Su on Optimization

When I was a kid, I had a very messy room.
I now know that because of my undiscovered attention deficit disorder, I needed
to see everything in order to remember I had it. But I knew where everything was!
It drove my mother nuts. (Sorry, Mom!)
Later, in elementary school, I was fascinated by the Dewey Decimal System, and created a card catalog
for all the *many* books I owned and started a neighborhood lending library.
As I got into middle school, pieces and collections of paper became worth saving and a three-ring
binder with tab dividers was the next coolest thing. Our family had a few early computers that did not have
internal hard drives, and I still have old 5¼-inch and 3½-inch floppy disks, all carefully labeled.
The ability to have file folders within a disk was the next craze in my quest to organize things.
Now The Almighty Cloud eliminates the need for duplicated effort on multiple systems. This organizational evolution
is just one example of how I am always trying to find the best way to get the job done.

Su on Surveying

I remember learning in my youth about America's 'Founding Fathers' and Lewis & Clark and thinking,
"They were all surveyors."
I learned to draw scale maps of my bedroom furniture, my house, my yard.
Then I started drawing scale plans of rooms and homes that did not exist. Design is
the first step in making dreams come true. Surveying brings design, math and
technology together. I always tell people it's the most fun you can have on three legs.