Commentary – Page 5 – Dishers.com

October 15, 2013October 15, 2013

Dropcam Pro, more cam, less drop.

Earlier in the year, I picked up a couple Dropcams. The purpose was to set them up at the office so that we can get a look at what’s going on there. Mostly to make sure the grounds crew was taking care of their end of the bargain.

I wrote about it here: Dropcam, the perfect name.

In that blog post I was very critical of the product. We couldn’t keep them connected to our enterprise wireless network no matter what we tried. In fact we jumped through hoops to do so with no support from Dropcam. It was their lack of decent tech support that forced me to pan the product, and the company and send them back. (Amazon return policy for the win).

Recently I got an email about the new Dropcam Pro.

Initially I had flashbacks to the crappy support. But thought, maybe, just maybe they’ve fixed them. So I ordered up a pair. What they heck right? Amazon will take them back if they suck, and dollar for dollar, feature for feature they do seem to have something going for them.

The Dropcam Pro features the following upgrades:

130 degree field of view vs. 107
8x zoom vs 4x (although zoom is misleading since it’s a digital zoom, or like a crop and expand).
Excellent low light vision vs. ‘Good’ what ever that means. I love it when a company uses general words to describe things instead of actual numbers. Would be nice to know the actual LUX sensitivity.
Superior Audio Quality vs. ‘Solid’ audio quality. Again, no real data. It’s like saying “My dad can beat up your dad”.

Absolutely no mention of any wireless or stability improvements. None.

So really what makes all this work is this cloud based DVR solution they offer, and of course ‘take additional money for’. Out of the box you get a camera, that’s pretty straight forward to configure using a web driven wizard with the camera plugged into your computer. Once you’ve given I the details on how to connect to your wireless network, you unplug it, set it up and give it power.

It then boots up, joins the wireless network and starts streaming your video into the cloud to their cloud. Where they will allow you one of three options:

No DVR, you just get a live view of what ever your camera sees.
For the bargain price of $9.99 a month or $99 per year, they will save 7 days of video for you to rewind and replay.
For $29.95 a month/$299 a year, you get 30 days worth of your video saved in their cloud to review.

There are other bonuses like motion alerts and what not. But that’s the gist of it. You bought a camera that you can only view through their website/portal, and/or can pay them for DVR services.

There is no ‘bring your own DVR model’ or a way to store video captured locally. Not that I’ve found yet, with a precursory look on the web. I’m sure it can be done, but that’s not their business model. I wouldn’t hold your breath. They will likely never offer this, hopefully some thoughtful hackers will in the future.

In all honesty, their base free offering is all we really need for what we’re using it for. Again, that’s mostly to ensure the grounds crew does their job and clears the parking lot during bad weather.

So far, at the time of this writing it’s stayed connected to our network for 3 days. One small blip but not anything I’d consider a fail at this point. So they look like keepers.

Video is good, night vision is decent, though this is behind a window, though our parking lot is fairly well lit.

So what about their tech support? Here’s where I get to hit them with a hammer again. Upon disconnecting the service last time I was told (neigh warned), that we’re gonna delete your account, if you ever buy a drop cam again you’ll have to re-register. I was OK with that.

So upon setup, I tried to ‘register’. I couldn’t, that name was in use. I thought, OK, so they didn’t really delete me. Let me recover my password.

Sorry, that email is in use. What?

Sorry, that email and that username don’t match up.

Those were the only two items you can use to recover, and I’m certain nobody else registered that username with my email. Not possible, not even to guess.

So I opened a ticket. “Hey, I’m trying to set up a drop cam, and it says my password is no good. I tried to use your password reset form and it tells me that the username and password don’t go together. You recognize my username on one page, and my email on another, but I can’t make this account “GO”. What shall I do?

The response?

Without reading and processing my request: Go here and use the password reset form.

Gee. Thanks for that. So while waiting, I just created another email alias, and registered a new username with that. I was skeptical I’d get my two weeks free trial using that ‘recovered’ account anyway.

So if you’re in the market for a nice camera, that’s backed by a cloud ONLY storage solution. One who’s tech support is sketchy at best. I can highly recommend Dropcam.

If you’re not worried that the company will fail, and you’ll lose the ability to store (or potentially even view) video down the road, Dropcam is for you.

If any of this cloud monkey business scares you, as it ~~probably should~~ might. Companies die and go out of business all the time. Then Dropcam might not be for you. I really hope it’s still working 2 years from now.

For what it is, I give it one and a half thumbs up. Which is significantly better than the previous experience.

August 4, 2013August 4, 2013

Racing and Bourbon, what a weekend.

So back in 2011, Christmas 2011 to be exact, Claudine bought me a 12 lap NASCAR racing Experience for Christmas. The Shootout experience with Rusty Wallace Racing to be exact.

We attempted to get that scheduled in in 2012 and at the last opportunity to do so we ran down to KY speedway, and, of course it got rained out.

So here we are this year. On Thursday/Friday, the weather was NOT promising. It was supposed to rain. We had a back up plan though. We were taking a ‘Weekend Away’, and Claudine picked The Bourbon Trail, as the destination. Should we get rained out, no big deal we’d just be halfway to where we were going anyway.

As for the racing experience. I give Rusty Wallace group “Two Thumbs Up”. The one hour class was a bit ‘long’ but I get that they have to cover safety stuff with folks. Some folks who apparently have trouble knowing right from left. That would be super important to have down when your radio spotter needs to tell you “Left and Lift”.

OK, so this is the description of the package

“Our “Shootout” experience is so much more than any entry level experience. We will get you suited in our beautiful custom Rusty Wallace Racing Experience driver’s suit made by Oakley. You go through a 45 minute orientation with one of our Professional Instructors and then you drive for 12 laps of racing. You will start behind the pace car just like the pros, after a couple of warm up laps its “Green, Green, Green” as you’re turned lose for an incredible run where passing is allowed and encouraged.”

The last time, the time that was rained out, one of the guys convinced us to do a ride-along, do that before you drive, it’s important and will make your driving experience better. We signed up for it, but didn’t get to do that. This time I did do the ride along, and I do believe it was well worth the added $69 (race day special add-on price).

So in the safety class, they explain to to what’s really happening is it’s a “Live Hot Track”, constant running. More like a NASCAR practice session. The track itself is divided up, they are giving us ‘Noobs’ the bottom 2/3rds of the track from the yellow line to approximately 2 and 1/2 car lanes up the track. The outer traffic line is reserved for the Ride-along/Pro drivers. We don’t get to go up there. I’m sure there’s be lots of wadded up cars if the did. Anyway this line is marked on the track with Orange Squares. You can’t miss them. You are told to stay in that middle 1 and a half lanes as you run. If you come up on someone, the spotter will move them to the inside lane so you can pass. That was mostly true. You were warned that if your spotter told you “Left and Lift”, you were about to be passed and needed to yield that spot and hit the inside lane and let them by. (Don’t get passed you should not get passed. 2nd place is first loser).

There are also 3 sets of cones for each corner. KY Speedway is a “Tri-Oval”, but it really only has 2 ‘turns’ if you will. Each turn had ‘Lift Cones, cones where you should probably lift the throttle for optimum driving, followed by a cone to indicate where you’d want to apply some brake to settle the car, get the nose down to get some bite, and a set of cones as you exit that were your ‘apply throttle’ cones.

As we walked from the class I thanked the instructor, he asked if I was doing a ride along, I said “Yes”. He said “Great”, ask for Scott, he’s the best, he’ll show you all the cones, point things out to you that will be important if you are driving. And, he said “Watch his feet”, and left it at that.

Now we know going in, or at least you should know going in, that you don’t really get a full-on NASCAR race car, no you don’t get to do 12 laps in that for $499, or what ever the price is, I think we paid $249 on groupon.

No what you get is maybe the former Shell of a NASCAR car. But given the way it will be driven it’s gotta be dumbed down. (mine didn’t have a Tach for instance), which (a) you don’t need for this , and (b) would probably actually cause more issues than it would help. at 150-160 MPH you don’t want any noob looking at a Tach, they need to be looking down the track.

The Ride-along though, appear to have the real deal, or at least one that’s only slightly modified (passenger seat), and maybe other things to make it a tad more reliable.

I brought a helmet, I brought a helmet last time, because I thought I read that I could, well you can’t, unless your helmet already has HANS device hookups, which mine of course did not.

So, the ride along went great, 2 laps in my line, two laps in the high line inches from the wall on the back stretch and tri-oval.

Then it was my turn, I got the #10 Monster Energy Drink car. You get the car that’s mostly likely to fit you. It was fine.

First, it’s loud, really loud (as expected). Their helmets are mediocre, but that’s not unexpected given the use that they see. They give you speakers to shove up in the helmet so that you can hear your spotter. This is important because you can’t see anything behind you, there are no mirrors. None. The HANS device severely limits your ability to turn your head, you won’t be checking any blind spots so you need to be able to hear. The speakers are loud too, they have to be, and there is no volume control.

You get in the car and they strap you in, and go over a few safety items. You’ll suddenly hear your spotter who will guide you to get going. “Switches Up, start your car. OK, pull out to the right, stay on the right side of pit lane, as soon as you exit and you’re on the access road begin accelerating. There is a checkered line at the entrance to the track, that is your spot to blend into that middle line. I’ll tell you if it’s safe to do so. ”

As you start going down pit road they will tell you to get it into 4th (high gear) as soon as possible. There is no shifting at KY speedway. You just GO.

I got out there into the line, first 2-3 laps are a pretty overwhelming. Stuff is happening fast at 130MPH. It’s loud, it’s awful bumpy to be honest. You are looking for cones, watching for traffic, watching for the orange square you’re not allowed to get above. Oh you’re supposed to watch for flags too. Yeah, not at first, you are 100% hyper focused on the car, and the track, at least I was. You are focused on trying to be smooth, smooth is fast, cones, lift, brake, on the gas. Then it hit me, I watch the ‘Ride-along driver’, I did look over at his feet, he never lifted. By lap 3 I was fully throttle, banging off the rev limiter in the straights.

Did I mention it’s noisy? When I hit the rev limiter, it’s not like the rev limiter on my bike, you are immediately down on power. I’m sure I was down on power in the car too but it wasn’t immediately noticeable. I was just too hyper focused on staying in my line. By lap (4) my spotters in my ear “Hey man, when you hear that, back off a little bit”, and it was on.

He was moving guys, for me. By lap 5 he worked me passed someone and reminded me that I’m not allowed to pass unless he gives me the go ahead. Of course out of the next corner there was another car, going way to slow, in my lane. I slowed, I slowed some more, I waited what seemed like an eternity for this guy to move, and for my spotter to tell me what to do. It never came. Was this a test? Ah, well he moved down about 1/2 a lane, and I passed him anyway. I had lost count of laps at this point, and I honestly couldn’t remember if I had 8, 10 or 12, but I knew I was at least 6 into it, if they kicked me out or black flagged me, well, I’d had my fun.

The next time around on the back stretch the spotter came on, I need you to pit next time by, start slowing down. We want to check your tires. Then a few seconds later “You really should start slowing down, we’re under caution”. I looked at the fence and indeed the caution lights were on. How long had they been on? How long before I noticed? I figured I was about to get a talking too. As I came down pit road he told me to pull up along side the 48 and shut it down while they check the track for debris. He said if I wanted a water to signal for it and they’d bring me one.

I pulled up, shut it down and waited. A guy walked up and told me they were checking the track and they’d have me back out to finish in a few. No talking too, no lecture. This was good. It was a nice morning mid 70 degrees but it was starting to get HOT in the car. I just sat there, watch trucks run around the track and look for stuff.

Then the spotter came back on and said to start it up and go. Same as last time, get into 4th as soon as you can, and go.

That small rest was priceless. It really calmed things down and I felt 100% more confident after that.

Within a lap I was full throttle, just off the rev limiter all the way around. Passing folks like crazy. I heard from my spotter twice, once to let me know I was getting a little ‘high’, and another to warn me that a ride along was coming. I tried to keep up with them but there wasn’t any way. I figure I was topped out at about 160, and they were tooling around at 175-180. You can get away from someone pretty quickly with a 15MPH delta. A few more laps later, he told me to come get my checker flag, that I’d done well, and they gave me an extra lap.

Was it worth it? Hell yeah. Smile I want to do it again, only on a super speedway like Daytona or Michigan or Taledega. I wanna go fast!

Those cars stick like glue, and it takes a little bit to build that confidence. If I did KY again, I probably would NOT opt for the additional insurance. Well maybe I would, but I never felt like I was ever in a spot to wad it up. I mean if I could run around wide open, no lifting, and not break it loose, the it’s not coming loose. I’d like to drive a ride along car and feel the difference.

I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t how it was described. There was no pace car, we didn’t get to line them up and go racing. You were out there on a hot track with 10 other drivers, maybe 11. But no you weren’t racing. That’s probably OK given the vast difference in driving abilities, but no not a true shoot-out.

Again, well worth it. We were there at 7:30 like we were supposed to be and out by 10:00am. We didn’t stick around to to watch. I’ll add photos later when I can get them off of Claudine’s Phone.

May 29, 2013November 27, 2015

Sena SMH10 Redux

Back in June of last year I evaluated the Sena Bluetooth SMH10 and panned it here.

Back then, prior to 4.0 firmware, Sena had some issues with this product. Sound quality and volume were in a word absolutely horrible compared to the Starcomm I was using.

This now that Sena was up to firmware version 4.2 I thought I’d reevaluate them. I knew I was also picking up a new helmet this year and waited before installing the. I added the Sena to the Nolan N104 the day I got it. Which was a bit disconcerting since you have to cut a slot for the mounting tab in the bottom of the helmet.

My primary reasons for wanting the Sena were bike-to-bike intercom. But since that represents less than 5% of my riding I wasn’t willing to give up any audio quality to get that which is why I passed on them last year.

Once mounted up, the speakers dropped (or pressed) right into the helmet where the Nolan BT stuff would normally go. I used it for a few days.

Again, I wasn’t happy. Sound quality blew, and volume was probably 80% of where it needed to be. I wear earplugs when I ride, wind noise over long distances is very fatiguing. For a definition of a long ride see the prior post: Mason-Dixon 20-20 Rally Report. Again I was disappointed in the audio quality with my Zumo 665 via bluetooth and again, phone quality with the iPhone 4s paired with the Zumo was equally bad.

After poking around, asking on some boards, reading blogs, etc. It became clear that this is more likely a problem with the Zumo Bluetooth and not the Sena.

Even with the Garmin Zumo 665 paired as the phone so that it uses the higher quality A2DP bluetooth magic, it wasn’t always good. It was good sometimes, sometimes it seems the Zumo would just choose to use the Hands Free Profile or basic headset profile. When using those modes, again, audio sounded like listening to an AM radio through a pillow. Not good.

After discussing with Sena Tech support, I paired with the iPhone directly as a phone. Wow, audio quality was there. The volumes wasn’t quite there, but audio quality was.

I then paired the Zumo as a multi-point device, and GPS Audio turn directions were good enough. Not high quality but that didn’t matter.

So we’re making progress. More research indicated that the low audio volume problem is well known. One solution is to use good earbuds instead of speakers. So I switched up the mount to the Sena Earbud mount and put together a pair of EarFuze custom ear plugs. Yep, the volume was there. Now we’re cooking. The Earfuze are good but not great. Upgrading those to a pair of Westone UM2’s and we’re there. Awesome sound quality from the iPhone and more than adequate volume.

So now phase two, intercom testing. My riding buddy put a Sena on his helmet, we paired them up and went for a ride. Impressive. I never had really good luck with intercom with the Starcomm even though that’s what it was designed to do. It always picked up too much wind noise and I spent way too much time trying to ‘tune it’. But for single rider use it was pretty awesome.

With the Sena, I can’t wait to ride with my wife or one of my kids and have the ability to chat with them at the same time.

But I now had new problems. Manipulating an iPhone while riding with gloves on isn’t an easy task. Yeah the Sena kind of does that but I didn’t find it to be super-reliable. I’m really hoping they fix that with Firmware 4.3 (hint hint).

A buddy turned me on to a small inexpensive bluetooth remote. This one. It works as advertised.

So now I get:

Really good, high quality audio through the iPhone with the ability to listen to podcasts, something that I couldn’t easily do with the Zumo. Getting them, converting them to mp3’s was a pain. Then Zumo didn’t know the difference so when you’d shuffle music you’d get the occasional pod cast or audiobook.
Good enough GPS audio for turn by turn directions.
Really good phone call audio.
Rider to Rider intercom that actually works, up to about 1/4 mile.

Now using it for the first 800 miles was pretty good. But there were a couple of problems.

1) I could initiate an intercom with my buddy but he couldn’t “usually” initiate the intercom. I was streaming audio from the phone and I think the Sena doesn’t know it’s not a phone call so it takes priority. He was using audio piped in via the mp3 jack, from his mixit so that he’d have music (from an older zumo) and radar.

This wasn’t a deal breaker though, inconvenient yes but not a deal breaker. He could wave and point to his helmet and I could always call him. GPS directions from the multi-paired Zumo interrupted the intercom.

2) At the end of our initial ride, my buddy’s Sena just died. Wouldn’t charge and won’t charge up. We rode through a crazy amount of rain. But these things are supposed to be water/rain resistant.

Luckily we were able to borrow one for the rally ride and for 1440 miles we had the ability to communicate and that was huge.

I’m in the process of testing their warranty at the moment and will add how that goes. But for now I’ve pulled all of the Starcomm stuff from my bike and plan to use the Sena from here on out.

We got a good 14 hours of use before charging was required. Thankfully they work while charging so a portable battery in the breast pocket of my jacket kept us going through the rally. In the future I’ll have one in the tank bag charging or charged and I’ll just swap them.

So as of right now I’ve found a good compromise. I am disappointed with Garmin and their Zumo 665 BT stack. This was allegedly broken with the Zumo 665 2.9 firmware update. I’ve downgraded to 2.8 but that didn’t seem to fix it. Maybe I’ll roll back to 2.7 and see if that helps.

For now, the Sena dual pack at $300 average retail if you shop around, it’s a bargain.

Read the folding bike reviews for more info.

January 20, 2013January 17, 2016

Family Cruise 2013

Claudine and I really enjoyed our cruise in 2011, and decided this year to take the whole family. Everyone but Michael was able to go. That’s right, Claudine and I and 4 kids, on a cruise.

We started the process of looking for a cruise in November, we were hopeful that we could take advantage of the “Friends and Family” rate, since Claudine has a family member who works for Royal Caribbean, but it didn’t work out.

We got the Friends and Family rates for cruises in January and started looking at what was available, the problem is, everything is short notice. When we got the list it was over the new years day holiday, and we couldn’t get in touch with the FAF coordinator until like 4 days later. We called Royal Caribbean and there was limited availability to begin with. It was going to be hard to book the rooms we wanted if we waited. They worked with us and we booked it.

Flying 6 people was out of the question, even leveraging miles, so we elected to drive. I originally planned on renting a van, but in the end we decided to just leave a day early and roll the dice with our mini-van. It worked out well and saved us another bundle of cash.

The ship left from Ft Lauderdale, we left Friday the 11th around 1:30pm, and pretty much drove straight through to Melbourne, Florida where my parents are vacationing and watched the sunrise and had breakfast with them. Then on to our first over-night in West Palm Beach about an hour from the terminal. I wanted the extra day just in case. It was roughly 1200 miles one way.

We had 6 people, and 3 rooms. We could have shoved all 4 kids in a single room but that would not have worked out well, I’m glad we booked it like we did. Claudine and I had a balcony and the kids had connecting interior rooms across the hallway.

The Independence of the Seas is basically the same ship as the Freedom that we sailed on last time. It’s physically the same but as we learned there were differences other than just the décor. Maybe it was simply that we were overwhelmed or overly impressed the last time. I certainly felt the cruise on the Freedom of the seas was all 5 stars. On Independence it was a mix of 5 star items and 4 star items. The entertainment for example, was head and shoulders above on the Freedom of the Seas.

This cruise was a 6 night cruise. 3 port days surrounded by cruising days. We left on a Sunday and returned on a Saturday. So basically 5 ‘days’ not in the port from which we left.

Our Itinerary was:

Sunday Afternoon: Board and depart
Monday: Cruising
Tuesday: Grand Cayman
Wednesday: Cozumel
Thursday: Costa Maya
Friday Cruising
Saturday (AM): Get off the boat.

We spent the first day showing the kids around, and getting oriented, letting them be awed and figure out what they wanted to do. In all honesty, the first day was half a living hell. Some of the kids were kinda grumpy, which made me second guess the whole thing. Matthew in particular was completely over stimulated and decided he’d ‘test’ his parents. But by the end of the evening, things had settled and everyone was having fun. Matthew found his stride in the ‘Aquanauts’ program. Which is like onboard day-care only a whole lot more fun. He really enjoyed the activities, and the Royal Caribbean crew in the kids area were outstanding.

The first night was also the first of two formal nights. Of which we learned that I had no-dress socks. How’d that happen? Of course there were none to be had on the ship. The clothing store on the Freedom had dress socks, ties, lots of things like this. Even the tailor who rented tuxedo’s didn’t have any. Grrrr…. So if you ever wondered if you can shove size 10 feet into kids dress socks designed for kids size 13-2. The answer is yes. Not very comfortable, nor much fun but it can be, and has been done.

Day 2, was our first port day. With a stop in Grand Cayman. We were supposed to stop there during our 2011 cruise but weather didn’t allow it so Claudine and I were really looking forward to it. We were highly encouraged by friends to do the stingray encounter at stingray city. We are cheap, so booking excursions through Royal Caribbean has never been our thing. We considered it since we were taking the kids and that added security of making sure you’ll get back on the boat does have some value. But none-the-less we chose not too. At breakfast on day one we met another couple who said you must do the stingray encounter so we decided to make that a top priority.

We weren’t in Grand Cayman that long, we docked at 9am, and were to be back by 3pm. We got off the ship, the girls hit up the jewelry stores for their free charms then Claudine did her magic, negotiating with the local tour company. She secured our Stingray encounter for $25 per person, with Matthew being free. They were advertising the tour for $45, which included transportation to and from the ship, 45 minutes with the stingrays and 45 minutes snorkeling. The same tour if booked with the ship was well over $75 per person so that was a score.

We hopped in the van which drove us to the pier on the other side of the island. There we hopped into a fishing boat probably designed to hold 30 people with 54 other people. It was a tad crowded, but we weren’t going that far. It was a 20 minute ride out to Stingray City which is a sandbar off the east coast of the island. Our tour guide, David Evans had a pretty good story about his father and his uncle starting this whole stingray tourist thing and his father diving with Jacque Cousteau back in the day. I couldn’t tell if it was BS, but do intend to look up what I can. We arrived at the sandbar, and man, oh man. Stingrays were everywhere, and huge ones, 4-5 foot stingrays. Not those babies you get to pet at the Newport aquarium. The water was crystal clear, and about 3 feet deep between waves. Matthew was in the water in no-time. Maria right behind him. Molly, not so much, and Maggie had no intention of getting in the water.

David and his partner grabbed our group’s stingray. They held it, tamed it if you will and then proceeded to make sure that every family had encounter time with the animal. You could feed them if you wanted. Matthew tried but got a little scared.

They feel like velvet, super smooth, and provided you don’t step on one and make it angry completely safe.

Certainly a highlight of our trip.

After swimming with the rays, they moved us to an area called the Aquarium for snorkeling. The water was equally clear and about 8-10 feet deep. We didn’t have gear, and there wasn’t enough gear on the boat to go around. Matthew and I grabbed life vests and got in the water but since he couldn’t see, nor touch bottom he lost interest quickly. He was also very tired from the previous 45 minutes in the water.

Claudine, Maggie, Molly, and Maria stayed on the boat during the snorkeling. All was fine until we started to leave. One of the boats two engines wouldn’t start and we were already running late. We putted our way back into the harbor, and the driver made the mad-dash back to the port. We were told that the last tender would leave promptly at 3pm. We got back to the port at 2:45 and the line for the tenders was already crazy long. We got in it, and it quickly became clear that we weren’t the only ones late. The line behind us continued to grow. I bet the last person wasn’t onboard until well after 4:30.

The rest of the day was casual, playing putt-putt and just enjoying the cruise.

On Wednesday we had pre-booked a personal tour guide to Cozumel. Claudine got the contact info for Gerry, from Cruise Critic and Travel advisor. I highly recommend using him for your day in Cozumel.

We pre-booked him, and his van for 3 hours (minimum) but knew we’d have him for at least 5 hours. He picked us up at the pier as promised and began telling us about thing things we could do/see on the Island. Claudine and I have been to Cozumel before, both on our honeymoon and the cruise in 2011 where we rented the scooter of death and rode around the island.

The first thing we needed was something to drink, it was hot 90 degrees and humid. Gerry took us to a small grocery store and secured for us, 6 large bottles of water and ice for a whopping $3.00. He could have easily told us to buy drinks from a vendor at the pier but didn’t. While Gerry was in the store he showed us a park to walk around in that contained an underground river. One that’s used for scuba training. Honestly the park was pretty hokey and full of fake animals. But we did see some turtles, and Gerry pointed out an Iguana. Matthew enjoyed it.

Our first stop on the Gerry tour was the KAOKAO Chocolate factory. I personally expected a bigger factory type tour and was very pleasantly surprised. KAOKAO is a small private, family chocolatier. Joshua spent 45 minutes in a very Discovery Channel like demonstration on the history of chocolate and the work required to get flavor from the beans. We made our own Cocoa. Everyone was entertained and the chocolate is delicious. This is a must-do, if you have time in Cozumel. You won’t be disappointed. It’s not free, adults were $10 and kids were $5, Matthew of course was free. We spent about $70 t0tal including the chocolate that we bought. I would do this again in a minute, or at least stop and buy chocolate.

After this tour Gerry offered up the Tequila factory tour, 4 wheelers, and the zip line. I could see where this was going, every time we stopped we’d be shelling out another $100 for a family activity. This isn’t quite what we had in mind. We wanted a leisurely day, seeing stuff but really didn’t want to hit up $10 per person activities. Gerry was cool with that and didn’t push anything, we started heading for the Tequila factory and passed the Zip line on the way. After determining that the Tequila tour was just a dog and pony show put on by a manufacturer and that unlike the chocolate factory they didn’t actually make it there we decided to pass on that. We asked him to circle back to the Zip line because the kids were excited about that opportunity.

The Zip-line was at Ecoparque Cuzam, where you can do a number of things including the zip-line, horseback riding, drinking, ATV’s, swimming and paintball. We were really only interested in the Zip-line. We met the owner and negotiated a rate, and off we went. The guys really took care of the kids, and it was fun and entertaining. A little pricier than I planned on, but we had a blast. I know the kids would do it again.

Matthew on the Zip-line 2013_Cruise

From the zip-line we headed across the Island for lunch at Playa Bonita. It was supposed to be better and more economical than Coconuts. It was good, great view, service was a little suspect. My food was excellent but the girls weren’t really happy. If we had it to do over again we would do Coconuts instead. It was interesting to learn that there is no electricity on the east side of the island. Everything, including the restaurants are run off generators, and that’s always been the case.

After lunch we stopped at the beach for a little bit so the kids could climb on the rocks, Matthew could throw rocks, and the girls could look for beach ~~garbage~~ glass.

Gerry really took care of us. We’ll certainly use him again. If you’re ever headed to Cozumel look him up. Email Eduardo: eduardoczm@gmail.com or call Gerry: (987) 869-0044 Please tell them the Disher Family referred you.

After all of that we were beat, and had Gerry drop us off at the pier. I brought Matthew back on the ship and the girls did a little shopping.

Thursday, our final port day was a short one. We docked in Costa Maya at 0700 and were leaving at 3pm. I wasn’t comfortable taking the family on any Jungle tours. It was questionable that we could rent anything that would hold 6 of us, and I wasn’t about to shell out big bucks for a 2 hour ride into the jungle on a non air-conditioned school bus to spend 20 minutes at the ruins turn around and come back. Instead we opted for a beach day. Claudine did her homework and got us reservations at Tropicante.

The place is the perfect Caribbean beach dive. Food and drinks were good, everything was reasonable, the beach was perfect. Massages on the beach, 1 hour for $25, you can’t beat that. No cover charge, our bill for the day with 3 “on the beach” massages was $160.00

We hung out, Matthew only left the ocean to eat.

The place is run by an American (Steve) that moved there to open his spot 5 years ago. Contact them and make reservations if you ever find yourself in Costa Maya. He can also handle all your arrangements for scuba, snorkeling, ruin tours, you name it. If we had more time we would have used him for other adventures.

We were back on the boat by 2:30pm, again I took Matthew and Maggie and left Claudine and the other girls to shop. It was the 2nd of the two formal nights, and I got to suffer in socks too small for the benefit of my family. But mostly my wife who wanted more pictures.

Friday our final day on the cruise ship was spent recovering from the previous days activities.

We have really enjoyed the ‘Freedom’ class ships. Our next cruise will be on either the Allure or the Oasis, we may then try a smaller ship but freely admit we’ve been spoiled by the larger ships.

Our final cruise day was non-eventful, it was hella-windy and chilly on deck. So we didn’t get to swim but we found other things to do, like 72 holes of putt-putt with the girls.

All of the photos can be found here: [on Picasaweb]

January 7, 2013January 7, 2013

Dropcam, the perfect name.

If you’re looking for an easy to use, yet highly unreliable web-cam, then Dropcam is for you.

The Goal: Get a relatively inexpensive, yet reliable camera to be able to remotely view weather conditions at our office. So that I can make sure the grounds crew is taking care of snow and ice removal.

After poking around the web and reading reviews, dropcam seemed to fit the bill so I ordered up two via Amazon. (gotta love Amazon Prime).

They showed up, and out of the box it configured easy enough.

We have a rather robust Cisco driven wireless network. Which from time to time we’ve had to dumb-down for some consumer devices. Fortunately for Dropcam that had already been done and we have wireless networks up and running for some of those troublesome Apple devices like AppleTV that don’t work with enterprise security.

The first camera, configured right up, and I created my account with dropcam. Then it started happening, the camera kept dropping off the network. I have to Access points within line of site and less than 40 feet away with minimal obstructions. Even my lowly iPhone 4s gets four bars in my office and it’s well known that it’s wireless is sub-optimal.

So I thought maybe I just got a bad camera. Opened up the second one, configured it up and basically got the same results. It would work, *sometimes*.

These cloud based products make troubleshooting almost impossible. There is very limited documentation, and next to no way to test anything.

We screwed around with the Wireless side just to confirm that it wasn’t on our end. We made it as basic as can be with a completely open network. Still no good. I opened support tickets with dropcam, and got no response for well over 24 hours. That’s not a good sign. So at the end of the day they went back.

Now we’ll ratchet up the search and include higher end POE/IP cameras, cause it looks like that’s what it’s going to take.

For us, dropcam sucked pretty hard.