guskintelligence

Dave's Thoughts and Plans

Posts Tagged cruise

Faceboat

Jan 31

Posted by davetron in Blog2011 | 3 Comments

Sometimes I get an idea in my head, and it screams to be free and in the world.  This isn’t as easy as it might appear, as some ideas are not satisfied with being spoken – they must be made real in the form my imagination fits to them.  In this case, I had an inkling of an idea when I found out my new HTC Evo phone (which is awesome, btw) could be a wireless access point.  What if I could host an application on my phone, where there was no Internet?  ”No Internet?” you scoff. “Where exactly is that going to apply?”

On the Magic Cruise, that’s where.

I have been developing a local-area-network version of Facebook (*much* reduced in capability) for use on this cruise a bunch of nerd-friends of mine are taking next week.  I call it Faceboat.  Faceboat will do a few things for us that may or may not be useful:

  • We can check-in from various parts of the boat, in case anyone was wondering where to find us
  • We can set up rendezvous plans without needing to be in exactly the same place at the time of the plan
  • We can put our room # up, available to friends, for reference

I’ll be honest – it was fun to release the creative desires that led to the imagined reality of Faceboat, but we may find it is completely unnecessary once we embark on the cruise.  Still, totally fun to do!

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Amanda Bornhofer

Sep 26

Posted by davetron in Blog2010 | No Comments

I met Amanda on the second Magic Cruise, while we were out on the Pub (not public) crawl of Key West. It did not take long for us to hit it off, because we had an excellent time bar-hopping, visiting and conversing (rather than playing Magic) many nights while on the boat. Amanda’s the kind of person who you can just as easily to talk to about any subject as you can just sit next to and remain happily silent just people-watching or listening. She and I and Mick and Patrick ran around late laughing our heads off, trespassing in various restricted sections and generally having a wonderful time making mischief – a tradition that to this day is accompanied with fingers up like horns next to the head and a “Pirates!” exclamation.

Amanda and I had a great talk or two on that cruise, about various subjects – Magic in the classroom, making friends, balancing work with going out – and then I had the opportunity to see her at a number of events throughout the year thus far, in San Diego, San Juan and U.S. Nationals. Amanda is a good person, who cares so much about the well-being and disposition of her friends, her family and her wards in the classroom that she often stresses herself out – and that’s just my observation from the small amount of time she and I have had chats together online! Honestly, she is a wonderful, caring, beautiful person, who is currently at the top of the list of my friends who can easily convince me to go out and do crazy things because it means I’ll have more time to hang out with said friends. (I even finally made a real weekend visit to the Midwest to see her, Steve and Lindsey, Danner, Alayna, Lems and a host of other awesome folks – which was as much them as her, but her awesomeness as part of this group cannot be denied!)

Despite getting to know each other so recently, Amanda and I get along so well that I count her among my closer friends. It helps that we think so alike in many ways, and that she’s smart, sassy and hilarious. :)

One more thing: I can’t talk about Amanda without talking about her laugh. It is unfortunate that I don’t have a recording I could embed here to share its majesty with the world, so my poor words will have to do the best they can to describe it. You know when you are near powerful speakers and the pressure of the sound they produce can make you feel like your heart is syncing up with the beat? Amanda’s laugh is like that – it doesn’t matter how I feel or what’s going on, when I hear it, the humor-pressure-wave rolls over me and I can’t help but smile!

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Teresa St. Arnauld

Sep 16

Posted by davetron in Blog2010 | No Comments

When I met Teresa, she had just said “yes” to Dwayne’s marriage proposal, on the first Magic Cruise.  Now, I understand this predisposes them to have been friendly to me (and in fact, I think I had met Dwayne at local Seattle Magic events previously), but even so, they were quite nice and easy to talk to.  Teresa, not being a Magic player herself, and I, not really able to play tournament Magic and looking for cool people to hang out with, ended up chilling together (with Jess, Rachel and Shannon) a bit on the rest of the cruise.

Teresa shares my affinity for corralling/organizing a bunch of gamers to go out together for dinner/etc.  She’s also quite good at it when she puts her mind to it.  Like many of my socialite-type friends, she’s very good at being inclusive in conversations, which I really admire because I feel awful when friends are left out of each other’s space on a full group outing.  Teresa and Dwayne’s wedding was wonderful, and it was Teresa’s idea to have Joe Rick Roll the audience – truly a genius masterstroke, and also hilarious.

Teresa and I aren’t hanging out all the time, but the time we do get to hang out together – Monday night karaokes, after long Magic events, etc. – is definitely much better for her presence.  She even found a sweet Thai place after an event here in Seattle that didn’t spice me to death – big thumbs up!

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Ya Mon

Feb 17

Posted by davetron in Blog2010 | No Comments

Our last port of call was in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.  Mick and I signed up for a combo excursion – Zip Line and River Tubing!  How could you go wrong?  The main problem with the day’s adventure is that the previous night’s adventure was a bit taxing and man-was-I-tired.  Since I was a little out of sorts in the morning during breakfast, I forgot my beach towel in the room and had to mad dash down to the bus to meet everyone.  I also forgot my sunscreen so both of us were dreading the harsh misery of the Jamaican sun.

Fun facts about Jamaica:

  • Their drivers are about as aggressive as Italian drivers.  When we were driving up the mountain to get into the canopy, and the single-lane road became steadily narrower (trapped between a cliff-face and a drop-off), there were numerous times another vehicle would honk-honk-honk and zoom by us.  Ridiculous.
  • Since tourism is their #1 industry, their social norms have modified accordingly.  At the end of our excursion, I had some shady dealings with one of the photographers to get some photos of the river tubing – he pointed at the $60 price tag for 18 photos, then agreed to a “deal” of $35 for the set… as long as I paid $25 to the register and $10 to him.  Shady!
  • Most of the people I talked to were both grumpy and friendly.  It was sort of odd; my guess is seeing so many clueless American tourists each day was a major factor.

The zip line portion could have been longer – it was three too-quick lines between platforms.  Mick even suggested we ask to do it again immediately afterward (after all, we already had the gear on).  I had tons of fun whooping and zooming down from the high point to the first tree-platform… but the process of zip lining is very much an unstable balance equilibrium problem.  The more you consciously try to adjust your position / rotation on the line, the harder it is to keep from twisting.  By the time I realized this, I was already heading down the last part of the line.

By contrast, the river tubing was relaxing and fun, but a tad too long.  The best part of that were the rapids (obv) but there were only three real white-watery sections.  The plus side (for our poor sunscorched heads) was that over 75% of the river tubing was under canopy cover and quite cool.

Even despite (or maybe due to) almost-drowning in Grand Cayman, I preferred it to Ocho Rios – possibly just because it wasn’t as “in your face” about the tourism.

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Just Breathe

Feb 16

Posted by davetron in Blog2010 | 4 Comments

Our second stop on the Magic Cruise was the island of Grand Cayman – not only was it spectacularly beautiful, but there was an exciting excursion on the docket for me: beginner’s scuba diving, a significant upgrade from snorkeling last year.

The experience was composed of three parts: the lecture, the training and the dive.  Each part took about a half-hour, with a bit of break in between for putting on / taking off gear.  Our dive instructor Moke told us we would be limited to no deeper than 40 feet (this sounded shallow when I heard it, but not once I was actually in the water!) and gave us a detailed lecture on why humans and water don’t mix.  When you have to keep track of EVERYTHING you do – including breathing and internal pressure – in the water, it gets pretty draining and pretty nerve-wracking very fast!

After the lecture, I thought I had a good idea of what I needed to do in the water to have a successful scuba dive.  After all, Moke claimed that via careful application of grey matter we would be able to think our way through the problems of being underwater.  What I failed to realize until I had the gear on, at the bottom of the pool, watching Moke demonstrate our emergency skills, was that the animal brain inside is very very powerful and can seize control from the more rational grey matter lightning fast.

The skills we had to demonstrate seemed easy enough: if anything happens in the water, like you lose your breathing regulator (“reg”) or you get water in your facemask, you need to be able to cope.  So Moke looks at me there at the bottom of the pool, and making slow and deliberate movements, removes his reg, pushes it over his shoulder, and carefully touches his way to the dangling hoses and retrieves it.

Then he points at me.  Now you, his motions indicate.

I remove my reg and as I go to push it behind me, the animal mind takes over.  YOU ARE DROWNING, it screams, YOU IDIOT!  Unable to keep a steady stream of bubbles going, I forcefully exhale (bad) and try to inhale (much worse), and then motion to Moke that I need to surface.  He’s concerned (rightfully so) and tells me to relax.  Yes, yes, I know I need to relax.  Here on the surface, everything sounds so simple!

This goes on about three more times before he motions for me to surface again.

“You need to relax,” he states again, and I keep nodding.  He looks at me thoughtfully, and then makes a recommendation.  “Try humming.”

Humming is the trick that does it.  Not only is it relaxing to hum slightly (and gives my subconscious a much better estimate of when I will “run out of air” while I retrieve my reg), but I can keep a steady stream of bubbles to maintain my air properly.

After that, the dive itself was super easy.  Moke refused to give me my camera for the first few minutes, but once I gave him my fifth okay sign, he relented.  I saw some amazing angelfish and a school of squid, along with quite a bit of beautiful coral.  I’m not sure I want to go scuba again, but despite the pool’s near-drowning, overall the experience was pretty spectacular.

Watch Facebook for my developed pictures (need to get them developed the old fashioned way, since I used waterproof disposables) later this week or next!

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Influence and Trust

Feb 15

Posted by davetron in Blog2010 | No Comments

This is sort of a secret combined cruise-and-philosophy/psychology blog (mwa ha ha)… or maybe now not so secret.  Anyway!  On the cruise, I often found myself sitting with a group of people where I knew one of them from the previous Magic Cruise (or through previously established Seattle friendships) and was able to bootstrap my way to new friends via introductions through that person.   I’m sure everyone has experience with this phenomenon in multi-group situations: when one group meets another, there is nearly always bridging going on through mutual connections.

Thanks to Lindsey, Steve, Peter, Dwayne, Patrick and Roberto, I met a ton of awesome new folks and with their (often merely implicit) support, quickly developed friendships through them.  The development of these relationships is an interesting study for me, since if you observe carefully, you can tell that at some point you + new friend have a stronger connection than you + old friend.  On rare occasions (I can think of only a few times over the years this has happened to me), you + new friend can develop a stronger bond than old friend + new friend.

I want a word to describe the strength of the connection between the pairs in you-old-new; the unsatisfactory word I have used in the past is Influence, because generally speaking the stronger the connection, the more likely you are to ask and receive something (a favor, a thought) from that friend.  But really that just describes the effect; the cause is closer to comfort and trust.  When you are out far past your normal bedtime (which before the cruise was like, 9-10pm?) drinking and socializing with new friends until roughly 3am, and you do it many nights in a row (despite the pounding headaches in the morning!), that is definitely indicative of comfort.

But what about trust?  My stab at the source of trust is something like: as you interact with a person, you are subconsciously testing them for reasonable responses.  Reasonable, in this case, is what you consider reasonable (highly subjective).  Each time you get a reasonable response, or are “pleasantly surprised” in some way (I think because any positive emotion gets mapped at least a little into the trust-o-meter, at least in my case), your trust toward the other person ticks up a notch.

I have a thought experiment I’ll discuss another time that helps me consider the usefulness of an Influence metric.

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Magic Cruise

Feb 14

Posted by davetron in Blog2010 | 1 Comment

I’m planning on spending a good portion of this week talking about the cruise from whence I just returned.  There’s a ton to talk about, but not so much that I can keep my account to friends in person, my article for the Wizards website, and these blogs all separate… so I apologize in advance if I keep repeating myself.  It was totally awesome, so it’s not like I feel *that* bad about covering the same ground more than once.

Big thanks to Mick for coming along as my non-Magic roommate (although he did appear to have a good time reading cards and asking questions about our Magic-related “DI La” discussions) and to Bill for posting to guskintelligence while I was gone!

One interesting point that came up – I think from Dwayne, or Peter, or both – during the cruise was how well constructed Carnival (and assumedly other cruise lines) has made the boat space.  There aren’t a huge number of places where people can be to hang out, and that means not only are you running into the same people over and over, but you definitely feel like you have choice when in reality Carnival is exerting indirect control on where you spend your time.

In our particular case, all of the sitdown bars were clustered on deck 5 (Promenade) near the dance club and the casino.  Food and pools/hot tubs were mostly on deck 9 (Lido).  There were certainly exceptions to this layout, but for the most part it got people to the same place without ordering them there, which was nice.

One reason I love, and will continue to return to, the Magic Cruise is that not only is the backdrop a cruise with amazing tropical destinations (I’ll be talking about those in future posts), but you also get essentially for free a group of social, friendly gamers along with you for the ride.  Magic is being played by someone during most of the sea-time, so if you want to (and there were certainly times I needed my fix), you can join in for multiplayer or draft.  But also, there’s just a good core group of people who are up for hanging out and doing cruise-y stuff without the added pressure of leaving one’s normal comfort zone.

Of course, leaving one’s comfort zone is a key piece to any adventurous experience and I did that too – more about that later!

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