The past few days have been a series of difficult technical problems with my home network. This evening, Daryl came riding to my rescue!! Hurrah Daryl!!

I moved the network pretty much intact from Colorado Springs to Pocatello. The only real difference was the internet service provider. Once the high-speed connection was installed and all the outside technical stuff like domain naming services was set up, my network came up and worked like a charm — except for being able to connect to my employer’s network. That just wouldn’t work. The technical guy at work told me that unless I changed the internal addressing on my home network, I would never be able to connect. So, I began the process of changing all of the internal addresses.

That process seemed to go pretty well, except that nothing would work on the inbound side! The weblog was not reachable and email bound for rnsmith.com wasn’t being delivered, either. Even internal mail could not be retrieved from the web server. One problem for me was that all of the documentation for this network is on the moving van! I had set up the email system more than a year ago and the details had long since fled my grey matter. I spent several days poking here and there in the system to see if I could figure out what the problem was. I wasn’t finding much that seemed to make any difference. So, finally I called Daryl.

We connected this evening and within ten minutes he had found the problem. I would never have found these configuration files until the moving van arrived and I found my documentation.

Our son Daryl is one of the most knowledgeable and capable systems administrators I’ve ever worked with — bar none. You’ve come through once again, Daryl. Many, many thanks!

The web log is back on line in Pocatello, Idaho! The system came up this afternoon when Cable One finished the DNS implementation. It should be a bit faster, particularly on the initial page load. We’ll see how service is over the next few months.

This also means we’re in our apartment in Pocatello, and have moved out of our home in Colorado Springs. Here’s some dates:

• We got back from the cruise on Saturday evening, June 12th, too tired to do much other than unload some suitcases.
• On Sunday, June 13th, all the computer equipment was turned off and packaged up so it could come with us in the motorhome to Pocatello.
• Monday morning, promptly at 8 a.m., the packers arrived. Three people started packing up the house and Nina and I started consolidating the stuff we needed to have with us in Pocatello into the motorhome. We were successful in getting most things we needed out before they got packed. In one case, the packer put our telephone system into a box just before lunch on Tuesday. We were able to retrieve it before he closed up the box.
• Monday evening we had dinner with our good friends Bobbie and Duane at the Outback Steakhouse. Good food and very good company.
• Tuesday the packers continued their work, finishing up about 3 p.m. that afternoon having packed about 280 boxes of "really important stuff".
• Wednesday morning the moving truck showed up about 9:30 a.m. to begin loading the truck. The driver and a crew of four other people arrived. They began tearing down beds and putting boxes on the truck. The original estimate was that they’d be done around 5 p.m. It was about that time when they figured out they didn’t have a large enough truck and called for another truck. In the end, they finished loading everything onto the trucks about 7 p.m. that night.
• Continuing on Wednesday, we finished loading the motorhome and cleaning the house. Duane came up and loaded all the remaining trash in his pickup truck to give to the trash collectors on Friday. It was a full load! We finally drove away about 8:30 p.m. headed north on I-25. We drove up north of Denver and stayed the night in a TraveLodge because they allowed a dog to stay in the room. We both collapsed into bed. The dog, however, spent most of the night sniffing all of the strange smells in the room!
• Thursday morning, June 17th, we drove through Ft. Collins, over to Rawlins, and across I-80 to Green River. From there we took US 30 through Soda Springs for a quick visit with mom and dad, and ended up in Pocatello about 6 p.m. that evening. We picked up the apartment keys and directions from security at my new employer and went to the apartment. It’s quite serviceable for our needs right now.
• Hallelujah! Our Pocatello realtor called as we were driving across Wyoming to tell us that we would close on our new home in Pocatello on July 22nd. We will be in our new home by the end of July! That’s a whole month earlier than expected!!

Most everything is put away in the apartment and we’re getting used to living in a small space. Life is pretty good. Last Sunday we went to Church. As we drove towards the building on the freeway, the parking lot was completely empty at about ten minutes before meeting was to start. Our first thought? Stake Conference! So, I called our new bishop at home and we figured out where the Stake building was (funny thing was, I had talked with the Bishop at work on Friday and he totally forgot to tell me it was Stake Conference on Sunday). The conference was good and we enjoyed being there. This is the third time this has happened! We should just expect that first Sunday anywhere we move will be Stake Conference.

We spent Sunday afternoon in Soda Springs. It was a very pleasant time visiting and having dinner with my folks. We’ll do this fairly regularly. Also, they are no longer long distance! Nina calls mom a couple of times a day, "just because I can!" she says. Monday evening Cable One installed the high-speed internet and now today, the web site is now online and working. Hurrah!

As we came south along Vancouver Island, we came into range for this
Blackberry. As that happened, I started receiving work e-mail. 130 e-mails
later it stopped buzzing. A few of the e-mails are important. Most can be
handled next week. Reality is setting in.

We're at dinner. I didn't order a salad, so I've got a short break before
the next course.

We've docked at Victoria and can disembark after dinner. We've not been
there before, so we'll get off the boat and look around. There's probably
nothing there that we really need to buy. It's supposed to be a really
pretty (and very Brittish) town. We've a few more minutes of paradise
before the hectic starts tomorrow.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

The cruise is almost over. We're close to docking in Victoria, Brittish
Columbia. Dinner is also in about 15 minutes. We've definitely had pleanty
of food on this trip! Every couple of hours, it seems, we're eating again.

The cruise has been a lot of fun and we're already talking about the next
cruise in the Carribean in a couple of years. Tomorrow it's all over and
back to reality. Dang!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

The cruise is quickly coming to an end. We sailed away from Ketchikan at about 1 p.m. this afternoon headed for Victoria, Canada. Well arrive there about 8 p.m. tomorrow (Friday) night. There is a law (called the Jones Act) from the late 1800’s that prohibits ships of foreign registry from docking at two consecutive mainland US ports without going to a foreign port between them. I think the purpose was to prevent foreign shipping companies from going into competition with domestic shipping companies. Nevertheless, the affect on us is that we can’t dock in Seattle without first stopping at a foreign port. So, we’ll stop in Victoria, Canada (on the tip of Vancouver Island) for about 4 hours before sailing the rest of the way back into Seattle.

It’s been a good cruise and I think everyone has had a good, relaxing time. I’m sure that we’ve absolutely worn out mom and dad on this trip. They’ll be glad to get home and have some quiet time. However, meanwhile they’re having a good time and are very engaged with the cruising process.

This is our fourth cruise with Holland America and we’ve no experience with any other cruise line. Of the four, however, this one has had the most issues and would rank fourth in overall quality of the experience. That’s also partially our own fault but there’s quite a few issues that the cruise line could also address.

1. This is the first time we’ve cruised when school was out. There are a lot of kids on the boat and that’s a first for us. Most of the time that’s no issue except when it comes to the pools and hot tubs.
2. We booked four veranda rooms on the back of the boat. The result has been somewhat mixed.
• It’s been very nice to have the rooms next to each other and to have the doors between the verandas open. It has provided quick access between rooms.
• The verandas are large and the furniture is better than on previous cruises.
• However, we thought we’d get better views from the back of the boat. That didn’t turn out to be true. We can only see to the rear of the ship and it’s quite noisy back there! The decks are terraced so those folks above us see down into our veranda and we see down into the ones below us. Privacy is somewhat lacking.
• The smoke from the stacks goes right over the top of the boat and swirls back up along the back of the boat on occasion. Diesel smoke isn’t all that pleasant.
3. This is a fairly new ship — it’s been in service about 15 months at most. There are too many things not working on the boat! Lots of elevators are out of service and others are iffy whether or not the door will close correctly. The hot tubs on the rear of the Lido deck have been "down for maintenance" almost the entire cruise. Ceiling panels are coming loose and a couple of them have been pulled down to prevent them from falling down and injuring someone.
4. Speaking of hot tubs, while there are five of them on the boat (and two have been broken for most of the trip), they are all very small. Three or four people can be in them at the most. The hot tubs on the other three boats were large, spacious, and comfortably seated 8-9 people. These are small, quite uncomfortable, and not very deep.

I think we’ll stay with the older, smaller boats. We’ll definitely not cruise out of Seattle again to Alaska. It adds too much time to the cruise and we spend too much time out in the ocean away from the Inside Passage. Even then, because the boat is so big, we cruise a ways from the shore. The smaller boats sail closer to the shore with more interesting scenery.

Perhaps I’m being a little picky, however. We’ve had a wonderful time and have enjoyed being together on the boat. I’m sorry to see the vacation come to an end (although I’m plenty tired!). It seems strange that a week from today we’ll be homeless!! Our house sale in Colorado Springs closes next Thursday morning early and we’ll be on the road driving to Pocatello. The house there isn’t bought, yet, the company is looking for temporary housing for us, but so far no word on where or what that’ll be. We just might be living in the RV once again!

Greetings from somewhere west of Juneau headed towards the Hubbard Glacier. It’s Tuesday and Day 3 of our cruise. Outside it’s quite foggy, cool, and occasionally showery. Now that’s no surprise as we’re sailing through a fairly major rain forest. We’ve just entered Yakatuk Bay and in a couple of hours we’ll be up around the glacier. Since the glacier is so big (some seven miles wide), it generates a lot of its own weather so there’s no reaason to expect that the weather there will be the same as it is here.

Yesterday, however, was one of those outstanding days! Bright, beautiful sunshine with a light breeze. We arrived in Juneau about 10:30 a.m. and we disembarked about 11 to take the bus into town. The accompanying picture was taken from the top of Mt. Roberts looking down on our cruise ship, the Oosterdam, as it was moored at the pier. Three other cruise ships were also in port that same day putting potentially 7,000 tourists in town. It sure seemed like there were that many! Mom and dad hung in there very well during the day. We walked through a number of stores, bought some small items, spent some time in the city museum across from the state capitol building, and walked back to the bus stop. They went back to the boat while Nina and I took the tram up to the top of Mt. Roberts. We spent a few minutes up there taking pictures, but the line to come down was very long, so we didn’t stay all that long up there. Of course, the fact that we were both quite tired with very tired feet had nothing to do with heading back to the boat about 4 p.m.!

We all gathered on the veranda and visited before going to dinner. The evening dinner is one of the highlights of the cruise. The meal is well served, very tasty, with good options. Our table stewards take very good care of us. After dinner most of us went to the show — a comedian — and then retired for the night. Because the weather was so good yesterday, we thought that might extend into today. We made arrangements to have breakfast served in the room with the intention of eating together outside on the veranda. However, it was somewhat foolish to think that wonderful weather would continue for two days in a row. The law of averages would argue otherwise. However, the weather isn’t bad, actually. Cool but not chilly, somewhat damp with occasional light showers.

We’re in the library. I’m on the computer updating the weblog. Nina is writing out postcards which we’ll mail tomorrow from Sitka. This is a new configuration of a cruise ship for Holland America; quite unlike the other ships in some significant ways. On the other three boats we’ve been on, the library was near the back of the boat on deck on the upper promenade deck. Here it’s near the front of the boat on the promenade deck. The biggest difference is the view. The other ships had huge windows looking out from the ship. This library has much smaller windows, much further away from the desks, that looks out at the promonade deck. The views are actually poor compared to the other boats. This is one unfortunate change. The boat is bigger by some 400 passengers or so than the last boat we were on — the Zaamdam. I think that may account for the reason that we sail so far out from shore and through rougher waters. It certainly accounted for docking in Juneau out where we had to take a bus back and forth to town. I’m certain it’ll mean that we anchor in Sitka and use the ship’s tender boats to shuttle back and forth to the pier tomorrow.

We’re having a very lovely, relaxing time. I’m looking forward to being up close and personal with the Hubbard Glacier today. After being out and about yesterday, it’s nice to have a much more quiet day today. Perhaps the weather still has a surprise in store!

With Seattle of the aft of the ship, we’re definitely underway on our cruise on the Alaskan Inside Passage. It’s a bit stormy with occasional showers. Dinner will be in about 10 minutes, one of the favorite activities on the cruise ship. I think we’ll really enjoy this trip. It’s already been fun visiting with our traveling companions. I also sent a message from my Blackberry, but failed to put the right code on the message, so it isn’t showing on the website. I’ll resend it during dinner and see if I can get that one on the weblog as well.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld


    From: Roland Smith
    Sent: 06/05/2004 05:42 PM
    To: "Rksjournal" 
    Subject: Lifeboat Drill

We're on the cruise ship which will set sail at 5 p.m. In preparation, and
in accordance with international law a lifeboat drill has to be conducted.
So we're all gathered at lifeboat #16 waiting to be accounted for.

While the trip here was fairly uneventful, getting from the airport onto
the boat was more of a drama than it should have been. We bought a transfer
and we'll not do that again. We landed at about 11:15 and had our luggage
about 20 minutes later. We finally got to our cabin about 2:20. Meanwhile,
Eileen, Phil, mom and dad didn't use a transfer, but rented a cab. They
spent about $28 and were in their cabin at 12:15. We spent $40 and were
more than two hours longer. Never again!

But we're here and it's already a lot of fun. A little later I'll get
Internet set up as this device will not work after we leave port. Perhaps
more later today!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld