Plan "B"

Well, this is it! My first blog entry using my new Palm Pilot. I love my job sometimes. I'm currently at the mall waiting to get a haircut -- oops. I'm up. Bye all.

Hey! I thought Josh would have something like this all wrapped up. I don't think he did this one though. Hey, Josh - what gives?

Just a quick entry to tell ya'll that I'm still alive. I went to the gym last night and weighed myself - I've only been able to gain back 2 of the 7 pounds I lost. At any rate, I've decided on names for my 3 new machines at work:

Back end DB2 server - Bastone (stick)

Primary DB2 server - Minaccia (big stick)

Failover DB2 server - Abbaglio (wrong end of the stick)

We named the other server "carota" (carrot), and the project is loosly called "Carrot & Stick Project". We had to go with Italian translations because "carrot" was already taken in our domain.

# posted by Johnny @ 11/23/2005 09:19:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

[sigh] I just bit off my last fingernail. I'm really bummed because I've been really good at keeping my fingernails looking like normal people's. I was really happy to have all 10 for the cruise because I wanted some closeups of my ring and cufflinks during the formal night photo ops. To be frank, the combination of tuxedo, high end shirts, cool cufflinks and ring really made a difference this year over last years cruise.

Anywho, part of the reason why I no longer have fingernails stems from the pressure I'm feeling at work (even though I'm blogging during office hours), but part of it stems from the cafeteria being out of decaf this morning, so I had a big ol' 32 oz cup of regular. Doi.

So, the more I think about it, the more I think that the cruise wasn't all it could have been because the DJ sucked. I mean, for me, I like to spend the hours from 10 pm to 3 am at the nightclubs onboard. Since the dancefloors were largely empty for the entire trip, there was little else to keep us entertained past 10 pm.

We went to the occasional magic or variety show, and we even took in the tail end of a movie, but c'mon. For my money, I really need a good DJ.

Of course it didnt' also help that the two places I wanted to go to the most were cancelled (Grand Cayman and Cozumel). Anywho, whatever. Live goes on - Dear John.

Well, it's back to the ol' grind for me. I happened across our labs cookbook that we publish every year. It contains recipes from people who work here as well as other research labs across the world. There are 3 different recipes for making ice cream with liquid nitrogen.

... but not want what you get.

So, when you board a cruise ship, you're more or less tossed into a salad bowl of different people. Granted, you're not likely to be cruising with the homeless or people who own boom cars (thankfully, they haven't discovered cruising yet), but there's still a pretty wide variety of people aboard. Most are older Americans, but on occassion, you'll get a group of 90 gay guys, or the Swedish Olympic vollyball team, or 20 folks from Romania. This time around, it was the Romanians.

In the months prior to the cruise, I'd been plotting and planning on getting into shape, waxing whatever needed to get waxed, wearing the right clothes, yadda, yadda, yadda. One of my final purchases was a bow tie - a real bow tie. Kim had convinced me that the drudgery of learning to tie a bow tie was worth the look of having the untied bow around my neck while dancing after dinner. Um, o.k.. So, I figured that if I was going to do it - I was going to go all the way. Full vest instead of those dicky vests you get when you rent. The most expensive shirts I've ever purchased. $100 skull & crossbone cufflinks. The whole shabang! I probably spent more money than I should have for two dinners, but at least now I have a nice tuxedo with a few options.

Back to the Romanians. There were two (in my opinion) attractive woman in the group. Alexandra and Colletta. (again, in my opinion) Alex was VERY attractive, friendly, outgoing, and had expensive tastes in champagne. For halloween, she was a playboy bunny and did her best impression of a cat grooming herself for the cameras. It was naughty and enticing, but also put her into the pigeonhole of "adult". I dismissed it as folly and moved on.

We hadn't spoken at all before our second excursion, which was white water rafting, but we had glanced at each other on the ship. Finally, on the excursion, we got to know each other a bit. She works for Air France in Romania, but I don't recall what capacity. She held my attention with conversation and smiles and I was about ready to buy her a house too.

I didn't make it to the nightclub that night due to consumption of rum beyond my control. The next night at 11:30 was the champagne waterfall. Lots of people were there dancing in the atrium. She was there too and we started dancing. Now, it gets a little grown up...

During the dancing, she asked me if I was ready to have some fun. Like an idiot, I was thinking - "hey, more dancing". A pretty dense idiot too. She told me, "you'll have to be relaxed so we can have fun. Are you relaxed?"

"Sure", I responded, still not getting it.

We moved onto the nightclub after the cheap champagne was drunk. We were dancing off and on a bit more. One song ended while we were dancing and some salsa music came on. "Do you know salsa?", she asked. "No, but you can teach me."

She taught me the basics of salsa dancing and I think we did pretty well. Then, in a final move that let me know what was going on, I asked, "How am I doing?"

"You're going fine", she replied, "but in salsa, the man's hand goes here." She pushed my hand from the small of her back to her - um - rump.

My other hand burst into sweat. I think I must have given a pretty clear signal that I wasn't interested in that way - but then felt a little wierd because all the other signals I sent seemed to be willing. At any rate - to make a long story short - she ended up shagging the cruise director.

After a restful day of going through the Panama Canal (which is an amazing feat of engineering) we docked in Cristobal, Panama (I don't recommend you travel too far from the ship). We did some shopping and Kim earned her smuggling merit badge with oak leaf cluster for shamelessly carrying 3.5 liters of rum onboard without even trying to hide one of them. The other was successfully transferred to the "special water" bottle. I only had enough guts to get one bottle on board, so Kim definitely wins the guts award.

Sun was setting and I was enjoying some quiet time on the balcony before the evening festivities. The sky was amazing. Even though the humidity was 100%, I took my camera out and snapped a quick picture of the sunset sky. A moment later, the sky exploded with deep, rich blue and red - There have only been a few such beautiful sunsets since the world has formed.

The picture below is untouched by processing. The top of the sky was a deep blue - almost purple, and the horizon was a bright, rich orange. It was neat.

I'm BACK! And I'm alive. Needless to say, it was an interesting trip. I'll do some trip reports in pieces in the days and weeks to follow, but I wanted to get some pictures up as soon as possible. Surprisingly, I didn't take that many pictures. I used two disposable waterproof cameras for the canopy and river rafting excursions, but only took about 20 pictures with my digital camera. Who has time to take pictures?!

In a nutshell, it wasn't up there with the Celebrity Mercury, but what could be - eh? It was mostly fun though. I mean, as soon as we got on the ship it was fun. The three days with no power or water was a real damper on our fesitivities, but we made the best of it. We survived hurricane Wilma and sailed through the tail of hurricane Beta. (Oh, joy).

Most notably, the DJ really sucked. It would have made a real difference I think. I heard a rumor that this was his last cruise and he knew it - so he had nothing to prove.

Anywho, more stories and pictures to come as I have time:

1. Class II rafting down the Reventazion River
2. You may get what you want...but not want what you get (the bow tie story)
3. ???