The day started early – 5:30 am. That was when the ship approached the locks of the canal. When Anne got on the deck, it was still dark. As the sun rose, we passed through the canal. It was neat to see and amazing that this thing was ever built. It also gave me a chance to try out the movie mode on our new camera.

Panama Canal Locks

Panama Canal Mule

Soon after we transferred onto small boats to get to shore and board a bus to ride a train and then another bus as part of a Panama Canal tour. Some of it was informative. Other parts were purely commercial and promotional. At the Miraflores locks on the Pacific side, we watched this 10-minute propaganda video about how well the canals were being run by Panama, how valuable they are and how we should invest in Panama, complete with bad reenactments of Balboa discovering the Pacific. I’m not sure tourists on vacation are the right target audience for this.

We stopped at a point outside Panama city for restrooms and shopping. I found an internet terminal – $1 for 20 minutes or 10x cheaper than on the ship. It was my first fix in almost a week. I checked on things at work and at home. Meanwhile, Anne was getting into some trouble on her own. She took a solo walk out to a levee and was stopped by a security guard on a bike who said it was a work zone. He escorted her back to the shopping area.

The back half of the tour was a rather long drive back across the isthmus. I nodded off. We were dropped off at the port in the middle of a bunch of shops. I found the business center in the back and got onto the internet for 45 minutes or so, enough to get through all the important email and send some IMs. I walked out and towards the boat to find an exasperated Anne looking for me. She couldn’t find me and was starting to assume the worst. Because you swipe a card whenever you get on or off the ship, she found out I wasn’t onboard yet, even though there was still a few hours before we were to depart for Costa Rica.

We talked to a waiter later about if people often miss the ship. She said it doesn’t happen often and couldn’t remember it happening in the last few months. That night we left late though and heard it was because they were waiting for a few people. Thankfully, they weren’t waiting for me.

1. The canal is not just a “path” of water bewteen the two oceans. There are a series of 6 locks in two parallel tracks that raise and lower ships between the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

2. The locks had to be built because of the terrain. The highest point is 85 feet above sea level.

3. The canal runs North and South, not East and West.

4. The locks are about 1000 feet long, so ships must be shorter than that to pass through. Many ships are built specifically to fit the Panama Canal. A new canal is being built to accomidate larger ships.

5. Ships do not simply sail through the canal. They idle through while they are guided by electricity-powered “mules” attached to the ship with cables.

6. A ship like ours pays over $200K in cash, well in advance, to enter the canal. You pay the same amount whether you go through from one side to the other other or turn around in the middle.

7. The canal is self-powered. Three dams produce electricity to power the mules, lights and other equipment.

8. There are no pumps on the canals. Valves allow water to pass from the higher elevations to the lower ones by power of gravity. The water accumulates in man-made lakes produced from tremendous amounts of rainfall.

9. The canal was completed in 1913 by the United States after France failed twice at getting it built. We controlled it until 1999.

10. Nine military bases we contructed around the base. They were all vacated by 1999. Many of them are deteriorating.

11. “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama” is rather long palindrome. Gen. John Stevens was the man with the plan.

Another lazy day at sea. After all of yesterday’s fun I was beat so I lounged around in my room for a while. I flipped on the TV to one of those channels where they play the same movie over and over again in a loop. “The Island” appeared to be just starting. The movie has a plot similar to The Matrix, except with clones that are being grown by an unscrupulous corporation selling redundant organs for unsuspecting rich clients.

At the end of the movie I couldn’t help draw parallels to being on the ship. You’re trapped (though willingly) in this intensely artificial environment. Instead of harvesting your organs, they’re harvesting your money – a lot up front and then little cashectomies here and there. The food is free – except if you want to eat at either of the finer restaurants. That’s $20 a head. Would you like a cocktail by the pool? $5.95. Don’t forget the tip. Just a coke? A couple bucks there. No need for cash, just charge it to your account. Hey, it feels free!

While on the way to the theater, check out the gift shops, full of jewelry, booze, perfume, clothing and trinkets. On the way to the casino, buy a spa package and some lessons at the gym. Every occasion deserves a professional photograph, so be prepared to be assaulted by photographers who will then sell you your photo for only $19.95! Buy flowers for your honey on the way to dinner. The TV comes onto promotions for their on-demand movies. Call home for only $7.95 minute or get on the internet for only 50 cents a minute!

There’s even a daily art auction. I feel the most sympathy for the auctioneer. It seemed like most auctions only get one bid. Then she’d talk up some piece for a long time that started at eight thousand dollars. No one would bid and she’d give up.

I’m proud that so far the only charge to our account has been the excursions from the ports. We bought a trip to see the Panama Canal and then two more in Costa Rica. Of course they mark these up too, but they make sure the transportation from the ship to the trip is smooth.

The one cool thing we did today was a backstage tour of the theater. We got to talk with the performers and the stage managers and go backstage. We saw the sound booth and the lighting control room. We had been wondering about the heliport on the bow of the ship so we asked the stage manager. Apparently she had never seen it used in 4 years and it was so expensive that they’d only use it in an extreme emergency where they were out in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t get to any port quickly. The comedians and magicians and such get on and off the boat at the ports. Pretty interesting stuff.

Other than that, more eating, lounging, walking and lounging was the order of the day. “Work”? What’s that?

I was last in Aruba about 13 years ago. I remembered only a pool, a beach, a casino and a windmill. Today we set off to rent a car and tour the island, and we did. After waiting for an Avis guy to pick us up, the 6 of us got into Suzuki XL-7 and headed off. Being a Dutch colony, all the street signs are in Dutch. I still don’t know what some of them mean. At least they drive on the right side of the road.

There were 10 caches on the island which made for convenient destinations with some other stops inbetween. Some of the cooler stops were: a huge cave with lots of bats flying around, the wish rock garden with thousands of little rock piles and 4-wheeling around the edges of the island. I drove the whole time and I had a blast.

The most unamusing part was Aruba’s famous natural bridge which is no longer a bridge. It collapsed last year and all you see is a bunch of rock lying in a gulley. That doesn’t stop tourists from coming here though – there were more here than I saw anywhere else on the island.

The final stop for the day was Haystack Hill, the highest point in Aruba. 562 steps lead up to the top of this peak which is quite a workout. I was quite winded but we all made it up.

No good vacation comes without injuries though. Anne smashed her knee on our second stop. It’s been sore, but she seems fine. I was proud of being out in the blazing sun all day and only getting my neck burnt a little bit. Yay sunblock!

We ended up finding all 10 caches and the windmill and casino I remembered. It was a long day though and we were glad to get back on the ship, take a shower and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

I woke up late – it was almost 9. Counterintuitively, Aruba is +1 hour from the east coast (the dateline takes a sharp cut west to accomodate Venezuela), so we lost an hour. I did the morning walk, then headed to breakfast. We stationed ourselves in a group of lounge chairs facing the sea in the Solarium. It was very comfortable and I finally succombed to the jet lag for nap. I read all the email I had downloaded on Friday and planned a day of exploring and caching in Aruba tomorrow.

The pool in the Solarium was drained, I guess because the ship was so rocky. The outdoor pool was full though. The captain said the waves were 10 feet high, but later they looked to be 15+. Later we saw what happens when the pool is full when the ship is rocking – the pool becomes a wave pool! At night they drained that one too. 🙁

Thre are very few clocks on board. There’s none in your room and when all the lights are out in an interior room it’s COMPLETELY dark, so you have no clue even if the sun is out. It’s strange be mostly unaware of the current time, date and even your own location. Even stranger is not to care. The elevators have signs on the floor which indicate which day of the week it is. While this seems like an odd place for a reality check, it’s effective.

More relaxing, more eating. We played shuffleboard and ping pong. We visited the shops. They have a cinema and they were playing Batman Begins. I meant to catch it but I was too busy doing nothing.

It’s 9:30 pm now and the ship is really rocking. The whole room is swaying and creaking. I don’t generally get seasick, but we’ll see what happens tonight.

I’m noticing these blogs are getting shorter and shorter each day. It looks like I’m really getting the hang of being lazy.

8 am was painful. I spent a good part of the day fighting off sleep. Jet lag sucks.

It was rather windy out today. On deck the relative windspeed was over 45 mph. That made a nice walk an interesting exercise. They have this “Ship Shape” program where you earn a “Ship Shape Dollar” for every activity you participate in. At the end of the trip you can redeem your dollars for some schwag like a hat, t-shirt or bag. I suppose this is their response to anyone who’s got home after their cruise, weighed themselves and vowed never to go on a cruise again. In any case it’s not a bad thing and I’m sucker for collecting stuff, so I did the one-mile walk on the top deck for 1 SSD. (I think they should take back a dollar everytime you visit a late-night buffet though.)

While I was up there I thought I would take out the GPS and see where we were. We were a few miles North of Cuba and you could see it in the distance. I recorded a track log of my 6 laps around the track to complete a mile. It looks suspiciously straight.

While the food is free most of the time, drinks are not. At lunch they have lemonade and iced tea, so I’ve made a point to stock up on that. I grabbed some and brought it back to my room in case I was parched again that night.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. My Dad won $115 at a nickel slot machine. We played mini golf on the top deck. The wind was blowing so hard the ball would often roll on it’s own. I came in second to my Dad by one stroke after completely blowing it on the 3rd hole.

I was glad I brought some FRS radios. We used them quite a bit to keep track of each other on the ship.

We spent more time exploring all the decks. The lowest floor you can go to is two where they have the medical facility. I find myself wondering more and more about how this whole operation works. Where do all the staff eat? What are their quarters like? Apparently our dinner waitress has a room on deck zero. Considering the median age of the passengers here, there must be a morgue on the ship somewhere and I bet it gets used.

Not that I’m complaining. Day 2 started out late, east coast time at least. Anne had already been up for a while, but I couldn’t get up any earlier than 9. If we had thought things through a bit more, we might have realized that we had a least a half-day to explore Miami. Without a car and without a place to store our crapload of bags, it was going to be difficult. Instead we hung out at the hotel until 1 pm. I downloaded as much email as I could and watched some curling – a bizarre, but interesting sport. Is all that yelling really necessary?

At 1 we headed by taxi to the seaport. It wasn’t until this point when I pulled out my GPS and realized that our hotel wasn’t anywhere near where I thought it was. We were on the other side of the airport. It would have been cheaper to take the hotel’s shuttle back to the airport and then a shuttle or cab from there. I guess the direct cab was faster and with less hassle.

Once we got to the port, a porter took our bags immediately at 1:30 even if you couldn’t board until 2. it would have been nice to know that ahead of time. We decided to do whatever exploring we could and headed back towards downtown. Here we did a dumb tourist thing and walked across this half-mile bridge in the breakdown lane. We failed to notice the sidewalk on the other side.

We made it across safely and walked through a shopping mall and down to a park. There wasn’t much to see, but it was nice to walk around even if it was hot and humid. Soon we realized that we had made a poor choice in footwear. Tevas are not good for extended walks. The blisters came quickly and numbered many. Anne had taken a walk earlier in the day. Between the two excursions she developed a really nice tomato-like color.

We walked back (taking the sidewalk this time) and made it back to the port just as my parents, sister and my mother’s friends arrived. We quickly checked in and boarded. Ok, I think the vacation is really started now.

The first order of business was to drop off some stuff in our room and then hustle down to the cafe which was only serving lunch for another 30 minutes. I’ve been wary of the glutton that I could be come on an all-you-can-eat cruiseship. What did I have for lunch? Roast beef, mashed potatoes, fried chicken and some ice cream. Well, they were small portions.

After more exploring, we headed for dinner. We had a nice table by the window. The only consolation of taking in all these calories is the enormous number of stairs you end up climbing each day. There are 13 floors and the elevators are slow.

At the dinner table I left my phone out to how long I would keep a signal. It flashed green for a while, then red, then green again, then red consistently. I was disconnected. I thought that Internet access was $10/day, but I was wrong. It was $10/day to rent a wifi card for your laptop. It was $0.50 A MINUTE to actually access the internet. I’m so used to being connected all the time that I couldn’t even imagine how long it would take to do what I wanted. Fifty cents a minute seemed ridiculous though, so I decided to just live with being disconnected.

We exited dinner to go to a comedy show, or at least we thought. There was 20 minutes of the cruise director, the director’s assistants and the very cheesy cruise dancers. I recognized one of them from muster drill. You gotta wonder what half these people do on the cruise when they aren’t doing what they’re here for. The comic finally came on for 20 minutes of his PG-rated show.

After a few hours of relaxing, we went up to the pool and had a nice swim. There was hardly anyone around. It surprised us that the hot tub was fresh water, but the pool was salt water. There’s something strange about floating in a body of salt water on a boat floating in a body of saltwater.

I don’t know where these stories of midnight buffets come from. It was nearly impossible to find a snack to eat late at night. We wandered the ship for a while before we finally found some hor d’orves outside the casino. The casino is a depressing place. It’s clogged with cigarette smoke and full of retirees mindlessly plopping in quarters.

We failed again getting to bed at the right time for the timezone, but I resolved to start correcting that at 8 am the next day.

A year or so ago, my parents booked us all on a 10-day cruise around the Caribbean. I’ve been looking forward to it and it’s finally here. Kinda. I’m not sure that a frantic 24 hours of packing up, tying up loose ends and flying to Miami counts as ‘vacation’ – especially since I went to work for a few hours in the morning and did more work in the airport and on the plane.

The week was more stressful than I can remember having in a long time. Tomorrow simultaneously brings the start of my vacation and an important deadline at work. We worked through the weekend and most nights. On top of that there were a few crazy firedrills at work this week which I really didn’t want to have to punt to others. I suppose I’m going to get my money’s worth out of this vacation.

We were psyched to get a nonstop flight to Miami (though it was expensive) and even happier when we found the plane’s seats were in a 2-3-2 configuration. That means we get a window seat AND we have to fight only with eachother to get out of our seats. I’m dead in the middle of the wing though so it’s difficult to check out the view. I brought my copy of Window Seat and everything.

Two hours in the battery on my laptop died, so I’m resorting to tapping out a blog on my Treo. I think there’s something wrong with my secondary battery; it doesn’t seem to hold a charge for long anymore.

I was happy to finally get all the pieces of my iGo together so I only need to bring one power adapter on the trip. This plane doesn’t seem to have seat power though, so I can’t try out that feature. It should power my laptop, PSP, Treo and iPod with one power brick. I hope the latter 3 converge someday soon along with my digital camera and GPS. All of them do one thing well and at least one more thing, but none do all of the things I need well enough. The rest of the flight was uneventful. We ended up waiting for over an hour for the hotel shuttle with a stop to pick up other guests at Wal-mart(!) along the way. We watched skating from the hotel and failed at going to bed at the right time for this timezone. The cruise should be fun. We’re hitting Aruba first, the Panama Canal, Costa Rica and finally Grand Cayman before returning to Miami. I’ve only been to Aruba before. Sadly there are only 54 caches total in all the 4 countries we’re visiting!

I think mostly looking forward to just relaxing on the boat. Tomorrow…

Yesterday I got a strange piece of mail. It was a thin security enevelope with nothing printed on either side. Through a window on the front was simply my address printed on a piece of paper. The stamp was one of those “Presorted First Class” stamps that aren’t really stamps. There was no return address.

Inside was one 8.5″ by 11″ paper folded in half. My address and postal barcode was the only thing printed on it. The opposite side was blank.

I looked carefully for a watermark on the paper or something else inside. There was nothing. I even tried looking at it with a UV light for fun. Nothing.

Now I’m left to speculate:

1. I’m being recruited by the NSA for a top-secret assignment to save the world from a evil meglomaniac threatening to hold the UN hostage with a giant laser in space. The fate of the free world rests on my ability to find the secret message encoded in the letter and report to their underground headquarters.
2. An Al-Qaeda sleeper cell has been awakened and has targeted me for their next round of terror attacks. The seemingly-blank letter has been laced with a powerful time-activated nerve agent. I will be dead within the week.
3. Somewhere in Missouri an IT Director is being fired for building a system that wasted thousands of dollars of company funds sending out blank letters.

I’m OK with any option except 2. I’m going on vacation next week and I’d like to hold off on any dying until afterwards.

Something that’s mystified me of late is the popularity of tag clouds. Why do people like them? Don’t they realize they’re ugly? Or perhaps no one really likes them, everyone just thinks someone else likes them.

Let’s take an example tag cloud, a strange mishmash of oddly-sized words that look like a 12-year old just discovered the HTML font tag:

What is this trying to say? Someone looking at this for the first time would have no clue why some of these words are bigger than others and why they’re in alphabetical order. Instead, let’s try something like this:

1. google
2. microsoft
3. blog
4. apple
5. open source
6. scientists
7. intel

etc..

That’s pretty clear that this is a list of popular terms and they even line up nicely. Boring? Maybe. But I’ll take clarity over silly design fads anyday.