Chupacabra

Anchorage (pop. 300k) has 3-4 LAs on staff, split between facilities, parks&rec, etc.  I think the superintendent of parks&rec is an LA as well.

I memed this as a joke, but it’s something you’ll have to memorize.  The sad thing is that after a while it starts to make sense.

I took the 40 hour prep course a few weeks ago.  It’s just generic PM concepts drowned in ridiculous jargon you have to memorize in order to pass a test.  It’s more alphabet soup after your name, but it’s well known and broadly applied.

If you work with large organizations I think it might be worth it.  It’s most common with larger companies (i…[Read more]

My MiL is from Sao Paulo.  She really wants us to spend a few years down there so the kids can learn Portugese.  She’s connected so who knows.

It sounds like it is booming, and there’s an olympics and a World Cup coming up (I believe), so there’ll be plenty of bubble work for the next 4-6 years. 

One project I worked on recently had a 300′ steel cable pedestrian suspension bridge as an alternative (wasn’t selected – way out of line with the site’s sense of place, plus costs, plus impacts to archeological sites).  The cable support posts were going to be around 80′ tall and the cable anchors would have had to have been set back 100′ or so…[Read more]

LOL, I shouldn’t write about communication when I’m multitasking on my iphone.

To clarify, I think a design education does two things for you other programs don’t.  The first is you learn how to solve problems using a design process.  This can be applied successfully to non-design problems.  You don’t learn to solve problems this way in a so…[Read more]

The analytical thinking, technical, and communications skills typically learned in a design program are invaluable in the real world and I believe we need more people with this kind of training in the world.

 
I think this is an excellent point and I would say it is one of the most significant skills I developed as part of my design education.  I…[Read more]

I’m a planner for a large land management agency.  My work can probably be grouped into three different areas:
planning – comprehensive land use plans, master plans, facilities plans, site plans, resource plans (I do a tiny bit of designy type stuff for some of these projects)
environmental services – resource assessments, wetlands inventories,…[Read more]

I don’t think this profession is worth massive debt.  UM is a good school and the job market is still too weak to expect a high enough salary to repay the debt you’d likely have from Harvard.  Not to say there aren’t benefits to going to the GSD, and it could make a difference when you head off to look for work (depending on a bunch of v…[Read more]

Pomona, unless you have a massive trust fund. 

The NPS does almost zero design in house (planning is a different story, though).

I’d need to hear more specifics to give fair advice, but I’ll go ahead and play devil’s advocate. 
 
I recently completed an MLA and pretty much all of my classmates had a hard time with critiques and being directed in studio by the professors.  What they called being “yelled” at I didn’t even make note of.  I was also surprised to see so many adu…[Read more]

A good resource or case study might be the Laws of the Indies.  This was the administrative tool that guided the establishment of military outposts in the Spanish New World.  It included design guidelines that morphed civilian and military.  To this day, many Latin American towns are centered around a Plaza De Las Armas that served as parade de…[Read more]

A good introductory book on the planning of US military installations is America Town.
 
Are you interested in design for military bases or in security design as it is applied to conflict zones?
 
The former is done by ACoE, the various branches, and consultants who specialize in military work (architects, LAs, Planners, Civils, etc.). Also, s…[Read more]

I was at Sitka National Historical Park a few weeks ago.  They have a 1-mile “totem trail” that follows a historic path around a battlefield with a dozen or so totem poles.  It was set up so you could use your cell phone to get a tour, hitting a new number at each pole and then learning what the totem represents, how old it was, etc.  There was mi…[Read more]

When I was last seriously searching for a job (spring 2008), I built an online portfolio using Dreamweaver.  It was extremely useful because I was applying for jobs all over the US and it allowed me to share a large amount of information about me quickly and cheaply.  I still brought hard copies of my portfolio to interviews, but the website a…[Read more]

Get your stamp, glaciers, and then come talk to me about fancy titles.

My favorite places have been Cambodia, Nicaragua, and Micronesia.
 
I would love to travel overland from Turkey to Morocco.  And Ethiopia and Eritrea are on my bucket list.

New blood?  I’m still busy squeezing the last drops out of my current employees.

May I recommend some prozac with your morning coffee?