Opinion – Page 4 – Dishers.com

January 17, 2011January 17, 2016

Cruising 2011

It had been a long time since Claudine and I had a good long vacation to just ourselves. Sure we’ve taken a weekend here and there but not a real vacation. We’ve been keeping an eye out for a deal and saving our vacation pennies since September. We’ve been looking at all inclusive resorts and other destinations, but after doing the math we decided that we might as well take a cruise.

So, the stars lined up and we booked a Western Caribbean cruise with Royal Caribbean aboard the Freedom of the Seas just two weeks from departure.

Now, keeping things in perspective, the last time we took a cruise was 21 years ago. A 5 day cruise on the Bermuda Star Lines SS Veracruz. Now it was a ‘smaller’ ship back then, Carnival and other cruise lines had it beat, but we had a budget and it was still highly rated at the time. It was an awesome experience. Sailing to Playa Del Carmen and Cozumel Mexico. Weighing in at a killer 10,000 Gross Tons. The newer Freedom of the Seas weighing in at 160,000 gross tons, was going to be a completely different adventure (yeah 16 times larger).

If you read this blog, you know how I tend to write my reviews of things. I call things how I see them. At the end of the week we had a fabulous time, and we’ll do it again I’m sure. If you’re looking for a cruise, thinking about a cruise, there are things you should know and avoid.

First and foremost, Royal Caribbean is first class. I suggest you book directly with them. We used a travel agent, and while she didn’t cost much, the value provided was basically non-existent. The flights she booked were horrible choices, in both timing and accommodations. Our flight into Orlando landed at 12:36, and the cut-off for the last Royal Caribbean shuttle was 12:30, which meant we had to make alternate accommodations. Again, not the end of the world, we were originally told we’d have a limo/town car waiting to pick us up. That turned into; call them when you get there, you shouldn’t have to wait for more than an hour for them to pick you up. Well, we didn’t have an hour to wait so we found an alternate shuttle. Not the end of the world but an inconvenience we should have not had to deal with using a travel agent. After looking at the transfer debacle we did some flight searching and found much better options. It was too late to change but they were there.

So bypass the agent, you don’t need one to book a cruise.

Pre-buying off ship excursions. Don’t do it unless you really, really feel the need. We were told from day one that certain things were ‘sold out’ and other things were ‘filling up so you better book them now’. In Labadee Haiti, we were told the Zip line was almost 100% booked two weeks before and that the jet boats were already full. Turns out we could have participated in either the day of had we chosen too.

The one thing we really didn’t like was the over-hyping of activities and the push to get you to sign up for things. While I realize that some of these things do actually fill up, we honestly had our pick of just about anything we wanted to do. Also, unless you have a compelling need to be hand-held and given deadlines or step by step instructions for your excursions, you can almost certainly do better doing it yourself. Example: the excursion to the Duns River falls in Ocho Rios Jamaica was $80 per person, plus your $15 entrance into the falls ($95.00 each) and you’d be there with 60 or more other strangers being ushered up the falls. We got a cab to the falls for $14 each, that included taking us there, picking us up, dropping us off in the shopping district, picking us up again and taking us to the pier. Our cost for the same thing on our time was $29 per person.

Our story starts with an very early flight out of Dayton International Airport. One of the best places to fly out of and into because it’s so small. The security check point has one of the body scanners. When they say take ‘everything’ out of your pockets, they mean everything. I left cash in my front pocket, the scanner picked that up and earned me a shake down and a talking too. Other than that it was a pretty plain airport security experience.

From Dayton we flew into Atlanta, with a 1 and a half hour lay over. (Note to travel agents, there is no reason NOT to fly people from Cincy to Orlando ‘direct’. No need to take a 2 hour flight and make it a 6-8 hour experience).

From Atlanta to Orlando, pretty routine. We grabbed our Luggage, called our shuttle, had to wait about 20 minute, but got to the pier with an hour to spare. We were on-board by 3pm.

Our first impression of the ship, or at least mine was “Holy Cow, this thing is big”. We were parked in Port Canaveral, next to two Carnival cruise ships which were quite small in comparison.

I didn’t get a shot that showed them both together, but the size difference was significant.

Our room was in the bottom of the boat (Deck 2), which initially I wasn’t excited about. We’d hoped for an upgrade, but the ship was full, and no such upgrade presented itself. We had a rather large portal window and the close proximity to the elevators made it work out well.

All ship rooms are somewhat small, but we found ours to be very comfortable. The online photo showed a couch in the room, but that turned out to be a chair. With only two people it was very comfortable. Four would have been too crowded.

After getting settled, we waited for our luggage and took a tour of the ship. Not a guided tour, just a walk around and get your bearings. Where are the stairs, elevators, bathrooms, bars, and most importantly where is the Casino?

We also wandered up to the Spa to book our first massage. We got roped into a Spa tour, which sucked. It was each station, hocking their wares, from massages to facials and even Botox, if you wanted it. Of course everyone claimed they filled up quickly so book your appointment NOW. We really didn’t like the hard sell every time we turned around. We did take advantage of a first day special that let us book our couples massage early and save a little money. We booked our massage for Monday morning and then got out of the Spa as quickly as possible.

With all of that out of the way we waited for the mandatory lifeboat drill. My cruise tip for you: Don’t be early to the drill, we stood around on deck for nearly an hour waiting for it to get started. Once you’re in your designated spot you aren’t permitted to leave until the drill is over and the Captain is happy.

Continue reading “Cruising 2011”

March 18, 2009

Investment Banking Explained

(This is floating around, I didn’t write it)

Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.
The next day the farmer drove up and said, ‘Sorry Chuck, but I have some bad news, the donkey died.’
Chuck replied, ‘Well, then just give me my money back.’
The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.’
Chuck said, ‘OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.’
The farmer asked, ‘Whatcha gonna do with a dead donkey?
Chuck said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’
The farmer said ‘You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!’
Chuck said, ‘Sure I can. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’
A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, ‘What happened with that dead donkey?’
Chuck said, ‘I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00.’
The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’
Chuck said, ‘Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.’
Chuck now works for AIG where he’s about to get a huge bonus!

December 30, 2008

TimeWarner/RR is dysfunctional (In case you didn’t know)

I’ve generally been a fan of TimeWarner / RoadRunner. It’s always been a good value for speed/performance vs. Price paid. In the past they’ve always seemed to be better service wise than say Zoomtown.

Now bear in mind, we kind of live out in the sticks in never land Trenton, OH, in between Middletuckey and Hamiltuckey.

When we moved out there (10 years ago), RR wasn’t an option, nor was Zoomtown, so we survived with Dual ISDN, which wasn’t cheap, but got the job done.

About 6 years ago, RR became available when TimeWarner purchased out local cable provider. We’ve had reasonable service since, er at least uptill last year or so.

We’re out in a pretty flat area, and lighting strikes near us are not uncommon. We’ve gone through four or five cable modems in the last 2 years.

In the last 6 months it’s gotten pretty bad. Our cable, specifically our RR was very intermittent. The proverbial crap hit the fan around the 12th of this month when our RoadRunner went out again.

A call to tech support yielded the standard troubleshooting that we always do before we call them. Reboot the router, unplug and reset the modem, etc, all to no avail.

Of course they couldn’t get a tech out for a couple days (like 3). So we again played TimeWarner Courier and swapped out our cable modem. But this cable modem couldn’t be provisioned. They couldn’t even see it.

So we accepted the appointment for 3 days later.

Later that evening, it magically started working. (hurray!). When they called two days later to verify our appointment, nothing was wrong, so we canceled.

Less than 48 hours later, it rained like hell and guess what? Our Roadrunner quit working. “ding ding ding”… Houston we have a problem. So we called tech support, repeated all the troubleshooting steps, tried like hell to explain to them that; hey, when it rains our road runner stops working but no one would listen.

We accepted the appointment for 3 days down the road. Magically less than 24 hours later, things dried up (or more likely froze) and viola, we had working Road Runner. But we decided to keep the appointment. We were told that 3-4 days is pretty standard, if we needed faster service than that we should have RoadRunner Business which is same-day service.

So, I ordered that, what the heck, it’s faster and gives me a static IP. Paying an extra $30 a month seems like a lot but when you consider all the BS we have to go through every time we call, that is money well spent in my opinion.

While waiting for the appointment on the 19th it became more clear that the wetter it is outside, the worse our roadrunner (and cable) service was.

When the tech finally arrived on the 19th, he declared all of our inside wiring ‘crap’. He also said the tap on the pole was bad, but he fixed that, and sealed it up with silicone. He ran a new temporary wire from the pole to our house and said someone would be out to burry a new wire in the next couple days. Funny though, we still had no service. I asked him what the deal was. He said “Your inside wiring is bad and I’m not an inside guy. I also can’t spend any more time here, when you get the new cable buried your troubles will be over”. The guys should be here tomorrow, they work on Saturday and Sunday.

Of course the weekend came and went and nobody showed up. During the week of Christmas we had Road Runner for a few hours here and there when things were dry or frozen. Which unfortunately wasn’t very often.

On Saturday the 27th the guys finally showed up to burry the cable, and burry it they did.

But when they left, we were in worse shape than before. Not only no RoadRunner, but not Cable TV either. Nice… The cable wire bury guys said they’d get someone out today, but then reneged and said Tuesday was the best they could do.

A call to TimeWarner resulted in yet another appointment, no sooner than Tuesday the 30th, which was the standing appointment for having our inside wiring redone.

On top of that, RoadRunner Business could not be installed while there was a repair order in effect for our address.

We tried, to explain to the folks at RoadRunner, that:

A: It does NOT rain in our house. We clearly have a moisture issue, or an issue farther down the line.

B: We at least had cable, until they buried the new cable, now we have nothing. Rewiring the inside of our house will not fix any of this.

They would not listen, so we waited patiently for Tuesday (today).

Of course the first guy shows up to do what? Rewire the inside of the house. We quickly re-diverted him outside. Check the signal AT the house.

Of course this was bad, so we traced it back to the pole and the tap. He allegedly re-did the tap and we now had cable, but no RoadRunner. Those signals were not present at the tap. He now needed to call a linesman.

The line guy showed up a couple hours later. What did he fine? A tap that had been struck by lighting, had water in it and was bad. He replaced that and we were good to go. This should have been done two weeks ago, but no…

We now are waiting for our RR business installation. Which I’m less convinced it worth it. But if it helps us avoid this two week run-around in the future, it will be money well spent.

December 28, 2008March 5, 2016

WebHostingBuzz

My love affair with local seo services and cheap host: http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/ is quickly coming to an end.

When I initially started using them I had some pretty signficant up-time issues. They agreed to move me to a different server. The same one that a buddy of mine is using for his blog that has worked out well. During my outages, his site was always still up.

Then out of the blue, on Christmas Eve no less, they decided to move me.

Since I control the dns of all my domains externaly (not with them) all my stuff broke.

If you want:

A webhost that will move your stuff without notifying you.
A webhost that will let you chat online with pre-sales support but not post sales support.
12 hour ticket turn around, only to have to go through everything again to get your stuff fixed.

Use: http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/

All of this is exacerbated of course by the fact that my broadband is non-existant, so that already puts me in a bad mood.

Granted the hosting is somewhat cheap, but it should be a little more reliable than it’s been. Especially when my recent issue was self inflicted by them. A little notice would have been nice. For the price of hosting, I somewhat expect an issue per-year. But they are running well above that now.

November 25, 2008

More Foreclosure Shenanigans

I really, really need someone to explain this whole foreclosure bailout thing to me. I really do.

I don’t have an MBA, but there are certainly a lot of guys working for these banks with MBA’s that now find themselves in a mess.

Somewhere along your lifetime, growing up you should have learned this very basic rule:

Don’t borrow money you can’t pay back.

Ideally, don’t borrow money at all, save for things and pay cash. While paying cash is hard, and not always ideal or realistic. Still, you don’t borrow what you can’t pay back.

If you don’t pay back money you borrow there are consequences.

The people you borrowed from tend not to trust you, so they are likely to not loan it to you again. Or if they do you’ll have to pay more (a premium) for defaulting on previously borrowed money. That’s how the credit system works.

Don’t pay your rent, and you will have a harder time renting in the future, that is if you’re honest with your references or if the new landlord figures out that you didn’t pay previously (can also be on your credit record).

It’s sort of an extension of do unto others.

So now we find ourselves in this whole foreclosure mess.

People are crying they can’t pay their mortgages. (see rule above).

If you made a bad loan, shame on you. Do your best to work your way out, renegotiate, refinance, or maybe get an extra job. Nobody should bail you out.

Banks are whining that they have too many people who (a) can’t pay and are being pushed into foreclosure.

So what? You Mr. Banker made a bad loan. That’s on you. Renegotiate, or do what you gotta do, which may be foreclosure. That’s the deal you signed, the bed you made.

But the banks are also whining: The loans are on properties who are now worth 1/3rd what we have loaned on them. Example: Joe Consumer owes us $300,000 on a house that’s only worth $120,000 now.

Again, shame on your Mr. Banker you wrote bad business. You’re a public, for-profit company. You screwed up.

Nobody, not the Government, (which is you and I as taxpayers) should be bailing out either of these parties. The banks can renegotiate their deals if they wish. Maybe cut some of their losses. If it costs us a little more for checking, and maybe loans are harder to get and cost a bit more, well that’s the free market system.

The economy is tough, I get that.

I’m not opposed to an unemployment extension that helps those who really need it. Maybe, a get out of your Mortgage payment for the term of your unemployment benefits

(the Government through unemployment benefits, could pay the bank some discounted percentage of your mortgage to keep you whole and current)

But nothing more.

If you’re a worker in Wilmington. Yes it’s sad, but that’s all it is. It’s not the end of the world.

You knew going in there that DHL/Airborne was the only game in town.

With that comes risk. If you put yourself in a house you can’t afford, and drive a car you can’t afford. Shame on you. That’s not my problem as a taxpayer.

I really need to understand how the Government spending money it doesn’t have to bail out companies that got into messes on their own, through their own greed helps anyone.

They are doomed to repeat this mess if they don’t learn from their mistakes. You tend to learn from your mistakes when there are consequences for them. Not when someone bails you out.