Letterman is going to do and interview with Koppel on Nightline... the thing is ABC tried like hell to replace Koppel with Letterman and in the end Letterman chose to stay at CBS... read me
From my friend G take back baseball hell I wasn't gonna go that day anyway!
Hey wish me luck on this one it might be a bumpy ride!
I know I promised so here it goes... Waterworld... what a freakin nightmare! I think the service at WW was the worst I've ever seen anywhere I've ever been, even worse than the movie theater and McDondalds! I come from the unique perspective of having worked there in the first year they were open as a gaurd so yes I can say I know what they are doing at least the gaurds.
Dade and I get there with fresh season passes in hand and walk up to the now combo park. It seems they just did AW and WW as one park this year, no seperate ticket. So we walk and head for the Season Pass Processing Center over in the Coney Island section of the park. This is pretty good, short line it went sorta quick and we had our passes in no time. This is where the first problem occured. In order to get to WW you have to go to the Tidal Wave and walk under/past it. Well how do you get to the Tidal Wave? Go to the Mexicana area. How you get there? Oh you have to go through Main Street Plaza area to the old Nottingham area past the new roller coaster, then up to the Skyway in the Oriental Village, loop around that and head through the Mexicana area until you see the Tidal Wave then take a left. Now walk up the path eventhough it seems like your going the wrong way keep going across the RR tracks and then you'll see the entrance. HUH! All of this without a sign in sight... it's a damn good thing I have been here like 100 times or I would have walked around and been lost for an hour trying to find the damn entrance. Well we made it and Dade was tired from the 2 mile hike and I was sweaty too, and that water looked damn good at this point.
First things first, let's get a locker and put our gear in it. We get in the 7-10 person line at the locker/tube rental shack and about AN HOUR later we were one person from the front. That person was an employee there on her off day trying to scam some free tube and locker or something. She said what she wanted and then wouldn't give the guy any money, meanwhile the line is now 30+ strong and I'm pissed at the amount of time it has taken and they are fartin around and I'm about to lose it when a supervisor shows up and send her on her way. So I pay the guy for the locker and he gives me a wrist band(for the deposit refund) and then he just stands there and looks at me. After about 30 seconds I remind him I did not get a key yet so he goes into ultraslow motion and bends down and start to pick up something. It took a full minute for him to slooooowwwwlllyyy take his time in picking out a key for me. Ok I'm about to blow at this point but I've got my super excited 4 year old tugging at my arm so off we go.
Our first stop Lil' Bucaneer Bay the kiddie section. First thing I notice is that nothing is working. The slides are pumping but the trees, the cannons, the coconuts and ship spouts are not doing anything. Dade doesn't notice so I'm happyish that he's happy. So Dade goes up and waits his turn for a slide but gets stuck at the top because a 1 year old is there without a parent in sight as far as I could tell trying to climb up the slide. I'm sitting in the pool about 10 feet away expecting to see a gaurd help out or a parent get her but nope 3 of the 4 gaurds in the area are having a powwow about whos screwing who or something by the sound of the language (in the kiddie area) and the lone other gaurd is way over there looking after another slide. So Dade is patiently waiting for this "baby" to get out of the way so he can go when finaly a parent shows up AND HELPS THE KID CLIMB UP THE FREAKIN SLIDE! WTF! Dade slides down and I convince him we need to be somewhere else so we head out to the Lazy River. On the way I see a 20'x30' section of astroturf, which covers everything in this area, covered in brown/black slime from standing water. It's obvious by the gooeyness that it has not been attended to in weeks. There were a couple of little kids "skiing" through it though... hmm maybe it was a new ride in the making... again not a gaurd to be seen, anywhere!
The Lazy River was uneventful and provided a moment for me to "come down" from the rage I had been building up but this was short lived. Our next stop was the racing slides. We get in line to get a mat and there are only 8-10 people ahead of us. Six go at a time on this slide so this should only take a minute to get a mat. Well first only one person comes down. Then they take their sweet time getting off the slide so the next set can come down. The one gaurd down here is more interested in talking on his cell phone than hurrying this lone slider along too. Next 2 come down oh but before that one of them sent their shoes down ahead, well the guy at the top won't let them go since the shoes are now at the bottom of the slide and not off the slide. So the gaurd has to go and get them out of the way... oh and you can tell he's not happy about having to get off his phone call so he going to stroll out there and get them as slow as he can and looking as pretubed as he can. Finally they send down those 2 then a run of six come down and we get a mat. I guess it's been 10-15 minutes for what should have been 2 minutes at this point so I start the timer on my watch. We get in the "we have a mat" line and we wait and wait and wait and I notice that 12 minutes has gone by and no one is behind us... they aren't even running! It turns out someone in an area not even adjacent to the slide got hurt, they fell or something. So the gaurds shut down the slide so they could watch! Eventually they gave her a band aid and everything started and we got to slide.
At this point I wanted to complain so I start to head back to customer relations when I notice Dade bounding along beside me like a gazelle! To him this was the way it was, he didn't know that all the employees were acting "put out" to be there and that things were all crappy, only I knew this and I was about to show him that the fun he was having was not fun at all, so I decided not to do it. There about another dozen or so incidences throughout the next 3 hours we were there, and in the end we were at AW and had bad service there to. Now I want you to know I'm not being unreasonable here. Employees singing "come on rain, all you people need to go home!" to my face is not acceptable. I would have been canned on the spot if I had done that in '83... I guess it's just sign of the times... I must be getting old or something, even the family places are not that "family" anymore. Next time I will take names and make a note of times and send in something after the fact...I don't want to damage my son's dreamland.
How was your weekend... I had a kick ass weekend. I took Dade to Waterworld on Friday... the service there is horrible but more on that on the next post. I took Dade to the race track on Saturday and went to eat at Empire Cafe and to see Minority Report on Saturday w/Angie. Wonderful!
Anyway the real reason I'm posting is I just found a link I wanted to show everyone, and I was afraid I'd forget if I did not post RIGHT NOW! The Future? nttDoCoMo is Japanese mobile phone company that is making great strides in highspeed anytime anywhere connections. They also promote technology such as video phones. I think they are THE driving force in moving mobile data into the future. Go to the link and view their vision of the future, I think for them most part it's a very realistic and achievable goal. I hope they make it real.
No one won the Lotto last night so it's going to be a whopping 68M on Saturday! We got a pool together at work so hopefully we will hit on that. If we do I'll walk away with a 1.2M in the bank... and I think everyone here on that list will probably quit!
Well for all of us BIG people Southwest Airlines is going to start charging us double to fly! read about it ... like I need another incentive to lose the weight! I see this getting out of hand, and another thing is a few years ago they tightend up the seating on the plane making it hard for us tall people to fit... now this! Nice.
I don't like cats that much and the more I see of this site the more I don't like cats!
They say that now they have a cell phone that is a tooth implant! damn and I thought I had a small phone!
Ok it seems as if someone has linked junk food and sexual addiction... I find it a stretch but some of you will get a kick out of reading it! read me then read a real live case of this here. I know her blog is waaaay better than mine but not about to start going out and doing crank then tell all of you about it!
Here is a nice article about Blogger.com and blogging in general.
Did anyone see Futurama Sunday night! That was the best, I still can't belive they are going to can this show! It's so damn funny! Anyway I was purusing Slashdot, as you do, when I ran across this site. Got Futurama? On there they mention how Slashdot uses an XML format to do all of the news and stuff and that the nodes all have names like Bender and Fry and Zapp and stuff! How cool is that! If you did not see it you should get a copy from KaZaA, it was called "Anthology of Intrest II" ... the middle story is worth the price of the download!
In case you didn't realize it we just passed the one year anniversary of Tropical Storm Allison. So for all you homeowners out there you might want to think about that flood insurance! It takes 30 days to kick in once you get it So now is almost to lat but better last than never! and if you live out of the 100 year flood plain/plan it's pretty cheap. Allison Pictures to help you remember...
Damn that is nasty! thanks to L for that one ... ugh I'm gonna go wash my hands!
Gotta go to the doc again today... well I pulled one off on the home alarm system. I went to this website tech-man.com and contacted Jim. He talked me through the process for only $10! I was ready to spend alot more than that and now it's all fixed up!
My friend RR passed me this link today, I have not looked at it but it has some good potential!
Want to play a game? Try Capoeira Fighter ... it's a pretty good flash game.
Today I plead with you... if anyone knows someone who knows how to work on home alram systems please let me know. I had a single sensor go out and now no one will work on it unless I sign a damn contract with them for monitoring. ughhh! I guess I'll be doing it myself.
It's been quiet on cool stuff to see lately... here are a couple.
My friend RR sent me this one Bad Jocks is a site that keeps tabs on all the bad atheletes out there... v.funny!
oops gotta go... I promise I will get some better links in here in the coming days... i.am.sam
My back has been bothering me lately so I went to the doctor today. She said it was nothing so I guess I'll sue for malpractive when I become paralyzed! Everything I touch is breaking! My PDA shattered screen, My Tivo won't connect and I'm pissed off, my cable modem fried got a new one, my House alarm, one sensor is stuck... ughhh!!!!! Other than that I'm peachy!
Six degrees of force feedback... this may be the future of video gaming!
Slashdot is reporting that DivX is coming for the Xbox... this will be a serious issue for the movie industry if/when this comes out.
Linux is tooting it's horn with the latest from ILM. It turns out that ILM used Linux machines and some homebrewed software to do the AOTC movie. Read bout it here and see some the very impressive screen shots.
Back to a regular blog... I know of lot of you are like ... finally! Anyway bust bee am I am! Oh yea I got a new saber the other day and it is fine fine fine! It is an HK OB1 TPM version with an Ice Blue EL Blade and driver set if anyone knows what the hell that means...
Links links links links links...
Did you know I now have broadband? I got RoadRunner, but some of you or most of you cannot get high speed internet... well that may be about to change... Two guys in a garge have hacked together an 802.11b WiFi network that will extend about 20 miles! A far cry from the 150-300 feet a normal WiFi does. This box can be made for about $150 and could blanket a small town easily making Cable and DSL obsolete! WOW!
Any South Park fans out there? Go here and build your own SP character!
OK I bonked... it was the 6th day and I tried to blog but the damn thing would not go through. I tried several times but to no avail. I eventually had to turn in my connection and that was that.
What would I have written on the 6th day... let me do a quick synopsis.
Day 6: Labadee, Haiti
Labadee is a peninsula on Haiti owned by RCI. They have it fenced off from the mainland of the island. There is no dock here and you have to take a tinder boat to the shore. We got up early and ate breakfast and headed for the tinders. Once we got ashore we had scheduled a WaveRunner tour of the coast so we got that sorted and found a front row spot on the beach. Did you know there are no fish in Haiti? ZERO! The Haitians have fished them all out... anyway the tour was so so. Angie got a slow WaveRunner and got left behind alot. In the end I traded with her so should could have a little fun... After the WaveRunner deal we went back to the beach and had lunch(catered by the boat) and layed in the sun for a bit. You could see the rain coming though and with my last two days of a good soaking I decided we should go. Angie and I went back and the others stayed and got rained on. Back on the boat we went to our rooms and got cleaned up and got a nap and waited for the evening shows... overall pretty good stuff. Angie won some more money in the casino and I lost some more money in the casino. I stayed up for the grand gala buffet at 12:30 and did not get to bed until after 2.
Day 7: The last Day at Sea!
Started the day off by sleeping in a little bit. Then went out and found a spot ont he deck for some sun. Eventually everone joined us and we went to Johnny Rockets for lunch. One of the things to do on this trip was climb that rock wall and today was the last day to do it, so we did. I went first... straight up like Spiderman! K and E made it as well... Angie on the other hand... she almost made it. By the time we were finished with that I was hot and sweaty so I went back and got cleaned up. We had to pack so I did that and had everything ready by dinner time. Our last dinner :( was great, the waiters all danced and sang and the food was kick ass, just as it was the whole cruise long. After dinner we found our way back to the casino where K would win and then K2 would lose what K had won... I lost a bit and Angie won a bit...eventually it was time and we went off to get a couple of hours sleep before the disembarkation started...it's all over now. :(
Day 8: We are out of here...
Up at the crack of dawn and out of our rooms early(b4 7a!)... one last free meal and the off to the Champagne Bar to wait our turn to leave the boat. Three and half hours later we were on our way back to Ft. Lauderdale... we stopped and ate since we had a ton of time. Found a place called Islamora Fish Company or something of the sort where I ate entirely too much, including a slice of Raspberry Cheescake Key Lime Pie! WOW! and just what are these numbers on the side of the menu and what do you mean I can't have one of everything? After lunch we dropped off the van headed for the airport and in a few hours we were home... vacation over... I think I need another to recover now!
