My family and I just came back from a one-week cruise to Mexico. We were on the Mariner of the Seas and stopped at three places - Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. The weather in Mexico was nice - high 70s to low 80s. Cabo San Lucas was scenic, and Puerto Vallarta was beautiful. Mazatlan just seemed kinda rundown and a little too industrialized. These impressions were based on our one day excursions in each city - and just around the tourist areas. The food at Puerto Vallarta was great. We had freshly made sausha, nachos, tacos, burritos, and enchaladas. The food in the cruise ship, mostly American, was good. There's a buffet and cafe that's open all the time, so it's pretty convenient. The service at the restaurant was oustanding - the best I ever had. The waiter remembered our names, filled our glasses with water constantly, made good recommendations, and when we like something, gave us extra servings. Still, I think I would be bored after a couple days in the ship without the stops in Mexico.

Drama Before The Vacation
My family and I had plans the day before the cruise. We were gonna eat out and shop for the day. We were only able go out and have breakfast. During which I discovered the site was down-and-out since the previous night. I ended up spending the rest of the day diagnosing and getting the site up and running. It was kinda stressful. At least this time I had a day to fix it. The previous crash occurred while we were on vacation, and the site was inaccessible for a couple weeks.

Haiti
While we were vacationing, disaster struck Haiti. The damage from this earthquake was even worst than the one from Sichuan, China a year ago. Over 200,000 estimated dead. Sad. On the last day of the cruise, there was a donation form for everyone.

Coco
The other big story while we were vacationing was the NBC talkshow mess. The Jay Leno experiment was a bust. NBC plans to cancel The Jay Leno Show, move Leno back to The Tonight Show, and oust Conan. I 'm a fan of both, but if I have to choose one, I'll go with Conan. The more news I read, the more cynical I become. When Jay first announced his plans to retire nine or ten years ago and offer Conan his job, I thought he was being nice and sincere. But it was all just lip service for NBC, who didn't think Leno would be able to sustain his top ratings so they plan to succeed him with Conan in advance. Jeff Zucker orchestrated this entire debacle, and what does he have about this? He gives himself a pat on the back for admitting that he made a mistake - "Man, I'm so courageous. I'm such a great leader. Damn, I'm so awesome. Woohoo!" Looks like now I'll have to wait at least another year for a new Conan show. Damn you NBC.

Internet Access on a Cruise Ship
You may have noticed that updates last week were sparse. That's because the ship charges $.55 a minute for internet access. That by itself is bad enough, but what's worst is the dial-up speed. I disabled images, java, and javascript on my browser, and it was still unworkable. It's just not possible to do any meaningful work on that connection and price. Yes, I know, 10 years ago, people did a lot of meaningful work on dial-up connections. But the problem here is your internet usage could cost way more than your trip. Don't bother. I overheard one person being charged $15 just to send an email. This is the most disappointing part of the trip.

If you have to use the internet, wait until you're on land, where internet cafes offer broadband and much cheaper rates. I was only able to squeeze in two updates during the three stops though.

Traffic Took a Hit
This site always end up taking a traffic hit when I'm on vacation. News need to be updated daily, or it's not a news site. Last week's traffic was down 25-35%. I thought I could do some updating in the ship, but the snail pace was unbearable and very expensive. If you're thinking about doing work during a cruise, you can pretty much forget about it. Even if you had a cost-saving strategy like mine, it'll still cost you. Here was my process: disable images, java, and javascript on browser, log on, load homepage, log off, select 10 stories, copy and paste the urls in separate tabs on FireFox, log on, load all 10 tabs, log off, tag the stories, log on, hit submit for each tab, and log off. Yeah, it sucked. This entire process took me about 2 hours, but only 30 minutes of connection time. That cost me about $15. Imagine what it had cost me if I had stayed logged on for 2 hours, and then imagine how much longer it would had taken me if I hadn't disabled images, java, and javascript.

Overall, a nice vacation. Not too stressful, even though I'm kinda tired. Now, I'll have to rebuild some traffic to the site. Back in the day, I would freak out over loss in traffic. Now, it's just, "Meh, bring it on." Since this is kinda my sandbox, I'm always looking forward to learning something new and trying out new features.