Sabbatical complete, now back to work
Working in a highly technical job is filled with exciting opportunities and fast-paced events. Often the pace feels like sucking on a fire hose while building a house of cards; volume and precision. A work sabbatical is a period of leave from used to carry out projects not associated to your normal job or in the case of college professors, a time to expand knowledge without the interruption of teaching. For every seven years at my job I get an eight week break to remove the compression from my mind and contemplate my next seven years. As I past my fifteenth year at work I was blessed enough to finish my second sabbatical while enjoying the company of my wife as she recovers from back surgery.
As a summary of our activities:
- 2,168 Photos
- 14.6 GB of Video
- Seventeen days outside of the USA
- Six hotels and six countries
- Four books read on my Kindle
- Two flights, two ships, and two rental cars
- Two trans-state trains
- One condo-resort
- Zero broken, lost or stolen items and zero injuries
Below find a summary of each event, some thoughts and links if applicable.
Flight to Fort Lauderdale
Our flight was pretty uneventful except at the end after our transfer in Atlanta. There was quite a bit of turbulence and a few filled barf bags by folks in the seats next to us. Why is it that they think all people are so short? As someone who is 6' 2" tall I feel like I fly with Air Lilliputian, since average human height is shrinking.
Cruise to Western Caribbean (from Fort Lauderdale on Carnival Miracle)
The check-in at the Fort Lauderdale terminal was smooth and well organized, as was the debarkation. This cruise brought us many days at sea and a brief visit to Colon Panama, Limon Costa Rica and Belize. During our 8-days underway we made some good friends and had time to relax and enjoy the sun and sites which are the key reasons we enjoy cruising. I used my kindle constantly to read while on the ship and found out I could easily get internet through the ships cellular network, which I did off the coast of Cuba and prior to each port. In Costa Rica we had arranged for my co-worker and friend Jose (with family) to drive over the mountains and meet us. (photos)
Trip to Disney World
Two days prior to going on Disney property, we decided to see what Orlando had to hold for us. One of two blog postings I did while on sabbatical was about the poor quality of the hotel we stayed in during our two days prior to Disney. We gave the opportunity for all the kids to fly out and join us if they could afford their own tickets (plane and park), we would cover the rest. Mitch was the only one who could get the time off and had enough saved up. Instead of slowing him down to our pace we asked him to bring along Nick, his buddy from school. Even though Lisa was in a wheel chair while at the parks it was still a great time with super weather! There was much fun had at Epcot during St. Patrick's day drinking beer from country to country! I have to say that the only time we were rained on was while driving from Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando, which was more like buckets than drops. (photos)
Cruise to the Bahamas (from Miami on Carnival Miracle)
Following the same trend as when we drove to Orlando, on our drive down to Miami, we discovered where all the rain was and why the state is so green. Miami needs to really work on improving their curbside check-in but more than that, the method for getting off the ship and out of the terminal. Why is it that Fort Lauderdale has curb-side shuttle bus to the airport but Miami does not? What a joke to pay $30 to take a 5 minute ride to the airport.
As our first trip to the eastern Caribbean, we were way excited to see the vibrant blue of the ocean and generally enjoy the weather we had. I should note that none of the photos were touched up at all for color or anything. Yes, the ocean is really that color. With my time in the Navy and our vacations, I've had the opportunity to walk on many beaches throughout the world. Let it be known that my favorite beach was found on this trip at Half Moon Cay, a privately owned isle. (photos)
Trip to Niagara Falls (Ontario, CA) & Chicago
After we finally made it through a 10 hour wait at the Miami airport, we struggled through security to make it onto our flight to Buffalo (via Philly). One item of note is that the three people running security to get to our gate could not speak English and were trying to give us directions in Spanish. Man, I was waiting for the TSA weenies to come haul me away after I let it be known that this was ridiculous that instructions were only being given in Spanish, lucky for them a fourth guy came up to give them in English. After arriving in Philadelphia, we jumped on a twin turbo-prop to go from our 29F outside boarding to 32F in Buffalo NY. Since we got there very late, we stayed in Buffalo for the evening and drove over to Niagara Falls (Canada side) the next day. What a lovely trip and the view from our 14th floor Radisson room was breathtaking. If you ever go, do not pass up the chance to go to the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory. After my phone died while in Niagara, we spent some time using free Wi-Fi at McDonald's and eventually boarded an Amtrak train for Chicago. If you ever have to take an Amtrak, do your best to avoid boarding after dark or you'll be stuck sitting next to the door and under a light as we were.
We did some train transfers in Chicago in order to get to Elk Grove and visit a good friend. She hosted us for two nights and even let me drive her car into Chicago for the day. Next time well park at the station and take the Metra into Chicago since we paid $43 to park for six hours. While there we were able to take an architectural boat tour with Wendella Tours as well as spending lots of time looking at big buildings. (photos)
Trip to Marshalltown, Iowa
We enjoy visiting since this is where Lisa was raised and where she has dozens of cousins and more importantly a sister and niece. During this trip we were able to enjoy the celebration of Easter, do some fishing and relax with family in cooler weather. I should add that during one fishing trip, we almost sank; maybe not that dramatic, but fun times. After out short stay we packed up a truck and drove home in 22.5 hours in order to deliver some furniture and load some up for transport back to Iowa.
Trip to Puerto Penasco, MX
This was planned as a birthday celebration for Lisa and her younger sister. What came as a bonus was that during the planning, we were able to include her older sister and niece, since they came back to Arizona. With our experience from previous visits came comfort in driving around down there. In a city where signs are optional (both the posting and following of them), it's a little stressful. During this trip, because of Maryann's past experience, we were able to see much more of the area than we had in the past. (photos)
Alas, sabbatical is over and we are left only with the memories. Sure we have little mementos to help refresh our minds and the people we spent our time with only helps to reinforce that.
PS: Only 2475 days until our next one.
My Google G1 died and then respawned!
While over in Canada, at Niagara Falls, my G1 decided it had lived a nice long life and just stopped working. After two years you become dependent on certain things and my Android-based phone is something I have come to depend on in everything.
So I started to go through emergency life response procedures. Pull battery, clean out phone (and contacts) reassemble and restart; nothing. Take apart, let sit in dry place overnight (it was humid and wet near the falls but the phone didn't go there), reassemble, plug in charger; no light, nothing. When we crossed over to the US side I used my wifes phone and called T-Mobile hoping to find a store with a battery I could test in the event the battery had spontaneously failed; nothing.
Let me stop here and point out that historically I have received flawless customer support from T-Mobile. Perhaps that is because I always go in and extend my contract and get new phones or simply that they truly provide great care. On this occasion, when I needed them the most they failed. This specific store in Amherst New York (1715 Niagara Falls Blvd) was reluctant to help and did so only after me asking to check with a borrowed battery. No other help or procedures were tried.
After no customer support (four lines with them for the last seven years) I was distraught and eventually angry. At some level I was also desperate. My line is able to switch to another carrier which has an Android phone that supports the 2.x version while my G1 won't be upgraded. The remaining lines have to wait until November. What do I do until November? We sat down in a McDonalds with my Netbook and used their AT&T free wi-fi to do some searching. Ebay had some new and used phones but nothing I'm comfortable spending money on for seven months of use.
Searching began on Craigslist for both where we were (NY) and at home (AZ). Once again the prices would cause me to add around an extra $15-20 per month to use a phone I was going to get rid of once moving to Verizon. And then I ran across a posting from Quick Fix Cellular of Chandler Arizona and decided to ask them the same questions, with the same data, that I did with T-Mobile. In email they came back in 5 minutes with some basic troubleshooting resulting in a complete system reset.
And just like that the phone came to life. I had 20 minutes till we had to return our rental car and just had enough time to reinstall the OS and all applications. Linking everything to Google apps made it easy since all my data was in the cloud. Right now I'm up and running on an Amtrak train heading to Chicago and was able type this whole posting on the WordPress app with my phone.
Here is the advice that was freely given and I offer with no guarantee or warrany, use at your own risk.
Try this first, perform a factory reset. This will wipe all data and re install the operating system. Take the battery out and put it back in, then hold down the home and power buttons for 20 full seconds, during these 20 seconds the phone may reboot a few times while you are doing this, that is ok. You should see a triangle with an exclamation, at this point flip out the keypad and enter "alt" + "w". After a few moments the phone should reboot on its own. Let us know if it works!
You can plan for many contingencies while traveling, have back-up plans and hope for the best. What you hope won't happen is that something goes lost, gets stolen or just simple breaks.
Hotel reviewers needed – apply within!
After spending eight days on the Carnival Miracle with world class dinners and room care, I may be a little tainted but please read on.
Today is our 10th day of travels afield and our second day in Orlando Florida. Saturday started crystal clear with a high of 72F, so the weather is not adding to my negative position (unlike last night). We had an opportunity to drive around town, hit a very large Flea Market, a mall and comic book store that I use to frequent when I was in the Navy. And yes, she bought me a Cylon Toaster shirt (she knew what it was and what show it was referenced in, my doll is a geek).
Back to the hotel.
We chose to just stay at a cheap place so we could putter around town while waiting to check-in at Disney. Following my normal approach, I went to hotels.com and searched based on location and sorted by price and rating. After reading some reviews and looking at the available photos of the hotel, I chose one that I thought was a great value (meaning, cheap and rated high). Well, as I stated above, my tweet last night says it all.
My biggest problem is that the people who obviously fill out the reviews are either use to a lower standard than I am or they lack a complete grasp on reality. The average rating is a 3.1 (out of 5.0) for a two star hotel is pretty normal compared to hotels in the area (average of 3.8).
Now where the review falls on its face:
- There is no wireless internet in the room (only in the hotel lobby, next to the desk)
- If that's satellite TV, they need to consider upgrading to one that circles the planet, since the picture quality looked like they were jacking it from the neighboring hotel.
- There was indeed a safe in the room, but someone had long ago drilled out the lock and damaged it beyond use. Not sure if you should be marketing the room with that feature.
- I love the "Accessibility equipment for the Deaf" statement, since due to the high level of 24x7 traffic on I-Drive and the proximity to that street, it sounded like we were sleeping in the kitchen of a 24 hour drive-in taco bell. Only the deaf would enjoy this room.
Now what these reviews are lacking for consistency:
- Cleanliness: Poor, there was dust, grime and mildew in every openly accessible corner. The wife won't take her shoes off to come to bed.
- Smell: The mildew had mildew, and the air conditioner took 20 minutes to turn on
- Equipment: There was a refrigerator (yeah), which had only three legs and leaned forward so the door couldn't open (boo). And, it didn't work.
- General Appearance: Stains on lampshades, paint peeling on the ceiling and damage to the door like someone took a crowbar to gain access when they lost their card key.
- Age: Somewhere in the 70's mixed with 90's Spanish east-side.
We rate this about a 1.2 and hope to never stay here again (of course, that excludes tonight.)
PS: Before someone takes this information and applies a little social engineering in order to get our address and try to rob us, I should add we left our adult children (one gun-toting boyfriend and one Aunt) to administer our home; with our two attack dogs.
PPS: The wife reminded me, "you get what you pay for," which doesn't mean I should stop whining!