrating but I did manage to work while she was gone.

I got to look at my review from her, and I did great in all but one area. Apparently, on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being the best, I scored a 2 on "working with intiative", which really REALLY threw me. I mean, I'm a prefectionist so having that one low number really bothers me.

I just don't understand what more initiative she wanted from me?? I worked when she wasn't there, I had ideas for maps that I thought of myself, I voiced ideas even if she didn't use them, when people came in and asked for maps I was eager and more than willing to do them for them. I just don't understand what else she'd have wanted??

Did she want me to say "hey, I have an idea for a map?" How the heck could I do that? I didn't know what the biologist were needing or wanting at the time without her suggesting to me first! When she left lists, I finished everything on them, or if I got stuck, I went on to another but kept going back to try to figure it out.

I mean really, what more initiative could I have?! I'd have rather stayed there then go to class or work, and sometimes I did stay 10 or 15 minutes late, even after coming in 10 or 15 minutes early!

What more did she want?

.... sorry... it just bothered me that she wanted more from me and I have NO idea what she'd have wanted. I really really enjoyed working with her and would do so again, so I'm just really confused.

Not to leave this journal on a bad note, I did get the name of another person with a possibility of an internship with Fish and Game, but I'm tentatively holding off because my semester seems a little full next semester to add in an internship again.

But overall, I really enjoyed this one and I'm glad I did it.

On Monday I began work on some maps for a lady named Lesley. She basically needed me to alter the Redbook Maps to show Planning Units, which will be used along the border, for when they built the fence. Because, as some people don't realize, the fence will affect animal migration as well as immigrant migrant.

So basically I worked on those on Monday and finished all but 3 of them, and Lesley wanted them by the end of December.. I got them to her by the end of November! ;)

That leads me to today. Today was one of the best days I've ever had at my internship. Mary got stuck in Flagstaff and so didn't even get there until my last hour of work. But regardless, I got a LOT accomplished.

I finished the maps for Lesley, and just as I was finishing, she came in and asked me about adding some areas from New Mexico in. I said not a problem at all! And successfully did as she requested and FINISHED that as well! She was very pleased. I felt very professional, going to her office and asking her some questions on the maps to clarify. It was GREAT.

THEN, another person, named Nick, came in and asked if I could create a map with certain rivers, because the one he had had too many. I said not a problem, that was EASY, and within a half hour of making one, printing it, having him look it over for about 20 minutes, then giving it back to me, I had it finished!

The greatest things was knowing that they can come to me, request what they need, and I was able to deliver, even WITHOUT Mary there. It was the greatest feeling.

Then, I was able to finish John's Birds map, and all that is left is the fish map, which I will work on Friday. The things is, Mary won't be in on Monday and so Friday is my last day! ONE MORE DAY. I am so going to miss this internship, I really wish they'd hire for this position! I'd be happy getting paid what I make doing data entry now! I would simply love it. But apparently they don't hire for that position.

Oh well. I won't miss the drive to Northern and 23rd, but that's the ONLY thing I'm not going to miss. Everything about this internship has been awesome.

Today Mary was out, and most everyone else in the office, except two other people. But I didn't want to have to make up the hours, so I was able to finish some more of John's Northern AZ maps. I also combined mammals into the plants/herps/inverts map, which I think will make John happy because he wanted ALL of them (those along with fish and birds) in ONE map, which was WAY too much. So hopefully I'll finish off birds and I have no idea what to do about the fish because the fish are all in the same streams so there's tons of overlappage.

One more week and that's it! o_o I can't believe it.

Today and last Monday I've just continued to work on John's northern AZ maps. They're time consuming and monotonous. But today I also got to finish up the GMU map. I had to make some changes to the layers for the various areas the biologists are assigned to. I used X-tools for this, which is an add-on to ArcMap that works AWESOMELY. It was confusing at first though because they didn't have any visible changes to the file... just changes in the data behind the file. So for a little bit I didn't think it was working until Mary cleared it up for me.

Oh! Also last Monday I got to work abit more on the map that's going in a book about the Chiricauhua Leopard Frog. I guess he didn't want the locations we added AND the old locations, just the new ones. Mary told me this and I was able to go in and fix it without Mary's help at all. That was so great for me.

I also showed Mary some little features with the align tool that she didn't know about. And, when I walked in today, I saw this HUGE birthday balloon Mary got for me! ;_____; I was so surprised and shocked she remembered and bought me a balloon! It was so NICE! And this balloon is huge.. I mean, you can fit a small child in it.

Hahaha anyway, only about 5 more days left of the internship! It has gone so fast...

I need to work on my presentation. That is all for now.

Mary was out today, so I took some time to convert the maps I've worked on or made into JPEGS. I was planning on doing a powerpoint but the maps are so big I don't think they'll show up well. So I might ask to print one or two out.... we'll see. That's a lot of ink to use.

I also finished and printed out one of the maps for John, and it's pretty much done I think. I then worked on the mammals one, and almost finished it but I ran out of time. I can't believe my last day of the internship is the 6th! Time has surely flown.

It's difficult to be "artsy" with ArcMap maps... I mean, the reason it's taking so long for these maps for John (of Northern AZ) is because I go to print, but there's some random city in the way, and if I convert the labels to annotation, they change size. It can do so much but it's not very user friendly. No wonder my carto prof (Dr. Edsall) prefers Illustrator.

Anyway, next week Mary'll be there Monday I think, not sure about Wednesday and Friday. But I'm sure I can continue working on John's maps if there's nothing else......

I managed to finish off the Chiricauhua Leopard Frog map the other day, and the man in charge of it looked it over, told Mary where to edit it to, then she gave it to me and I finished it up. I just had to change the border and move some points around, and I was able to do it without any help. It was great! I also did some more work on John's northern AZ Redbook species maps, and finished one (a few minor edits to do). Mary said it looked really great. I did that one completely from scratch, I am rather proud of it.

On Friday Mary'll be gone, so I'll work on the mammals one of John's, and then start making JPEGS of the maps so I can use in my presentation on the 1st.

Today was pretty cool. I got to do something new. Mary showed me how to enter points via a database file into ArcMap, in such a way that it'd plot the points on the map. First I did some data entry, which was cake because that's what I do for work anyway! I also taught Mary a feature in Excel where you can copy/paste just the values in the cells and not the formula in the cell itself. So that was cool.

Anyway, I inputted the points, converted them to DD from DMS, and added it to the map. Basically with this one, for the leopard frog, I'm re-creating a map that was already made once, adding in these data points so the biologist can then go back through and re-draw the lines. I also worked on the gartersnake map again, finished as much as I could until the biologist gives us more specific data.

I need to start thinking of a web domain, I'd like to create a website to put the maps I make into one specific area.

Anyway, that's all I did today, Friday is a holiday so I won't be there again until next Monday!

The last couple days have just been kind of tidying up some projects I've been working on as described in the last journal entries. I've went back and added up the hours I've worked and they come to 90!! I can't believe I've put in 90 hours, that's crazy. Friday Mary was out of office and Monday I had to ask for the day off, so I have to make up those hours. However, I only have 36 more to do so it shouldn't be so bad trying to fit them in around my schedule.

I think she has a "new" project for me to work on so we'll see how that goes... tomorrow! I should get some sleep.

On Monday and Wednesday I just did the same thing I did the other days Mary was gone, and found a couple more places. Today, Mary returned and I tried to show her where I was at on each project, but she had a lot to do herself so I only got a little bit completed. The stuff I got stuck on, however, have so far been things Mary had trouble with when she intially made the gartersnake map, so that made me feel a little better.

The only thing I'm worried about, is I'm not getting much analysis experience with this internship. Today I did do an intersect with private lands and the rivers in New Mexico, which was new, but other than that most things have just been "import or make layer, create map." I'm worried that I won't get any anaylsis experience and then I'll be sorta in trouble once looking for a job. Not that I'm not learning a TON already, it's just something in the back of my mind.

One other thing, is that I really don't like having a bunch of projects started and not completed. I'm the type of person that likes to start one thing, and finish it before I start another. Now, I know this isn't always possible, like for instance I couldn't complete the condor map until it was approved by the guy who asked for it, and I understand that. I'm just worried that once I get a real job I'm gonna get really frustrated having to work on a bunch of projects at once. I guess that's something I can work on then...

Till next time!

Today I worked on finding the 2-3 areas I couldn't find before for each of the three sections for the Mexican Gartersnake - extant, extirpated, and status unknown. I did find a couple, but I have no idea where the others are. She says to use a topo map, but I don't know where she PUT the topo map so.. it'll have to wait.

I then downloaded all the files for the critical habitat project, and set up that one, then did the same for John's Northern AZ redbook species, and set it up. I didn't get a lot done today because I was trying really hard to find those other areas in the gartersnake map. Oh well.

It is, however, a nice feeling that I can be there without Mary and get some stuff done, at least.

Today I managed to get quite a bit accomplished, even without Mary there. I didn't even get stuck... well, stuck from "not knowing" something, anyway. My first duty was to print off the map from last time, but for some reason it wouldn't print correctly, even though it looked fine in the print preview mode. So I'll have to ask her about that. Also, there were grey numbers printing out with it, even though the numbers weren't visible on the preview... it was odd.

But then, I started on the gartersnake map. I worked probably a good two hours on it, and got a good chunk finished. The longest part is going to be looking up the little areas on the topo map and plotting them on the map, but it's not hard, just time consuming.

Other'n that, same ol' same ol'! I would love to do this as a job every day, it's so awesome.

These last two days we have been mainly planning for the next 4 days, because she will be out of the office (on vacation in Hawai'i - as long as there aren't any more earthquakes). She has three projects set up for me to work on, one is the Mexican Garter Snake population areas, another is a critical habitat of Arizona map, and the last is another one for John, showing the Redbook species of northern Arizona and their locations. Lastly, she showed me briefly how to get some meta-data entered. We were both hesitant on actually entering a bunch because if she finds a template later on I'd have wasted my time, so she said I could just play around with it and enter some info for one of them, just to learn about it, etc. Which is fine by me!

We were struggling on trying to get the key working for the last map we made (a general NAZ map that showed tons of stuff), because ArcMap wouldn't break the items up correctly. We fought with it a while and she showed me a trick - if you cut your shapefile in half and make it two separate shapefiles on the same project, it'll cut the key items in half and they're more flexible (hard to describe). We couldn't figure it out, but I went back to it in the last ten minutes and I DID it :D So that was fun. Today I'll finish that up and print the map, then work on those other things she left for me to do.

I did something on Friday that she hadn't seen before (again :D). She wasn't aware of the tracking feature, so I showed her how to make the name of the mountains S-T-R-E-T-C-H out over the whole mountain range, along with curving the word (she knew how to do that). But it was cool hearing her say "I'm gonna have to remember that!" :D

Anyway, off to the internship I go, wish me luck by myself! I am less nervous without Mary there, because I can work at my own pace and not feel pressured (not that Mary is at all intimidating, but I am just that way), but it is nice to have her there for the stupid little questions that pop up from time to time (not to mention the big questions).

I think I'll be okay. :D

Monday was a federal holiday so I got it off from the internship.

The last couple days I have been basically working on lots of projects at once. Mary seems the type to start a few projects at a time (probably typical of someone in her position), so basically I am just adding the finishing touches to them. I moved some labels around for a map of the Pygmy Owl, and also worked on another project for John Nysdat. This one involves many, many layers on one map, so all I've done so far is created a new shapefile and plotted points where the mountain ranges are so that I could label them with annotation.

There are a few more projects I've worked on, but they're just bits and pieces. One that I did from start to finish, however, was a map for Mary. Basically, I had to find these specific points in Arizona and New Mexico where they might build a dam or reservoir. She needed to see how this would affect known and unknown populations of two species of endangered fish. So I made that map, used green and purple because they tend to go well together and show off each species, even when they overlap. I did the layout myself also, and she seemed pleased. She said that maybe we can even get some analyzing done on it, to figure out how much those dams/reservoirs might impact the fish and their habitats.

On Friday and next Monday, I think we're mainly going to figure out what I'll be working on for the next two weeks, because Mary has a long-planned vacation to Hawai'i coming up.

She also mentioned another 'new' thing for me. The Redbook maps, when posted for public access, will need metadata with them. So she intends to show me how to do that, which she said is tedious but necessary. I don't think it will bother me because I do data entry as a full-time job, so I'm already used to doing the same thing over and over again, especially entering it on a computer.

Anyway, till next time.

I realized today that I've come a long way, and am now a lot more capable of working on my own. Mary gave me a list of shapefiles that needed to be added/created/edited for the ongoing projects "project", and I was able to do all TWELVE or so of them on my own! I had a couple questions but for the most part she didn't need to write up each shapefile step by step, just "edit this" or what-have-you. It was really nice.

Secondly, I played with colours on this other project, and was able to get it looking decent until it was printed. UNfortanately it didn't print in as many colours that showed on the screen. But I had run out of time so I left and intend to finish it up on Friday.

I hope she gives me a nice long list for the 2nd half of October, it's a really great feeling to be able to be told "I need this map" and be able to create it!

I think I've come a long way :) I love this stuff! I think I'm leaning more towards the cartography aspect of GIS than the computer programming or analyzing aspect of it. But I dunno how the job market is for cartographers :/

Till next time!

I can't believe I completely forgot about updating my journal! It's been crazy busy with tests, so that's my excuse. Anyway, the last couple days I've just been doing the same ol' same ol', basically making jpeg's and layouts for the Redbook Maps. But on Monday, I did something completely different and learned something completely new.

I'm working on a new project, that maps the conservation projects going on in Arizona. Well, there are a lot, and so having so many layers on one map is hard to read, so I'm playing with colours/transparencies/etc to figure out a way to be able to decipher all of them. And, I have to make a couple new ones also. So I learned about the trace tool, and something called X-tools (?), that took the polylines you make and creates a polygon out of them. I was able to eyeball the watersheds and then trace, which seemed to impress Mary! After which, when I used the X-tool to make it a polygon, there were no errors, meaning I closed all my ends, and Mary was happy because I had made it "perfectly"! Hurrah :) On some days I feel like I don't get anything done, but on other days I feel like I accomplish a lot, so I suppose it's a trade-off.

So today, I have a feeling I shall work more on making those "missing" shapefiles. I'm a little worried because she'll be out of town for like, half of October, but she's going to make a list up for me. But I worry that, if I get stuck on one little detail, I can't really move forward. So we'll see how it goes!

Here's a triple post for you. I've been crazy-busy with school/work and (today) an ANT infestation that I haven't had much time to update. The last couple days at F&WS has been great. I was converting a bunch of the finished layouts to JPEGS, and was able to flex my creative juices so-to-speak. We ended up changing the design of the original maps! I think they look really professional and "finished". I'm really happy for that. I was also able to take home a copy of the big first map I made for Gunnison's Prairie Dog, and I showed my mom, my friend, and my boss at work! They thought it was awesome :)

Today I had a MAJOR ant infestation (they were all over my bed - MY BED!), and so I emailed Mary and asked if I could make up the hours so that I could remedy this situation at home. She called and said it was no problem, that actually it worked out well because she needed to get some extra work done to get prepared for my next "project". Also, she won't be in on Wednesday, so on Wednesday I'll just finish up converting to JPEGS and then get started on that new "project" if she leaves me instructions. I offered to do the extra hours on Wednesday, but then I suggested that maybe I should wait until next Mon/Wed to make them up, that way she'll be there and I can be more productive, and she seemed happy with that. I am glad :D Even on days she's not there I do get quite a bit done, because Debra's there if I have questions, and Mary always leaves extensive instructions, so it's really great!

Now back to extermination ~_~

On Monday, I continued to work on John's map, it ended up just having been an extra polygon, so I just deleted it and continued on. After that I worked some more on the fish maps, editting the rivers down to their respective lengths.

Today I should be learning more about layouts, and how to set up nice printable maps, which is something I really want to learn, because we didn't do much with it in class. Apparently you can't make a layout and then save it for each map, so you kind of have to make bits and pieces and put them together, print, then do it again for another.

Mary ended up having to be out of the office today, she had sent me an email the day before apologizing. But it was fine, she left instructions for me.

Initially, I looked at her instructions and thought to myself "she wants me to get ALL THAT DONE?" Sometimes I feel like I'm going to slow, but I really don't know how anyone could go much faster when she wants me in at a scale 1:3000 and basically just moving the lines around... I CAN'T go any faster. But it was all right, because for some reason I got stuck on John's map, a random yellow line appeared, so I stopped and went on to editing the rivers in the fish maps. She had made two shapefiles for me to edit, because there would have been too much editing otherwise.

Blah, sorry about the vague entry, brain's tired. More Monday.

Today went well, Mary wasn't angry or disappointed that I couldn't get more work done on the fish maps. And today I worked on John's prairie dog map, doing basically what I did with the condor map, moving the vertices around where he outlined on the map I made him before. I got maybe half-way done, and intend on finishing it on Friday.

A big thing that happened today, was that Mary got offered a promotion! Debra came in and offered her a G12 position! Mary hasn't said yes yet, but I'm fairly certain she'll do it. Her main concern, I think, is that she might have to work different hours and that she won't have as much time to work on GIS anymore. She said, though, that it won't affect my internship.

So today was a good, typical day :D But three hours goes SO fast! I should have taken it for more hours per week. Oh well.

Today I worked alone, as Mary had to go out of the office. She left instructions for me based upon what we talked about on Friday. I was a little nervous to work without her there, but it went all right. I managed to create two layer files based on two fish species, and then buffered them. I ran into a problem though, because I was supposed to edit the streams but I wasn't sure what to base the editing on. I had a list of streams/rivers and two maps that the biologist wanted to combine, but the layers I created didn't really match up to the maps, and I didn't want to chop a bunch of things off. She also stated in her note that it required "minor editing" so if I was going to do what I had thought I'd do, I'd have considered it major editing.

She mentioned in her note that if I get stuck to go ahead and start colouring the birds, herps, invertebrates, and plants. So I went through and did that. Afterwards, John came in and said he LOVED the map I created for him! He was able to sit down and outline the Gunisson's prairie dog area in a matter of minutes. Next, we'll edit the map to his specifications and be completely done with it. Yay.

That's all, tomorrow I see Mary again and she'll explain to me what she wanted done with the rivers.

Well, we received an email reply from John and he had a WHOLE BUNCH of highways to add and so... that's what I did all day today. Mary showed me how to query for specific roads, which was easy, but the problem was at one point it'd be called, say, State Route 66, but at another place it'd be State Highway 66. Then, she told me of something her last intern showed her. Once selected, if you hit ctl+c to copy and then paste into your created layer, it'll copy them over! She said her last intern blew her away... I hope I can do something to impress Mary. I have done two things so far that she didn't know about. I knew about where the transparancy selector is in properties, and I also thought of merging roads so I wouldn't have to name each segment. She liked both, but I really want to "blow her away" with something at some point! I hope I can!

Anyway, I worked on the roads most of the time, and so I was disappointed I didn't get to finish. Mary said she'd make the layout and finish it up. I apologized that I didn't get it done, and she was like "oh that's no big deal" blah blah, but still... I wanted to finish. Although she did say it turned out good and said it was a lot of work because he wanted SO MUCH on the map itself. She seemed pleased but... still... I wanted to finish it.

On Monday, Mary won't be in, so I'll be working on the fish maps. She said she'll leave some basic instructions but we briefly went over it and it seems pretty straightforward. We shall see. I will be nervous about Monday, but I think I'll be okay once I get there and get to work.

Until next time!

Today I worked on John's Gunisson's prairie dog map. I had a base map to work with, and so added the layers he wants: certain highways, certain vegetation layers, certain forested areas, etc. I learned about merging fields and annotation, and had tons of fun with colours! :D It was a great day. I nearly finished the map, I think all I have left to do is add a legend.

It's really cool because he asked that, if possible, he'd like the map by Monday's staff meeting and ta da! He shall get it! Once he gets it, he'll draw all over it to indicate where he wants the area indicated for the prairie dog's habitat, then he'll give it back to us and we'll finish up the map!

I believe that on Friday, I shall be working on colouring the birds' maps. I love playing with colours, so I am excited! I also met one man today, I can't recall his name but he works with Bald Eagles and getting them off the endangered species list, etc. So cool!

I can't wait until Friday :D

Today was an excellent day...! I managed to finish off my first map! It took me a little longer than I'd have thought just because of the mess up that first day, but my goal when I went into 'work' today was to finish the condor map.. and I did! Mary seemed very pleased as well! We did a lot of chatting today also, it's so comfortable being there. We talked about our pets and then since I finished the map a little early, I had about 10-15 minutes until I had to leave. But instead of just bolting out I decided a little chit chat was in order, and she seemed to agree! So we talked about... car wrecks!

More importantly, today I got to meet with John Nystedt, a biologist who needs a map for the Guinesson's Prairie Dog. I listed as he told Mary what he needed. He also brought his two children with him, 3 and 5 years old. Now, I can't normally handle children, but his were very well behaved. I can't believe the difference between an "educated" person's child, and an "uneducated" person's child. Working in retail exposed me to many of the latter, and I can definitely say there is a difference between the way they act in general.

Anyway! The bad part of today. I was at my internship from 9:30-12:30, then I had to go to work until about 9:30 tonight. My feet.... are HUGE. They are horribly swollen, and it has me a little worried. So I guess I'm going to have to start walking every hour or so to avoid this problem.

But otherwise... today was GREAT! I feel so accomplished! Next week, on with colours and/or the prairie dog map!

Well yesterday went well. I got to work more on my condor map, and I figured out why I messed up before. So hopefully I'll be able to avoid doing the same thing wrong again. Mary is so understanding.. but messing up over and over again probably won't look that good. We also talked about colours for the bird maps, and I thought about it while I was doing my map then suggested maybe an orange with a light orange/tan, because mammals were brown and fish were blue/green. But I don't think I'll play with colours into I finish the condor map.

Apparently she's meeting with someone regarding a map for a species of prairie dog, which she offered to have me meet the biologist so I can see what it's like when she gets the info for the actual maps. That'll be happening tomorrow. I also hope to finish my condor map tomorrow!!! But time just FLIES when you're there... and since this week I had been making up time, tomorrow I'll only be there for 3 hours so I don't know if I'll have enough time to finish it. ~_~

And Monday's a holiday, I have off from school, the internship, AND work (for once!). I might make a trip up to the Out of Africa park... if it's not unbearably hot.

Till next time!

Yesterday, the 28th, was my first real day of doing anything productive at my internship. The computer was working fine, although the security test was still unavailable online. Mary managed to get a CD from Larry the tech guy, so hopefully on Wednesday I'll be able to take the security test.

So we opened up the Red Book project, and I got started on a map. The first one is the California Condor map, which just needs updated. She figured it's the easiest one to do so we'll do it first. Basically, all I need to do is extend the boundary of its range down, so I made a layer of its new range and then started to edit, moving the sides of the boundary down to the new boundary. It was going great, time was flying (I was even there an extra 1.5 hours early to make up for last Friday when she had to go to a meeting), and I was about done. Debra came in to ask me about the ethics book and to make sure I read it. When I went back to the map, and zoomed out, some lines had gotten crossed and my last hour of work was ruined! We tried to figure out where the lines got crossed, and it was getting late, but I was determined to find it! But then ArcMap died completely and we just stopped. So Wednesday I hope to fix or re-do this part of the map. I was so frustrated that I messed up!

Luckily, once I started working the stuff started coming back to me. Things I learned in my GIS lab course helped me in editing and remembering to save edits. I was so happy that I managed to get some work done, which tells me that hey, maybe this is a good job for me after all! And also, being frustrated about messing up at the end helps to make me feel I'd take this job seriously.

Another thing that was fun, was during lunch I was listening to the biologists talking about things, and it's just so amazing to me to be in an environment where talking about wolves and them attacking cattle and the like is COMMON. It's so hard to find people who are into the same things when all a person really cares about are animals. Haha.

So far, I'm fitting in well and I hope that it continues, everyone there seems really nice and kind and helpful. I can't wait until Wednesday! (Which is a big deal, I was SO worried about going in on Monday morning, I almost wanted to drop the internship!).

Until next time!

I was very nervous. I was afraid that because I don't have a lot of actual experience working with ArcMap, etc, I would just sit down and stare at the computer like "duh!". But! The first day was good because we basically just did paperwork, and Mary explained exactly what they do there regarding the Red Book project. In this project they map out the locations of all the endangered animals in Arizona. She explained to me the steps on how to do this, and then, she said "But I don't expect you to know how to do everything I just said" and that lifted a huge weight off of my chest. But the things she mentioned did ring a bell in my mind, this weekend I plan on checking out my old labs from GIS I and refreshing my memory.

Another thing that happened was when I turned on the computer, it said "hard drive not found." So they had to get the tech guy, Larry, to come look at it. Meanwhile, I went to use her computer to do security training online... well, that didn't work either! I told Mary this is a bad sign! But instead she just went over the maps and paperwork with me. I then had to read a book on ethics, which is required when you work for the U.S. government. After that, I looked at the maps that were already finished. It was almost time to finish up, and Larry had fixed the computer, so we went in there and I got to play around with the basic layers they have, and learn where they were on the computer, etc.

Friday I won't be going in, because Mary is out of the office and I don't feel comfortable enough to get things done without her there. So instead, next week I'll be going in an hour early extra every day to make up the time. I hope I can navigate through the traffic! :D

But all in all, first day went well!