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Those who know me, know that I don’t talk geography on this blog. I talk swag.

As in ESRI conference swag.

I must say, the haul from the DevSummit and Business Partner Conference was pretty good. Two man purses, a water bottle, some notebooks, some pens, and some pocket litter. Yet, what has caught my attention the most, and the something I can’t seem to put down, is the the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy.

Yeah… You know what I’m talking about…

It’s what ESRI tech support uses to answer questions over the phone:

• Caller: “I can’t seem to export to PDF. Is there something wrong with my install?”
• ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy: “Very likely.”
• Caller: “What could it be?”
• ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy: “Focus and ask again.”
• Caller: “What? Well, I think I need to install a service pack?”
• ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy: “So it shall be.”
• Caller: “Ok, I’ll do that and call you back.”
• ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy: “Consult me later.”

By the way, I was using the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy’s REST API to call up all those replies as I was writing the above.

So, see. If ESRI can dish out swag like this, you better watch out FOSS4G and Where 2.0, because your swag is toast. ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy says, “Very likely.” If they give out 14,000 of these things at the UC AND release ArcGIS Everything 9.3 by the Users Conference, well then, kiss cancer and climate change goodbye! Because with the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy and ArcGIS 9.3 working together to form the ultimate Spatial Decision Support System, what everyone is doing or working on will be irrelevant—which the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy says “there’s no doubt about it.”

Now for the tough questions:

• Will I graduate from the ESRI Institute of Technology? Indications say “yes.”
• Without getting shot? Chances aren’t good.
• Will James Fee ever go to any Where 2.0 conference? The stars say no.
• Should Dave Bouwman have won the ESRI Code Challenge hands-down? Very likely.
• Is Dave now drowning his sorrows in a few thousand dollars worth of Fat Tire? No doubt about it.
• Is the estimated worth of ESRI about the same as the number of people in the world? Yes.
• Will Jack ever sell? No.
• Am I an ArcTard? No doubt about it.
• Will there be an international version of the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy? ¡La verdad!

So, in conclusion, the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy is one of the better pieces of swag on the conference circuit this year—because it speaks the truth!

If you don’t already have one, then it sucks to be you—which the ESRI Magic Eight-ball Knock-off & Stress Squishy-thingy says there’s “no doubt about it.“

(Is this the dumbest blog posts ever? So it shall be.)