GIS in the Idaho Panhandle

GIS Day was November 18, 2009 and the North Idaho GIS Users Group planned their annual day long conference on this day. The event contained presentations from attendees on the current projects that they have been working on in the past year. There was a wide range of representation from local, state, and federal government agencies to private sector businesses.
One of the overwhelming concepts was the idea of a regional resource center. This is from the State of Idaho's strategic planning for the Idaho Spatial Data Infrastructure being organized by the Idaho Geospatial Office. The Regional Resource Center Proposals are broken up by region and can be found here. The idea of a regional resource center to house spatial data and be a source for training and assistent is appealing. Most appealing to smaller juristictions that are feeling the pressure to take on and complete projest that require a vast amount of spatial data creation and analysis. This would give them a local place to seek data and training.
A second concept that was in many presentation was using Web Mapping Applications to display local data. Most interesting was the amount of people that currently have ArcServer deployed and are either developing custom web mapping applications or are customizing the out-of-the-box Web App. For rural North Idaho there were many juristiction using this technology to simplify distribution of their spatial data out to their users.
This event showed off the work of many GIS practisioners in Northern Idaho and showed a strength of GIS technology in the rural north. Thanks to those who planned it! And thanks to the Norther Rockies chapter of URISA for sponsering the event.

Landis Live @ Pend Oreille Winery

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

My One and Only Political Post

This is just one man's opinion, take it or leave it. I heard people today say that they are an Obama supporter or McCain supporter and rub into each other the result of the election. Today being the day after election day, in my mind, we are no longer Obama or McCain supporters. We are one nation, the greatest, most free, nation on earth. With one democratically chosen president elect. Whether we agree with the policies of our president elect or not, he is still our nation's elected President. Today should not be an overwhelming celebration of one candidate or the sulking of the other, but the praising of a nation where people have the right to freely choose who they would like to lead their nation. This is not a right that we should be arrogant with, but instead protect and cherish in humility.

Justin Landis Live @ Pend Oreille Winery

Sorry its kind of Dark and the audio may not be too good but it is still cool.

Defeat on the Trash Battle Front

We I didn't have time to blog about this experience as much as I would have liked. The Trash competition has been over for some time now and I'm sorry to say that we lost. The closing weigh in put the Landis's at 83lbs of trash to our 92lbs of trash for the month. The winner recieved $190 from the yardsale where all the items sold came from dumpster diving and leftovers from a friends yardsale. Justin has posted a video of the last weigh in on Emenation. Although we lost we learned and experienced alot. We are also ready for another challenge and this time we won't be so easy on them:)

Day #3-6..... This is difficult

I'm really surprised at how hard this it is to be aware of what we are buying and what we are throwing away. I find myself just throwing things out without even thinking about it. Which is why our friends are most likely winning this little competition. Just to clear some things up about why my wife and I are doing this little competition. We are in no way becoming environmentalist. For me we are realizing that we are could be better stewards of what we have and how we use what we have. Many of the practices that we are slowly trying to put into place are not only good because they are less wasteful but they also are very practical and save us money. Like re-using foil and plastic baggies. For a commentary by my Friend Justin that explains why we are doing this challenge follow the Link. It was recorded on our way to do a little dumpster diving. Go here to check it out.
I was hoping to be able to blog about this everyday but I just don't seem to have the time. I will blog as often as I can and try to process my thoughts enough for the post be interesting and maybe meaningful.
We have been doing some dumpster diving. Here is a link to some pictures that we took. It feels strange jumping into a dumpster. This was really the first time we have done it in broad daylight and had people actually see us in the dumpster. I don't know why but the thought of people seeing me do that made it harder. Deep down inside of me I don't want people to think poorly of me which I think indistinctly they would if seeing me scavenging through a dumpster. The more I do this the more it is showing me how I process what I see and how I react to what I see and how I can change that for the better.
One of the things we noticed was that in one day that dumpster we went to was filled. It was empty in the morning and full that evening. Even though it was a business it seems like it was an awful amount of stuff being thrown out.

Day #2

Today, I was sitting at my kitchen table just eating my lunch and I got a little of my lunch on my face. So without even thinking about it I grabbed a paper napkin wiped my face and threw it in the trash. Right after I did I realized that I didn't have to use paper napkins I could grab a cloth one that would just be washed and re-used. This got me thinking about how much of conserving our waste is changing our habits and the way we think. There was nothing easier about the paper napkin it was just there. If the cloth napkin would have just been there I would have used that. How much stuff do we use and then through away just because it is in front of us. Or another theory would be that we use a lot of products just because that is what we have always used. We have always used paper napkins so I instinctively reach for the paper napkin when I need to wipe food off my face. I'm not a big environmentalist. I don't think that I'm going to save the planet. But I do feel that as a person of this world that God has created that I should be a good steward of the little piece that God has allowed me to be in.