Beware of the Leopard

To illustrate how distracted I am lately, I spent close to 30 minutes reviewing the word "leopard" in my mind trying to remember just how it is spelled. Is it Leapord, or in a more absurd moment leappurred, as in a cat capable of leaping great distances? Makes sense, but since it does I knew that couldn't be it. That would be more "leapfelis," and we all know that's not right. The sad part of all of this is my great affection for the obscure Beware of the Leopard reference, having for over a decade carried around in my heart the desire to create a cross-stitched sign stating such and hanging it on my bathroom door.

Anyways, today is a Beware of the Leopard (or leapfelis) kind of day. All things I must know are hidden somewhere in the disused lavatory of my mind. Or, in the case of ArcGIS9.whateveritisnow, deep in the recesses of some mad programmers mind hidden from all logical or reasonable extrapolation. I am so ingrained with command-line that this GUI stuff is baffling. I cut my GIS teeth on ArcEdit, and although I find not having to type in "vertex add" every ten seconds a savings in exertion, hey, I have a desk job, I could use the caloric loss! Seriously, getting that darned curser exactly on the line, and on a line that is too thick to see the imagery behind it to boot, is very frusterating. And WHAT is with projections being under Data Management tools???? And I thought ArcInfo5 was unintuitive! But, the reality of it all is that it is most frusterating having to relearn a software that was hair-pulling enough to learn the first go-round. After feeling like I was holding my own in this techno-geek world for awhile, I now feel like a plebe again. Nearly 40 and wet behind the ears. Sigh.

My new mantra: when in doubt, right click.

Ah well, at least I still have command-line Arc ... for now!