• “Meaningful Interaction” is my new mantra
• iPad = running joke
• UX folk may be considered geeks by some, but they are just as highly friendly as they are intelligent … and can drink with the best of them
• I got a bevy of good insights and observations from others in casual conversations – probably as many as from the sessions themselves.
• Whitney Hess is the John Moschitta Jr. of Twitterers – she must have averaged 25 tweets per 40 minute session.
• Dan Willis is a madman as a presenter.
• No matter how well you pick your sessions, you’ll invariably miss at least one that you regret missing.
• From Greg Vassallo, my regulatory issues are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.
• “If a picture is worth 1,000 words, prototyping is worth even more” @gish
• Sometimes it’s better to look UP from the phone when looking for a restaurant – it could be right in front of you.
• “I you own the site map, you own the project” – @RussU
• Even the biggest ‘celebs’ among us are remarkably approachable.
• Finding time to bird while in Savannah was impossible; in the end, though, I didn’t miss it.
• When working out for the first time in over a month, STRETCH.
• No matter how much I learn, I’m consistently awed at what I don’t know (yet)
• There ARE some pretty interesting applications of Augmented Reality; it’s not just about a layer of silliness over a user’s screen/background.
• Southern hospitality is not a myth, and Southern cooking is as delicious as it is fattening
• I wish I COULD build that Amusement Park device from the BRAINSTORMING AND DESIGN PRINCIPLES workshop
• Annoying college students at the Hyatt
• Nearly all the people with dSLRs were using Canon – is there a UX bias there that I’m not in on?
• There IS life after midnight, and I was able to stay up to see it.
• “So tired. Guess staying out to 3am last night was bad idea. Guess staying out to 3 am tonight is ALSO bad idea. I love bad ideas.” – @AdenaDeMonte
• Those designs by the SCAD students at Gulfstream were very impressive – one has to wonder why some aren’t real products
• No matter how well you leave things ‘back at the office’, you’ll still receive at least one call and/or email you need to respond to.
• I think that 90% of my tweets happen during conferences. Or while birding.
• The ability of IAs, UX and IxD folks to design to affect sustainability is far greater than I realized.
• So, it appears my #ixd10 badge will be a case study for next year’s improvements: it’s broken, dropped in a puddle and singed.
• Dante’s ability to fire me daily is unaffected by distance from the office
• I missed Fat Tire a lot, and it’s everywhere in Savannah. Luckily, it’s also everywhere at next year’s venue, Boulder, CO
• I’m determined to be involved in IxD11 – either as a planner, a speaker or both.

Still, any time birding is a bonus and I did have the opportunity to get out more than a few times. Here’s a look back at 2009:

Birding

Total Species (overall): 421 species
Total Species (2009): 209
New Species (2009): 76

New Jersey

Total Species (overall): 225 species
Total Species (2009): 145
New Species (2009): 11

Highlights:

The year started off well, with 5 new species early in January, all relative rarities in my area: Green-tailed Towhee, Snowy Owl, Rough-Legged Hawk, Horned Grebe and White-winged Crossbill. Obviously, the Arizona trip was a major highlight – lots of new species (69, to be exact), great scenery and habitats, as well as a few lifebirds in the real sense – the Elegant Trogon, Flame-colored Tanager and White-eared Hummingbird. Seeing the Trogons was an amazing thing – especially since I got to see them mating, as well.

After a slow spring and summer with little birding, I was able to end the year on a high note with 2 more addition to the lifelist (Ivory Gull and Eurasian Wigeon), plus a new state bird (Spotted Towhee).

Overall, a slow year of birding – not many times out and not a whole lot of new birds outside of Arizona – but I’m still happy with what I got to do. Not sure how much I’ll get out in 2010 – but my goal is to top 450 species, but that will probably require a few day trips or some extra travel to get. Not that I mind that!

Pictorial Highlights

As always, you can see my Best of 2009 set on Flickr.

Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be for finishing up the bathroom: put in the tile, seal it, install the chair rail and do all of the other finishing work. Unfortunately, the drywall guy we hired did a piss-poor job and the walls were so uneven that we have to tear them out and redo them. At least he was smart enough to give us some money back.

But the good news was that it gave us some more time to get other stuff done: we got a new stock pot for making turkey soup, we made another turkey for turkey sammiches, we went to BJ’s for some bulk supplies, etc.

But the majority of my fun was from getting out to do something I have not done nearly lately: bird. Monday took me all the way down to Cape May in search of the four rarities there – IVORY GULL, SWAINSON’S HAWK, EURASIAN WIGEON and RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD. I ended up getting 2 of 4, so not a bad day. I followed it up by seeing another eastern rarity – a SPOTTED TOWHEE – at Palmyra Cove the next day.

Cape May

I got up early – really early – in order to make the trek down to the birding mecca of Cape May, only this time the mecca had some extra rarities to enjoy. My first stop was the Bree-Zee-Lee Marina where the IVORY GULL – a rarity normally restricted to the arctic – had made a lengthy appearance and was giving people a lot of chances to see it. I got to Cape May very quickly and had no problem finding the place, and I was treated by the fact that the bird was already there waiting. I wasn’t there more than 5 minutes when the bird decided to give us all a flyby and I got great looks at the beautiful white feathers that were starkly different from almost all of the gulls that normally habitate this area. After about 45 minutes, it disappeared and I decided to move on, but I had my first lifer of the day.

Reports on the hummingbird had been nil because of the cold weather, so I decided to give the hawk a try. Unfortunately, it – as hawks are wont to do – was flying to other places, so I missed that one. From there, it was a trip over the Cape May Lighthouse with some other birders that I met, where we went looking for whatever might be around, but most especially the EURASIAN WIGEONS, which I had missed a few times before. 3 drakes and a single hen had been seen there earlier, but there was only a single, young drake hanging out when I visited – but it was a enough. My second lifer of the day!

To follow up, I went back to the marina to see if I could get another look at the Ivory Gull — and although it took a bit for me to find him, when I did I was treated to some closer up views, such as the picture below. And then, it was time to drive back. Without even looking too hard, I was able to see quite a few species, including two lifebirds – all by about noon.

Palmyra Cove

The next day wasn’t as nice weather-wise – in fact, it was pretty cold – but the destination was literally right up the road, and Shari could join me. We wandered up to the area by the Little Pit where the SPOTTED TOWHEE had been seen, hoping we would make it’s 9:00 a.m. itinerary (the bird seemed to disappear about 9 a.m. every morning). Lo and behold, my luck held from the previous day and it was in it’s accustomed spot almost as soon as we got there. However, getting good looks at the little lady was a little tougher as towhees often enjoy the thickets of brush. But I was able to get a few shots. This wasn’t a lifebird for me – I’d seen them in Vancouver a few years back, but it was a first-of-state bird for NJ for me, and a lifer for Shari (not that she really keeps track). Still, 3 rarities in 2 days was a nice departure from all of the recent work.

Now I just have to look forward to my wife’s annual trip to Barnegat and Forsythe for my wife’s birthday.

In the meantime, take a read at the Onion’s skewering of Michael Vick.

• a lack of kitchenware that made it hard to cook meals
• the coffee maker that spit coffe
• the bed that had a Shenandoah-like valley in the middle
• the general uncleanliness of the place
• the hose with no nozzle
• the fenced in yard where the fence was only a foot tall in one place and where the gate fell of in the middle of the night.

But the big problems were to come.

It actually started to be a good day. We got some breakfast and went to the supermarket to buy some supplies and a replacement coffee maker. Then we went to Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge for some birding and a jaunt into town for some lunch and some window shopping on the mall. We took the dogs for a hike on the beach and had a nice dinner.

Then we started to see about finding someplace else to sleep – the hole in the middle of the master bed was so uncomfortable we were willing to try other options. The bunk beds in the second bedroom were out, because the mattresses were placed directly on wooden slats, and we sunk in between them. So we decided to see if the couch was a pullout. It was … but opening it was the WRONG thing to do.

To call it disgusting would be generous. It was obviously used and closed up without cleaning it. And the slipcover the put on the couch was put on upside down to hide all of the unidentifiable stains on it. There was even a big, crushed spider to add some accent. We were so grossed out that we actually pulled the slipcover off, grabbed the sheets and comforter from the main bed and started looking for laundromat. At 10 o’clock. On a Sunday night.

So we spent an hour driving around to local coin-op laundry places trying to find one that was open, without any luck. So we had to go back, skeeved out by what we had found. Needless to say, the cavernous bed was preferable to our alternatives, but we bee-lined our way to the laundromat the next morning.

We can laugh about it now (mostly), but it really dampened our view of the place.

When Friday came, we were nowhere ready to leave, but a forecast of downpours courtesy of Tropical Storm Danny gave us the chance to say we’ll get there when we get there. That, in turn, made the prep much more enjoyable. We left later than we wanted to, but still made record time (1.5 hours Haddonfield to Cape May). It was time for vacation to start.

The house was very small (5 rooms, including two bedrooms), but quaint. However, it did gave a few ‘quirks’: limited dishware, a half-assed cleaning and almost no furniture. A breakfast nook table, a sofa and a small table for the cable router was it. Other than the beds, there was NOTHING in the bedrooms.

Okay, so it was small – we could live with small, especially on the beach. And especially when we got the sunset we were treated to.

Forsythe NWR

Since they were staying in Atlantic City, the obvious first choice was to go to Forsythe NWR in Brigantine. Obviously, I’ve been there a ton of times and so it was a good place because I knew where to look for certain things. However, I also knew that this time of year was notorious for the greenheads, which can make any trip around the Wildlife Drive a nightmare. Still, it was worth a try just in case they weren’t there.

At first it looked like we might be in luck. Patty and Al got there just before me and were already seeing their first lifebird of the trip – the purple martins in the houses by the parking lot. Better yet, there was not a single fly to be seen. That would prove to be a short-lived blessing, as the greenheads descended on us seconds after we made it to the main intersection for the drive. A dose of bug spray (and a couple of follow-up applications) proved effective at keeping the bites at bay, but the were swarming us with abandon which was annoying in itself. Strangely, getting OUT of the car at different stops would prove to lessen the flies impact, so we did so frequently during the first half of the drive around the park.

Early morning light was excellent with a warm sun, cool breeze and cloudless sky. However, the birds were a little less accommodating as they were hanging out on the ’sunny side’ of the drive, making photography difficult. Still, Patty and Al were enjoying the few birds that were out – a number of different peep species, their first Great Black-backed Gull, and a few terns diving into the water. Just past the first tower, we got our first good looks as a host of Forster’s Terns were perched near the intake, allowing for some easy photography. We were joined by a newbie birder who obviously had NOT been to Forsythe before, so we lent him some spray to avoid any further damage to his already mangled legs. We were able teach him about some of the local species, which is great – I love seeing new birders getting out there and being excited at almost everything they see.

Back on the ‘old-hat’ birding front, we were being treated to a number of the Forsythe standards: Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Herring Gull, Laughing Gull, and a few less common species including Black Skimmers & Spotted Sandpiper, and something new for me at Forsythe, a Least Tern. And the Osprey were out in force – one nest had FOUR young, which is the most I’ve ever seen in a single nest. I’m more used to a pair of young, but this family went super-sized: must have been a good year.

The big excitement came when we made it around the first bend, where the intake usually hosts several terns fishing and is the most common spot to see a Black-crowned Night Heron. Neither of them were there, but what WAS there were 2 (maybe 3) Smooth Dogfish swimming near the rocks trying to eat crabs. That’s right – SHARKS. I was really stoked – I have always wanted to see sharks in the wild (sand tigers hanging around the fishing pier don’t count), so this was a first for me. Unfortunately, it would be the highlight of the rest of the loop as the birds weren’t really playing fair (especially the Roseate Spoonbill, which was nowhere to be seen), and the flies were getting worse as the day went on, so we decided to work our way to Cape May. Even if the birding wasn’t excellent, how can you bird in NJ without visiting Cape May?

Cape May

After the short drive from Brigantine to Cape May, we decided to get some breakfast. Then it was off to the Cape May State Park to do some birding. The ponds weren’t really doing much, so we jumped into doing the hike around the marshes/swamps in the park. And the birding was just about what you would expect near noon on a hot day in summer – not absolutely horrible, but not too great either. But I got to show off some of my knowledge of butterflies and dragonflies, which Patty and Al weren’t very familiar with. They seemed interested – but more likely they were just humoring me.

I had to get excited, though, when one of those huge black dragonflies that frequents the park was actually grounded for a bit – I’ve been trying for two years to get a good shot, and finally got a bunch of them with this guy. Turns out that they were indeed Swamp Darners, as I had thought. But I tried not to spend too much time taking pictures of butterflies and dragonflies, since I knew that they wanted to bird. There wasn’t much new under the sun for me, but they were able to pick up a few new species – Gray Catbird, Carolina Chickadee and American Black Ducks among them. There were a couple other birds flitting about – including a unseasonal Cedar Waxwing, but I really wanted to get them a Blue-gray gnatcatcher that wouldn’t come close enough for a good look. A horde of brown birds (starlings, brown-headed cowbirds, etc.) ended our trip around the marsh, and we decided to go to the Cape May Meadows.

The Meadows

The Meadows was a little more populated than the state park had been, but not particularly lively or easy to get pictures of the birds that WERE there. Still, it was fun to visit the place and see some older species for the first time this year. And Patty & Al got to see their first Mute Swans, as well as seeing a fledgling American Oystercatcher (a FOS for me) and a Least Tern laying on a pair of eggs. There were a ton of odes at the Meadows, as always, including some Needham’s & Painted Skimmers and Halloween Pennants. But soon enough, the heat of the day led us to the end of the loop and we decided to call it a day to head back ‘home’ for some dinner.

End of the Day

The end of the day (after a Garmin-inspired 26-mile detour) was back in Haddonfield, where Patty and Al got to meet Shari and the pets, and where we went to a delicious dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (thanks for dinner, Al & Patty!). But it was great to sit back after a long, hot and enjoyable day of birding and talk with them and get to know them beyond the pictures. Soon enough, it was time to say our goodbyes but it was – at least I thought it was – a successful day. They tallied 7 or 8 new species, which isn’t bad for a mid-summer venture, although I’d LOVE to show them the migration in Cape May one of these days. Or who knows, maybe next year we’ll all get together in Texas or some other exotic birding locale for a combined trip?