Category Archives: Travel

2011/05/30 · 08:43

Legoland

Lego's version of the famous Houmas House

Lego’s version of the famous Houmas House

Legoland was 100% worth the trip!

We drove down from Morgan Hill on Friday, taking the I-5 route. Because of construction at CA-58, we were a bit delayed en route, so we stopped overnight at the Rodeway Inn in Castaic, CA. It was a bit dingy, but given that we arrived after midnight I was prepared to relax my standards a bit.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early and made a beeline for Legoland. We arrived shortly after the park opened, and it was surprisingly crowded. Legoland’s crowd skews pretty young; there were lots of under-6-year-olds.

Our first stop was the aquarium. We’re undoubtedly spoiled, but I found it mediocre. Had it not been included in our ticket price I might have been disappointed.

The park, however, was well worth the price of admission. The models are jaw-dropping (see my Flickr stream for a few examples from Miniland, the model city area.) The rides are clever and well-designed, although the lines were long because there’s no equivalent to Disney’s FastPass system.

The boys’ favorite was probably the large, well-appointed water park. I sat in the sun and relaxed while they shivered in the water and claimed that they weren’t cold (the lazy river’s heated, however.)

A note about Legoland food: mediocre and expensive. Take your own if you can.

We closed the joint down, which was easy given that it closes at 6. Our hotel, Carlsbad by the Sea, was delightful; clean, beautifully landscaped, and well located. Breakfast the next morning was included, too, always a plus.

I’m posting this from iBlogger on my phone, so this update is too short to capture the full flavor. Suffice it to say that I highly recommend Legoland.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

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2011/05/03 · 09:30

DC day 3

Tuesday was our first car day. I didn’t want to hassle with renting a car for the entire trip, so I reserved a car with Avis at Union Station. A quick cab ride later, I drove back to the hotel, picked everyone up, and we were off to Annapolis. (This is glossing over some details, like how one of my children, whom I will not name, took an inordinate amount of time to get ready so that we got a really late start.) Our late start meant that we missed our planned breakfast at McDonald’s, but as we headed north we found a convenient Chick-Fil-A and had an early lunch instead.

We tried to drive directly to the US Naval Academy (USNA) visitor center, but this proved to be impossible because none of us knew where we were going. We backtracked to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium and took the free shuttle to the visitors’ center. Actually, Mom and the boys did that while I stayed with the car to conduct a short Q&A for a webcast I’d done for Windows IT Pro. This turned out to be a real problem because I’d planned on using my iPhone as a tethered Internet connection for my laptop. This seemed like a reasonable plan, and I tested it at the hotel, where tethering worked fine. (Well, OK, the truth: it was slower than I liked but it was also cheaper than hotel wi-fi, so it was adequate.) However, I had a hard time maintaining a connection, and when I did it was unusually slow. I eventually got in to the webcast site about 5 minutes before it was scheduled to be over, so I missed the Q&A– my apologies to anyone whose question went unanswered.

That done, I caught the shuttle bus and met everyone at the visitors’ center. It has a terrific array of Navy-related artifacts, including the Freedom 7 capsule flown by Alan Shepherd (USNA 1945) and a wonderful gift shop. Everyone else had already seen that stuff, though, so we went right to the tour. (David is really interested in attending USNA, so he went to an admissions presentation instead, though he rejoined us later.)

Our tour guide was terrific. He clearly knew a great deal about Annapolis and Navy history, and we got to see all the highlights, including the crypt of John Paul Jones beneath the chapel (fascinating story alert here), the Lejeune Building (a/k/a the gym; he got bonus points for properly pronouncing it “Luh-jern”), Dahlgren Hall, and the enormous Bancroft Hall dorm complex. We arrived shortly before the end of the formal class day, so we got to see lots of midshipment strolling around. “Strolling” isn’t quite the right word, but neither is “marching”… perhaps I should stick with “walking” and leave it at that.

After our tour, we went back outside to catch the shuttle bus, just in time to see the local police arresting four people for dropping beer bottles off their roof onto the street. This proved a valuable learning opportunity for the boys, who had never actually seen 5-0 roll up on someone and cuff them. The drive back to Union Station to drop off the car was almost anticlimactic after that episode.

For dinner, we decided to go to Chinatown… where we ate at Fuddruckers. It’s pretty funny, but the Chinatown gate is flanked by a Starbucks on one side and Fuddruckers on the other. Despite the incongruity, we had a great meal, then went back to the hotel to watch a little CNN and zonk out for the night.

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2011/04/28 · 20:17

DC day 2

Monday morning started with a quick breakfast at the hotel’s coffee shop. David and Mom made a quick run over to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to try to get tickets for their tour, which was rumored to be pretty cool. They ended up buying tickets from a scalper, but that was OK in the event because the tour was super– more on that in a minute.

Brief aside: if you’re going to visit DC, you really, really do need to request tickets to things as far in advance as you can. We couldn’t get tickets to the Washington Monument or the White House tour because we just didn’t apply early enough. Six months wouldn’t be too early, in fact. The simplest way to get tickets is to ask your Congressman’s office for help; they arranged our Capitol and Pentagon tours. Anyway…

We walked over to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Along the way, we stopped at the headquarters of the US Forest Service, which had probably the friendliest staff of anyplace we visited (plus: lots of Smokey the Bear images, a bonus). A kindly old man gave Mom a Colorado blue spruce seedling as a souvenir. The BEP tour itself was superb: there’s a short film talking about the process by which paper money is made, then you walk through the tour space, which looks down on the various parts of the printing and packaging process. There’s a strictly-enforced no-photography rule, but that’s OK, as the machines themselves aren’t all that interesting. It’s just a bit jarring to see people handling huge sheets and stacks of currency, and very cool to see the process by which they take blank paper (which is illegal for private citizens to possess– see, the tour was educational!) and turn it in to cash money. The last step is called “monetization,” in which the Federal Reserve takes ownership of the currency and makes it “real” money. I was snickering thinking of how my friend Paul Miller would react to that line.

After the BEP tour (did I mention it was fantastic?) we had some time to kill before our scheduled Pentagon tour. We took the Metro to the Pentagon City stop and had lunch in the food court at the Fashion Centre mall. Big deal; it’s a mall, it’s big, yada yada. However, they have a Popeye’s, so I was pretty happy. Back on the Metro, a short ride took us to the Pentagon visitor’s center. Security, as you might expect, is pretty tight. You go into the visitor’s center through a magnetometer and after an ID check to ensure that you’re on the tour list. When you get to the visitor’s center, you assemble with the other people in your tour in an area where photography isn’t allowed (well, except of one side of the room where there are some static displays.) Then you’re assigned to a guide. Our guide was a nice, exceptionally young, Air Force airman from Nebraska. He did a terrific job of leading us through the tour, walking backwards the entire way. The tour itself is mostly unremarkable. I mean, sure, it’s cool to be inside THE PENTAGON, but the corridors the tour passes through don’t have much interesting stuff in them except for quilts sent after the 9/11 attacks. Speaking of which, the most important part of the tour (IMHO anyway) is the trip to the 9/11 memorial room. It was a moving reminder of the lives lost in that attack. The boys’ favorite part was learning that the snack bar in the Pentagon courtyard was once thought by the Soviets to be the entrance to an underground bunker complex; as a result a large megatonnage of commie hardware was pointed at the hot dog stand.

After the Pentagon, we made our way on the Metro to Arlington National Cemetery. There are no words to describe this, really. We were able to see the guard mount, changing of the guard, and the laying of a new wreath, at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Despite the large audience, there was a spirit of reverence there that’s hard to describe. As much as I like to talk trash about the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the troopers of the Third Infantry Regiment did a marvelous job. (Disclaimer: I skipped the Kennedy gravesites on the tour.) The sheer expanse of the place is kinda mindblowing, too, though it makes sense when you think of how long Arlington has been used as a national cemetery.

By the time we got done at Arlington, we were all ready for a break, so we retreated to the hotel for a swim. Monday’s dinner was at Carmine’s, a family-style Italian restaurant on 7th Street. The food was superb, and there was certainly a lot of it– we ordered the cold antipasto (which I’d skip next time), the country-style rigatoni, and the veal scarpaccio with angel hair. We couldn’t eat it all, which tells you something about how much food there actually was. We all left happy and stuffed. Then back to the hotel to stack some serious Zs– we were all tired after another full day.

(side note: I’ve posted pictures to Flickr, so they appear in the “photos” section of the page sidebar. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to embed them in the body text right now. Sorry!)

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2011/04/28 · 05:07

DC day 1

So the boys and I traveled to Washington, DC for spring break. Our plan was to meet Mom there and spend the week sightseeing and generally having a high old time.

Our flight SJC-ORD-DCA was delayed by nearly 3 hours: the inbound aircraft was delayed by weather, then diverted to LAX for a mechanical. By the time we got to DCA, it was about 0115 Sunday morning. This was not my favorite. However, we’d planned to stay at the L’Enfant Plaza hotel because of its location, so it was super easy to get from the airport to the hotel. We checked in and got into bed so fast I’m surprised the other guests weren’t disturbed by sonic booms.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was only mediocre, sad to say. In fact, the best thing about the hotel (as I write this on day 5 of our trip) has been its location: it’s right above a Metro station and a short walk from most of the major DC attractions, including the Smithsonian complex, the Washington Monument, and the Holocaust Museum. The staff is friendly, and the hotel is in decent shape, but it’s not a star property. Anyway, enough hotel reviews and on to the good stuff.

After breakfast, we walked past the Smithsonian buildings along Independence Avenue to the Washington Monument. We weren’t able to get tickets for the full tour, but the monument itself is stunning up close, and the surrounding grounds help give a sense of its scale (being able to see it from practically everywhere in downtown DC doesn’t hurt either.) The boys had fun people-watching (as did I); as diverse as the Bay Area is, the tourist-y areas of DC are even more so.

A short walk later, we arrived at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I can’t adequately explain how sobering and moving this museum is. I wanted the boys to see it so they had some sense of the history behind the Nazi regime, and I think they did. Matt and Tom more-or-less sprinted through, not unexpected at their ages, but David and Mom kept a more leisurely pace. I can’t say this was a highlight of the trip, because it’s certainly not a feel-good kind of place, but it was probably the most educational (and certainly the most emotionally resonant) of all our stops.

After another short walk, we arrived at the National Museum of American History. Paydirt! We had lunch at the Stars and Stripes Cafe; it was well-rated in Mom’s guidebook and we were all hungry, so that went well. The rest of the museum was fantastic. There’s a superb exhibition of Lincoln memorabilia, in which I was reminded that at the time of his election he was viewed as a bumpkin from the far west– Kentucky and Illinois being far west at that point in American history. There are too many other wonderful exhibits and collections here to list, though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which contains the original flag that flew over the Battle of Baltimore and inspired Francis Scott Key. (My second favorite: “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden.” The boys were commenting last night on how gray President Obama has gotten since his inauguration, and now we know why.)

We came back to the hotel and hit the pool, which inexplicably closes at 6pm each day. That didn’t stop the boys from enjoying the water, or me from enjoying the sun. Given that most of the museums and attractions close at either 5pm or 5:30pm, this isn’t terrible, but it would be nice to have a bit more flexibility.

For dinner, we trekked to Ben’s Chili Bowl, which has been in the same location since 1958. The chili fries were excellent; the chili itself was awfully good too, though it was quite spicy. Dinner really reinforced the value of the Metro, too; it was simple to go from the hotel to dinner and back again without the hassle of parking or getting lost. The milkshakes at Ben’s are excellent too.

After that, it was time for bed! Everyone was tired from our late night, so no one complained and we all slept really well. More tomorrow…

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2010/11/11 · 19:47

Veterans’ Day in Pensacola

Today was surprisingly busy for a Veterans Day. Of course, the best way to celebrate Veterans Day would be for veterans to get the actual day off while everyone else works. Until that happens, I’ll settle for getting the day off. The only reason I got this particular veterans day off is because I am in Pensacola teaching the Navy this week. They took the day off, so we did as well.

I celebrated by sleeping in, followed by a visit to the Omni fitness center. This is a Walmart-sized gym a couple miles from our hotel. It has an enormous open floor with every kind of weight machine you can imagine, plus a wide variety of cardio equipment. I got in a great run while watching “The Enemy Below“, a movie I will have to share with the boys when I get home.

Upon returning to the hotel, I started working on the next feature I wanted to add to the LDS Tools application. I have mostly confined myself to fixing bugs, but I wanted to add a “popover” controller to allow users to quickly copy address, e-mail address, or phone number when viewing a member’s record. This seems straightforward enough, although as I dug into it a bit more it turned out to be slightly more challenging. The trick is to use what Apple calls a gesture recognizer to notice when the user holds down a touch on the screen for a long period. The recognizer calls your own code when it fires, and you’re responsible for deciding what to do; in my case, I wanted it to display the popover with a single menu command.

My first attempt displayed the popover correctly… everywhere, not just for the cells that actually contain data. For example, a long press on the “add to favorites” button would trigger the popover. This wasn’t what I had in mind, but before I could fix it, I had to interrupt my programming to join my coworker Apolonio for lunch at Chick-fil-A. He had never eaten there before, but I daresay he will be enough air again. He was particularly impressed that someone came over to our table to ask if we wanted our drinks refilled. As a lifelong California resident, he isn’t used to Southern courtesy.

After lunch, we headed for Naval Air Station Pensacola for the scheduled performance by the Blue Angels. I had seen the Angels about six weeks ago, which did absolutely nothing to diminish my interest in seeing them again. Apolonio had never seen them, so we were both eager by the time we got to the seating area along the runway. The Blues put on a fantastic show; the weather was warm and clear, the crowd energetic and appreciative, and the flight maneuvering flawless. I could, I would happily go back tomorrow or Saturday to see their two upcoming performances, the last ones of the season. However, I have a previous engagement: finishing up my week of teaching exchange to her students at Corry Station.

This class is unique in that they seem to have more cohesion, more esprit de corps, than previous classes have. This is resulted in some great discussions in study hall. These young sailors are willing to help each other with explanations, corrections, or information sharing: exactly the kind of behavior that will help make them successful in the fleet. It’s really a pleasure to work with them, especially when I can see that the content and exercises I’ve been working on for the last few months are successfully teaching them some of the complexities of exchange.

Anyway, after the airshow I came back to the hotel and resumed working on my popover problem. It turns out that the solution to my problem was to always accept the user’s long press, but only to display the popover if the user was pressing within one of the data items I cared about. For example, if the user presses down on one of the action buttons and holds the press, I just ignore it. If they do the same thing on the displayed phone number, I display the popover. Once I figured that out, thanks to some of the sample code on the Internet, the actual process of copying the phone number (or whatever) was trivial. For an encore, I think I’ll add support for copying or pasting the member’s picture, but that will require a bit more work that I don’t think will fit into the current release schedule.

Now I’m officially done for the day. I plan to spend a few minutes reading some more of Mike Mullane’s wonderful autobiography, Riding Rockets, and thence to bed. Happy Veterans Day to all who have served our nation!

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2010/09/13 · 05:55

Our visit to Denali

In the previous installment, I talked about the fishing trip. As much fun as that was, it was just the first day. Oh, bonus picture: here’s a panorama of the boat dock where the boys were throwing stones:

Alaska-panorama-2.jpg

Where was I? Oh, right; the drive to Denali. The route is a straight shot up the Parks Highway. On the west, you can see the Kichatna Mountains, and on the east you pass from the Talkeetna Mountains up into the Alaska Range. The drive is pretty flat overall, but no less spectacular for all that. Here’s a panoramic shot of the view out into the Alaska Range from one of our roadside stops:

Alaska-panorama-1.jpg

We made a ton of stops to take pictures. On the drive north, first we passed into the Denali State Park, which has all kinds of scenic overlooks facing both east and west. One of them was the Alaska Veterans’ Memorial, so of course we had to stop for that. It was surprisingly large, given Alaska’s small population, and both well-maintained and well-attended. There were easily 50 people there walking around while we were there, which surprised me a bit. The state park’s southern boundary is a looooong way from the national park, which is a little misleading. (Oh, and cell phone service: not really. Don’t count on using a phone-based GPS on this route!)

The most scenic part of the drive was probably the passage over Hurricane Gulch. This description (and the pictures) do a good job of giving you the sense of it, but you really have to see it– the camera doesn’t capture the scale very well.

Denali itself was a bit of an anticlimax. The park is enormous– 90+ miles from side to side. You can take bus tours, but we didn’t have time to do that, and the boys were tired of riding in the car so they didn’t want to drive out to Savage River, the limit of how far you can drive in your own car. We compromised by having lunch (mediocre, but we were hungry so we didn’t care) and visiting the visitor’s center, which has some terrific dioramas. My favorite: the wolf trotting away from a kill with a bone in its mouth, looking for all the world like a deranged cousin of your friendly pet dog.

On the trip back to Anchorage, the boys were in great spirits, aided by our stop back in Talkeetna to pick up some clothes we’d left at the hotel and to get our fish. 15.5 pounds’ worth of fish, packed in a lovely shipping box by the Talkeetna Smokehouse lady. It also didn’t hurt that we didn’t have to stop at every scenic overlook so we could ooh and aah, although we did stop at a few. Mt. McKinley was more clearly visible on the drive south, but even so, this was as good as our view got:

DSC_8665.JPG

It was full dark by the time we got to Anchorage; we had dinner about 10:30p at Red Robin (mostly because they were still open), then got to the airport, dropped off the rental, and waited, somewhat grumpily, for our 1:20a flight. Everyone slept on the plane, which was good– we needed it!

Summary: great trip. Alaska is beautiful, and I’m eager to go back, hopefully during a time with better weather and more salmon!

Most of the (good) pictures I took are here. The bad ones got deleted, of course.

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2010/09/06 · 00:38

Dear Alaska…

…I love you.
Seriously.
This might seem like a strange thing to say. After all, we barely know each other. We met early one morning, when the boys and I staggered off our flight in Anchorage and slept at the Fairfield Inn near the airport. We were so tired that I fear we didn’t make a very good impression, but the next morning, when we set out for Talkeetna, I got the sense that this could be something very special.
I was stunned by your beauty and poise, and I can’t wait to see you again!
Love,
-Paul

The drive to Talkeetna took us through Wasilla. Fortunately, we didn’t see any sign of Sarah Palin. We did, however, see some pretty scenery– a nice appetizer for what was to come. The weather was overcast and chilly, with scattered showers. We easily made it to the Swiss-Alaska Inn, had lunch, dropped off our bags, and went to the public boat dock to meet our charter guide. I’d booked our fishing through Fisherman’s Choice, based on the simple fact that they were the only charter outfit who returned my initial inquiry. It turned out to be a good decision, as they took great care of us. Terri, who runs their office, was quick to answer all our questions and made sure everything was in order.
The fishing itself was fantastic, despite the weather– just under 50°F, with a steady rain. Apparently the salmon didn’t mind, because we all caught some. Matt caught two big hookjaw; Tom and I each caught nice-sized silvers, and David caught a chum that put up a terrific fight but was, sadly, inedible. Every cliché you’ve seen of salmon leaping out of the water and twisting in the air is 100% true. That’s exactly what they were doing, at least every couple of minutes. I haven’t been teased so much since the junior prom. Luckily, we figured out that they would hit on salmon eggs after we spent some time having our spinner bait ignored. Mike, our guide, cleaned the fish for us before the boat ride back to the dock. The boys were thoroughly chilled and wanted hot showers, so we did that, then Matt and I drove the fish over to Talkeetna Country Smokehouse to get them packed. The lady who runs the smokehouse was a real sweetheart. We had a lovely chat with her and her three-year-old son while she was getting the fish prepared. When she said that we could pick up the fish on Sunday, “bot not between 10 and 5 because I’ll be at church the whole time,” I wondered if she was LDS. Turns out that she was, and she invited us to attend the local branch Sunday morning (more on which shortly).
Matt and I went back to the hotel. Speaking of which: clean, comfortable, basic place to stay. It was by no means fancy (e.g. no television reception, the world’s creakiest bed, baseboard heaters) but it was perfect for what we needed, and the rustic feel attracted the boys’ attention. The attached restaurant is quite good, though I thought it was a little pricey. I guess it must cater to the local tourists more than the local hippies. Anyway, since we’d eaten lunch there we decided to strike out into town for pizza. We ate at the Flying Squirrel Bakery, which had a big sign out front advertising their Saturday-only wood-fired pizzas. They did indeed, delivered in a beautiful open great room. The pizza was OK, not great, but we all devoured it with gusto. After that, we went back to the hotel and relaxed for a while. Everyone was in bed by 9pm, the earliest bedtime I’ve had in months.
Sunday morning I woke up about 0630, but I didn’t get out of bed for a while afterwards, as the boys were all asleep and I was reluctant to wake them until I needed to. Matt woke up and we chatted for a while. He’s decided to live in Alaska and be a wildlife biologist once he’s married. I allowed as how that sounded like a fine plan, as long as I could come visit. Eventually, though, it was time to wake the other two and get our day started. We enjoyed breakfast at the hotel, though it was interrupted promptly at 1000 when the waitress, cook, and front desk lady had to leave to walk down the street to the local Catholic church (the shepherd thereof having been in earlier for breakfast). That was fine, as they told us we could just pay when they came back. I took Matt and Tom down to the boat dock to skip rocks for a while, then we headed to the Talkeetna branch Sacrament meeting.
The branch is tiny— there were about 30 people in attendance when we got there, with one deacon, no young women, and only a few people who looked under 60. The meeting was quite nice, though it definitely helped remind us how fortunate we are to live in an area where the church has a strong, active, and large membership. We only stayed for Sacrament meeting, then we headed out to Denali. More on that, along with pictures, in tomorrow’s installment.

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2010/02/21 · 15:22

A review of our cruise on the Disney Wonder

One of the unusual things about California that we’ve had to adapt to is the presence of two school vacation breaks: one in the usual April timeframe and one in mid-February. The kids call it “ski week” because lots of folks use it to go to Yosemite, Tahoe, or other places. For instance, our Scout troop traditionally goes snow camping at Yosemite during this time.

This year, we took advantage of the off week to give my mom a Christmas present: we took her on a four-day Disney cruise, followed by three days at Walt Disney World, with four of her five grandsons. (The fifth is only 17 months old, so he wasn’t really invited.) Ski week was the perfect time for us to combine the two, so we started making plans just after Thanksgiving and had everything squared away by early January. This was no small feat, given that we had to coordinate travel and activities for people from California, Vermont, and Louisiana.

Logistics I started by contacting Vacations to Go, the cruise agency we used for our previous Princess cruise. They do an excellent job of handholding, which in this case was warranted by the complexity of our plan. Their agents are all home-based, and the one we drew (Judy Hastings) did a terrific job. They’re like Amazon in that you get mostly-automated communications from them at major milestones, telling you what to do (or what’s ben done.) We reserved category 12 staterooms, the least expensive (and least fancy) kind– but more on that in a minute.

Disney offers web-based booking for all the shore activities. We used their booking system for a couple of activities and found others by using the web. Our particular cruise stopped for a day in Nassau, a day at Disney’s Castaway Cay, and spent the final day at sea.

For air travel, we were pretty much stuck. We wanted to leave the 13th, so we’d have a day of buffer in case of travel delays. Julie and Mom both had much shorter travel legs than we did, so to maximize our time with them we wanted early flights. That left us stuck with US Airways, which I hadn’t flown in at least 12 years. Service was perfunctory; everything except soda costs extra (want a blanket? that’ll be $7), and we spent an extra hour in Phoenix because one of our FMS computers needed replacement. The fare was outrageous, but at least we got the times and dates we wanted. Enough said about that.

When we arrived, we took the shuttle to the Embassy Suites near MCO. This enabled us to gather and have a little together time before heading to the ship the next morning. We had considered staying at the Hyatt at MCO itself, which would have made the process of getting to the ship a little simpler. However, they were full. Oops. The Embassy Suites was plenty nice for a one-night stay, and we all love their breakfasts.

The next morning, Tiffany Town Cars picked us up exactly on schedule and drove us from Orlando to Port Canaveral. They came recommended on one of the Disney-themed forums I’d been haunting. For $125 for a party of 8, it was a pretty good deal. Disney offers transport too ($35/person each way), but only from MCO to the port.

When we arrived at the port, things were in a bit of a rumpus. The Disney Magic was late in arriving due to high seas during its prior-day stop at Castaway Cay. Our area was filled with frazzled people who had just gotten off the Magic, plus frazzled people who wanted to get on it but didn’t realize they were in the wrong place. We arrived at about 9:30 am. Disney usually opens the terminal for arrivals at about 10am, so we didn’t have too long to wait– it just seemed like a long time because of the unseasonably cold weather.

The check-in process was smooth, as you’d expect. We showed our passports to the nice trainee behind the counter, turned in our cruise contracts, got our pictures taken for our “Key to the World” cards, and settled down to wait for boarding to begin. Arlene spent nearly 90 minutes in line to register Matt and Charlie for the kids’ activities aboard, but some kind of computer problem kept registration from working until later when we were aboard.

All aboard! Protip: get on the ship as early as possible on your departure day. You can swim, play on the sports courts, eat, and explore (all of which we did… well, except for the swimming; it was about 50* and windy.) We boarded as soon as they’d let us and went to Parrot Cay, one of the four onboard restaurants, for lunch. (There are also several places to get fast food, but I don’t count those as restaurants.)

The lunch buffet was a solid “OK”– I thought the quality and range of choices were better on Princess, but this was by no means bad stuff. Arlene got a piece of truly vile gluten-free cheesecake– we’re not sure, but we think it might have been made lactose-, sugar-, and gluten-free, meaning it was probably made with goat’s milk and Windex.

We spent time ranging around the ship and discovered our staterooms a little after 1:30p, the time when Disney releases them from housekeeping. Despite their small size, the rooms we had were nicely appointed with a queen bed, a fold-out futon-style sofa, a (very) small desk, and a 27″ flatscreen TV showing unlimited Disney programming. (Boo hiss: no Olympics, as they’re carried this year on rival network NBC.) Our bags arrived later, as did some terrific cruise gift baskets that Julie had ordered for us.

Our first night’s dinner was at Animator’s Palette. You can probably guess the décor theme; if not, this might help. Our dinner was superb, and our table staff (Faisal and Kevin) did a great job of taking care of us. On Disney, you dine in a different restaurant each night, but you keep the same table staff. We filled a table for eight all by ourselves. The ship had several kinds of gluten-free bread for Arlene (though they would always bring her at least three pieces of it at each meal, more than she could eat), and they were always able to adapt entrées for her without any difficulty.

There are lots of odd angles in this particular restaurant, which I think contributed to Matt and Tom both complaining of seasickness during dinner. They ended up going to bed semi-early while the rest of us went to see the “Golden Mickeys” musical. As you would expect, this was superbly produced and performed, and those of us who saw it loved it. We put some anti-nausea wristbands on the kids and that (along with a good night’s sleep) helped a lot. The two anti-nausea drugs they sell aboard ship aren’t safe for asthma sufferers, so keep that in mind if you’re going to sea.

Nassau We got into Nassau about 9am and promptly split up: Mom, David, Tom and I hit the port while Julie, Charlie, Matt, and Arlene went on a dolphin visit. I’ll leave it to Arlene to describe that (and show off the tons of pictures she took). As for the port: meh. It was pleasant to walk around in the sun, but other than that it was pretty bland. Mom and Tom went off to their snorkeling outing, so David and I had time for a quick lunch together before our own snorkel trip. Mom and Tom got the better end of the deal; their expedition went to an area with a crashed Cessna, and they baited the water to attract fish instead of selling little baggies of fish food. I took a ton of pictures and video using the underwater camera case that Julie and Paul gave me for Christmas, but the results were a bit disappointing (I’ll upload them once I have more bandwidth than this airport offers); the camera’s autofocus system had a hard time coping with fast-moving fish.

Everyone made it back to the ship with stories to tell, so we had a lively dinner at Parrot Cay. This dinner featured their “island menu”, which was uniformly excellent. Everyone loved everything, which might be a first. Either we were all unusually hungry or the food was unusually good.

Castaway Cay The next morning we arrived early at Castaway Cay. The weather was poor: 25-30 kt winds, rain, and low clouds. Disney cancelled most of the shore-based activities; Julie and I had Jet Ski time booked, and Arlene and Charlie were headed for the glass-bottomed boat tour. Too bad! The weather did eventually improve, and we were able to spend some time on the actual beach in the sun. Stingrays cruise very close in to shore, which was fun for the kids. There’s also a simulated fossil dig located in and around a real whale skeleton; this was very popular with Matt and Charlie. David spent the whole day with a pack of teens in a structured group activity and delighted in being away from his family (OK, maybe not, but he did have lots of fun!)

Lunch was a barbecue buffet that was pretty good. We spent time doing nothing much in particular; although we would have all preferred to be able to enjoy our scheduled activities, having a day off wasn’t so bad either! We sailed early, about 5pm, to get ready for the “Pirates IN the Caribbean” theme of the evening. Mom had laid on pirate clothes for all of us, so I was sporting a do rag, an earring, and an eyepatch when we went to dinner, which was again excellent.

The party itself was clearly oriented at the 5- to 12-year-old set: it was noisy, featuring a non-stop stream of Disney hits [sic]. The redeeming part in my mind was the shipboard fireworks. Disney makes much of the fact that they’re the only cruise line that can launch fireworks at sea, and these were beautiful (although nothing compared to the displays at WDW.)

A day at sea The weather was nicer on our last day than it had been on the preceding days, so we all got some sun, and the kids got to swim. Apart from that, it was a low-stress day, capped off by a French dinner at Triton’s, the poshest of the onboard restaurants. Arlene had duck; several of us had an excellent duck confit appetizer, and David and Tom both had (and loved!) escargot. I was really pleased by how well we all did at trying new foods, something that’s easy when you know the wait staff will just bring you something else if you dislike whatever you ordered. (Kids: don’t try that it home. It won’t work.)

A side note on kids’ programs Our day at sea good segue for me to talk about the onboard programs. We had kids aged 5, 8, 11, and 15, so we covered all the bases except the nursery. The 5- and 8-year-olds spent time in the Oceaneer Lab and Oceaneer Club, a big open space located on deck 5. Each kid gets a wristband with a small RFID tag, and each parent gets a pager. That way it’s easy for each party to keep track of, or contact, the other. The Oceaneer activities tended to be science-themed. Matt made Flubber, researched sharks, and so on. Charlie’s program was more activity-themed, and Tom’s (aptly named the “Out and About” club) was a nice mix. For example, one day they played dodgeball, then had a big trivia contest, then made their own pizzas for lunch.

David spent as much time as we’d let him in “Aloft”, the teen club on deck 11. Here the main attraction was the presence of other teens, plus lots and lots of food and games.

There was enough adult supervision for all of the programs that we felt comfortable letting the kids spend time there, and they enjoyed it immensely. This made it possible for us to have quiet adult time when we needed it. This is one of the major distinctions that Disney offers, and they deliver exactly what they promised. The kids clamored for more time in the programs, and we were happy to be able to mix that in with our other family activities.

Debarkation Disney wants the ship unloaded as fast as possible, so you pack your luggage and put it out in the hall the night before you arrive and they put it ashore for you. This worked quite well for us because we’d done it before, but in the morning I heard other families complaining about things they’d forgotten or mispacked. We had a sit-down breakfast at Triton’s, then a few minutes later we were off the ship, through customs, and ready to take the bus to Walt Disney World… but more on that another time.

Table scraps A few miscellaneous notes and observations:

  • There’s cell phone connectivity aboard, but it’s crazy expensive. Don’t plan on roaming in the Bahamas, either: $2.99/minute for voice and an extortionate $19.99/Mb for data. (The shipboard rates are lower but I was too afraid to turn on my phone to find out what they were.)
  • Shipboard Internet service is slow and high-latency. Disney blocks outbound VPN connections, too. At least it’s expensive! I bought a 100-minute block for $40 and used about 75% of it checking mail and dispatching work on Wednesday, so that means I went two whole days without e-mail. Sigh.
  • Attention Anita: unlike Princess, Disney ships have ice cream from 0800-2300.
  • Julie recommended packing a power strip of some kind because each stateroom has only two outlets. I grabbed two of these and they were splendid– just what we needed.
  • Don’t bother taking your own snacks aboard. You’ll have plenty to eat.
  • I think the four adults, combined, read maybe 50 pages during the entire voyage. There were just too many other things to do to spend time reading.
  • Our stateroom was on deck 2, just below the dance club. We never heard a thing; the interior soundproofing is excellent, although you can hear hallway noise. We could also hear the ship’s thrusters loud and clear because we were so far forward. However, Disney doesn’t schedule port arrivals at 0700 like Princess does, so no one’s sleep was disturbed.
  • Don’t let the small square footage of the cheapest staterooms fool you– it was fine for three people.
  • The Disney cruise message boards talk about upgrades a lot. In theory, you can buy them before you board; you can ask for them at check-in, or you can attempt to buy one after setting sail. In reality, at most time periods Disney sells out. The purser told us that the only time they’ve recently had cabins available for upgrades was during the recent East Coast snowstorms.

Bottom line: a great trip, one we would definitely consider doing again.

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2009/09/20 · 22:02

Bryan & Katie’s wedding

Right now I’m on a Southwest flight from PDX back to SJC after a great trip to see Bryan and Katie’s wedding. Bryan, of course, is better known as Dr. Bryan J. Rice, high muckety-muck of X-ray lithography for SEMATECH, and, not incidentally, one of my oldest friends. I’ve known him since my senior year in high school, when we had the good fortune to have the same physics class/ We spent countless hours together working on cars, studying at college (he got his bachelor’s in computer science and a masters’ in physics in the same amount of time it took me to get a bachelor’s alone!), and generally palling around.

David and I left San Jose Friday evening and flew into PDX, where we picked up our rental and headed for the Hotel B. The bride’s sister had recommended it; its primary virtues were its low rate ($40/night on Priceline, although they’re exaggerating if they think it’s a three-star property) and its proximity to Bryan’s house, where the wedding was to be held. Overall it was nothing special: the rooms were adequately clean and reasonably well-maintained, except for the incredibly squeaky floors. On the other hand it’s right across the street from the Hillsboro airport, which just happens to have a large contingent of helicopters that fly pretty much all day. For most people that would be an unwelcome nuisance but for us it was a bonus.

First thing Saturday morning we headed over to Pine State Biscuits. Summary: A++++ would eat again. In fact, if I lived in Seattle, i”d drive to Portland just to eat there. In fact I”m considering planning a trip up from Morgan HIll to eat there. Turns out they were recently on the Food Network, and i can see why. Large portions, delicious biscuits, and the best stewed apples– tender without being mushy, and not sickly-sweet– I’ve ever had. (Plus the waitress pictured here kept calling David “darling” and batting her eyes at him.) After being thus filled, we headed over to Powell’s, another reason why i feel like a future visit to Portland is in order. What a fantastic place! David and I each got a few books. I would happily have bought more, save that I lack time to read them all (I did get the 2009 edition of “The Best American Science Writing“, the 2007 version of which I thoroughly enjoyed). I figure I can squeeze that in.

Then, the wedding. Bryan really put on the dog for this event; his backyard was groomed and manicured within an inch of its life, and it was absolutely perfect for the ceremony. The weather, which had been yucky-but-typical in the morning, improved markedly, with clear skies, a light breeze, and plenty of sunshine. I took video of the entire ceremony, but haven’t had a chance to edit it yet. In the meantime, here are some pictures to tide you over. We had a lovely dinner and got to meet a few of Bryan’s co-workers from Intel, as well as seeing some familiar faces from his family. I’m really glad we were able to attend, even though I’m sorry Arlene had to miss it. (but I get to see her and the boys this week! yay!!)

Today was quiet; we found the Brookwood Ward in Hillsboro and went to Sacrament meeting, hit Pine State again (figuring, correctly, that eating there would cover us for both breakfast and lunch), and went back to the hotel to get David’s forgotten retainer. At that point, we decided it would be more fun to take the Portland MAX light rail to the airport, so I returned our car at the airport (remember, it’s right across the street!) and we trained it back to PDX. Tonight for dinner it’s pasta-in-a-bag, followed by the last part of “Torchwood: Children of Earth,” then up and at ’em tomorrow.

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2009/08/02 · 12:05

Heading to SJC

We have been having a wonderful family visit in Alexandria, complete with lots of great food and family time. Now I am at AEX enroute SJC. I was supposed to fly AEX-MEM-MSP-SJC but the MEM-MSP was cancelled due to mechanical problems. Too bad Northwest didn’t tell me until check-in. They wanted to reroute me to SFO, which would put me in at almost midnight. Instead I’m going aEX-MEM-IAH-SJC, which should be OK. Then tomorrow, New Job City!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

 

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2009/06/11 · 09:02

Ad hoc travel

Normally I plan my trips well in advance, but not this time! I went to San Jose to meet with a customer on short notice. How did my routine differ?

First, I packed ultralight. Toiletres and fresh clothes went into my laptop bag, meaning that I didn’t need a separate bag.

Second, I went reservationless. I dent reserve my rental car until I was on the airplane. I didn’t reserve my hotel until I was parked in its parking lot. This was slightly nervewracking, but it gave me maximum flexibility to accomodate my customer’s schedule.

Now I just want to get home!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

 

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2009/05/03 · 23:01

A grand day out with Chris

Today I got a chance to see a dear old friend, Chris Larsen. Chris and I were roommates in college, but the last time I saw him was at his wedding in 2002 (see here, here, and here). I’ve had several business trips planned to the Bay Area, but each of them has been cancelled for some reason or other. This was the first time that I was actually going to be in the neighborhood (sort of), so we’d made plans to link up. He came down and met me after church.

For lunch, we hit the Persian Grill. I noticed it yesterday when at the laundromat, but it was closed until dinnertime. I had the makhsoos, which was excellent (I also tried the spiced yogurt, which wasn’t bad). As we were talking, I said something about Perrysburg and a man at the next table overheard us– he’s from Perrysburg, and his friend is a former Toledo resident. It’s a small, small world!

We then drove the 17 Mile Drive. The weather was fairly poor– around 55°F with heavy fog. We couldn’t really see much of anything until we got near Spanish Point, and even then there was so much overcast that the sea and sky blended pretty much seamlessly. I got a few good pictures of the beach and water, along with the below shot of the Lone Cypress. along the way, we had a great time talking about energy policy, nuclear reactors, the economics of coal-fired power, and the EPA. In other words, just a garden-variety conversation 🙂

DSCN1300.JPG

After 17 Mile, we headed over to Cannery Row and hit Ghiradelli’s for some ice cream. Chris tried to talk me into ordering the Earthquake, a $30, 8-scoop concoction. Wisely, I declined (though I did ask if they had one I could photograph for the kids!) Chris had his laptop, so he showed me recent photos of his family. I retaliated by whipping out my iPhone and subjecting him to pictures from our whale watching trip and our recent spring break visit to Louisiana. We walked around Cannery Row for a while, still talking about abstruse technical topics, then visited at my apartment for a while. I issued an advance invitation to come visit us in Seattle, and he kindly volunteered to be a trail and mountain guide for the boys and I so we can visit some of the excellent scenery in central California. All in all, it was a great visit, long overdue. I look forward to the next time I get to see him!

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2009/04/27 · 09:14

The busy, busy month of May

What a month May is shaping up to be.

First, I’m teaching a series of classes at the US Navy’s Center for Information Dominance, as part of a very cool experimental program on improving the ability of expert systems to teach. The program is named Skynet Digital Tutor. Read up on it here. For the duration, I’ll be teaching from 10a-10p each weekday. Jim said it was good fun, though, so I’m looking forward to it, except for being away from my family for two whole weeks. That’s the longest I’ve been away since 2000, and honestly I don’t like it one bit. Thankfully we have phones, web cams, and so on, so it won’t be as though I’m cut off from them completely. In the meantime, I stocked my apartment with yogurt, microwave popcorn, and fresh fruit, so I’m good to go.

Next, I get to go home for about a day and a half, then it’s off to TechEd USA 2009! I’m doing a session on OCS 2007 R2 deployment and management. Because I need a demo playpen, I’m building one in Hyper-V using OCS 2007 R2 and Exchange 2010 532.09, a later build than the public beta. It’s been fun to set up a clean environment from scratch, as opposed to the complicated environments we’ve been building for various demos and launch events.

After TechEd I have three whole days at home, then it’s back to Seattle to teach the UM portion of rotation 3 for the Microsoft Certified Master for Exchange class. I’m really looking forward to this, as it will be the first time I’ve delivered my new version of the material. After that, I’m sure I’ll be ready for some time off (though hopefully by then we’ll be ready to start househunting! No offers yet, though.)

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2009/04/14 · 17:26

INTERACT 2009, part 1

Last year, INTERACT was a fantastic physical conference held in San Diego (a hard location to beat!) This year, Microsoft’s changed things up. There are separate, and mostly concurrent, events in Reading, UK, Boston, and Redmond, plus an online virtual event. I flew in yesterday and am now in the middle of an Exchange high availability session. There are two parallel tracks: one covering Exchange 14, and one covering OCS 2007 R2 topics. I’m mostly attending the Exchange sessions, but there are some pretty nifty OCS sessions as well.

The weather’s been weird since I got here; yesterday as I was driving to the Microsoft campus, I drove into a good-sized hailstorm. The hailstones were small, but there were enough of them to perceptibly whiten the ground. Fortunately it stopped hailing before I had to get out of the car!

I’m preparing a series of blog posts on various topics that I’ll post over the next few days. Some of these posts have some really exciting stuff in them that hasn’t been publicly disclosed yet, so stay tuned!

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2009/04/02 · 13:47

BYU Radio on the go

The LDS Church’s annual General Conference is this weekend. So is our trip to Louisiana. What to do?

Normally we watch the conference broadcasts in the comfort of our living room. This is easy because Dish Network, DirecTV, and U-Verse all carry BYU TV, and we’ve found that in extremis connecting my laptop to the TV and watching their live Internet stream works fine too. None of these, however, will work well in the van as we drive south.

Enter ooTunes, an iPhone application that can stream live radio stations over the Internet. It supports Windows Media streams, which not coincidentally are the kind that BYU Radio uses. I tested it this morning and it works quite well, even over a cellular connection. So, problem solved: we’ll plug the iPhone in to the van’s input jacks, launch ooTunes, and listen to conference as we roll. (As a backup, I’ve already told the U-Verse box to record it, just in case– there’s too much good stuff in conference talks to miss them!)

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