mk-ultra

I seem to recall this category of cabin coming with an awful-coffee-maker. Might just be mixing up memories from other cruises/lines. Off to deck 5 for hand made awful coffee. Meteors are being shy -- might be too far past the peak.

Up reaaaaaaly early (0400 local) to watch the meteors. Hard to avoid light pollution on the ship. Balcony with the light smothered is pretty good.

Tomorrow: "Magic Peublos: Nogueras and Coalma w/lunch." Basically, 1.5 hour bus ride to admire some architecture and visit a museum. 1.5 hours back, then fooding .I'm really good at admiring buildings and meandering through museums, so cool. Also fairly skilled at eating.

Crab Shack kinda failed on the "crab" part. Alaska had zero, as in no, snow crabbing this season. SF Bay area had a delayed dunginess crab season... not even sure if the fishery is open for crabs yet. Thus, meager crab in that pot. Sad face.

Ate all the things to Disney’s Under the Sea playing on repeat in my little brain.

Remembered to take a before carnage pic for once.

Bib on looking like a moron. Bring on the shellfish.

At Crab Shack for dinner. This is one of those fabulous things you can’t see in the cruise planner or book ahead of time. $39. Allegedly it’s only on AK cruises but we have 3 nights of it. Best kept secret on the fleet. Kill yourself after reading this.

Security weenie note: brought along my Flipper Zero toy with the GitHub “Flipper Unleashed” OS. Lots of obnoxious in a small package.

Oh ye of human faith... my bets are on pier sprinting after a lot of people messed with their phone's time twice.

We shifted +1 hour ahead again last night, putting us 2 hours ahead of Pacific time. Excellent potential for spotting pier-runners from the lido deck tomorrow. 😂

Attended the "Tide Pool Life" enrichment talk this morning. The presenter is naturalist Robert Raincock. Absolutely worth attending his talks. He's funny, very personable, and manages to present what could have been pretty dry (pun intended) information in an engaging way. Turns out I missed his talk on astrophotography yesterday. I don't even remember seeing that in the app. Then again, after gambling and drinking all night, I'm lucky to remember anything. Up another $1200, so I ain't complaining. Up $2500 in total now. 🙂 We witnessed the Geminid meteor shower last night. It's a couple of days past peak, but still damn impressive. One meteor every 1-3 seconds. Still not done, so I'll be ogling it tonight again.

Much warmer today. 72F at 10AM. Adios, jacket! 😎

Inexplicable temp shift was explicated by the Captain. We sailed into the much cooler “California current”. Sailing right back out of it tonight.

I am absolutely loving the Captain's ship-wide PA announcements. Zero fluff, and chock full of useful information, including a brief (nerd alert) explanation of how far away the visible horizon is. Free classic trig lesson for the uninitiated.

Piazza decked out handsomely for Christmas. PA switched to holiday music 24x7 yesterday.

Starlink suckage this morning. Oddly enough, I had a work call on my cell using cellular-over-wifi during the suckage. No problemo with that.

Booking it down the Baja peninsula. It got inexplicably colder overnight. Jacket back on. Casino-wise, up $1300 😄

Up at the crack of before dawn. Ships time went +1 hour overnight, which I assume is for our first stop, Manzanillo. Captain's prerogative -- and something to pay attention to if you like coming back close to sailing time during port stops. Breakfast buffet had some Filipino food (pork adobo). That was a nice surprise. Burp.

For blackjack nerds: every table here uses a CSM. You aren't going to practice your counting. $5 and $10 tables are 6:5. Entertainment value only. There is one weird hand-dealt BJ-ish game I wouldn't touch with a 10' pole. $25 tables are 3:2.

It’s not even quite sunset, but today has been getting warm enough for t-shirts and shorts on an open deck. 😎

Usual mix of stuff that seems endemic to Princess. Various elevators out of service. Random up/down call buttons inop. Way more broken stuff than I see on (cough) Royal. In the not-broken-but-poorly-designed category: elevator lobby with 6 elevators. 4 in one bank, 2 in the other. Hitting a call button on one bank doesn't call both banks. You have to hit a button for each one. Why? Who knows? That just chafes the engineer in me. Personal OCD-ish problem. 😛

On Crown it’s Speakeasy, deck 6 port side of Gatsby’s casino. Temps normal. Smoke level forest fire.

Will check and report back.

I've got to say, I'm fairly impressed with the Medallion (RFID puck) experience so far. I can see the potential for accidental billing if you and 10 other people belly-up to a bar and the bartender doesn't attribute the purchase correctly... but so far, so good. Being a security weenie, I naturally tried to see if I could clone my puck with the Proxmark3 in my mess-with-things kit. Nope. Decently encrypted.