Molly and I are in San Diego for the annual ESRI user conference. This is my third time at the conference. There’s usually about 15,000 fellow GIS geeks from over 200 countries attending. Big doings in the GIS world. Took a quick look in the ESRI book store and they had Roger McCoy’s Field Manual for Remote Sensing. Molly thought it pretty cool that she could say, “Hey, I’m related to him.” Lise is home holding down the fort for us. Rumor has it the bathroom is going to get painted.
View of the San Diego conference center from our hotel room.
At the conference center.
I don’t like flying anymore. The first five or so years I worked for Grumman flying was a way of life. I loved it. Always heading someplace new. Now it’s more a hassle than anything else. Sitting in the SouthWest waiting room we were force fed CNN. The Colorado movie massacre. Penn State taking down Joe Paterno’s statue. Kidnaped cousins in Iowa. Stuff I would rather not hear about right now. I’m not looking to ignore these things, I just want to hear them on my own terms, not force fed to me. Twenty-four seven news coverage is probably one of the worst things that has happened to us.
I did hear a new announcement at the airport. Family alert; have you lost a child? Who’s going to jump up and say, “Hey I’m an idiot and left my kid wandering around the Detroit airport.” There’s always a chance it was deliberate. Buy them a ticket somewhere and dump them at the airport.
Not too much birding wise this past week. Everything has settled in locally and we haven’t had time to do serious chasing. There was a black billed magpie up on South Manitou Island but there is no way we could have chased that one. I wanted to chase least bitterns yesterday but I smacked up my foot in a bike accident Friday morning. We just played low key and got ready for the trip instead. Did get a little odonate work in yesterday. No dragonflies, just a couple damsel flies. Haven’t had time to key them out yet. Plus some insect sex if you’re into that kind of thing.
Unknown damsel.
Unknown damsel eating a bug.
Insect porn.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 