I love my job, but sometimes are better than others. Today is one of those times. Right now I am riding to Memphis (actually Collierville), TN with my office manager and another consultant to play golf in a charity golf tournament put on by the Valero refinery in Memphis. That refinery, which has been owned by four different companies since the Trinity-Little Rock office opened (Jan. '96), has been a great, long-term client so the expense (tourney fee and lost time/revenue) of this sales effort is worth it. Unless our fourth (we don't know who it is yet) is a pro, I don't think we have any chance of winning, but I'll let you know.
For the most part, we at Trinity are very much white-collar workers (we don't get dirty on the job) because we generally don't do stack testing or "field" work. Getting out of the office usually means going to a meeting, conference, or training course. We do occasionally get to tour plant sites, especially those for which we are preparing air dispersion modeling analyses (it's good to know what a site actually looks like when you are trying to build it in a model). It is these times when we get to break out the few tools (excluding software) we have. I'm sure the stack testers who tote equipment to the top of smoke stacks would scoff at me, but try carrying and using a camera, GPS, and two stop watches while also trying to make notes on a D-size plot plan drawing and multiple aerial photographs in 20 mph wind 150 feet off the ground. This is what I recently attempted (except for the stop watches - you only need those when doing visible emissions observations, which are typically conducted from ground level). I even got dirty! Of course, it was just from using the handrail while walking back down the *who knows how many* flights of stairs because the man lift broke while we were on top of the super structure.