In my first five years as a young surveyor, I had the privilege of working with a PLS who was maybe ten years…
Author: Carl C. de Baca, PS
02.01.2026
Communities Facing Disasters
Imagine, if you will, the effort it takes to rebuild an entire community, literally from the ground up, after a catastrophic event, such…
10.25.2025
Bad Backsights: It’s Only Money
Did you happen to read the editorial by Juan Plaza that NSPS helpfully linked on the Surveyor Says website? It is entitled Are…
08.13.2025
Licensing Boards
In the latest setback for the integrity of licensure and the protection of professions, some states are ‘streamlining’ their boards of regulation by…
05.11.2025
Making Do With Less?
Pundits have proclaimed for years that our society has peaked, and subsequent generations will have it harder than the one before. Everything is…
05.11.2025
Creation Myth
No offense to accountants but do you suppose that, at professional conferences attended by accountants, that a typical icebreaker goes, “So Bob, how…
03.06.2025
Terminus
Well, it is February, and like all of you, (suuure…), my thoughts go straight to the Roman god of boundaries and boundary markers….
03.06.2025
Rising From the Ashes
A power line fell early on the morning of Aug. 8, 2023, sparking a fire in overgrown brush near the edge of the historic…
12.31.2024
Is it Intelligent to Attack the Artificial?
Artificial sweeteners—sounded good in theory, but now they are thought to be bad for us. Faux meat—real yecch. The synthesizer versus the electric…
11.02.2024
Bad Backsights: A Matter of Degrees
It seems like the fastest way to get into a vigorous debate, if not an outright argument, with your fellow surveyor is to…
