'Pssst! Hey kid, ya wanna be a metrologist?"..."Uh, what's a metrologist?"... "Ya get paid to measure stuff."..."Sounds kinda boring." So it goes at colleges and universities all across the United States.

“So what’s the weather gonna do today?” I am sure that we have all been asked that after answering the first question (about what we do for a living) with: “Metrology.”

I started out my day with a quick chat with a colleague about a client project she is working on. It concerns calibration, and I could hear the tone of a righteous lecturer creeping into my voice.

What happened to the good old show-me-the-money capitalistic down-and-dirty business I grew up with? Where’s the cutthroat competition? What happened to “we’re big, you’re not, we’re doing it our way” partnerships?