Donner Party Through Utah

Utah County Areas Less Than 10% Slope

The yellow areas are less than 10% slope. Data taken from AGRC.

Timpanogas Viewshed

This is a really cool function with ESRI software. You can produce viewsheds by digitizing a point and then overlaying it with a DEM (digital elevation model). This is a function used often with the military. It shows all those areas visible from that point.

Utah County DEM

Made this with elevation data from SGID. Pretty Cool, huh?

Thank You Rosie O'Donnell!

The other day after Rosie said something about how this terrorist in Gitmo is a nice guy and the USA tortured him into making all these confessions, I told my wife that she was psychotic. My rage was piqued at the totally fraudulent and irresponsible comment. My wife and I got into a little bit of an argument over my questioning O'Donnell's mental health. Her mom joined the fray. I was really irritated and so I told her mom, "I know her type, she blames America for every possible ill in the world. Its a knee jerk reaction of these intellectually lazy academics and Hollywood elites. Next terrorist attack, it will be our fault because of Iraq." 'I READ THEIR BOOK!!!!' They both looked at me incredulously, the evil conservative that accuses liberals of treason because they don't agree with me. My mother-in-law said emphatically, "oh I don't agree with that!" I was in no mood to argue with liberals in denial though I thought in my mind, well who then are the traitors talked about in the bible who will abound in the last days. I just stared at the computer screen and shrugged my shoulders as she gave me a discourse on how hollywoodites are people too. I'm sure at one point Rosie was a human being, that is before she lost her soul.
When news broke that these unfortunate British soldiers were captured, I told my wife, "well now we can expect to hear Rosie on The View talking about how it is our fault and its Britain's fault somehow as if the Iranians have no accountability". I had no idea she was going to further validate my point by accusing our government of staging 911. I hate to use two Patton references in one post, but if I could track down Rosie, I'd pin a medal on her. Now I think, if my wife can't recognise that many on the left are indeed traitors, I'm going to start questioning her American credentials. Thanks Rosie!

Outsourcing, does it really save money?

“Most companies entering into offshore outsourcing contracts do so for one reason alone, cheap labor. A recent report by Gartner indicates however, that such a single-minded approach to offshore outsourcing is the primary culprit for those off shoring contracts which fail to yield dividends for the company. Companies often fail to account for hidden transaction costs, increased staff training and turnover costs, as well as worker inefficiencies when creating cost savings models. In fact, the Garter report indicates that start up costs are so high that real savings in outsourcing cannot be achieved until the contract reaches a maturity of one to two years. Many companies have ignored this fact and entered into short-term contracts, almost eliminating entirely the possibility of achieving major cost savings. ZDNet Reports:
"For the same reasons, short-term offshore deals lasting less than one year are unlikely to realize any cost savings," the report said.
The high turnover of offshore staff, particularly in countries such as India, also has a negative impact on productivity.” (http://www.blogsource.org/2005/06/identifying_pro.html)

2006 Election Results

This is another one that I did for my project. This has the 2006 Congressional election results for Utah by county, except for Salt Lake, Utah and Cache County. These counties I had to split up at a higher resolution, because every model that I ran splits them up into several districts. Well, Salt Lake everytime, the other two, a lot of the time.