Closed for the Holiday

OK. This will be my last post of the year. The next 2 weeks are going to be jam packed with family, last minute shopping, getting a few jobs out etc.

I want to take this time to thank all of you that have read and participated in my blog. You are all awesome.

I also want to thank the 2 of you that whined about getting to many emails. You are also awesome.

This next year I am going to make things interesting. I am going to be controversial on several items, I will be conducting interviews with people (only RLS), in a nut shell I am going to take this thing to a whole new level. I will be posting in new places and I am going  to expand my reader base on a state then national level.

Note: If any of you are interested in participating in a 10 question Q & A please contact me through email. I am compiling a list of questions and want to post a new interview once a week. Must be an LS.

Christmas is my thing, so I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I want to pay respect to those with other beliefs as well.

This coming year is going to be a real turning point for us. People will be going going back to work, revenue will pick up, people will start spending more and who knows maybe we can turn a profit.

Peace and Love to all of you.

JMW

Lots of Corners

OK. Let’s talk about multiple corners.  A sore subject?  Sometimes!!

A month or so back I and my totally awesome right hand man were doing a boundary survey in Paradise Valley in a subdivision that has zero monumentation.

The only way to get to the lot was to come off of the section line which is the east line of the subdivision and then chase the subdivision corners for a check.

Remarkably we found several monuments around this subdivision that checked within tolerance. I was very happy with that and proceeded to our lot and set all 4 corners. (Yes I filed a map).

The first corner we came of course was at the corner of a block wall surrounded by trees. I immediately saw a rebar with a yellow cap sticking up about .5’ west of the wall corner, shot it and what do you know, I missed it .5’. Then I look around a little more and discover another rebar with yellow cap 3.8 feet on the northerly projection of the subdivision line where no line actually exists.

So there we are in the trees staring at these 2 points wondering WTF? So me being the diligent monkey that I am I start digging next to the wall corner and beat a little concrete out and what do I find, yes a rebar that is called out on another survey and guess what, it hits really well.

The funny thing about this is that the rebar at the wall corner was actually easier to shoot than what these other 2 guys did. They spent a lot of effort to set these points for who knows what reason.

Did I contact them? No. Their monuments had no direct impact on my survey; however I did show them on my ROS.

I guess my point on this is always dig next to the wall corner. Obviously things are built there for a reason. A little research and hammer work can go a long way.

Offer

I was given an opinion last week by a fellow surveyor that I am the only one using Topica for self promotion.

Well I have to say that I honestly never thought of my blog as self promotion.

I like to talk about business and surveying and am doing so in a manner that anyone around here is yet to do.

After some thought I have to say he is right. Anyone that does something like this is doing a certain amount of self promotion.

I am still trying to figure out what I am gaining my blabbing to a bunch of surveyors?? Probably nothing as very few of you is likely to enhance my business my throwing me tons of work that you will most likely keep for yourself.

I am in the process of taking my blog beyond the Topica crowd, starting with APLS members and then to people I know across the country that happen to be surveyors. I will have a significantly larger amount of viewers very soon.

So I am going to make an offer to all of you.

If you have something you would like to promote (within reason) contact me and I will post and then put it on the side bar for a pre-determined amount of time.

Needless to say if you want to promote your survey business it will never happen here, but anything else is fine. It is open game. Yes, even a side business.

If you are an equipment, material or software vendor I will post your ads for a reasonable fee.

If you are an Arizona Joe Surveyor I will post your promotion for free.

So think it over. If there is something you would like to get the word out on, please contact me. I am more than willing to help.

Cool Old stuff

Year end tax planning

OK, the new year is almost here and if you are like me the end of year tax planning is a key part of life.

This year has been very strange, even more than 2009.

Certain areas are up while others are down and others are gone.

I have made it through and next year is looking pretty awesome.

I made a prediction earlier in the year and it has come true.
My prediction was that after the November elections and the Republicans got some control back people would start spending money.

Boy let me tell you, a giant freight train of work came slamming down out of the sky and landed right on top of my predicting head shortly after. I have been running for over a month with no end in site.

How is this relative? Well let me tell you.

Being that this has been a strange year for business and my books were looking like a straight push or a loss, this sudden surge of work can change that.

RJR is an S Corp and operates on an accrual basis, therefore when the bottom line is huge that means a check to old Uncle Sam is written in March instead of Sam writing me one.

So one thing I have to do is defer billing on 2 months worth of work until January 2nd, this will help reduce the profit margin in the company. Another thing I will do is write a whole bunch of checks on December 31 and hope I can end the year with a zero bank balance.

Those are just a couple of tricks. On a good year I would do all of that, I would give awesome bonus's to my employees (I give high dollar to everyone, at least 5-10% of salary) and buy or upgrade equipment and then write myself a huge distribution check.

The important thing is to look not profitable.

Get this, they key to monetary business success is low income and high expenses. It took a while to get my mind wrapped around that since we are programed to believe the opposite.

The CPA is the one that does all of the magic. A good CPA makes all of the difference in the world. I personally have a CPA and tax attorney team assembled that work closely and I consult on a quarterly basis.

There is a lot more to this but I will stop now.

Professionalism – Do I know?

I am a really good surveyor. It’s true. Ask anyone that has ever worked with or for me and even if they dislike me they will tell you that I am a really good surveyor.

Am I an expert? Never!!!! I would never portray myself as such because when that happens I would be asked to testify and that is the last thing I would want to do. That just sounds like unwanted liability. Besides, there are others that are way more qualified for that title and better surveyors as well.

Want to know one of the things that make me a professional?

It’s knowing what I don’t know and let me tell that is a lot.

There is one thing that I am an expert at and that is utilizing other people’s talents. I have never been afraid to go to someone more qualified than myself for an opinion or an answer. To beat myself into the ground trying to figure it out or refusing to ask is detrimental and arrogant.

On many occasions I have sought the help of others in areas from math problems, deed interpretation, AutoCad, grammar in legals, expert witness, the list goes on and on.

Over the past few years my best friends have become a Blacks Law Dictionary, Wattles, my attorneys and a handful of surveyors that I go to for answers, each one are used for a different thing.

Example: Just recently I had a problem plotting some easements. I had started the whole thing incorrectly from the POB and nothing was fitting. After about an hour of staring at this stuff I called a colleague, sent the info over and within 30 minutes I was on the right track. My bad? Oh yeah!

Example: When I get a hold of something like a spiral curve I will usually go to a math whiz for the calc’s.

Example: I recently had a problem interpreting the language in a deed. While at lunch with a friend that happens to be an attorney I tossed it in front of him and got confirmation on my thoughts.

Example: I have twice used a total rock star of a surveyor as an expert witness and because of what he said my attorneys were able to kick some ass.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of another set of eyes, even if they are a less qualified pair they can often see something that you are missing.

Almost every day I discover something new about this profession that I did not know, albeit a trick of the trade or a law thing, etc.

I am sure about this. As long as I am in this profession I must remember that there is much I do not know, there is much to learn, I am not the end all of surveyors and everyone has something to offer.

Title Company Re-write II

I want to thank whoever posted this comment and I also want to thank them for actually taking the time to ask and learn something.
I really got a lot out of this post, it puts things in perspective from the eyes of a title agent.
Please read.

"Anonymous said...

I too, have had a lot of bad experiences with title company rewrites. At one seminar I attended, there was a nice gentleman, a title examiner, who I have a lot of respect for, and I approached him with the, "How come you guys always rewrite our descriptions."

He explained. Not ALL descriptions get rewritten. Generally, new parcel descriptions prepared by surveyors aren't. Generally, that is.

He further explained that when a surveyor writes a new description that is part of a parent parcel, CITE the reference to the original description ("A part of that parcel of land as described in . . ."). That way, it tells the title examiner exactly what your intentions are right up front. Also, if you have a tie to a record line, call that out as well (". . . to a half inch rebar with plastic cap stamped ABC, accepted as the southeast corner of that parcel as described in a deed recorded in . . ."
Again, this tells the title examiner exactly what your intentions are.

I discussed the point of calling out a line as defined by two existing monuments and why that was better, in a surveyor's eyes than just calling out a line without any monument references.

He explained that yes, calling for the monuments AND the record line you are saying the monuments define is a sure-fire way of telling the title person that, "Hey, here's the record line and it is defined be the location of these two monuments."

Then, he explained something to me that I had never considered. He said from a title examiner's point of view, when they have an original description that they have previously insured title on, it's gold (or should be in a perfect world). Now, take it one step further and say the north line of this parcel has a deed call for "EAST a distance of 100 feet."
A new survey is done to split off a piece from the parent parcel and uses the found monuments on the north line to define it's location, but does not call out for these monuments to define the deed line location. And, because we always have a difference between record and measured, that line is now called out as "North 89 degrees 55 minutes East a distance of 100.05 feet to a found half inch rebar."

From a title examiner's viewpoint, since a call wasn't made to the deed line or some statement added like "accepted as the northeast corner of . . ." WE have just created an overlap or gap.

There is now a 5 minute angle between the original deed line and also a .05' excess onto the next parcel, so from a title examiner's point of view, do they insure title to this new parcel knowing there's a potential for the discrepancy?

I think most of us are on board with calling for found or set monuments and we understand why that's important, but after hearing this guy's take on it, I gained a whole new perspective and in addition to that, started writing my descriptions in a whole new way that make them as bulletproof as I possibly can.

This guy wasn't saying he knew a better way of writing descriptions (although I have had many a fight with title people who felt they could!). He was merely saying there are other ways of looking at deed descriptions. In retrospect, I have a lot of respect for this gentleman's integrity. He was doing his job and also gave ME an education."

The old Guys

I was thinking the other day about this guy, one of my first crew chiefs, he went by a certain name but when I found out his middle name was Howard I immediately dubbed him Howie. (He hated it).

Howie was a nasty son of a bitch.  He chewed Copenhagen, smoked generic cigarettes and drank coffee all day. At night it was a 6 pack of Old Style and the cheapest TV diner he could find. He was a connoisseur of prostitutes and had the clap 11 times that he knew of.

He would go to Saudi Arabia for 2 year stretches and sleep in the back of his Land Rover to avoid housing bills and then vacation in Thailand every 6 months, get baked out on Thai stick and bang hookers for 2 weeks, hence the clap so many times.

He carried a 270 behind the seat of the truck just in case he saw a wild burro. He would shoot them on site claiming that they would pull out stakes. (Note: This is true, I have had it happen and they set them neatly over a hill and crapped on the nails.) I suspect that he was part burro himself that’s why he hated them so much.

He avidly hated anyone that worked in the office and referred to them as “office pukes”, he had zero use for anyone wearing a white hard hat or white shirt and was convinced that anyone that wanted to work in an office had a vagina.

While he was all of this, he was an awesome field surveyor (only) and passed his LS the first time. (Early 70’s)

This nasty Mofo made me tough. I was already pretty tough and still am but he would go out of his way to make things very hard on me. He was an agitator. He would mess with your physical and mental status, he had a way of making a person continually question themselves, therefore I became a check freak. I still am.

He had a method to his madness and his training. Those with a weak mind or the PC pussies of today would have never made it with him. They would have quit and cried to mommy.  I actually witnessed people quit on the spot because of him.

Bottom line is that he made people good surveyors. That was his main goal with youngsters and he accomplished it well. He was a living breathing survey machine and he wanted to teach. He loved it, but only on his terms.

Today, he would be written up, fired, sued and have the book thrown at him.

But that won’t happen because one day he was on vacation with his mail order Philippine wife in an undisclosed location, he smiled at her and dropped dead from a massive heart attack. Death was quick for the old surveying donkey.

If you were on his good side he would treat you well after hours (I was), but on the job it was take no prisoners. If you were on his bad side you were total shit and he wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.

Speaking of fire he had an eye-man burn one of his trucks to the ground. Imagine how the rest of the time those 2 spent together was. My question is: how the hell do you accidently torch a truck?? What goes through your brain before and during that??

I know a lot of you my age and older were brought up by similar guys of the older generation. I personally loved these old guys. They were tough and the work ethic was hardcore.

I would love to be able to send these new/young guys back in a time machine and give them 6 months of Howie. They would come back much better having done it.

So let’s all take a moment to remember the guys that trained us. Good, bad or ugly, we all learned a lot.

Because of them, I am who I am today, just a whole bunch more refined.