Thanksgiving in Edisto, SC

We drove up to Edisto Island, SC to be with my Mother's side of the family. On turkey day Chance and I rode around the Island. We woke up to 43 degree weather but it warmed up into the 60s. Chance rode for 15 miles and then picked me up. The Island is beautiful but the pavement is not made for road bikes. The wind is high which makes for a tough ride. The state park has really nice hard packed dirt trails; again not made for road bikes. The trails were fun as the sand sometimes caused the bike to go wonky! When your clipped into the pedals you either recover or fail completely. We both exited the woods without being owned by the sand.

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Atlanta, one of the best cities I have lived in.



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45 minute delay

Oomph, we will be delayed 45 min due to "German" paperwork. Sunny skies 19C perfect plane and we are held-up by bureaucracy. 


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Smoking may reduce blood flow and cause impotence

They take smoking cigarettes very serious but it does not seem to deter smokers.
This is at Duseldorf airport




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Funny story... Embarrassing for me.  After about 45 minutes of seeing road signs pointing to roads going to ausfarht I said "dang all roads lead to the town of ausfarht" when the whole car burst out laughing and telling me ausfarht means EXIT. 


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Map of Location101

Playing with BB gps while on autobahn.

You have received a map location.

http://maps.BlackBerry.com?lat=52.78520&lon=7.16725&z=9&label=Location101



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5AM and we are heading to Dusseldorf to catch a flight home.  The GPS showed how close to London we are.



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Get it right or there are consequences

Little things like power adapters and checking transformers before plugging them in make international travel interesting.  If you plug in a device that is 110 only there will be something not working. Either the power in your room or your device.



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stargate bowling alley.

We found the perfect nerd place tonight. A stargate bowling alley.  From what I am told it is a TV show followed by nerds.  The cast pic is on the wall.  No, we did not bowl just looked.



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Look zach german ice cream!



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P@penburg the sleepy town

Here are some pics of the quiet little town of P@penburg at dusk. I have yet to see it in daylight. We are at the Yard before 8AM and return after 7PM. Work, eat and discuss the next day is the routine.

Yard picture of Hull

Another peek shot- This is the hull steel cross section. Next year there will be water on the lower dark side and insulation on the top.

Pepsi NOT Beer

Look, Dad is drinking diet pepsi tonight. Steph would like it here no ice!
We are at WirtsHaus a German restaurant. I am taking the waitresses advice and having und Schweinefilet Mit Krauterbutter. For me German food is not that different from the food I grew up with. meat, potatoes, beans with subdued spices.

Sadly there is a burger on the menu called Big American Burger. Why are we always referred to as big?

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Bikes, bikes and more bikes

Bikes and more bikes: many employees ride to the yard.

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Well it was very cool to go see the ship. I have been advised to not post pics so I will just do this one low res photo.
The ship is being built in multiple sections called blocks. In the same building is a full Celebrity ship that floats out in February. Some of the Hull sections will have temprary plates put on the ends and then floated to their final destination for final assembly. Some blocks will be lifted into place once the Celebrity moves out. There are massive cranes that straddle the whole building allowing them to pickup the sections.

We found the server room and saw the AC cold water pipes and electrical connections. Crew cabins are pre-built units and we saw a few of them. Actually all cabins are built off-site and brought to the yard and then put in place. Each cabin has its own self contained fans, wiring and plumbing just waiting to be hooked up to the mains supplies.

More too come,


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This is in the small building, a Aida cruise ship 4 months from delivery.



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Espresso in the office!

Hmmm real espresso


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At the yard; the camera cannot do justice to the enormity of the buildings.  The wind is brisk this morning. Temp is around 10C or 50F.
 


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What do Americans do in P@penburg

After one night it is clear a regular night would be very different for me if I lived here in Germany. BBC, CNBC and CNN are the only English channels on the hotel TV. Websites come up in German unless it is a site you have an English account setup on. So what do these 35+ Americans do? Learn to be a nerd and buy a Slingbox. In the simplest terms a Slingbox allows a user to view their television that is in the States anywhere with an internet connection. Either over their laptop or right on their TV. Brent showed me his on-screen BrightHouse remote that allowed him to control his FLORIDA DVR and record and view his BrightHouse Florida TV right in P@penburg. The remote was an exact copy of what my DVR remote looked like. The quality of the picture is quite good . Everyone seems to have a setup that is streaming their video from home back to Germany. People from the UK are wanting american TV. Seems like everyone from VPs to individual contributors use a slingbox. Everyone seems very happy to be here and are figuring out ways to make their time here an experience they will not forget.


Here is a small segment of a Canadian cartoon in German

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Brent's master bath.


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Typical apt. kitchen

We went to see what a P@penburg apartment was like. Brent the logistics and purchasing rep showed us his place.



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Blaine hitting on the waitress


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Head

Where in the US can you get foam like this?



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Turkish dinner



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DCL office at the yard.



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VTC setup that is used for meetings with Anaheim, Orlando and london.



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No ship visit today

It has been a long day and it became too late to go into the ship hangar. Hopefully tomorrow we will get in and get a tour. We saw the new build team don their inspection outfits which made a few of us envious. Cool winter vests, black ballistic cloth over-pants with reflective stripping and large Maglights. The laundry cube went in today and needed inspection.

New Build IT office

Bob and Blaine's office.

Been a full 12 hour day in meetings. We met with a team from Luthansa who drove down from Hamburg. They are installing the phone system which is IP based. Looks like we will have close to 3000 wired phones.   A group from Amsterdam met us to discuss portable phones (Another 2700 phones). The satellite vendor flew in from Lauderdale to discuss how the phone systems would call off the ship.
The day is winding down, we are getting hit with many emails with questions from Orlando since it is just 1PM there and we have our other work to do.

More to come, I hear we are going to a Turkish restaurant tonight.


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Beer

Great beer at the hotel and then we went an ate Italian. That was followed up with a dark draft at "the news pub".

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Bathroom in hotel room

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Hotel room in P@penburg

Autobahn

Cruising down the autobahn. You do the math 1 kph = 0.621371192 mph

This is shot on my Blackberry while on the A3 Autobahn.

Sights along the A3 Autobahn

Pics taken from the A3 while driving from Dusseldorf to P@penburgh

Citroen C6

Rental Car Citreon C6 at Dusseldorf airport. Our flight was delayed from Frankfurt by an hour. The pilot blamed it on the swine flew working through the controllers in the tower. Glad I got my shots! From Dusseldorf we drove 180KM to P@penburg with about 100 miles of the drive on the A3 Autobahn.

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The new build team and I are going to the Myer-Werft Shipyard. My presence is to help the team understand the software integration points with our legacy systems. On this trip is Bob the Manager of IT New Build; Blaine the OPS analyst; Tim the Network Engineer; Alan the Network configuration analyst; and Brian if he doesn't know it he will find it Ops analyst. The corporate team sent a phone god so the ship can communicate to the Disney VOIP system.

Lunch in Frankfort was a Riaota Sandwich (ham and cheese) and a Cappuccino -- We boarded a Lufthansa Flight from Orlando to Frankfurt at 8:30PM Sunday November 15th. 8.5hrs later we were in Germany. This trip is for the IT team to meet with some of the Ship Yards vendors that we have to integrate our systems with. Big names like NEC-Philips, Sea-mobile, Ving and Lufthansa are helping with the new ships. My role is to provide Bob, our IT lead, with the support he needs with application development.

Bob has made 16 trips during the past three years getting ready for the new ship. We are less than one year away from taking delivery and our final payment. Unlike the Italian yards the Germans are never late. Our ship will be floating October 31st 2010 with handover in mid-November. Plan on coming to take a ride on it after January 4th.



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Mock-up of the new ship cabin

Stateroom on the new ships

Mock-up of the new slide

The AquaDuck model

Sailor Mickey Balloon mock-up

Look for my Boss in the air during the 2009 Macy day parade!

The new ships that we can now speak about!

In February 2007, DCL announced the plans for two new ships to add to our fleet. The new build team made the first steel cut in March 2009 at the Meyer Werft shipyards  in P@penburg, Germany for the Dream.  Later that month, the two ships were named. The D1sney Dream is set to sail in 2011. This magical cruise ship will be followed by its sister vessel, the D1sney Fantasy, which is set to sail in 2012.

 How Big Is The Dream?

All of the specifications of the Dream are already being publicized. It is 1,115 feet long, 125 feet wide at its widest area, which means it is too large to pass through the Panama Canal. The "Dream" has 14 decks, which will include a total of 1,250 staterooms. The vessel has a 128,000 tonnage. This means it can comfortably accommodate 4,000 guests.

It will take more than 1,458 members of the crew to take care of these guests during the cruises.

This magnificent ship is using all up-to-date technology along with a very classic design based on the early part of the 20th century. Sounds like a trip back to the time when cruising was at its best!