POA1

Remember that it's New Year's Day.

If you use Flight Ease or any other multi brand flight engine, you have to refer to the individual airline's site for the perks associated with the "plus" fare.

You know how there are casual nights and dressy nights? There's another type of dress code you'll likely encounter: Festive Orange. (I'm not making this up. You can see it on the first page of the Daily program for the 14th of December. Despite the fact that we had many suitcases, we did not have room for our Festive Orange outfits. Daily-Program-2023-12-14-Nieuw-Statendam.pdf

Ah... The 21st century version of smacking the side of the television to make the picture come in better.

I would like to say that I am thankful that you put a little space between your photos. It really helps with the viewing experience. Two thumbs up. Highly recommended!

There's no speed boost that I could see with premium. It's really just additional services you can access.

@wesport Did you have to call in?

Well played. 🤣

December 13th. As I read through these, I now realize that I missed out on learning how to make an origami Christmas Tree. I fear that this is going to be a repeat of the first two decades of the 21st century. Steel drum lessons were offered on nearly every Caribbean cruise, but I never went to them. Here I sit, at the age of 60... not a virtuoso steel pan player, but merely a lowly cruise blogger. I suppose I should take comfort in fact that I blog for science. Daily-Program-2023-12-13-Nieuw-Statendam.pdf

You'll have to let me know how the wireless administration of the new model works out. It I had my laptop with me, the old model performed like a champ. It's all managed through a web interface. If you tried to manage it wirelessly, it did not perform nearly as well. Also, the fact that the new version has switches and more lights probably means it far superior.

And the Daily from December 12th, 2023 — a listing of the many things we failed to do. And of course, the PDF version. Daily-Program-2023-12-12-Nieuw-Statendam-.pdf

I think it's 72 hours or 3 days.

Happy New Year from Michelle & me, Rich! It's still 6 hours 'til midnight here in your home time zone, but I wanted to get early start

We base it on service provided. It'll be a little more obvious once you get to the Retreat and have an opportunity to experience the service and see if one of "your guys" is doing more, or if they are doing the same amount. The amount is up to you, but I would spread it out in case your cabana stewards change. If they change out people, it might be weekly.

I feel better knowing that we haven't been singled out. 😁 Happy New Year!

No, it does not. I used a little bag that I had on hand.

We returned to the room during our second full day of the cruise and found our disembarkation paperwork. Michelle remarked, "Already?? This is why we don't do 7 day sailings." A lot of you will be sailing from Fort Lauderdale this season, so you may find the disembarkation & Luggage Direct information helpful. (And depressing!) Diesembark-Luggage-Direct.pdf

I noticed that the response time was dragging over Christmas and again last night. That's a typical DDOS symptom. I use Cloudflare for mitigation and prevention, but seeing CAPTCHA is not unusual. I never saw the car path thing before.

The two guitarists alternated lead & rhythm and both were excellent. The bassist, keyboardist and drummer were great, too. It's just that the singing wasn't the best. They weren't even doing any tough vocal parts. (Eddie Money, Tom Petty, etc. Things got a little worse when they did Journey songs. )

For you? Of course! @VMax1700 I have the older version of this one. If I were buying one today, I'd get this one as it has newer firmware that will work better if you're configuring it from the wireless interface. (The old TP-Link N300 really worked best if you configured it via an ethernet cable.) The text below should get you there on Amazon. I don't know if the link works outside the US/Canada, but you can search on the product name that should work. I addition to being newer, and having more up-to-date firmware, this version has more lights and a switch to change modes. And, as everyone knows, more lights = better. TP-Link AC750 Wireless Portable Nano Travel Route (TL-WR902AC)

I think CC was under a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack last night. It also happened on Christmas. If you have servers and you have some experience under your belt, you expect attacks around any holiday. Most companies are short-staffed on holidays, so attackers have more time to work and fewer people trying to fix things. The human verification system we saw this morning was a new one to me. For whatever reason, I was never redirected after I proved that I'm not a bot. I just sat there, looking at the Success! Screen. It never moved on. I'd like to think that's because I'm such a successful guy, but I'm guessing it was just glitch.

Bear in mind that there may have been personnel changes since mid-December. That said, the playing was outstanding. The vocals were not. It was enjoyable, but you really had the feeling that they'd have been amazing if there had been a really good vocalist. We were there 4 or 5 nights out of 7.

Happening for me all over the place.

I got it right after the I answered a question. Considering that I'm logged in, never cleared my cookies, and made a legitimate (and hopefully helpful) post, it's pretty silly. After all, they're ad-supported and posts = content = revenue. Hopefully they will tweak it so it's less intrusive. Otherwise, posts from people onboard ships will dry up.

Glad you were able to take care of it! You were not going to get your PCC until Tuesday at the earliest. (January 2nd.)