Project frustrations

When I was in San Diego in November giving a talk, someone from the Boise Rocky Mountain Research Station (FS) heard my talk and decided they needed some suggestion or work done for them. They are trying to map stream temperature as a function of sun radiation. Instead of measuring radiation across their whole study area, they want a vegetation map and will model radiation based off vegetation canopy.

They called us up and we set up a contract to do the image processing for them. Since I was their contact, the project was handed to me. Simple enough project, we thought and should be able to get it done in 4 weeks.

RMRS provided us a project plan / procedures to follow. They obviously put a lot of time and effort into this as it was very specific. However, as I began working on the project, I deviated a bit from the written procedures. Specifically, I secured better (I thought) imagery than what he provided me. The imagery I got was much easier to work with and provided better results.

After doing a sizeable chunk of work, he alerted us that he wasn't happy with the direction this project was going. We talked it over with him and it turns out he isn't interested in our input; basically, he just wanted a hired monkey to push the buttons exactly as he outline them.

So I had to start over. Ugh. It's been a pain and working with his imagery has created more problems that it will ever solve.