Day Two

I am going to be away this week attending the ESRI Federal Users Conference in Washington DC this week. These blogs this week will reflect my time away from home and my experience there. Enjoy

I am in day two of the Federal Users Conference and this may be a longer day than yesterday.

There is a short keynote session this morning, but then it's going to be a day full of me sitting in classrooms and learning a few new tricks and seeing what is new and what is going to be introduced in the near future. I have already went through and made a number of sessions favorites and put them on my calendar.

This evening there will be a meet and greet at the Smithsonian History Museum. Usually at the end of every big conference there is a big meet and greet session and I've always missed them. I intend on making an appearance this year and see if I can run into an old friend or co-worker or two.

Have yourselves a great day

Hi ho hi ho

Day One

I am going to be away this week attending the ESRI Federal Users Conference in Washington DC this week. These blogs this week will reflect my time away from home and my experience there. Enjoy

I go in this morning and get my conference credentials and free gifts that they give us (usually a map book, an awesome pen, a notebook and a nice carrying bag) for attending. It;s day one of the conference and it's going to be a long one.

Jack Dangermond, the founder of ESRI will once again be the keynote speaker at the Plenary session as well as Vice Admiral Robert D. Sharp, Dr. Healy Hamilton.

This will consume our morning until lunch, then after lunch it will be either me speaking with vendors or setting in on a few classes until this evening when the Department of Energy User Group will have their semi-annual meeting with the other being in San Diego.

It's going to be a full day for me, that's for sure. Watch Facebook as I'm taking my 360° camera with me this trip.

Have yourselves a great day

Hi ho hi ho

Away I Go

I am going to be away this week attending the ESRI Federal Users Conference in Washington DC this week. These blogs this week will reflect my time away from home and my experience there. Enjoy.

Today I start my journey to Washington DC and more specifically Arlington, Virginia where my hotel  The Holiday Inn Rosslyn is located.

This is the hotel that I usually stay at when I go to DC on business, on personal travel I usually stay in Gaithersburg, but this is just a couple quick metro rides and I'm inside the building of where I need to be. I can literally walk out of my hotel, across the street and a couple blocks up and I don't have to step outside again.

Weather permitting, I'm going to try to make it to the Arlington Cemetery this trip. The last two times I was there it was bitter cold, hopefully I can get in and settled early enough that I can take a trip over there.

Have a great day, I will

Hi ho hi ho

Conference Day 2

Well day one of the ESRI Federal Users Conference is in the books, and now we are on day two of the conference which could be just as long as yesterday.

Today is going to be a day filled with Professional Development Workshops and visiting the Expo exhibits to see what new and innovative things companies are trying to sell to the GIS Community. Hopefully Trimble will be there as I just got a Geo7X a few months ago and would love to talk to a few people about it now that I am more familiar with it. I know Nearmap is going to be there, and it is a subscription we are considering buying, but our area is so specific, I'm not sure that they could provide anything more detailed than I pull in from WVU.

There is a get together this year after the Conference is over with at the Museum of History (Smithsonian). Three years ago I had to be back in Morgantown in the early morning hours as Michelle was going to have surgery that morning, so I went back to the hotel and got some sleep before I made it back to NETL to drop off the car and pick up mine, then come back home and pick up Michelle and have her at the hospital by 5:00 AM. Tonight I don't have to rush so much and I can go and network a little bit and learn what types of projects others are doing.

Have yourselves a great day

Hi ho hi ho

Conference Day 1

Here is where I will be for much of this morning, I'm at the ESRI Federal Users Conference and will be in the Plenary Session all morning watching and listening to new innovations from Jack Dangermond, who is the father of GIS. He is the Bill Gates of Microsoft and the Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the self made multi-billionaire founder of ESRI and GIS.

I got to meet the man three years ago as he was getting out of his cab on the second day of the Conference a few years ago. He's very approachable, very kind and friendly and one heck of a nice guy. I can say in my profession, I have met the founder and the innovator.

After the Plenary Session this morning, we will break into training, where you can go and sharpen your skills with the new technologies that are being developed. Last time I went and picked up quite a few tips and tricks that I use to this day still.

After the Conference is over with, the Department of Energy will have their GIS Users gathering. This is mostly some people from the other national labs discussing what they are doing. I was in on the original meeting three years ago, so it will be nice to see how this has developed. I can also speak with a couple of my old bosses who are in Oregon and talk to them about how I had the software installed on a very locked down LAN and how it is working. I was the Guinea Pig, and made it happen. I should be downtown DC until later tonight.

Have yourselves a great day, I plan on it .

Hi ho hi ho

And I'm Off

It's been three years since I have attended, but I will once again be going to the ESRI Federal Users Conference again this week, woo hoo this is like Disney World for GIS Geeks like myself.

 I'll be heading out from my office later this morning to head to Arlington Virginia where I will be staying at the same hotel I stayed at last time I went down. I usually stay north on 270, but a couple years ago I stayed here and really liked the hotel. I was very close to everything, and could easily get to the National Mall with no problem.

I'm leaving later this morning to avoid the heavy traffic that goes with the Washington Beltway I-465. I'm going to be traveling at non-peak hours just after everyone gets to work and before the chaos when everyone will be trying to get home from work.

Have a great day and wish me safe travels.

We're Coming Home

Well St Louis, it has been a lot of fun but we are leaving today to head back home. Hopefully we will take a peace of you home with us as we have left a peace of us with you. We got to spend an extra night here as to not put us back in Pittsburgh during the middle of the night, so we are leaving this morning.

We will be leaving St Louis at 8:45 St Louis Time (9:45 EST) and flying to Dulles International Airport in Washington DC aboard United Airline Flight 4669 where we should land there at 11:45 (we will cross back over the time zone). From there we will have an hour and ten minute layover as we head towards our next flight to Pittsburgh at 12:55 aboard United Airlines Flight 6191 where we should arrive back in Pittsburgh around 2:00 this afternoon.

It was a direct flight out, but the return flight is a little wacky to say the least. No complaints though, we should be back at the homestead later this afternoon as we drive back from Pittsburgh.

Have a great day, we'll be traveling.

Training Day 7

As I am out of the area on business travel for the next week or so, I will be writing a series of absentee blogs like I do when we take our cruises. I may attempt to write a live blog or two, but no promises as I am going to be swamped the next seven days training for the new job.

Well today is my last day of training, I will be leaving the Durham, North Carolina area this evening and heading to Raleigh to the airport to fly to Dulles. I will leave at 7:50 tonight on  United Airlines 6203 to Dulles. The at 10:05 PM I'll leave Dulles to fly to Morgantown on United Airlines 3142 arriving in Morgantown at 11:11 tonight. You can track my flights if you want on United Airline's Flight Tracker.

I will be home late late tonight and will be very happy to see my lovely wife and spend some time with her. I have missed her that is for sure.

Travel day

As I am out of the area on business travel for the next week or so, I will be writing a series of absentee blogs like I do when we take our cruises. I may attempt to write a live blog or two, but no promises as I am going to be swamped the next seven days training for the new job.

Today is the day that I travel to North Carolina. I'll be leaving at 6:32 this morning and heading out on  SILVER AIRWAYS 139 to Dulles and then have a few hour layover in DC before I hop on another plane at 12:49 on  United Airlines 299 and head to Raleigh North Carolina. You can track my UA flight right here and I'll probably already be at Dulles by the time most of you are reading this.

I'll be staying at the Milleneum Hotel  during my stay and I would imagine our training will there as well, but I'm not sure as RTI is located in that area as well.

Anyways, I'll be in class or labs all day and evening the next seven days, I'll see everyone when I get back.

Saturday Morning Ramblings

Well I sit again in a quiet household, Phin and I are up and everyone else is sleeping. I'm collecting my thoughts for the day and writing my first blog in a while as all of them this past week were written last weekend.

I can't say it wasn't an eventful week, I did have a few OMG moments. The first was seeing the technology that is now being done with drones and creating 3D Models. Professionally the last time I was this awestruck was when I saw Google Earth for the very first time.

Thursday I had a my all time professional high before the days festivities started, I saw Jack Dangermond getting out of a cab so I walked over and introduced myself and had a moment that will forever be embedded into my head to speak with the man who my profession. In the GIS world. this is God so to speak and I had the opportunity to meet him. I was ecstatic.

From that high I had to call Michelle and then I hit the low for the week. I could tell something was wrong, and came to find out that her partner in Crime at work as they call themselves had just lost her 42 year old husband to a long, very hard fought and very valiant battle with cancer. Lydia is 37 years old, the same age Michelle was when she became a widow, so this was a very hard thing for Michelle. Our plans for today is to be with Lydia and her family as they lay Joe to his final resting place.

Yesterday Michelle had to be at the hospital at 5:00 for a surgery. I left washing DC around midnight on a couple of hours of sleep to drive about 4 hours through the snow in the middle of the night to avoid the heavy DC traffic around the beltway and all roads leading into and out of DC to surprise her and be with her when she had her surgery. She has lost so much weight that there is no layer of fat around her diaphragm and a bone was catching and snagging that she had to have it filed down. I made it back to take her to the hospital at 5:00 AM and be with her, I kind of surprised her that I was here as she did not expect me till after the surgery. She is resting and doing fine, but she is still in a great deal of pain. She's a trooper and will recover quickly.

I can't say that the past 48 hours haven't been very eventful for me because my life was eventful on steroids for that period of time. By last night I was just exhausted and crashed and fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. I slept straight through until about the time I normally get up.

I'm up and rested and ready for the challenges of a new day.

Have yourselves a great day and enjoy yourselves.

Photo Flashback Thursday

Once a week I like to take a little bit of time out, time to look through my 30,000+ lost moments in time that I have either captured with a lens, scanned or just stolen from some place on the internet. I like to post up one picture and relive it briefly for everyone. Sometimes this is a pretty easy task like todays and sometimes it is a struggle to find that special picture, one this it always is is a whole lot of fun for this writer.

This weeks picture goes back a couple of years, Michelle and I headed to Washington DC to see if we could catch the Cherry Blossoms take bloom. We went down in 2013 around the same time period, however we had no luck. In 2014 when this picture was taken we hit it just right at the peak period.

This is a picture of my standing by the Tidal Basin and getting my picture taken. Right now ironically as this picture posts, I am not too far from where this picture was taken. I chose this picture because it was a great day for Michelle and I, we spent the entire day at the National Mall and the Smithsonian. I may be at the Smithsonian this evening as my conference finishes up.

Have yourselves a fantastic day.

Hi ho hi ho

ESRI Federal Users Conference.

Well I'm here in Washington DC getting ready to attend my first National ESRI User's Conference. I have attended a couple of the smaller state and regional ones before, but this is my first multi day Conference on a National Level. This is not the biggest one, that occurs in San Diego, but this one is one of the bigger ones other than that one.

I have a full itinerary of sessions that I want to sit on and get up to date with the technology that I make a career out of. This is the opening day and the first half of the day will be filled with registration, the mass meeting where everyone attends as well as the expo where I can see so many new and exciting developments before they are released. The afternoon I have a few sessions penciled in that I want to see. As a Geographer I am going to be like a kid in a candy store both today and tomorrow.

Tomorrow is going to be the busy day, I have 7 sessions that I will be sitting in on, as well as a DOE Users Group Luncheon and the networking reception tomorrow evening at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

Have yourselves a Great day, I'm going to.

Hi ho hi ho

Tueday's Tidbits

* Well that dreaded thing that we all love so much called Monday is now once again behind us and we are staring straight down the barrel of a Tuesday. Time for a tidbits.

* There have been 19,077 days since my birth, that rounds out to 21 years if you count the same way that I do.

* It was 4,300 days ago that I Graduated from West Virginia University completing a goal that I had always had.

* 2,901 days ago I took this very special lady out for a date on the town, I must have impressed her.

* It was 2,125 days ago that I got down on one knee and proposed marriage to that very special lady.

* It was 1,662 days ago that I gave that special lady my last name as we decided to get hitched.

* I have about 2,760 days or so to go until I retire, give or take one or two hundred of course. You never know what could happen, I might get lucky and win a big lottery.

* In 2,398 more days WVU is going to kick the dog shit out of the University of Pittsburgh in football as the Backyard Brawl will be renewed.

* Phil the Groundhog will one again have his day in 345 more days.

* I still have 312 more days to write content for the Goodbye 2016 Blog that I will post at the end of the year.

* There are still 306 more shopping days left to go until Christmas, you still have plenty of time.

* The next anniversary of my 21st birthday will occur in 282 more days. I swear I am the worlds oldest 21 year old.

* The Springs Festival is in 228 more days.

* Our 2016 Cruise is scheduled in 201 More days, this is about the time we usually book our cruise for the year but it has been booked for some time now.

* Jimmy Buffett will be playing in Pittsburgh yet once again in 182 more days and we have our tickets and plan on being there.

* In 165 more days Michelle and I will be celebrating our Fifth Wedding Anniversary.

* There are only 131 more days to go until the Third Annual Friends and Family Picnic at Krepps Park. I'm getting excited and hopefully we have much better weather this year than we had last year.

* I have written a grand total of 4,375 blogs for George's Journal in the 11 1/2 years that I have been doing this.

* Nothing new on the Brother Search once again, like I have said it appears we have hit a brick wall and will need some kind of miracle for this to happen at this point.

* A little bit of work has been done to the Hall Family Tree, there are still 334 names in the database and more and more detail is being filled in.

* I will be heading East this morning, traveling to Washington DC for a Conference. I'm wanting to get an early start so I can avoid rush hour traffic on the DC Beltway.

*  I might try to stop over to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier tonight. I'm going to be busy the next two days and won't get much of a chance to see anything, so I might head over to do a little bit of site seeing this evening.

* On 9-11-01 our Country was attacked. Four years ago I went to Shanksville, PA to see the first site of three where we were attacked. This evening I am going to visit the Pentagon and that areas since it's all by the hotel to see my second site. That just leaves NYC as the only site I will not have been to.

* I am loving this near Springtime weather, I was actually wearing shorts as we got out and about this weekend. I'm ready for winter to be over with, give me the birds singing and the flowers a blooming.

* Have yourselves a Great day and hope that I can get to downtown DC in one piece...lol

* Hi ho hi ho

Returning Home

Here I sit in a quiet hotel room, Michelle is still sleeping right behind me and I'm up collecting my thoughts in the early wee hours of the morning. The Sandman kicked both of our butts pretty hard last night.

I managed to grab a lot of pictures yesterday when we were in DC. We brought Michelle's Surface Computer down so I'll have to wait until we get home to take all the images off of my camera and share them with everyone. I turned on the GPS feature, so everything was geotagged. Maybe we'll see if I can do a KMZ so everyone can see what we saw and where we saw it.

We had a wonderful day yesterday, starting off with catching the Cherry Blossoms in peak at the Tidal Basin, to seeing the Declaration of Independence to spending quite a few hours in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to the Botanical Gardens and the Capital Building, we had a very busy day and we did it all on foot once again.

Today we'll be getting up and eating breakfast and heading back home.

It was a great trip.

It's a DC Kind of Day

Hello everyone, we're here in Gaithersburg Maryland getting ready to start our day. We'll go and eat breakfast soon and then it will be off to the DC Metro's Shady Grove location and heading into the hear of our nations capital to see the cherry blossoms.

We have our alternative plan worked out in case of bad weather, but we will be in the heart of DC today.

This is the second year we have tried to do this, last year it wasn't that successful but this year we have nailed it. I know we're both super excited to spend the day there.

There are a number of Geocaches we may try to get this year that we didn't last year. Most of our time will be spent at the National Mall as that is where everything that we want to see is located.

Have a great day.

Back to Work

All good things must come to an end, and unfortunately for me that includes those fun filled things that we tend to enjoy so much called weekends. Now it's time to stick our noses back on the grindstone for another fun filled week of work so we have the resources to enjoy the times we are not at work.

It's actually going to be a short workweek for me, we are going to be leaving for Washington DC on Thursday afternoon for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Checking out the live Web Cam we might just be getting lucky and hitting this at Peak Period. I'm starting to get super excited, I know we tried this last year and just seemed to miss them, but looks like we might be hitting it this year at it's peak!!!!

It'll be nice to get out of town this weekend, Hayley is living with us so she'll be taking care of the animals for a couple of days while we are away.

Looking at a couple of week time period, I know Michelle has a total of six Birthdays on her side of the family during this time period and obviously as you have read by a previous blog my Sister's birthday is today as well.

Earlier this year I singed up for a five week course as a refresher at Coursera for Maps and the Geospatial Revolution taught by Penn State. I figure it would be a nice little refresher course for me. If anyone is interested in taking free college level classes, check our Coursera's Course Catalog.

Hi ho hi ho

Tuesday's Tidbits on a Wednesday

* Well since yesterday was my April Fools edition of my blog, I had to move my tidbits that usually runs on Tuesdays till today. The blue footed booby is still partying, so I still can't think of a better reason to do a tidbits.

* It has been 2,207 days since Michelle and I went out on our first date together a few years ago. We have done a lot together since then.

* 1,433 days ago I got down on one knee and proposed marriage to this wonderful woman.

* 960 days ago in front of our closest friends and family, we exchanged our martial vows.

* I've got about 6,452 more days to go until I retire, give or take a few hundred.

* 273 days to go until my Goodbye 2014 Blog is written. I need to start getting some more content.

* 267 more shopping days left until Christmas, if you like to get an early start, you have plenty of time to go.

* In 158 days we once again set sail out on the Atlantic Ocean towards the Caribbean once again. This will be our third cruise together and the last on this version of the Carnival Pride before it goers into dry dock this winter and gets a complete overhaul.

* 126 days to go until our third Wedding Anniversary.

* 112 days to go until we party down with Jimmy Buffett and the rest of the Pittsburgh area Parrotheads.

* Only 80 days to go until SUMMER!!!!!!!!!

* This is my 3,596th blog post. I'll be celebrating my tenth year as a blogger this year. I will be celebrating it on Grand Turk.


* We'll be traveling next week, we are heading back to Washington DC for the Cherry Blossom Festival . We are hoping to catch them in their peak, but you never know. We went down last year and they had not peaked yet. Hopefully we'll have some more luck this year.

* We'll be spending much of the day again at the Smithsonian again, much we have not seen and would love to see.

*  We have made it down to the trails a couple of times this week already, Monday we took Sadie and Gracie and that just wasn't a good trip. Sadie is getting very old and may be nearing a time that we would all regret. Blind, no teeth, deaf and losing her way even around the house.

* I am still thinking we need to do a pic nic this summer. Everyone has been very receptive towards it, now we just need to find a day or a date that does not conflict with anyones schedules. To my siblings who will be attending, what days do or do not work for you. What days do not conflict with previous plans or parties?

* We have our grill assembled, now all we need is nice weather and a big bag of meat to throw on it. We've still got the big gas one that we are going to use, but I'm ready to break out the charcoal one.

* Does anyone else have any ideas for family get togethers this summer?

* Hi ho hi ho

Tired

To say that both Michelle and I are tired and worn out from yesterday is a bit of an understatement. Both of our feet are worn and tired as we did everything on foot yesterday from Metro Central.

We started out by going to see the White House. We saw both the front and back and the parks on both sides. We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial where we ran into Michelle's niece Abby as she was there on a school field trip. We saw the reflecting pool and the Korean War memorial, we tried to visit the Tidal Basin and see the Cherry Blossoms but they had not bloomed yet so we were out of luck.

We visited the World War II Memorial and walked by the Washington Monument, but it has been closed due to structural damage it suffered from the earth quake a few years ago.

We got tickets and attempted to go to the Holocaust Museum, but our tickets were for four hours later, so we decided to move on and try to return if we were near there around that time. It's something we would like to both see, but that will have to be the next trip here before we can do that.

We did make it to a couple of the Smithsonian's Museums. The Museum of American History and the Museum of Natural history. Both places were very fascinating, but by late afternoon we were both getting a little bit tired and decided to go back to Metro Central and ride the train back out to Shady Grove.

It was a full day, I told Michelle we will have to come down a few more times as there is just too much to see in one day. We could have taken a tour bus, but we wanted to be there and experience it rather than just drive by it.

We'll be heading back home later this morning and are talking about stopping by the outlets in Hagerstown first, but we'll have to see how she feels first.

Have a great day.

Big Ole Hairy Friday

National Mall,  Washington DC

Yes it is once again that time of the week that we all look foreword to, when we can take time to cease the labors for the week and take a little bit of needed time out to enjoy the fruits of those labors. It is once again the dawn of another weekend, and a Big Ole Hairy Friday. For us, we're already off and we are in Washington DC today.

We're taking an extended weekend, we drove down to Gaithersburg Maryland last night and are planning on spending today at the National Mall in Washington DC. The Cherry Blossom Festival is our main agenda for the day, but we'll be hitting the Smithsonian and a few sights around town before heading back to the hotel this evening.

We have our gnome with us today and we'll be taking a few pictures using it as a prop at a few places around DC. I'm kind of hoping Barrack will come out and pose with our gnome, but he's probably going to be a little bit busy. =)

Have a great day, we will.