Cartographic Skills - Orientation

Cartographic Skills - Orientation Lab

This assignment was difficult because I have no previous experience with blogging or reading blogs so I have had to spend a lot of time trying to understand what the expectations are.  Also, I'm still working on my organizational skills so trying to get all the titles, labels, post headings and such all sorted out has left me dizzy.  I'm sure as time goes on I'll get it sorted out, I just hope at that point I'll be able to back track and straighten things out.

But in the meantime, the assignment is supposed to be blogging about me, so here is my introduction post and story map:

My name is Maggie. I grew up in New Jersey, joined the Air Force after high school and ended up stationed at Hurlburt Field in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  There I met and married my husband 37 years ago.  Since that time I have raised my two now adult children while living all over this beautiful country.  I have been to or through all but 5 states and lived in 12, from Florida to California to Maine.  Now I am back in Florida and just love it.

I started drafting in AutoCAD years ago and ended up working for a utility company in Iowa drawing their maps in a CAD based...sort of... GIS system.  While I was there we converted to a true GIS system and I was hooked.  I love maps.  I love making maps with GIS.  Unfortunately life sometimes intrudes and I had to leave work for a while to tend to family matters.  That was 15 years ago.  Now I'm ready to go back to work, but my skills are so old and rusty I wouldn't even consider me for a job. 

While I have experience mapping in GIS, my experience was learned on the job and very specific to that field.  I am very excited to learn about mapping in greater detail and be exposed to more applications for GIS than my limited experience.

Maggie's life