You Did Not Win a Free Cruise

A few months ago I received a letter in the mail. When I opened it up, it told me I had one 1 of several prizes. I looked at all of the rewards and tried to guess what I really won. Was it the free week at a hotel or the free 7-day cruise with airfare. I guessed the hotel but it turns out I won the cruise. So what's the catch? I had to sit through a timeshare sales presentation. Okay it wasn't a timeshare but a travel club. What's the difference? With a timeshare you own the deed to a piece of property you can visit once a year or every other year. With a travel club, you gain access to wholesale room rates for hotels around the world. In both instances you have to come up with $50K or so. Naturally I declined the purchase but followed up on the cruise.

I received an e-mail from Gocrv.com telling me how to redeem the free cruise. Basically I filled out a form indicated the dates I wanted to go and the departure port I wanted to leave from. I also paid a $200 deposit. I then called a number to schedule the trip. I had enough trips planned for the year and so I wanted the cruise to be towards the end of 2026. When I called the number and finally met with the vacation specialist, she told me to call back in May as their inventory had not yet released for dates towards the end of the year. Today I called back.

One thing I have been practicing is being nice to people when I travel. This past weekend I took a trip to Las Vegas to see Donny Osmond and when we went to check into the hotel, we had to wait a half hour before we could get a key to our room. Rather than pitch a fit, I politely waited in line to talk to a real person instead of the check-in kiosk. The gentlemen told me they didn't have any king rooms available. He then upgraded my wife and I to a junior suite. It paid to be polite. It may not always, but it did last weekend.

So I called the nice ladies at Gocrv.com this morning and made sure to be polite. I got to hear a number of fine-print details that they speed over in commercials and I agreed to the terms. Then she put me on hold to see what options I had for a weekend cruise in November leaving out of Port Canaveral, Florida. After about 10 minutes, she came back on the phone and told me she could get me a weekday cruise to Ensenada leaving out of Long Beach, California in October.

I have only been on 2 cruises in my life and the first one was the exact same cruise she proposed to me. Furthermore I would be required to pay an additional $350. I asked if there could be any other cruise available. She said there was not and so I politely told her I didn't want to repeat something I had already done and asked for a refund of my $200. She transferred me to customer service where I politely asked for my refund again. I was told I would get an e-mail with instructions on how to process that refund. That was an hour ago and I'm still waiting.

So here is the question: Did I really win a free cruise with airfare? Not really. When my wife and I went on the Ensenada cruise several years ago, the whole thing cost about $1000. Most of that was an upgraded balcony stateroom. I could have done it for $500 if I opted for an inside lower-deck stateroom like I had won. I could have effectively done the same cruise for $50 less. Ultimately I have learned there is no such thing as a free cruise, no matter what the literature says. The cost for learning that lesson is about 2 hours of my time total. That includes the sales pitch and all of the time spent on the phone talking through details. Hopefully you learn from my lesson and save yourself those couple of hours. 

Lonely Ride Up the Mountain

This past winter will be one for the record books because of how warm it has been. Right now is the end of March but the weather thinks it is the end of April, if not May. Then Mother Nature decided to throw us a curve ball today with a cold front that brought temperatures at my house down to almost freezing. Unfortunately my truck did not like the sudden drop in temperature and decided to not let the radio work on my drive to the morning gym, Alta ski area. This is the 3rd time it has happened in the 7 years I have owned the truck. The simple fix is to allow the truck to warm up slightly, turn it off, and turn it back on. As the drive is not very long, I just drove to the ski area without the radio.

I had hoped my wife would like to ski with me for an hour this morning. She is not a fan of the freeze/thaw cycle we are having right now. In spring skiing, the snow starts out frozen solid. Imagine an ice-skating rink stuck on the side of a mountain. It is like that and if you don't know how to carve turns, skiing can be a little scary. Without my wife to join me, the ride up the mountain felt extra lonely.

There are also a number of displays that show up on my radio like time and outside temperature. Without the radio working, I couldn't see those either. I like to know the temperature so I can see it change over the 4000 vertical feet I climb to get to the ski area parking lot. Generally there is a 10-degree Fahrenheit difference but I had no idea today. All I could do is guess.

It is amazing how I have come to appreciate little modern conveniences for the short drive to the ski area. I thought about that and how technology provides feedback about the world around us. Something as simple as knowing the correct time is very comforting. Couple that with all the information we can get at our fingertips thanks to Smartphones and the Internet and we have the ability to be very aware of what is going on around us. Unfortunately we do not all take advantage of that information and there are a lot of ignorant people in the world. But that is a topic for another post.

Making the Most of Spare Time

This afternoon I find myself with a spare hour and am not quite sure what to do with it. I want to be productive and active (sitting and writing my blog is not active). My neighbors keep bringing over treats and I can't help but sample them. Sure I could plop down on the couch and watch a movie or show while I gorge myself on candy, cookies, and other various Christmas goodies, but that is not a good way to prepare for all the food I will eat in the next week or so.

I could go tune another pair of skis. That at least keeps me active as it is a lot of work walking back and forth the length of the skis. I might not get a lot of miles traveled but I do get a fair share of steps. Unfortunately tuning skis makes a mess and I have already cleaned myself up for the day. I guess I'll pass on that.

I could go through my Christmas list and make sure everyone is shopped for and gifts are wrapped. Well, I actually did that yesterday and did not see anything forgotten. Everything is wrapped nicely and ready to go under the Christmas tree. My son even sent me the clue I am supposed to give my grandkids letting them know they will be going to Orlando in February. We should have a great time. 

I could go for a walk but that is what I will be doing in an hour anyways. No need to double up on that. Besides, I spent the morning skiing at Alta with all of the skiers that decided to go to my ski area instead of staying at Park City as there is no snow there. There is enough to keep one run open but with the hoards of people trying to ski the same run, it is probably chaotic.

I have checked in with my parents and offered condolences as they had to put their dog down yesterday after a good 19-year run with the pet. Needless to say they are besides themselves with grief. I understand as I thought it to be a particularly bad day when my wife had to put our dog down. That is why I checked in on them.

I supposed I could go clean the bathrooms in the house but my wife did that earlier today while she needed to kill some time. We also worked together to take out the garbage as the garbage men will arrive tomorrow and we want to make room for all of the Christmas wrapping paper. 

Writing in my blog is not that active but it did take 10 whole minutes to put this together. Now I only have to fill 50 minutes. What to do? What to do? 

Losing Track of Time

Tuesday night I completely lost track of time. It happens every once and a while. A week or so ago I started putting together a technical specification and became so engrossed in what I was doing that I needed to be reminded to go to lunch. However Tuesday night, 2 hours seemed to be only 5 minutes.

After work I headed back to my sailboat and started playing Horizon Zero Dawn. My wife called to talk a bit and so I paused my game to have a conversation with her. As she hung up the phone, she told me she would call me when she headed to bed. A seemingly 5 minutes later my phone rang again. I told my wife that she must be going to bed early. Then I looked at my watch. She didn't hesitate to correct me that it had been quite a while since I talked to her on the phone last. To me it seemed like such a brief moment in time.

It is too early for me to write a review of the game but I have to say it has my interest. I can tell that eventually it may start to feel like I am doing the same thing over and over, but it has my interest right now. Stay tuned for more.

A Man with One Clock

I am at the San Francisco airport waiting to catch my flight back to Salt Lake and thought my flight might actually leave on time. Why? I checked the monitor and it said my flight is on time. Then I logged into my e-mail and it told me my flight is delayed by 2 hours! I have a computer and am too lazy to go back and check the flight monitor again and so I logged onto the airline website and asked for a flight status. It says my flight is only 45 minutes delayed. So what is the correct answer? This reminds me of an old saying: "A man with one clock knows what time it is, a man with two isn't quite sure." In my case, I have 3 and none of them agree.

One of the problems with keeping travelers up-to-date with the latest information is that it is often wrong. An airline may see a delay about to happen and so they notify passengers. Then a pilot will work a miracle and arrive sooner than expected. The seemingly 2-hour delay gets shortened to 45 minutes.

A quick check of my e-mail between paragraphs and I have received a message indicating that my flight is now only 45-minutes delayed. I have 2 sources of information that agree. It will probably change again before I actually board the flight and so I don't put much stock into my departure time until it actually happens. Fortunately I have a really good book to read and don't mind hanging out at the airport too much. I would like to get in at a reasonable hour but a delay is not heartbreaking.

Daylight Savings Time

This weekend we will be experiencing a semi-annual event that causes havoc with our clocks and watches: daylight savings time. In the spring we change from standard time to daylight time. In the fall, we go back to standard time. The idea behind the time change is that going on daylight savings time means we will use less electricity in the evenings for our lights. It was a good idea until air conditioning became so common. Now it is a toss-up as to if it saves any energy at all. One thing that is certain is that we all spend a lot of time adjusting clocks around our offices, homes, and wrists.

Computers also have to deal with daylight savings time. Most home computers are smart enough to automatically adjust themselves. So what happens with sophisticated servers? In the spring, we jump forward an hour and so it instantly goes from 2am to 3am. In the fall, we jump backwards from 2am to 1am. If there are any scheduled jobs meant to run between 1am and 2am, they get executed again. The autumn can be a good thing if every night at 1:30, the bank deposits extra money in your account. You get 2 deposits instead of 1. However the bank rarely just gives away money. The more common case is that they will charge a fee. In the fall, you will get charged twice and that can be a bad thing.

The way most servers get around daylight savings time is by staying on one timezone and that is generally UTC or universal coordinated time. Doing so keeps the time the same even during the spring and fall semi-annual time changes. This can save a lot of hassle. Trust me on this one as I had to move one of my servers from PDT to UTC this evening. The time change caused a lot of problems in the spring and was poised to do even more this next Sunday morning. Now I can sleep more soundly on Sunday evening and don't have to worry about fixing stuff on Monday morning.

Leap Day

Leap Day is one of those events that happens once every 4 years and just happens to be today. It is necessary to keep the calendar from getting out of sync. Of course it would be convenient if every year had the same number of days, but that's not how the universe works.

A few years ago, I had a co-worker propose that we were off on the number of days during the year. He had noticed that the seasons seemed to be starting later and later. I had had a similar thought before and ran through the mental exercise. I realized that while seasons were directly effected by the rotation of the earth around the sun, we really use the length of day to calculate how long this voyage takes. I pointed that out to my co-worker and he agreed with my logic.

Computers are kind of like the earth. It would be nice if they all used uniform time units to represent a day. Unfortunately that is impossible, simply because of tiny differences in how computer clocks are made. So that means that every once an a while you might want to resync your computer's clock with a trusted time reference. What better day than Leap Day to make that adjustment? After all, sometimes it is very important that your computer has the right time.

Keeping Time

This week has been spent rebuilding and configuring servers in our research and development private cloud at work. Some time ago, our company's IT department decided to remove a machine that the rest of us use to keep all of our computers' clocks synchronized. One of my favorite sayings is: "A man with one watch knows what time it is, a man with two isn't quite sure." This is also true for computers and so when servers in a private cloud can't decide on the time, it wreaks havoc. In our case, it brought the cloud down and all of the machines with it.

In reality, not everything in the cloud came to a halt. The servers were still out there running just fine, we just lost all network connectivity to them and so it was impossible to log into them. The only solution was to stop the servers and restart them. If they were actual machines, a power cycle (or turning them off and on) would do the trick. As they are part of a cloud system, it requires that I reconfigure them once they come back up. All of the data in the database machines was preserved and so we didn't lose anything important. Furthermore I have simple scripts or small programs to reconfigure the servers, so rebuilding everything didn't require much thought, just time.

When I found out that our private cloud had crashed because of clocks not being in sync, I was pretty upset. I wondered how a few seconds difference could have such a negative effect. I guess it underscores the importance of keeping the correct time.