picture of a chunk of tree with the word "log" on it
Jan 17-31
Vancouver to
   Busan, with a red line through it Honolulu
Fred Hansen, Winter, 2005
FRED Home


Monday, January 17
 
We docked around 2:30, but the ship was cleared by customs for disembarkation only at 3:30. We duly slogged forth in the rain on various errands.

S needed Canadian $2 coins to ride the bus tomorrow, so we stopped at a currency exchange. Very modern architecture. Modern business, too; they don't really have any money. They just put money "into" plastic cards. This is of little use to us since our charge cards already do a fine job of currency conversion. S had to look elsewhere, so we split.

Next I stopped in at a pharmacy to fill a prescription I'd had no chance to fill. Not so fast, they say. You have to get a Canadian doctor. But fear not. We have a tame one who will write a Canadian prescription and just charge you $40. (Others charge $100.) So I slopped along two blocks to the doctor; mostly under overhanging roofs. To his credit the doc noted it was blood pressure medication and did take my pressure. Disappointingly, it was still as high as it had been to initiate the prescription back in Pittsburgh. This despite my having actually started on the trip and "relaxed" at sea for three days. Returning to the pharmacy I learned why so mnay Americans come to Canada for medication. My co-pay for the prescribed drug in Pittsburgh had been $24 for 30 pills. The total charge in Vancouver, without insurance, for 100 generic pills was $29, and that's in Canadian dollars.

The parent reception was this evening. Parents and siblings, but students not allowed. Parents can come on board tomorrow with their children. Amazing choclate dragon and ship on the buffet. I ate too many of the nut-filled dessert cakes.

Exercise: 2 mi. Desserts: numerous.

Tuesday, January 18
 
The students arrive. I spent the whole day trying to move the mozilla/composer sources from Unix to Win/XP. Finally succeeded using TFTP.

Everyone went on deck to see the ship leave.

Dinner wait was 35 minutes.

Here might be a good place to describe the layout of the vessel. The public areas are decks 2 through 7. Others are crew only. Deck two has passengers and the clinic. Outside the clinic on the wall are two slots, as might be used to tuck in a few file folders. The top one has packets of Meclizine, a useful seasickness antidote. This slot needed to be refilled often for the first day, though people get accustomed to the sea surprisingly quickly. The other slot has condoms. I don't know how often it gets refilled. Decks three and four are passenger cabins, end to end, with two corridors on each deck and thus four cabins across the ship's beam. Most of the outside cabins have windows. None have portholes. The windows on 4 are quite large. Each corridor is about 600 feet long and around a 150 feet from the corridor end to the nearest crosswalk. Thus walking all the corridors on decks 2, 3, and 4 gives a workout of nearly a mile.

Deck 5 has the lifeboats ranging along its rails. Inboard it has some passenger cabins. The main dining room is aft. With four feeding lines there is not too much waiting. Jost forward of the dining room is classroom 9. Amidships on deck 5 is a circular area called, for historical reasons, Pursars Square. Here are the principle offices for passengers: ship's pursar on starboard, SAS administration on port. Just forward of the Square are offices for the two deans (academic and executive; S and Becky Drury). Above the Square is an atrium reaching into the 6th deck.

Deck 6 is the principal living areas. Aft is another dining area, the Garden Lounge, somewhat less formal than the main one. It was the only dining area for the trip to Vancouver, so the faculty have come to favor it for all meals. Two classrooms occupy the port side of the dining area, and serve as eating areas during meals. Mysteriouls guarding the middle of the room is a large  floor to ceiling box disguised with bubbling columns on its sides.  Running from the Garden Lounge to the atrium is what was the "street of shops" for the cruiseship. The snackbar is starboard while port sports three classrooms, formerly more lonuge, the library, and the cardrrom.  Then come a small circle with variety store port and clothing store starboard. The atrium was formerly surrounded by the casino, but is now the library on port and the computer lab on starboard. About 20 desktop computers are arrayed on two tables and available for student use. All access a single set of shared folders. Anyone can create a folder and store files, providing they are willing that anyone else be able to read and revise those files. My own approach is to have the master copy of my files on my laptop and to recreate my public folder to update it. That way no one can permanently revise my files but I have them as an emergency backup. Forward on deck six is the main lounge. This is the site of the morning "Global Studies" class taken by all passengers, students, faculty, staff, and mere hangers-on like myself. The aft ends of the lounge are marked off as classrooms 6 and 7. Classroom 8 is between the computer lab and the lounge.

Deck 7 is the luxury areas. Aft is the elegant outside sunning area complete with pool descending to fill the Garden Lounge's mysterious box. Some exercise equipment lines the starboard side. Forward of the sun area is the Jade Spa: beauty shop, massages, sauna, facials, large bathtub, mudpacks, and so on. Unable to reconfigure this space, the decision was made to man it (or woman it).  So these facilities are available. I wonder whether the students will much use them. Students are, however, overloading the spa's gym component, featuring five elliptical machines, six cycling machines, three stair-steppers, and only two treadmills--my weapon of choice. There is no internal passage from aft to bow on deck 7, so we have to go outside to move from the gym to our room. (Inclement weather forces a descent to deck 6 and s subsequent ascent.) The housing on deck 7 is opulent. Each room has a private patio. The fittings are much more motel than ship. Each has its own TV and fridge.  Ours, somewhat larger, even has a massive hide-a-bed sofa. Furthest forward on 7 is the faculty staff lounge. It is much too large for the purpose, having been the ship's discotheque in its former life. Allegedly free coffee will be available here 24x7 and evenings will see full bar service.

Exercise: none.

Wednesday, January 19
 
The day began very early. The sea was rough and so: my bed creaked, the TV swang from side to side; and the bathroom door kept banging into the tub. I finally fixed the latter by stuffing the sofa cushion behind it. (Oh yeah, the dean gets a sofa.) After breakfast I complained about those items to Dante, our cabin steward. Amazingly, by dinner time they were all fixed.

I arose at 6:30, breakfasted and walked on the treadmill. Then I began trying to build the composer. A short way in, Maggie came by to tell me my wife was lying on the floor having felt the effects of the strong sea right in the middle of presenting her faculty. I walked her up to the room

Exercise: 3 km

Thursday, January 20
 
Sea much calmer this morning. No whitecaps. Long swell so the ship does pitch a bit, but tolerable. E joined us for breakfast and I started right in compliaing about IT matters. Wrong. After I bit I ealized my error and breakfast was pleasant.

Running on battery, computer did not behave well initially. Right button seemed stuck. Unable to click to get focus. Could not drag from explorer to word pad. Explorer doing lots of I/O.


I left off building "composer" last night with the problem that gcc was taken to be "cl." Today I found this in composer/configure.in. In order to set environment variables, I created "fred" as a legitimate user. Then I had to change owner on all files and figure out how to get tcsh going.

Next problem:  composer wants glib, but it has to be installed so it can all be accessed from one prefix path. I either have to fix composer source or change my glib setup. Sigh.

Exercise: Elliptical machine. Distance 2.1 in 45 minutes. Miles or km?

Friday, January 21

Last night was *wild*! Tremendous roll, lots of banging and creaking. I did not seem to sleep. The administrative offices were all over the floor. Breakfast delayed due to havoc in the gallery. The piano in the lounge suffered; a leg snapped off, tipping it completely over. It wound up on the opposite side of the dance floor, with the lid torn off and in another corner of the dance floor.

Gained another hour. Now on Hawaii time.  Computer slow to get started again.

Maggie wants me to do the ba duk lecture tomorrow night. Just before activities fair.

The glib problem is easily solved by making a new tree and copying the glib stuff into it: /usr/glib.

7 PM The day that began so foul turned glorious. Beautiful sun all after noon. The sea continued strong with 20 foot waves, but the captain found a course that minimized the upset.

I am getting into a mode of agreeing to do too many things. Just today I took on fixing S computer and reformatting a file for Maggie. Both simple tasks, but each with its own special hitches. My major tasks at present are:
  1. maintain these logs
  2. lecture on go for tomorrow night
  3. build Mozilla composer
  4. Church of the WHoly Quantum
The Church is getting the short end of the stick. And I fear that too many of these tasks are jsut sitting at this computer. That's not too bad for days at sea, and it won't happen in port.

Exercise: planned some in the morning, but the gym was closed. I allowed fate to decide I would not exercise today. Got quite a bit of exercise weaving around while walking from place to place.

Saturday, January 22

Mostly peaceful night. I know I slept because I was awakened when the TV fell off the shelf. It looks like it was just installed with chewing gum. Terrible dream about a guy married to some sort of evil wife. He strangled her at length and I awoke at 6:55.  I seem to wake the same time every day despite the fact that each of the last three days has been 25 hours.

I've been having a debate with various others concerning the alcohol policy. The way it is now, students must not bring alcohol aboard, but they buy "drink tickets" during 5-7 PM. Drinks are then served in a drinking room from 9-11 PM. (And no music is allowed in the drinking room.) What bothers me is that external beverages brought aboard by students are confiscated. Why are we confiscating a commodity and then selling it. The cynical conclusion is that confiscation supports revenue from sales.

The noble aim of confiscation is to reduce or eliminate solitary, uncontrolled drinking in student rooms. This is indeed a deplorable practice with the potential for both short term dangerous behavior and a long-term lifetime of alcohol abuse. The only way I could condone students bringin their own liquor aboard would be to store it in private cabinets and dispense it to its owner during alcohol hours. Too bad: there is no room for such private liquor supplies aboard the vessel. So I suppose alcohol confiscation is the only available choice. Perhaps confiscated bottles could be served at reduced prices on alcohol nights--albeit, there would be no acknowledgement of the generous host.

Network connectivity remains a problem aboard ship. My laptop is in the same situation as many I have consulted on: It has a strong signal to the shipboard wireless network, but it cannot acquire an IP address and so cannot communicate. One thought was that there might not be enough IP addresses available. This seems false from an experiment last night. I plugged the laptop into a spare ethernet hard-wired connection. No IP address. I switched to use the ethernet cable from one of the computer lab permanent computers. It was removed from the net and I added; but I still could not get an IP address. Then I hooked the lab computer to the extra outlet I had used for the laptop. The lab computer worked fine, but my laptop continued unsuccessful. This morning I make two observations. My wirelss card is getting channel 5, but not channel 1. The received packets display shows almost constant use of the network. Perhaps bobcat (the laptop) cannot get an address because it is starved for bandwidth.

Exercise: Stair stepper.  22 floors in 12 minutes. Started at level 5, but dialled back to level 2.
Desserts: 4 (and they were all cakes, which I don't favor. Sigh.)

Sunday, January 23
 
Good night last night. In the morning S the 25 hour days finally got to S. She arose at 5:30 and went off to read. I still managed to sleep in almost until 7AM. We are now in the only time zone without a city name: "international date line, West". (Although, as far as I can tel we are on the east of the date line.)

Last night I gave my presentation on Wei Qi, Baduk, Go. Attendence was great. At least 20. Talk was fun to give and well received. Attendees played "first capture" in the latter half of the session. Aftter the community college session, the activities fair was held. About 20 signed up for the go club. However, no one volunteered to be leader, so I don't know that club play will be arranged.  This morning I got a note and pin from Maggie in thanks for giving the class. A nice surprise.

E was scheduled to give a talk on PowerPoint at the same time as mine, but her audience was the faculty. And that time was chosen by the Captain for his dinner with the faculty. S said later that one thing he mentioned was that the main damage the other night (piano et al.) was due to a rogue wave. About 30 feet when the others were 20. The captain was on the bridge when it hit and saw it approach, but there was no time to do anything to avoid it.

This morning the wireless does work to connect to the intranet. So I can send these files to the public space.

S has another computing task (for Maggie); shouldn't really take that long. We wtill have not got administrative access to her computer.

Exercise:  stairmaster  32 floors 14 min; elliptical 0.7mi 13 min

Monday, January 24

tasks this AM:
    get the class rosters online for faculty
    load wordPerfect on S computer
    change power management on ditto
    clean CPAP eqpt
this PM
    fix CQ files - a modern church  ("The Church of the WHoly Quantum")

8 PM
I did get the class rosters online. I think the faculty can get to them, but S cannot get them from her office computer. Ram came and helped me put Wordperfect on S computer. It works for him, but not for S. Sigh. Along the way, however, Ram did change the timeout period on IP addresses from 24 hours to 4. This seems to be much better. Just now, for instance, I got an address immediately. And I got to the class rosters. That work, however, slipped over into the afternoon.

And then I took a nap, having slept poorly last night. When we have high seas (25 foot waves last night) my roly-poly body refuses to stay in one place. Tonight I have asked Dante, our cabin steward, to make the bed with the pillows at one side. I napped that way this afternoon and splept much better.

Dr. Mike is talking about Buddhism. He's picked one aspect to talk about: stillness. A major concept in Buddhism. He observed that the biggest problem of many trauma patients was psychological torment. Buddhism can help.

His practice is usually solitary meditation. He brought and played a singing bowl. Special bought bowl; three minute ring. As it dies down we hear silence. Listen to the sound of the silence behind the sound of the bell. (25 seconds ring in this noisy place.)

"The teachings of the Buddha" Jack Kornfield. Around a hundred meditations.

fred: Is the stillness like not being afraid the ship will fall apart? Your fears are more hurtful than the actual event.

Vipasna Buddhism. "Insight" simple form of Buddhism. Close to that of the Buddha himself.

Kathye: Tibetan Buddhism. Die, go into Bardo. There choose next lifetime

Manindri: She was taught that Buddhism agrees with science; indeed, foresaw modern science.

Exercise: elliptical 2 miles, 30 minutes


Tuesday, January 25

We are close to the international date line and will cross it late this afternoon. The ship is not making progress as expected, so we are already in the next time zone across the line:
Solomon Islands, Magadan, New Caldonia. We will lose tomorrow. When we awake, it will be Thurday the 27th.

I slept very well on the crosswise bed.  This did not, however, forestall my taking an hour nap after lunch. I awoke with the taste in my mouth of the strawberry ice cream that finished lunch.

Today: fix up CQ pages

8:30 PM
Nope, did nothing on CQ. Maybe I've lost interest. Maybe there are already too many religions.

This afternoon I napped and read some of Elspeth Huxley's The Edge of the Rift. Her style is what is often called beautiful. It is certainly very poetic with lots of adjectives and lots of sensory words: colors, smells, sights, sounds. Lots of  nature; specific mention of many kinds of flora and fauna. Nonetheless, it reads pretty well and has a certain amount of narrative interest through tension. This would make a good style for a travelogue such as this, but is not something I can do and therefor not something I allow myself to be interested in doing.

This evening I got suckered into three activities, two simultaneous. The go club decided to meet B days at 7 and the web site decided on B days at 6:30. And at lunch I agreed to collect haiku for the daily announcements. I even wrote a haiku for the announcement:

Your breezy haiku,
Chosen for the daily news,
Will blow us away.

In the initial web site meeting I volunteered to write a program to turn arbitrary text into web pages. The point is to have a good way to associate text with pictures immediately so submissions can give stories with pictures. The basic idea is that bracket-filename-bracket is augmented with a following <IMG> tags for the file.

Exercise: Schwinn bike: 7 mi, 30 minutes

"Wednesday, January 26"
On the ships log, this day was recorded as the first 27th of January. We skipped the 26th by crossing the Intenational Date Line.
Why was there a second January 27?  See tomorrow's entry.

Exercise: sitting

Thursday, January 27
Green, angry angles
Of the sea assail us in
Grandiose disdain.

At 2:30 yesterday afternoon I looked at the electric clock in our room. It was still going, telling off the minutes in shiny red letters. That was a small triumph; the electricity had never gone out through the turbulent night.

We had gone to bed expecting a not-entirely-easy night amid crashing waves and howling winds. Nonetheless my crosswise bed configuration did not me drop to sleep. I first awoke at about 1:30 with the violent motions of the ship. At 3, the sea chastised my pride in the crosswise bed by rolling so steeply that I slid right out of the bed endwise. And onto the floor.  At four came the announcement that RDs should gather in Pursar square. I later learned they decided to visit each of their cabins to see if they were okay. All were. Some little time later the TV snapped its leash and scurried across the floor. Having 220 volts, the leash snapped and sizzled for a second until its fuse burned. (This turned off the fridge, endangering S medications. Sigh.) Thereafter succesive rolls slid the TV across the cabin with great whaps at the end. Around 6 a roll more severe took the entire bed--with S and I as passengers--and rammed it into the patio door. It was a wild and scary night. The oldest senior passenger called many and got me. I hurried over only to find that the medics were already there and taking good care. Overhead were ominous rumblings as newly-freed equipment rampaged across the deck.

At 6, our maelstrom turned to nightmare. The intercom blared: "All passengers put on your life vests and stay in your room or go to the corridor." Nothing more. No reason. Only an impelling sense of urgency. The life boat drills had prepared us and instructed us in proper dress: long sleeves, long pants, closed toe shoes; clothing to keep you warm. (Heat is not an amenity available found on lifeboats.) As I struggled to dress, the vessel continued to pitch from side to side. Mindful of the roll-on-roll-off ferry disaster in Scotland, I decided that the piching was due to water sloshing on a lower deck; fortunately this was false. No way were we going to continue to subject ourselves to the rampaging TV--now joined by the bigger if more benign bed, so we went to the corridor and became part of a wary gathering. The mood was subdued and without panic. We sat in two rows facing each other, backs braced to the walls and feet braced against our opposite number to avoid being tumbled around.

Hope was not encouraged by the next announcement instructing all passengers on decks 2, 3, and 4 to proceed to deck 5. Again no reason. Was the vessel flooding from the bottom up? (No, they just being moved closer to the lifeboats. The corridors on the lower levels are limited.) We on deck 7 were now the only passengers not gathered on deck 5. The overhead rumblings continued with each major roll. Finally Kenn came on the intercom to tell us that we were now rolling so much because the engines had died. And should be restarted "in about an hour."

The deck seven team came together and retrieved food and beverages from the cabins. We dined well on snack food and bottled water. Plenty of calories if not much nutrition. Time wore on. The chief engineer hurried through with a couple of crewmen. They ventured outside. They returned. They came and went again. Curious passengers like myself tried to pester with questions. To no avail. A sentence started as the crew approached could not be finished before their retreating backs vanished around the corner. E came up tojoin the deck 7 group and slept next to her mother for a while.

Remarkably the engines did start in little more than hour. The vessel was turned to a better course and calm became at least a hope, if not a reality.

Gradually the announcements began to resemble a standdown from the alert and we returned to our cabins, scenes of disarray and even havoc. Our cabin was a mess, but not othersie greatly damaged. Other cabins had smashed partitions and broken tables (5/8th inch glass tops in a dozen pieces.) Out television had completely self-destructed. The case was separated from the innards and the tail end of the tube was broken off with its yoke. I felt some guilt at not taking better care of it. Had I restrained its sliding just after it broke free, it might have been saved. However, (a) no such restraint struck me as feasible, and (b) I was annoyed at the lack of imagination shown by the outfitters in not imagining the rigors of the sea. The place was clearly outfitted by hoteliers without a single thought for travel at sea. In my mind I was grateful that the ship itself had actually been designed by a ship builder. Had the hoteliers had there hand in it, the ship might well have sunk soon after launch.

An afternoon session with the captain made clear the magnitude of the event. More information was provided by the captain in an informal meeting in Pursar Square the next morning.

-- The initial life-vest announcement came after the front window on the bridge blew out. Winds were high, hurricane force. A LARGE wave came along. Its foamy crest was probably on deck 7.  The brunt of the green water was right at bridge height. Sometimes the captain moves forward to peer out the window. Had he been doing so at the time of the wave, he would have been hurt, maimed, or killed. Fortuitously, he was sitting in the captains chair and the glass was safety glass. He had time to turn his shoulder and "only" got soaked and bruised.

-- All the electronics for controlling the ship are in the cabinet beneath the main window on the bridge. (Hoteliers did apparently have a hand in the ship design.) The engines were not harmed, but could not be controlled.

-- The engines are on manual control and cannot be accurately synchronized. Unsynchronized, their pitches interact to produce continuous rattle in the Garden Lounge and classrooms 1 and 2.
-- Since the classroom spaces are adjacent to public spaces, SAS sought permission to build partitions. This was granted too late to do a proper job and partitions were attached only at the top. The various rollings of the ship damaged the partitions to where they became dangerous and had to be removed. Classroom 3 is adjacent to the snack bar/lounge and chatter becomes an increasing distraction throughout the afternoon.

-- Another wave tore out the window in the chief engineer's cabin, soaking and bruising him. He had to hustle hard to get the engines working while hurting all the time.

-- (How is it that the two officiers most crucial to repairs were the ones attacked by the sea? We are too far at sea to suspect terrorists. And a terrorist would surely have chosen a more direct attack. Perhaps it is simply that these officers occupy exposed quarters to keep them closer to the sea.)

-- Some time before the window went, the captain tried to cheer us up by telling us that if we thought we had a mess, we should see his cabin. According to him, he had a 500 pound safe stuck through his desk. \

-- The ship has borrowed a compass from a passenger and may have to borrow a GPS unit. Only one of the ship's two GPS units is still working.

-- A questioner asked if the Captain had expressed an opinion on the choice of a January crossing of the North Pacific. He replied that,
    I was not asked and did not offer my opinion.
(No one asked what his opinion would have been. Early on a crewman told me that there are no passenger ships in the North Pacific at this time of year, and not even a whole lot of freighters.)
To my mind, the Captain should have at least expressed distaste. He alone was the one person in the world who could have looked at the weather charts and redirected the voyage to calmer waters. My safety and that of all other passengers and crew was in his hands. He had orders from Semester at Sea and the shipping company to sail from Vancouver to Hokedate. It may have been that a quarter-century of taking orders from the USNavy ill-prepared him for the difficult task of rejecting orders from V-Ships.

-- The Coast Guard was alerted as soon as the window blew out. They sent a cutter that reached us a day later and accompanied us to Hawaii.

-- The nearest ship at sea turned immediately in our direction. It, too, was a day away. No ships were sailing our perilous waters.

-- Damage was extensive.

-- Apparently we have hit the news media worldwide.

{Two months later on a bridge tour, I learned a little more. The vessel was designed to roam the Greek islands, travelling at night. To achieve the travel itineraries, high speed was essential. One way was to reduce the waterline by placing the bridge well forward. The guy I was talking to mentioned that the bridge on the Maxim Gorkiy has the bridge much further from the bow. That way waves pretty much disipate before reaching the bridge windows. (And, yes, that is how to spell "Gorkiy." I am sitting here in the faculty lounge in Cape Town and looking out at her. Curiously, besides the big foredeck there is very little outside deck.)}

{The M/V Explorer has a sister ship, the Voyager, built to the same plans. In March, it hit a wave and lost the window next to the one we lost. Their wave was only 9 meters. So some designer is going to be in deep hot water. And many lawyers will get rich pursuing suits.}

5 PM
A mandatory all-hands meeting has been called to discuss our situation. As Captain Buzz arrived, he was greeted with enthusiastic cheers.

Kenn: Our voyage has changed dramatically.
We are working to share information.
We finally have some to give.

Housekeeping notes: regular meal sched; snack bar open til midnight
    outer decks closed;
    tell pursar of problems w/ plumbing or hearing PA
community college and classes continue

here he is the man who has been:
"busier than a one-tooth man in a corn-cod eating contest"
Capt. Radican:
    I did not do much; the crew did. (Applause)
SAS staff has nothing to do with the ship, don't blame them
it is a rumor that someone said originally that
    we should not have chosen our original route
Process: ISE makes proposed itinerary
    ship management (600 vessels) approved the itinerary
    they considered a data base of storms
the storms we encountered could not have been forecast
{To me, a current weather map trumps a database. Even as we left port there were storms all across out route.}

where going and when will we get there
    yesterday options: Japan, Midway
    he picked Midway
    prior to knowing other options
    Honolulu is now an option, if the weather holds
    rolling due to following sea
    the following sea is giving us about 2.5 knots help
    Midway: 600 miles, 2-2/5 days, depends on weather
    Honolulu 1200 miles 5.5 days   
    choice is under review
    Honolulu needs daylight - tugs
    Midway is an anchorage situation

Dean Becky:
    Can I get off in Midway?
    Can I get off the program?
    Is the program continuing?
    no firm answer yet
    in the past, adjustments have been made
decisions
    program
    safety
    ship, is there hidden damage
       how long will repairs take
what released to parents and web page
    intended five minutes apiece on SAS satelite phones
    website
       message saying SAS is working to preserve the academic
          integrity of the semester
       message from homeland security and US coast guard
          MV Explorer in calmer seas
          continuing to monitor
          690 N of Midway and in transit to Hawaii
          ship is using two engines and is 1450 mi from Honolulu
possibilities
    house in hotel
    continue academic program there
    fly students to Japan or Shanghai



Exercise Wednesday/Thursday: none, unless you count trying to walk around and get up after being thrown across the room
Exercise Thursday/Friday: TBD

7007 Pat - lent books: Aztec, Noble House
7010 John - took DVD to try on my computer; it fails, I have no audio

Friday, January 28

Day, a flying fish,
Bolts aloft, boils the sky and
Sinks oblivious.

I seem to awake each morning at 7 AM in the time zone where I am. Today we are in a time zone East of where we were scheduled to be; so 7 AM in this area is 5AM by the ship's clock. Too early. I managed to lie abed til 6 and then wented and walked the decks and stairs for exercise. (The gym is still closed.)

The toilet in our cabin was out and so are all the public toilets except those in the Faculty Lounge.

Today's task is to get a working version of PicPage, the tool for building html from txt files.

I did get a working version of PicPage. Sadly, cygwin has include files for gif and jpg, but lacks the corresponding libraries. Anyway, only one other person showed up for the meeting at 6:30. Same thing for the go club at 7.

Since the clocks are to go ahead an hour tonight, I went up to the room a little after 8. Took an hour getting ready for bed, and went to bed around 10.

Exercise: walked all decks and stairs inside

Saturday, January 29

When long happy hour
Hits busted loo, bliss is a
Piss in the shower.

Beautiful day outside. Deck is open for us!

Today: ?
    Extend PicPage to build a single page referring to all others.
    Tackle CQ again?

8:30 PM
Nope. Did none of that. In the afternoon I helped out a bit in the IT lab.
In the evening I attended the website team meeting and finally got to show off my tool.
We put up a set of instructions on the website public folder.

Later on we are going to try to play bridge. This will be fun, but isn't a great idea since we lose an hour tonight.

Exercise: climb all stairways
    even those outside!

Sunday, January 30

Waggling the mouse
That lives in my arm cheers up
The beast in my head.

Slow day. Feeling just a tad glum. Forgot my pills at breakfast. Didn't get around to exercising. Aha. Around 1700 I caught a mile on an eliptical and did feel some better. Thus the haiku above. Its nto really very good and is only the second stab. But I don't seems to see a way to proceed with it.

The big task for the day was to deploy the web site tool for reviewing images. Early tests revealed two problems: images from cameras are too big to review and some users don't know to put sub-drectory names into the names of files. And I had no programmatic way to determine or change the size of images. Around 1500 I discovered GraphicsMagick, which does offer these tools, but I failed to find the documentation, so programming would have been a nasty voyage of discovery. Late in the evening I discovered the documentation including command line interfaces which do exactly what I need.

The evening also had the Honolulu preport meeting. The Asst. Executive Dean gave us logistical details:
    We will dock around 1430 at Honolulu Pier 2. This is an industrial pier and we will have to walk "ten minutes" to Aloha Towers. Imigration will be handled in the Union with queueing by ID number. Clearing the ship will take at least two hours. In the meantime various suits from SAS and V Ships will board. And there will be a press conference; probably aboard ship.
    We will be in Honolulu at least four days and maybe five.
    The luau will be Feb 1 (Tuesday) , 1615-2200. We need to arrive at bus area at 1600.
    Kenn also read off some official details of our events:
       We were between to low pressure systems.
       One was a storm 1000 miles wide and the other was to our South.
       The wave that hit us was at least 55 feet high.
           Crest around deck 7.
       Max observed wind was 101 knots (116 mph).
       The bridge drench stopped al engines at 0620.
       By 0700, partial power had been restored to one engine.
The Exec. Dean exhorted to students to be mature. To be sure they would remember the good times they were having. There is still no definitive plan for getting us to Asia and continuing the voyage. But several options are under consideration.

The Field Officer read off some details about trips. Mostly amounting to asking us to arrive early for tours.

The Academic Dean hosted a cultural preport. Motly dull. The students in the piano bar did not pay much attention. First Captain Buzz went on about hawaiian history covering most of the material from the morning's Global Studies. Then a geology prof covered the geology in more detail than was palatable at that late hour. Finally we got another westerner doing a hula; surely we will see better in days to come.

Exercise: elliptical 1.13 mi in 15:50 minutes



Monday, January 31

No global studies today. Did not awake until 8 AM. Found three empty elliptical machines at 9 AM even though they were booked solid for the morning.

Arrival in Honolulu scheduled for 1430. Finally docked at 1630. Passengers not cleared for going off ship until around 2000. Many students decided to move to hotels for at least a few days.

Exercise: elliptical 1.75 mi  25 min