Good morning.

In this part of the world it's 36°F and dark
The sun will be visible from this vantage point once again at 7:20am.
Forecast for the day 57° high and abundant sunshine.

Good hump day morning all.

One of the sites we have flown since the 1970s is a plant that makes "stuff that shall be un-named" and puts it in large piles out in their plant yard. One pile is for customer A and the last pile is for customer B and they have several dozen large piles of the stuff. Of course the tax folks want their cut of the profits and the company wants internal auditing on how much stuff was made and sold. They load it on railroad cars so I am sure they know the weight of what was sold. The value of inventory on the ground is what the tax folks want a cut of.

We fly over at a prescribed time and the auditors are there to see us fly over. I guess to be sure we don't just make up numbers. We fly it in stereo and we can measure the volume of each pile of stuff and tell them how many cubic yards of stuff is in each pile.

I am always amazed at the math involved to figure out the aerial triangulation to know the exact angle each photo was taken at and calculate the tilt, tip and yaw of the camera angle. We of course try to shoot it straight down but wind and gravity make that impossible for every photo. It is controlled down to the pixel and we can generate a point cloud with a point every few inches on the ground. The exact shape of the pile shows up. With a little more math we can calculate the volume of the pile.

All of that started in WW2 by the British and US governments trying to figure our the German defenses and weapons. It was done with humans looking at the photos in 3D and hand drawing the contour lines. Now we use the same math principals and computers to be a ton faster and more accurate. It is just amazing to me how anyone figured out how to do it in the first place.

Supposed to precipitate crystals this week. Glad I got new tires. The old ones were crappy. Like driving on cow crap on concrete slippery if the pavement is wet.

So...If I just pile the dog poop in one place in my yard instead of scooping it, after a year you could do a fly over and calculate just how much my dog poops in a year. Or would that pile be too small.

It's just that IAMs claims their dog food is more digestible so the dogs eat less and more importantly poop less.

There would be some natural composting of the poop so you need to just bring it indoors and freeze it and then put it in a pile for to be measured. It might be easier however to just weigh the frozen turds.

Be cheaper as well.

Well poop. Sounds like too much trouble.

They used to use dog poop to tan leather. Do they still do that? If so. is there someone buying dog poop?

There are services that will come pooper scoop your yard, are they collecting and selling it to the tanneries?

We also measure holes in the ground. Well really they are usually strip mines or gravel pits. We can fly a facility and measure how much is removed. We had one guy that wanted to see the gravel operation of a competitor because he wanted to buy them out. They would not let him on the property. Our customer knew more about the operation than the family that was selling it.

Do money pits count?

Yes, please. I have some of those.

I'll send you the load Ol' Hank dropped on my drum rug today. Whoooeeeeee, it was nasty!!

If it's wet outside we leave him in the garage so his paws can dry. Apparently, he did NOT do his business outside this morning. I didn't let him out, my son did. :(

G'day Jim, how goes it?

Oh sorry, I see Richard too :)

How are we gents?

Heading for a late arvo walk on the beach with the missus

Trained all my puppies to stop on a rug by the door and present paws for drying/cleaning when they come in from it being wet or muddy out. They immediately sit and I start with shake. Then then the other one. Then stand up and let me get the back ones. Then the last one. If I bend her rear legs back it works real well and after a few times they get the routine down. They especially like it if it is raining enough that they need toweled off, that's doggy fun. Save that for last.

Keep a beach towel by the door. If it's muddy I keep a bowl of water and a wash rag by the door as well. Can actually dip their paws, then wash and dry them off. To be honest Mom started the bowl of water thing after Mom learned she could get them to do the towel thing.

Pepper won't go out if it's raining very much. If she has to pee really bad ie keeps asking but won't go out in the rain, let her out the front door and she "does her stuff" in the front flower bed right next to the porch that has some roof over it.

Hope you tourist are having a better day than I have. IBS is acting up since lunch yesterday...really glad I put that padded seat on the loo.

If this keeps up I may have to outfit the loo like Willard Whyte's bathroom in Diamonds are Forever.

Kia Ora, mate. Hope your retirement training is going well. We're wrapping up this holiday with an O'Dark-30 wakie-walkie. Flying to LAX by way of Sydney. We had a great time but I'm ready to swap a (South Island) NZ summer for a SoCal winter. Are you still playing up north, where it's warm?

Are you having a layover in Sydney?

We fly in tomorrow evening.

Yep, a few hours and then on to LAX. G'night, y'all!

Oh bugger, we'll miss you by half a day in Sydney.

Have a good trip.

Our last night here, camped on a beach about an hour south of Auckland

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