Cruising Newbie (Part 2): Groups and Crowds

When you view any pictures or videos about a cruise, often times you see the ship, and you see groups of people having fun, hanging out, smiling, and being generally cheerful. THIS IS GREAT….except when it’s not….let me explain.

You never see what it takes to get on your cruise. From arriving at the terminal, to going through security, checking in, and getting on board. The reason? These are all where large groups of people are, and can pose a security risk. However, let’s be honest about something here.

Everyone is rushing to get on the boat first. Everyone is rushing to get through security. Everyone is trying to get to their vacation to have fun before everyone else…however, honestly, it’s fruitless.

When you arrive at the terminal (if you’re not parking), they have porters that are collecting your luggage, except he has 100 vehicles behind you…no time to chat, drop your bags (with tags), and head to the terminal. Security’s next and you need your boarding pass, and birth certificate…have these out ASAP because you have 400 people behind you ready to push past and get through security as well…no liquids, and everything in the bin. If you’ve ever flown, it’s the same principle.

Yes, passed security, just one more part….check in. Check in is where you get your Sail and Sign card, your Faster To The Fun sticker, and more. Remember those 400 people? They’re behind you…waiting…on you. Hope you kept your boarding pass and birth certificate/passport…you’ll need it here also.

NOTE: Birth Certificate…. the one with the raised seal…not birth announcement from hospital, or anything else. If you don’t have this by now, you’re not getting on the ship.

Welcome to the waiting area. The 400 people that were behind you? Congrats, you get added to the 1400 people that were before you. So, now all 1800 people are in a waiting area, waiting to get on…and YOU ALL WANT TO BE FIRST (but you won’t be).

NOTE: Everyone needs to have a seat (obviously, for safety reasons). If you’re standing, you’re probably blocking 400 people trying to walk past you, and now you’re a hazard.

Every once and awhile cruise staff will come on the loudspeaker and try keeping everyone organized (and cheerful). Take a seat and relax…you’ll be here for a minute. Additionally if you HAVEN’T checked your email/Facebook, or any other social media…hop on it, this is your last signal for awhile…guess what? It’s boarding time!

All bets are off. Everyone who was organized before NOW wants on the ship, they’ve had it with waiting. HOWEVER, there’s an order.

• Weddings! (Congrats y’all!)
• Diamond/Platinum
• Gold
• Faster To The Fun (FTTF)
• Plebs (Normals)

NOTE: While it looks like you’re next to last, consider a wedding might have 20 people? Diamond/Platinum 20? Gold 50? FTTF 200? ….”Normals” I’d estimate those original 1400 people. Andrea and I were on our 3rd round of drinks (on board) and people were still boarding the ship.

So, you’re getting ready to get on the ship, but they try to shuttle you through the boarding photo op.

I want to write a formal apology to my wife…I wasn’t aware of any of this, and was very overwhelmed by what was happening and pushed past this area. While she was excited for it, I was a bit more than grumpy, and I swear next time I will stop and take a picture.

You’re walking up the ramp, you’ve made it! You’re on the ship! It’s finally here! Time to relax, *sigh* However keep in mind, because you were one of the first ones on the ship, you’re room isn’t ready, you’ll have to wait an hour and you’re not allowed to get to it. Fair enough…you can go up to the Lido Deck (Deck 9), and grab a bite to eat…with the luggage you didn’t check.

NOTE: After reading reviews, the best recommendation I can make is the following. Pack one change of clothes, and your formal wear in a carry on. If there’s any hiccup in getting your bags delivered…you’ll still have what you need, without hauling all your luggage with you. Check it with the porter at the terminal, there’s no charge.

If you’ve bought CHEERS! when you board the ship you’ll walk right past a bar. Stop, let them know you have it, get your sticker (they put on your Sail and Sign), and grab a drink. Stop, have your drink and people watch…it’s interesting!

At this point there’s an equation to use for how many groups or crowds you might encounter.

Crowd Size = People On Board/Areas Open/Interest in Area/Time of Day

Given this equation… We can assume a few things….

Off the Hook = 2,979/10 areas/karaoke/10PM (Late night Karaoke, full ship at night)

*meh* = 100/10 areas/lunch buffet/12PM (Docked in Nassau during lunch)

As long as you KNOW that being busy means more crowds/groups, it’s similar to being at a concert, a NASCAR race, or an Airport. However, here’s a few tips I can make to make it easier.

• Have your Birth Certificate/Passport/Boarding Pass out all the way till the waiting area.
• Check all your luggage except a carry on that you can manage for a few hours.
• Get Faster To The Fun (FTTF). Makes getting on and off ship SO much easier. Additionally you get a separate access to guest services.
• Get CHEERS! It makes your life a lot easier when you can just get a drink and watch the crowds go by.
• Take your time. The ship isn’t going anywhere without you as long as you make it there in time, relax, you’ll enjoy it a lot more!

Knowing a few of these things before hand should help. Some people stress in crowds if they don’t know (myself included) what to expect. If you can manage to remember these things, everything should turn out just fine!

Cruising Newbie (Part 1): Is a cruise right for me?

This is Part 1 of a continuing series on cruising. After reading multiple post online, viewing countless YouTube videos, and asking tons of questions, I figured I would condense some of it in a series of post to follow along with. As I complete portions of this series, I’ll link them to the appropriate sections mentioned below.

Is a cruise right for me?

Andrea and I the other week took a cruise to the Bahamas, and I have to say I’m definitely hooked (no pun intended). Part of taking the cruise initially was the thought of “I don’t wanna be on a boat with everyone else, near buffets with everyone trying to siphon every dollar out of me for fun… I’m willing to bet they get you on ship, and then charge you admittance to the clubs, etc. I bet they even charge you for soda…”. Additionally I’m a veteran, so the last thing I wanted was to go to yet some other country I hadn’t been to…I just want to relax”. I couldn’t be more wrong.

Disclaimer: Andrea had been on a cruise before, and my daughter had been a cruise the week before. I heard nothing but good things, but was still slightly hesitant.

After having been on the cruise, I can say there is a certain mentality that you need to have to be ready for it. We had taken a Carnival cruise (on the Liberty), that set sail from Port Canaveral.  As you can imagine, this is probably the busiest of ports. So, let’s start with before even getting to the port.

Booking
We had booked through AAA. Even after doing the research, the price was the exact same amount that we had reviewed online. It was fairly easy to book, and our AAA Agent was *extremely helpful* (Note: They don’t get a commission on booking, they get paid on their service level…so you can trust them). I assume you can book yourself, however I honestly had a great time with Candace, and I’ll book through her more often. However, before you book, there’s some things to keep in mind.

Mentality
I know, this seems silly, but there are a few things to remember when you are going to take a cruise.

• Diversity. A cruise ship has employees and cruisers from all over the world, some who may and may not speak English as their primary language. If you hold any type of adverse opinion about foreign nationalities, a cruise may not be for you, ask yourself…can I handle groups of foreign speaking people serving my food, being beside me at dinner, or in the pool? While on our cruise I saw a couple with a woman of middle eastern heritage wearing a headscarf…. Whatever, I hope she enjoyed the food 😀
• Groups. There are groups of people everywhere you go (except your room). From the time you enter the terminal to the time you leave, you’re surrounded by large groups of people. The terminal has everyone boarding. The bars are filled with people, and the ports are filled with people. Prepare for that thought first…but it’s not forever, and there are some reclusive areas to breathe. We’ll cover this later.
• Your Stateroom. Now almost every cruise ship has different staterooms that offer their own benefits, so the question becomes where do you want to stay? There is lots of options (and lots of reasoning behind selecting them). Andrea and I stayed in 1011, which is an interior room on the 10th Deck (Lido). And we’ll go over this (in video as well), however, there’s deciding factors on each room type and if it works best for you. We’ll follow this up later.
• Requirements. There are requirements for security reasons (wouldn’t want an incident to happen and not know what to do, right?!). You need to participate in some of them, however crew always participate, we’ll go over this in another post.
• Ports of Call. Your ports of call are important…where do you want to visit? Make sure it’s a place you always wanted to check off your list…you never know when you’ll get to return…think this through, you don’t want to ruin a great experience with lackluster care.
• Spending Money. This is completely your call. You CAN participate in an endless amount of fun for absolutely 0 additional cost…however, let’s be honest, you’re going to want something to remember the trip by, and that cost money. We’ll cover what other areas require a little (or $) and maybe how to save on them.
• Families. Part of the groups come from families that are on board. Some with kids. We’ll go over what parts of the ship to avoid, and what parts of the ship might be the best if you have young ones.

There’s other topics, and we’ll cover them in follow up post, however I think the above areas should help you (if you read the follow ups), decide “Yes! a cruise is for me”, or maybe “No, this isn’t my cup of tea”.

I’m in love with the Carnival “model” of entertainment on our cruise, and I’m excited for my next one. And while I could type out a books worth of content in one sitting, I’d rather prepare it in bites, so you can contemplate on the subject after reading each one.

Dynamic Storage and Sorting with Entity

I ran across an issue at work, where I had multiple rows in an excel form that I needed to read into a database. This consisted of about 14 columns which I needed to group on 5 criteria.

The grouped data becomes header information (in a header table), and then the rest of the data needs to be in a detail table to be referenced later (from information in the header table). The initial thought was, I need to obtain the grouped data, for the header, then handle the rest of the data for the details. However, this became a chicken and egg solution, whereas the header data (after being grouped) was going to need to be referenced again to cross-reference with the detailed data so I could tie them together. THEN I’d be able to put them into my database.

However, after thinking about it, I decided that I could shift my db operations around, and streamline this a tad bit better.

Running through the excel form, I just detail data in (I’ll need to reference it anyways), then, I build my grouping (generating an id to tie them together), for my header data. After I enter my header data, I take the id, and use it as the detail to header tie, and update my detail data.

As much as I hate to say it, this was one of those linear thinking concepts that I got caught up in.  Took me way longer than it should have *sigh*

Pantone for CSS/HTML

Working in an industry where we primarily deal with Pantone colors (colors for franchises), this raises the question whenever development is done and, how do I convert a Pantone number, into a hex value.

After looking up about Pantone, the answer is… you don’t, and it doesn’t matter.

Reason:
For anyone who might come looking later. Pantone (or Pantone Matching System or PMS), is a numerical system for identifying a color. For example 100 is a color, and this color is known worldwide as 100, so when you reference PMS 100 to a vendor, they know exactly what color to make your product in….but what about for web?

Monitor glare, LED vs. OLED, screen protector or none, monitor brand, graphics drivers…they all impact our ability to recognize true colors, so even a Pantone color isn’t going to appear the same on my phone vs. my 2 yr old monitor. So why use it?

Just don’t. Look at Pantone to Hex as a friendly cross reference if you find one online, but don’t stress it past that.

NOTE: Pantone is a copywritten system for the numbers, so, as long as you’re not distributing the values, you should be OK to use it in your internal projects. This is the reason GIMP can’t use it.

Did I do something wrong?

Fine.
What’s wrong?
Nothing.
Did I do something wrong? Just tell me and I’ll make it better…promise.
No, I’ll be OK.
*sigh* OK…. I love you.

Wonder why some people cheat on their service providers.
I guess when you have no fucks to give, you just stop giving a shit too huh?

Recruiters and Requirements

I love getting emails like this….

“I came across your name searching for the below skill set in our database and wanted to reach out to you to see if you or someone you know might be interested in this QA position”

First off, I’m a Software Engineer, not QA, but let’s not mince roles, after all, I’d hire a QA person to write software….why not?

“Required Software – MS Office (Advanced Excel, Word) and C++ is a must”

Seriously, who the hell ask for MS Office…then, surprise! We need you to know C++….it’s kinda important. Seriously, the C++ would be exactly what we would want. What skill set did you exactly search on with your database, QA, MS Office, C++?

Is recruiting software really this bad, or is this a complete just lack of effort? Let’s even forget that it’s in two different fonts, in two different colors.

Yeezus.

Popular Websites

Sitting, waiting for lab work for Jake, and we’re watching Dr. Phil. The man has a Net Worth of $280 Million Dollars and a following of hundreds of thousands of users (if not millions).

And this is his site.

Absolute garbage.