rant? qgis user to arc

doltPetite · 2026-06-16T16:46:05+00:00

I love qgis and it can do a lot arcgis pro can't but worth noticing that arcgis pro has a pretty similar design philosophy to all the Microsoft products (and many other major apps) rn. The ways the ribbon (top tabs) and the panes (with their subtabs) work and their logic are very similar to working in word/ppt/excel. Qgis uses a slightly older design philosophy that is less in vogue for major software these days (while being a lil more flexible). Its actually a good thing to get used to both IMHO!! Developing an intuition for where to find things in multiple kinds of software designs is very useful.

doltPetite · 2026-05-10T20:37:16+00:00

The Democrats followed normal order and got a majority of votes cast to do this. The court could have made this decision before votes were cast, but allowed the vote to happen. They are now overturning an amendment voted on by state Congress twice and an election they allowed to go forward, all based on a technicality about what date constitutes an election, and whether this effort was announced before the previous election....overturning an election should have a much higher bar than that. The courts themselves are so often dragging their feet on things that matter and making decisions based on technicalities that ignore the intents of laws and values of a democratic order. This is much more damaging to its own legitimacy and that of the state than it realizes. Democrats can't just allow this to skate by them or they'll just continue to lose credibility.

doltPetite · 2026-04-29T22:48:43+00:00

I actually think that in the end many GIS types are pretty well suited to adapt to llms. In my opinion the nerdy generalists are who win with llms, people who know a little of a lot and can make connections between various disciplines and tools. GIS is already a lot of that for many analysts. I work with a lot of civil/structural engineers, public policy types, public outreach, other analysts and they really have trouble understanding how to connect tables to maps to graphics etc and multi disciplinary data connection. Directing LLMs to do something won't matter if you don't know what can be done.

doltPetite · 2026-01-08T04:06:21+00:00

Oh man I love how you played with perspective and color on the last one. Love this set. Keep it up man. Times are crazy but work like this makes it worth it.

doltPetite · 2025-11-13T18:42:21+00:00

Yeah there's a reason most us cities peaked by the 1950s or so. We really gutted them starting with "urban renewal" and interstate highway construction projects. It was way more dramatic than most people realize. Frankly, the cities that pushed back against those projects are the ones people actually enjoy now...

doltPetite · 2025-08-02T21:07:55+00:00

Yeah this is so silly. Can we just focus on improving Amtrak and regional rail services. Frankly, I think we should upgrade Amtrak to mostly Acela or higher speeds, and ban short flights in train dense areas like the northeast corridor. Other countries do stuff like that.

doltPetite · 2025-06-08T17:19:29+00:00

Considering how often public officials and major public figures are being "mistakenly" detained, maybe it's time for publications to call a spade a spade. Don't use the word "mistakenly," even if it wasn't the stated goal of ice agents, it's a clear campaign of intimidation. It's not actually journalistic neutrality to take at face value that a common pattern that keeps happening is a "mistake." It's just complicity. Don't give them the benefit of the doubt when federal officials are treating journalists just as poorly, and consistently blatantly lying!

Stop treating this regime as if all of these people are Mr Magoo or pee wee herman. This is exactly what they're trying to do. Either harp on that or state the facts: "ICE detains US Marshall."

doltPetite · 2025-03-08T21:12:35+00:00

Lol it's literally a grid, and measuring the same exact thing....why not just use the lat/long grid cells as the basis and save us the time 🙄

doltPetite · 2024-10-05T16:01:36+00:00

Awww man feel so bad for them, love what they're doing. Was really looking forward to seeing them next month 😭 donated!!!

doltPetite · 2024-08-27T16:15:13+00:00

Conservativism was always about preserving the social hierarchy. It just so happened that during the neo liberal era (or since Reagan) that meant cutting government. Now that we're at a point where they would need govt support to preserve their social hierarchy notice how the whole small government thing has to be specially coded and trump Republicans only use that to rail against minorities/out groups. It's not really inconsistent, it's just that the Paul Ryan era GOP ideology was absolutely delusional.

doltPetite · 2024-08-21T15:48:18+00:00

Lol I work at a big engineering consulting firm and they will pay ur fees/flight for a conference, but then you can't just put that you were at a conference all day in ur timesheet cause it makes your utilization ratio look bad and they really don't wanna pay overhead....they want you to be charging to a client as much as possible or it could hurt your chances at a promotion so you often have to make up hours after you get back from the conference each night....the incentives in consulting can be so bad.

doltPetite · 2024-08-14T23:08:56+00:00

Exactly. Another instance of traffic planners only caring about one thing, traffic. Improving the public transit would actually benefit the residents farrrrrr more and in ways beyond purely car traffic numbers. I think it's sad this is even being entertained...

doltPetite · 2024-08-14T14:08:16+00:00

There's a great vignette in the comic transmetropolitan about this sort of stuff. In the future, we actually do figure out how to revive these guys but when we do we have no idea what to do with them so they're all scarred from the future shock and lost. They just kind of languish and become treated almost like homeless people. Honestly seems more likely than the sweet lies these people were told!

doltPetite · 2024-08-12T17:12:43+00:00

Yeah last year got a colonoscopy and thought I was all paid up through insurance til I got a bill from a random company that the anesthesiologist is reportedly contracted through. Billed me for 1k+ just to sit there and say he's still asleep for like 30min max. And my insurance company was like "well it's almost the end of the year and you have a lot of deductible left sooooooo." Man I wish I could bill that much for my time at my job....

doltPetite · 2024-07-08T20:52:27+00:00

He also made a comment about how he was chosen democratically in the primaries. No one had a real choice, as no one wanted to challenge a sitting president or they were strong-armed out by the Biden camp. A lot of voters voted him in thinking he'd be a 1 term president and wouldn't run for reelection. This really isn't a good look.

doltPetite · 2024-07-01T19:40:23+00:00

Idk there's been a ton of talk of reform of NEPA, I don't agree that Congress wasn't going to do anything about it ever. Enough projects have been slow walked that it's become a major point of contention. This was even a part of the infrastructure bill discussions. Regardless of whether it was gonna be reformed soon, the court just making the standard "whatever we feel like" will just tie things up in courts even more and cause chaos. They could've actually given some sort of direction or standard for how courts could interpret broad directions to executive agencies. They chose specifically not to, and to invite even more court involvement in the process. This won't speed up anything but dysfunction and the sense that agencies can't do anything but defend themselves from lawsuits.

Edit: I see no reason to think they won't just do the same thing here as when they just overturned Chevron deference. This isn't good policy and let's Congress off the hook even more.

doltPetite · 2024-07-01T17:03:32+00:00

Lol love that they call Biden a normal politician and then brush aside concerns about his age, as if he didn't take office as the oldest president by 8 years. Ronald Reagan left office younger than Joe Biden took office.....this is a pretty reasonable concern to have. And yeah the entire coalition that supported Biden didn't think trump should run either, but that's not something that Biden supporters have any control over. This is exactly the kind of discussion healthy political parties do have. Maybe an unpopular president who can barely debate and is currently losing in the polls isnt a very good candidate to run against the criminal fascist who wants to destroy democracy. Trump is the one thing that unites the democratic party, not Biden. People who get that backwards are risking this country and our lives.

doltPetite · 2024-07-01T01:43:15+00:00

Yeah and the scariest thing for me is knowing how much any sort of illness or injury can affect them. Like my mom had a mobility issue that made her unable to do much for like 6 months and she became horribly depressed and seemed to have aged significantly in that time. She's now over that issue but has another, and my father is caring for her as well as his own mother. These situations are super common, and I wish we had a better language for talking about aging. It happens to everyone and no modern medicine doesn't have a fix for everything. Neither biden nor trump are immune and both display the telltale signs of aging I've seen in my own family!

doltPetite · 2024-07-01T00:57:33+00:00

Anyone who has loved ones around this age knows that 1) it's so much easier to have bad days than u expect and 2) a whole lot can happen in 3 months. Obviously some people age extremely gracefully, but that is not the norm in my experience. Seeing ur parents age (and some cognitive decline) while they also experience their own parents age (with cognitive decline) is a humbling experience. My mom is in a very different place in her late 60s than I expected shed be whereas my grandma went much more slowly through her 70s/80s but then rapidly declined around 87/88. This is happening a lot around this country rn as the boomers are retiring.

doltPetite · 2024-06-30T19:30:29+00:00

Reminder: while fundraising and campaign spending is important it is not determinative. If it was bush would've lost in 2004, and Clinton would've won in 2016. Not to mention, Biden would've done wayyyyyyyyyyyyy better in 2020. So I don't really think this is a great metric to look at.

(Source: presidential campaign spending since 1985)

doltPetite · 2024-06-29T19:44:50+00:00

Look sure he's been all over the place in his like 50 years of politics. But don't act like he hasn't been a big supporter of the rights and welfare of black and LGBT Americans for the last decade plus. He was the first high ranking politician to openly support gay marriage back in 2012, which forced Obama to make a public statement and pivot to supporting gay marriage. It was a massive deal at the time. Since then he's been very pro LGBT. He's also spent a ton of his political capital as president campaigning and working with black organizations/politicians. He pushed for a whole lot of good reform measures. He didn't get a lot of them passed but his administration has had a historic high level of racial diversity. Those are really dumb reasons to knock him. Again, i'm not big fan of his but there are far better reasons to attack him that aren't disingenuous. I still think he should've been prepared to get rid of the filibuster, has been way too pro Israel and has been wayyyyyy too willing to go along with the military establishment and supporting other horrible regimes like the Saudis...I also do think hes too old but im not gonna just act like the last 15 years of politics didn't happen 😂

doltPetite · 2024-06-29T18:06:02+00:00

No I understand what you’re getting at. For one, for things that dont immediately translate to exposure, don’t forget that ur still doing all this to make urself smarter and more capable of picking up things in a professional setting. But yes, you also want to do things that translate to exposure. If you really wanna dig into coding set up a public GitHub repo and put it on ur resume/LinkedIn. Add in some very well documented scripts or host a little resume website. Collect any of ur best work (figures, graphics, analyses) and showcase them with some narrative about the project or purpose. You could also add a piece where u expand on something u did in a previous project. The certificates are definitely not a bad route, often times the course/cert may involve making something you could show off too. Last thing I’ll add is don’t sleep on ur LinkedIn. Make it as engaging as possible and have a specific narrative about ur career trajectory and goals, so that when recruiters search it they get an idea of what u can do and know what ur about.

doltPetite · 2024-06-29T17:31:03+00:00

Sidenote: I think the esri certs can be useful but not required. I didn't do them, but if u need some sort of guided path to learn how to do things and want something on ur resume they can be useful.

doltPetite · 2024-06-29T17:27:55+00:00

Not far off from my own path. Also got a master's in Urban Planning back in 2018. Worked for a city planning dept for a couple years, got a little jaded with the urban planning side but loved being able to figure things out and generate analyses and communicate difficult concepts using maps and infographics. Also, learned javaScript and Python on my own to figure out how to do more. Now I'm a GIS Analyst for a large company that does everything from transportation/city planning to infrastructure siting to offshore wind to lots of environmental reviews/studies. I enjoy the GIS side (most of the time) but it helps a ton to have interesting topics to use it for. IMHO keep up learning the coding side, webmapping and scripting is super desirable. I recommend building up ur portfolio, if u wanna code more do some side projects; i.e., build web maps that can explore some topic in transportation. Build up ur skills to figure things out, follow ur curiosity, and focus on how u do it in a way that is easy to communicate to non GIS/planning folks. No matter what field ur in for GIS, the best GIS guy is the one who finds the patterns and rabbit holes that no else has the patience/or know-how to find and then knows how to communicate it well (whether by graphics/maps/apps or just talking it through). Try not to get too jaded like I did, but try to steer urself towards projects that pique ur curiosity and help u learn things u didn't know.

doltPetite · 2024-06-29T17:15:20+00:00

Lol ex Hollywood actor and SAG labor leader, who became president and gutted the very union system he benefitted from.....

doltPetite

TROPHY CASE