Finished up the ESRI conference in San Diego. Great time. Whole bunch of GIS geeks like me. Scary thought. Molly went to the conference with me. She liked hanging out at the Hilton pool while I attended sessions on spatial statistics. Who won there? We scored much booty in the trade show. I was afraid my bag was going to be overweight.
Over 15,000 people attended the conference. Initially I thought over 200 countries were represented but in fact it was only 131 countries. Heard more than one language I didn’t recognize. Pretty amusing to overhear someone yammering away in an unrecognizable language and then hear “ArcGIS online” in the middle of the conversation. There was a Nigerian gentleman beside me at a trade show booth. The way he was dressed I assumed he’s that deposed king that’s been sending emails to help get his money out of the country. I’m glad he didn’t recognize my name and ask why I never responded to his email.
Fellow geogeeks.
Plenary session for 15,000.
San Diego is a lot different than when I was there during my Navy days, lo those many years ago. I didn’t serve under Noah but it wasn’t too long after that. Wood ships and iron men or something like that.
Ed in the navy.
The real “Old Navy”.
Port of call – San Diego. Sailors and dogs keep off the grass.
San Diego was a navy town back then but I wouldn’t have called it a friendly navy town. This was the time of signs saying “No Dogs Or Sailors Allowed On The Grass.” Maybe I was just in the wrong parts of town but the place has cleaned up considerably and is really pretty nice now. You didn’t see sushi or Indian restaurants back then. There’s lots of homeless people though. I guess the weather probably makes San Diego a better place to be homeless than Chicago.
San Diego has over 90 golf courses and more retired admirals than any other city in the world. I doubt any of them are among the homeless. The number of admirals may be why the city even has a couple Navy monuments now. One is dedicated to Taffy 3, where an outnumbered and completely outgunned navy group took on a much larger and far better armed Japanese fleet. This was a classic last stand battle, an Alamo with survivors. E.E. Evans, who I believe was Cherokee, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions commanding the USS Johnston. Once the Johnston was completely shot up and sinking Evans ordered the crew to abandon ship. He went back to make a final check for survivors but was never seen again. He and his crew fought so fiercely that the skipper of a passing Japanese ship saluted them. Iron ships and iron men. I couldn’t get any good pictures of the monument because there were always people there.
Didn’t get much birding in. Just what I could get on the waterfront by the convention center. I did get three new species for the year, Heermann’s gull, western gull, and brown pelican. The two gulls were life birds for me too. Also had a really out of place ash-throated flycatcher, right on the waterfront. The only other passerine we saw there was pigeons. The flycatcher didn’t add to the count because we got them in Arizona but it was interesting to see it on the waterfront. Right by the USS Midway museum.
A very lost ash-throated flycatcher
The birds were a pleasant little addition to the conference. The count now stands at 284 for me, 271 for Lise, and a combined count of 287. Onward and upward.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 