scott

Iceland Weekend

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Back in December M and I started talking about vacation plans for the Spring. I mentioned how I read once that the hot springs in Iceland were supposed to be amazing. She found a travelzoo deal for a long weekend in Iceland in February and we did the numbers and it worked into our budget, so we booked it. We were both very excited.

We took a redeye from JFK to Iceland on Thursday the 4th. The flight was rough just because it was a redeye and I had to sit in the middle seat next to a rather large gentleman on the isle. I felt very claustrophobic but overall it could have been much worse than it turned out to be. M and I both were still a bit tired getting off the plane. The only thing odd about customs in Iceland was that we had to go through security and metal detectors again on arrival even though we did it in NYC. The only other time I had to do that was when i went from an airport that was so small they didn’t have security to go through so i was surprised by having to do it after going through security in NYC.

After getting our bags we grabbed a cab for the long ride to Reykjavik. It was about a 45 minute to an hour drive. It was snowing and it was still dark outside. We were staying at the Hilton and we were very thankful for the early arrival we had on our room. We got to the hotel and went to the room to take a nap. We slept like 3 hours and when we woke up the sun just rose, it was after 10AM.

We grabbed breakfast in the hotel and then hung out until our bus arrived to take us to the hot springs at Blue Lagoon.

The drive to the Blue Lagoon wasn’t too bad. It was around 30-40 minutes but we got to see the countryside in the daytime. It was very bleak and you couldn’t tell when the snow covered ground turned into the white sky. It was kind of awesome sight to see. We got a ton of photos on the bus trip.

The hot springs themselves was the highlight of the trip. M and I both were looking forward to it, and it didn’t dissapoint. Even the sign’s telling you were to wash was entertaining. We meet up after showering by the spring. It was freezing outside so we ran as fast as we could from the building to the spring. Getting into that water was one of the best feelings. What was funny is that after we took a break and came out of the water M confirmed her initial thoughts that we didn’t need to run out to the water at all. There was a part of the spring that was actually inside the building that there was a door at water level that you could go out so you are in the water and not outside and exposed when you go outside. When we were there it was snowing and freezing. My ears were freezing but overall i was super warm since we were in the water. It was an odd feeling. We lathered up with the silica mud like they say to do. it was fun. We lied around and swam around for a while and then lounged a bit before showering and heading off to the bus back to the hotel. Overall the hot spring was amazing once in a life time thing to do, and if we just did that it the vacation would have been worth it.

Back at the hotel we made reservations for dinner at a great sea food restaraunt in down town Reykjavik. The guide book suggested it and it was fantastic. Both of our meals were great. We tried to goto an Ice Bar, but the place was having issues with it so it was closed. Apparently the locals don’t think too highly of the bar since it is a touristy thing to do but we still thought it would have been fun to try.

On Saturday we took the shuttle bus to downtown Reykjavik and walked around. We went to several museums. Had coffee and lunch in some nice little shops. We walked around the downtown area and looked at a bunch of shops. It was a pretty packed day walking around Reykjavik. I will say that we probably went everywhere we wanted to in the city. We headed back to the hotel a bit early to rest up before our planned dinner reservations but M was not feeling very well so we ended up staying in Saturday night. I entertained myself with my iPad and the lobby wifi and grabbed dinner at the hotel bar.

Thankfully M was feeling better today but she was still under the weather, so I went to the hotel spa for some hot tub action before we left for the flight. Then it was the long cab ride back to the airport. We grabbed lunch at the airport, browsed the duty free and then just hung out till our flight home departed.

Reykjavik has a pretty nice modern airport. The flight home was thankfully uneventful. It was a short vacation but this Iceland trip was pretty spectacular even with M being sick Saturday night.

The Last Day of the Cruise

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We woke up on the last day of the cruise and we were nearing port.  We had breakfast and then grabbed our luggage and headed to the meeting area we were told to goto for our shuttle transfer to the airport.  We had to wait a bit since we were delayed getting into port.  Getting through customs was a bit of a production but it could have been much worse than it turned out to be.  We actually didn’t take the bus to the airport like we had originally setup.  We were concerned about making our flight so we grabbed a cab since the cab line wasn’t so bad.

The return flight home was uneventful and our fantastic cruise was over!

My First Cruise Day 4

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Day 4 was thankfully less eventful than the 3rd day.  We docked in Cozumel Mexico.  We woke up to seeing a near identical ship out of the porthole.  Turned out the Voyager of the Sea’s docked slightly earlier than we did.  At breakfast we also saw two other much smaller carnival cruise ships in port.

We decided on a low key day and after brief browsing of the stores near the dock to hop a cab to a private beach.  We got some chairs in the shade and just relaxed.  We waded in the warm water, had a great lunch and just unwound.  It was really fun.  We took a cab back to the boat early and then relaxed in the pool some more.

It was really cool to watch the Voyager pull out of port.  They backed the ship out of the dock like you would back your car out of a garage.  It was very impressive to see that kind of precision with a ship that was over 100,000 tons displacement.

We had dinner in the dinning room.  All around great day.

My First Cruise Day 3

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Day 3 was a bit interesting.  It was our first port call.  We went to the Caman Islands.  We didn’t end up at the part of the island we were supposed to due to bad seas.  Our shore excursion was also canceled.  We ended up taking a cab to the downtown area we were supposed to goto.  We bought some rum cakes and walked around a bit.

Neither of us were up for much shopping.  We then took another cab to a beach nearby.  We had lunch and then tried to go snorcleing on a boat since that was what our original excursion was supposed to be.  Big mistake.  We should have realized that the seas beging so rough was a good reason not to go.  I was already fighting a migraine and took something for it at lunch.  Once we got on the little boat and it rocked around while at anchor I knew we had made a bad choice.  There was no turning back so we went on our way.  I got sick real quick.  I spent the rest of the short trip lying on the bow of the boat trying to rest.  As it turns out the seas were too rocky for M also and she couldn’t really snorkel that much in the choppy sea’s.

We then headed back to the beach.  For me the damage was already done and i having a full blown migraine.  M was a total trooper.  She got us into a cab/van back to the dock.  I barely made that trip.  She cut the entire line through customs and onto the tender back to the boat.  It was a long line, but i guess people are generally good and didn’t say anything when she was trying to get a sick person back to the boat.  I was able to lie down while on the tender and was very happy to be back in our air conditioned room so I could nap.

After a few hours nap I did feel totally normal.  Or well enough that we went to eat dinner in the dinning room.  We skipped the dinning room the 2nd night and on this night it turned out that the 4 other people at our table had skipped so we had the entire table to ourselves.  Overall it was a fantastic night, but not so great day!

My First Cruise Day 2

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The 2nd day of our cruise was really the first full day.  It was also a full day at sea.  The weather was much nicer than it was in Florida.  The morning was laid back.  We had breakfast at the windjammer and then I had an acupuncture appointment.  I had always wanted to try it so when we did the tour of the spa I signed up for one.  M worked out a bit when I was in the spa.

We had a relaxing lunch and then hung by the pool a little and also explored the ship.  The Navigator was huge.  I read up a lot about it before hand since i am interested in cool technology.  This ship was impressive.

For dinner we decided to skip the dinning room and hit up the steak house.  It was for an extra fee but well worth the price.  We had a great time.

My First Cruise Day 1

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Off on my first cruise.  M and I are taking the Royal Caribbean Navigator of the Sea’s to the Western Caribbean for 5 nights.  With the exception of rediculous traffic that was a close call to getting to the plane on time we had an uneventful flight.

The port was 15 minutes away from the FT. Lauderdale airport so it was a quick trip to the ship.  I was getting over a cold so they required that i be looked at by a nurse before we got on the boat.  I was fine so i breezed through that.

Right when we got on the boat we got our cards we could use to charge anything with.  What was cool was they took our photo so they can verify it is us anytime durring the trip.  I thought that was neat.  We got there a bit early before our room was ready so we headed to the windjammer for lunch.  The view was spectacular even though we were sitting in port.  The buffet was really nice also.

We brought our bags with us instead of checking them so once 1PM rolled around we were able to head down to our room.  We wanted cabin with an outside view but didn’t want to go crazy on cost so we ended up with a cabin on deck 2 with just a porthole.  It was ok.  I think we both imagined much worse.

Once we were settled in to the cabin we had several hours before ship left port.  We both wanted to schedule appointments at the spa so we went up to check it out.

It had been raining on and off all day in South Florida but when the doors opened on the elevator and we walked out onto the deck for the first time is a sight i wont quickly forget.  It was spectacular.  Just the open deck looking out on the water.  Even with the bad weather it was still a sight to see.  We did a quick tour of the spa and each scheduled some appointments.  M actually went right away and did something.  We just relaxed the rest of the day and had a great dinner meeting our table mates for the first time.

Google Apps Premium

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On several occasions I have blogged about Zimbra. In June I decided to switch back to Google apps. For about a month or so I had been playing with both Zimbra and Google apps. What’s funny is I was relatively happy with Zimbra, but when I was playing with android phones I started looking again at Google apps. It seems like nowadays Google apps is universally accessible on multiple operating systems and phone platforms. Zimbra does use Microsoft’s exchange sync but do not as universally compatible as Google apps. The biggest drawback was the limitations on android phones. Even though I ended up not keeping an android phone I actually like the flexibility that Google apps gave me. When I first started using Zimbra I actually A copy of mail both on my Gmail and on my Zimbra account. Recently I have been less concerned about downtime with anyone provider, so that redundancy seemed like overkill.

What I ended up doing was I stopped using Zimbra and started using the free Google apps. Once I got the IOS 4.0 upgrade for my iPhone however I was compelled to purchase the paid version. There was a quirk with each change sync settings and IOS 4.0 that was fixed with the premium version. I tried the 15 day free account and liked it. I ended up canceling my Zimbra account and and now I am only using Google apps. Feature wise I can’t complain about Zimbra. Overall the two products were similar. I do however like the UI of Google apps. Recent integration of Google voice to my Google apps for domains also affirms my choice was the right one for me at the time. The

So far I’ve been happy with my choice for the past few months. I know every year or two I reassess the situation. I did that about two years ago when I switched from Google Apps to Zimbra, any year or so before that when I moved on to Google apps from another mail provider. Let’s hope I am satisfied with what I have now for a few years. Of course if Google doesn’t continue to innovate I’m open to other options.

RIP Partsearch

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Today seems like the last day of Partsearch Technologies. It looks like the staff has been let go and the company is going out of business.  It is still kind of odd that I found myself wanting to write about it. After all I haven’t worked there since February 2007. In any event I have several friends that still worked there up until the end, and after spending so many years working there I feel like a wanted to write something.

For the past several weeks I’ve heard about problems they been having. Of course it seemed like (to me) there’ve been problems for years. In the end I have mixed feelings about this day. Partsearch was a place I loved to work at for many years, but toward the end for me it was a place I dreaded to work. At the time my decision to leave was both sudden, and a long time coming. What I mean by that is, by the time I was ready to leave I realized I should’ve left the year before. I talk about that now because it seems like the decisions that were being made then probably had an impact on the company’s ultimate demise.

In recent years I have had many negative things to say about working there. In reality as I said I had several years where I loved working there. I met many friends that I still keep in touch with today. I got to work side by side with one of my best friends for 2 years. I went from being just a systems engineer, to manager, then to a director. Today I can’t help thinking about all the fun times I had, but also about the frustration that led me to leave.

I talk about this now because in the end it seems like the company doomed due to its virtual reliance on one client. This wasn’t news. This was actually in fact a problem since the day the company was founded. Over time from what I’ve heard their reliance on Best Buy decreased, however at the end the vast majority of business was still from them. The detail that I have are fuzzy about the last days, but I recall talking to other managers years ago, and discussing the fact that in the end the business model just did not work. That and the companies reliance on one customer was worrisome from the get go. I’m not a finance guy, all my information is secondhand and anecdotal, but to me this seemed obvious. Let’s put it in an other way. If it was a great business model, Partsearch would not have relied on Best Buy for such a large percentage of revenue 10 years into the company’s history.

I can recall spending weeks and months preparing to build websites for customers that were to be the next big thing for Partsearch. The problem was the next big thing never came. It was always a bit demoralizing to spend all this time and money and effort on a website and never generated more than $5-$10,000 a month in revenue. This happened, more times than I can remember. At one point we had to have been managing 15 to 25 websites with 2 to 3 generating 90% or more of the money. One of those sites with the company’s own Partstore site. And from what I heard Partstore wouldn’t have gotten much focus if it wasn’t for Dan convincing upper management it could make money. Don’t get me wrong, the actual building and constructing the sites and infrastructure was challenging. That’s what I did. That is why I liked working there for so long. The frustrating part was to do it knowing that historically it wouldn’t make any difference.

I guess in the end my thoughts about working there a very bipolar. On one hand I got to work with some good friends. I gained new friends. I grew as an engineer and manager. I learned a lot more about technology than any other place I’ve ever worked. Gus for one still motivates me today even though I haven’t worked for him in over five years. All that positive thoughts get clouded when I think about the frustration of having to deal with Glenn and other upper management. In my mind the lack of understanding some aspects of technology, and being delusional in the fact that they thought they could build software better than they could just buy off the shelf that eventually led me to leave. I know you can argue anything I’m saying right now. However think about this, as far as I can remember the website infrastructure was rebuilt, or attempted to be rebuilt no less than four times in 10 years. In all those attempts (again as far as I am aware) it never worked just right. Today that still baffles me. In the end it was a e-commerce site, with the search engine backend, and fulfillment system. That’s nothing groundbreaking, yet there was so many problems with it.

What I find kind of funny is that I knew several people that worked there up until the end. Most of them are actually happy the companies out of business and they’re forced to look for something else.

When I was younger and jaded right after I left Partsearch I look forward to this day. Then it was almost like when it happened it would be justification. Now when the day is here, it is just sad. For everyone that I still know I was working there I wish them good luck finding a job. For those friends who had already moved on like myself, I say take a moment to think of the good times we all had. Because now that it is all over, all we have are the memories. When you count up the time that I was happy there outweighed the time I was unhappy!