Cruise Report Part 1: Leaving Home and Day 1

I was hoping to post about the cruise before now, but we've been a bit busy since we got back. We had a little down time so I started on it, but then we got busy again and it had to wait. But, finally, here it is. I've decided to split it into an entry for each day. Hopefully there won't be too much delay between entries.

The Cruise

In case I didn't mention this before this was a Disney cruise. It was a four-day (kinda), three-night cruise to Nassau and Disney's private island Castaway Cay (pronounced "key"), with the home port at Port Canaveral Florida. My travel agent sister-in-law told us it was a four-day cruise, but it was more like two and a half. The ship started boarding around mid-day on the first day, and we got off the ship on the morning of the fourth day. On each day it left port around sundown, arriving at the next port the following morning.

Leaving Home

As seen in my post on that day, the car was frosty on the morning we left. Our plan was to drive as far as we could the first day without staying up too late, then drive the rest the next morning. We ended up stopping in Saint Augustine, Florida, just a couple hours away from the port. As it turns out the hotel clerk recently moved there from our town. Small world.

Cruise Day One

We had the typical free breakfast at the hotel, then drove to the port next morning. We apparently got there earlier than most. The lines were very short and fast and we spent an hour or two sitting in the terminal and looking at the Christmas decorations and the model of the ship. (As it turns out there are two ships, more or less identical except for "art deco" vs "art nouveau" decor, and the model was of the other ship.) We also talked to my wife's folks on the phone. None of her family arrived until after we had boarded.

We boarded the ship and as we entered the main lobby we were asked our names and announced. After that we went to the buffet for lunch, then walked around the deck to kill some time until our cabin was ready. Along the way we happened upon a couple ping-pong tables and decided to play a bit. We didn't keep score, just played for fun. It was just as well the way the ball kept rolling away. Fortunately the portion of the deck with the ping-pong tables had plexiglass covering the view over the side.

We talked to my mother in law on the phone and were told that my sister in law and her family were checking in. We went back inside to the boarding area and waited on a balcony above where we were announced in hopes of getting a shot of them coming on, but after about 15 or 20 minutes of waiting we gave up. After a bit more wandering around, and finally meeting up with the family, we watched a bit of the show they put on on the middle pool deck. Then the ship left port as the sun set.

The cabin was nice. We got an interior cabin to save money. It was near the stern. (That's the rear of the ship to you land-lubbers.) It was comparable to a small but nice motel room. The only problem was the outer metal part of the hose to the shower head was broken and the rubber hose inside tended to kink. We didn't mention it to the cabin steward, figuring they probably couldn't fix it until they got back to port anyway. The cabin was, of course, decorated in a nautical Disney theme.

There were shows each night, and scheduled dinners at three restaurants. The shows and dinners were scheduled so that there were two shows a night, and two dinners at each restaurant. Passengers are scheduled in groups so that each night you eat in a different restaurant and get the same serving crew each night. As it happened, our group was scheduled for the late dinners. The first night we ate in the Animator's Palette restaurant. The whole room is in black and white, as are the staff uniforms, but some of the walls are painted screens with the same scenes in color behind them. Over the course of the meal the scenes are lit up so they appear in color, and the staff changes in to colorful vests. The food was pretty good. It was fairly fancy, as I recall, but I don't remember what I had.

It was late after that so we called it a day and went back to the cabin. There was a towel sculpture of a bunny on the bed, along with a couple chocolates, a schedule for the next day's events and activities, and a card congratulating us on our wedding anniversary which was that month. After such a long and active (for us) day we were ready for bed. As we passed through the Florida straits, as we would later learn, the seas were a little more rough. Since we were near the stern the effect was more than it would have been amidships. For me it was nice. I kind of rocked me to sleep, though I was awakened in the night by the coat hangers swaying and clattering in the closet. They were quiet after I shoved them to one side (which I recommend as a bedtime routine if you ever take a cruise.) I don't think my wife liked it as much. We were told later by our restaurant servers that the seas were less calm than usual for our cruise, but the previous cruise was much worse due to the weather. In fact, we had not boarded by the normal entry due to the gangway being damaged by the motion of the ship in port.

That's it for the first day. More later.

Drinking Game

We spotted this shot glass checker set in an antique shop. I guess the player who gets jumped has to drink. Would you stack glasses when you're kinged, or make that shot a double?

A Mishap At Saturn

Some years ago, a good decade now that I think of it, I bought a program that I very much enjoyed: Microsoft Space Simulator. It was very cool for its time, particularly for a DOS program as you can see from these screen shots. It's been a while since I've run it. I may still have it stashed away, but I really can't remember if I got it on 3.5" or 5.25" floppies. My current computer has neither so the point is moot. (For now, anyway - I plan to snag one off of an older system before I junk it.)

So, curious to see if Microsoft has followed up with a version that can take advantage of modern computers, I did a search. I didn't find an updated version, but I did find mention of Orbiter.

Orbiter is a freeware space flight simulator that looks a lot nicer than MS Space Simulator, as you can see from its screen shots. Unfortunately, it, or my computer, has a problem. When I tried to load the Saturn scenario from the demo section it instantly reset and rebooted my computer. That's just plain annoying.

I do play to try it again, perhaps with nothing else running, but I would like to hear from other users who have had the same problem with it and hear how they fixed or avoided it.

Anyway, if you haven't seen it, give it a look yourself. It looks pretty cool.

Fever Dream

I'm getting this down while I remember it. I have no idea what time or even what day I had it - this has been a little disorienting and I'm amazed more time hasn't passed.

Most of my time since my last post has been spent in bed with the covers alternately on and off and a damp washcloth on my forehead while I occasionally sip ginger ale and water. The dream started with me lying down like that, with all that stuff around me, but I was lying on the ground at the edge of a sunny field watching a pickup softball game. The grass seemed dry where I was, but must have been damp where they were playing because they kept slipping and making mildly spectacular errors and saves. One heavy-set batter fell immediately upon making a hit.

As it happens in dreams sometimes, I rolled to my feet and found myself in my old room at my parents house. Nobody else was home and I somehow knew my parents and wife were out shopping. I shuffled over to the bathroom and opened the cabinet to get a fresh washcloth. (I'm not sure why. Maybe the first one had grass & dirt on it.) As soon as I opened it a hurricane lamp chimney fell out and broke on the floor. I went off to get a broom and dust pan to clean it up. While I was grabbing them it occured to me I should get a vacuum too to be sure to get up all the slivers, since folks are often barefoot in bathrooms. I went outside to get it, since it was naturally in a case in the trunk of the car.

As I pulled out the case from the trunk, a woman walked up to me and started talking. It was Zsa Zsa Gabor, except she looked to be only about in her mid-40s at the oldest and her hair was in a more modern style. I'm not sure exactly, but as I took out the vacuum and tested it I think she talked about a vacuum cleaner she used to have. I recall thinking she didn't look too bad and that if I weren't married I might have made a play for her.

We said our goodbyes and I headed back toward the house. When I got to the door I found that instead of being on the bathroom floor the broken glass was embedded in some tar on the driveway. The tar was a navy blue instead of the usual black, but though I noted that as unusual it didn't surprise me at all. I sat down with a putty knife and began prying up the pieces and feeding them into the nozzle of the vacuum. At that point my father showed up and began helping me pry up the pieces. We had to break up a few of the larger ones to make them fit in the vacuum nozzle.

I don't remember any more of the dream beyond that, if there was any more. I guess I woke up then.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel a little weak, so I'm going to grab a pill and get back to bed.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin... Keep Those Web Sites Rollin'...

Another trio of links:

Scientific American The latest in science news, and highlighted articles from the print edition. You can, I think, see all the articles with an online subscription. RSS feed available.

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing BOINC for short. Install it and hook up with one or more projects to let your computer use its idle time to help with massive computational projects being distributed in small chunks to participating computers. Projects include:
* Mathematics and strategy games
o Rectilinear Crossing Number
o SZTAKI Desktop Grid
o Riesel Sieve
o Chess960@home
* Earth Sciences
o BBC Climate Change Experiment
o Climateprediction.net
* Astronomy/Physics/Chemistry
o LHC@home
o Einstein@home
o Quantum Monte Carlo at Home
o Spinhenge@home
o SETI@home
* Biology and Medicine
o World Community Grid
o SIMAP
o Predictor@home
o Malariacontrol.net
o Tanpaku
o Rosetta@home

Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products & Web Sites A very important resource if you're trying to rid yourself of or defend yourself from spyware & adware. It not only has a list of good software to use, but also instructions on how to clean your system, and a list of supposed anti-spyware programs that are actually spyware/adware themselves or are at best ineffective.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Here's a couple more entries for the links...

WWOZ FM New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Station A little taste of home. This and NPR were pretty much what I was listening to on the radio in my last years in New Orleans. WWOZ is a community-run and supported radio station that features local, regional, carribean, on out to global music. It's great stuff you may never hear elsewhere. Very much worth a listen, which you can do online! (Great even for locals in offices with bad radio reception.) Search Amazon.com Music for wwoz

Google Image Labeler Help Google give better image search results by playing a game. They give you a series of images and you start entering words that fit what's pictured. Another player randomly matched up with you gives words too. As soon as you've come up with a word in common you move on to the next word. Score points by getting as many matches as possible within the time limit. See your partner's guesses after the round is done. Sign up for a Google account and see your accumulated points.

Dang I'm up late! G'nite!