Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox crashed my computer several times.
Once switched to Google Chrome, the problem was solved.
Chad would be happy to hear that (he is a big Google fan).

Monday, July 28, 2014

San Diego Trolley

The trolley was very convenient.
I did not have to drive for five days.
From the airport, I took a bus to the downtown.
It took only 15 minutes and cost only $2.25.
From the downtown, I purchased a one day pass ($5).
Both the hotel and convention center are located near the train station.
Train comes every 15 minutes during day and 30 minutes off prime time.
I enjoyed the train ride and miss Tokyo.

DoubleTree by Hilton

I stayed at DoubleTree in San Diego Mission Valley for five days.
The hotel is in front of the train station, but there were coulple issues during the stay.
1. There was noise from the wall.  The enginner found it was caused by the neighbor's AC and there was nothing he could do.  I was not able to sleep well due to the noise.
2. Wireless Internet was down on the last day.  Promotion code was expired for some reason.  Instead of giving me a new code, the front staff kept tellinig me it should work.  I could not check e-mail on the day.
Esri selected this hotel with a conference rate, I would not stay again.
Neither breafast nor Internet was included in the plan.
The hotel seems to care for brand rather than service.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Southwest Airlines

It was my first time to fly Southwest Airlines.
I found a non-stop flight from STL to SAN for the reasonable price.
Both flights were full due to the conference.
Online check-in was easy, but non-reserved seats did not seem fair.
Although it was fortunate for me to find the aisle seat, not everyone could check-in exact on 24 hours advance.
Snacks and drinks are decent, and I would rate Southwest Airlines as B.

Friday, July 18, 2014

2014 Esri User Conference

I attended the conference in San Diego from July 13 to 18.
In addition to Esri Japan employees, I saw Caleb and Derek who are a former student from the GIS Center.
I learned a lot from technical workshops and exhibits and was surprised to see about15,000 people at the conference.
It was also fun to take a train around the city.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Verizon Wireless

We found a better plan for our cell phone.
It is now $65 per month including unlimited text messages!