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Pretty heavy rain there, looks like. We're getting some showers here.

Is that a movie screen on the top deck of Princess?

Yup. Looks like Poseidon Was playing.

That's called MUTS (Movies Under The Stars). There usually is always something playing on it. It was neat watching the Monday Night football game on a chilly night in Alaska out in the open, except for the noisy Philly fans..... :rolleyes:

Thanks for the kind Veterens Day E-mail.

Very welcome and well deserved, Chief! Hope you and DW had a pleasant day. :)

As I told your DW, I think I can still fit into my ribbons, but that's about it! :eek: Oh, maybe my hat too....

bummer:( That is Mr. Marley's dinner time - maybe I can figure something out and feed him a few minutes early? Trouble is - you just never know:(

 

One more month to go and the 6 pm feeding will be gone - he'll be down to two times a day (much more civilized for me;))

Well, Mr. Marley and I will be dining at the same time.... just looked and saw the 5pm ET departure too. Can't say I'm surprised as I mentioned it early that they'd probably be late.

Everyone enjoy the sail away! Should be here tomorrow... although now that I think about it I may be dropping DW off at the airport around sail away time tomorrow...

I hope to be here but, if things go as usual, she will be late leaving and I won't be here. :( We have dinner plans with the inlaws tonight.

Thanks for the heads up, Chief!

In May/June of this year, it was on deck 7, starboard off the atrium in the room called "Art Gallery" on the deck plans. Made a nice area for the workshops.

Thanks for taking the time to give your perspective of your cruise. That isn't easy to do here when you have not enjoyed your cruise and have more negatives than positives to report. I am sorry you didn't enjoy your time on board.

:eek: you call that chilly-- try 3 degrees C, and winds up to 60 clicks,, no more leaves, hopping the leaves on my lawn will move on down the street--:cool:

25°C here, just a few leaves laying about. :D

Thank you so much! Yes, we are on the Eurodam.

Bon Voyage! Will be watching for you two....

Thanks, Chief! I should be here.

Interesting. The same line up and in the same locations as when were disembarked on October 27!

Unless I can figure out how to watch this on my Samsung Galaxy, I won't be here...our grandson's 6th birthday party is at 4 PM!

Sheila, the Galaxy should work just fine. I have an S III phone and a Note tablet and can use both. Make sure you use the web browser app that came with the device to view as most of the add on browsers don't fully support Flash Player (video only usually). You can find the included web browser as the app called "Internet" under the globe.

If you've found it worthwhile in the past, I should think you would again. Pre-paying for it helps spread out the costs of the cruise, just like it does with excursions. If you get a card for the package, by pre-paying, it might have your name printed on it.

My understanding is that, so long as the price of a drink is $7 or less, the package covers it, no matter the category of drink (premium, call, house, etc.)

On board credit is only applied to things purchased or booked on board, not online prior to the cruise.

Enjoy your cruise!

LOL, I put little stickylabels with numbers on every one or I would forget where they all go too!:o

That's what I've told her to do now for the umpteenth time. She says why when all she needs to do is call me? :rolleyes:

Wow, made it! MIL had an internet emergency that I just got back from fixing... she'd unplugged everything to move it around and couldn't plug all the modems, routers and airwave devices back together.....

Chief, I'll be here I expect. It's 3:30 pm EST, not DST though, as we have gone back to Standard Time (GMT - 5:00 hrs) in the Eastern Time zone and are not on Daylight Savings Time (DST) any longer.

Just do a colour photocopy of your passport and laminate it (or not).:)

Another vote for a copy of your passport's ID page. We've used this method in the Caribbean several times. Never thought of laminating it though... :rolleyes:

There is an argument for having the real thing with you though as Betty mentions. Guess it depends on your level of risk taking. We've not an issue not having our real passports (yet!).

We've done only 1 X cruise and, I guess that particular cruise sort of soured us on them, although we continue to discuss trying them again.

We did the Infinity just after it had been "Solticized" in a 2 week drydock. Boarding in PE was a complete disaster as X had to entertain the media and TAs over getting guests on board. We didn't board until after 5pm, never got lunch in the convention center they sent us to and didn't leave port until after 10pm. 2 weeks before sailing, they remembered to tell passengers that boarding would be delayed and not to arrive before 2pm. Huh? We were driving but with so many flying in, there was no way for them to change their plans at that point. To me, this was X administration, not the Infinity staff, and was very poorly planned.

As you might imagine, the ship was in various stages of construction when we sailed. But the staff was surly, our cabin stewards didn't even learn our names until the last couple of days, we had to call to get our cabin made up in the late afternoon and ask for soap, shampoo, etc. Not impressed. Also, they just didn't seem as professional as HAL staff consistently do.

We found food to be excellent on board. We enjoyed variety that just isn't found on HAL. Over 17 nights, the menu never repeated itself, even slightly (with the exception of the always available section). The preparations were always hot (or cold, as the case be) and we judged preparation, presentation and taste a step above HALs.

Highly prefer the smoking policy on X. But, the odor of smoking (except for cigars) generally doesn't put us off too much, certainly not to the extent of changing our perference. Lastly, we entertain ourselves with books, music and leisure so we can't judge the entertainment. The library on Infinity seemed like an afterthought compared to any HAL library we've been in, both in size and scope.

Just our humble opinion. :)

Sounds like you had breakfast with the women of my DWs family! :D Thanks for the review.

Thanks for the thoughtful review. Wishing you a happy life together! :)

Interesting. Thanks!

It will surely be interesting to see what the results, as we passengers see them, of this will be for the near and far future of these lines.

No. Range means how much strength is left after a given distance. If you don't add strength at the "extender" you don't add distance.

 

Let's say a signal drops in strength from 10 to 1 between point A and point B and the attenuation is linear. If you place an extender halfway between point A and point B it receives a 4.5. If it doesn't add strength it sends out another 4.5. At point B both the original signal and the duplicate out of the repeater are both down to 1, for a total of 2, and your range is extended only slightly past point B.

 

If your extender doesn't add strength, it doesn't really matter where you put it, you're always going to end up with a total of 2 at point B, and an insignificant range boost.

 

Anyway, none of this matters to the OP's original question, and this discussion doesn't belong here. The answer to his question is NO, using a range extender in the cabin won't help very much. At least we agree on that!

 

Have a nice day! :):)

John, I am having a great day, as I sincerely hope you are, and I am enjoying the technical discussion with you and others. :) We do certainly agree on how helpful (or not helpful) an extender would be, if not on the practical matter of how they work.

Thanks for taking the time to banter with me. It's all in good natured fun. I think you speak engineer and I speak technician in this case, and we actually do come to the same conclusion. End result is agreement! :D

One thought however. You can stuff a lot more electronics in a range extender that you can in your computer. Also, it is possible that the electronics may be more sophisticated. Therefore, it is possible that a signal that may appear to have a power level of 1 to your computer may appear to have a power level of 3 or 4 to a really good range extender.

 

The only way to really find out is to bring one on a cruise and try it out.

 

DON

I completely agree with your final sentence. However, unless you are paying lots of money for an extender, most of them are quite cheaply made. While newer specifications (801.11ac or 801.11n versus 801.11g) are designed to have longer ranges to begin with, you would need an extender that uses the newer speciifications to take advantage of that. If you use an older 801.11g spec device, you're stuck with that. Another way to improve throughput is to use a dual channel extender (one that operates on 5gHz and 2.4gHz) so there may be less RFI and quicker handoffs by the extender. As I said, there are a few extenders that allow you to load custom, third party firmware to access signal wattage levels and boost those, but otherwise out of the box extenders are using the same equipment as your laptop.

It has to be boosting to do anything. Let's say the signal strength at the router is a "9" and it attenuates to a "1" at the extender. If the extender simply input that "1" and output a "1" nothing is accomplished. The strength is still "1" ... or maybe "2" since there are two "1" sources ... and little or no extension takes place. Maybe the extender doesn't boost it to a "9" again, but it has to put out a stronger signal than it receives.

No sir, in the long run, it is boosting nothing but range. If you have a signal strength of 1 between the access point and the extender, you have a poor signal, period. The signal between your device and the extender could be a 9, but with the signal between the access point and the extender at 1, you get an overall signal strength of 1. That is why extenders should always be placed halfway between the access point and the end device, so the signal between the access point and extender is something better than 1 and throughput can be maintained at a reasonable, but always reduced, rate.

There is custom firmware than can be loaded on a few extenders that will enable the user to boost the wattage of the signal, thereby "boosting" the signal, but out of the box this can't be done.

Fouremco is right about other and better ways to "boost" signal and range, but they aren't germain here. My analogy to an extension cord stands as the extender only extends, or "boosts", the range of a signal, not signal strength, as it works as a signal repeater.

from land when docked? That way you wouldn't have to lug your computer off the ship.

Think of a range extender as an electrical extension cord. If your computer doesn't see a land-based WiFi network neither will the extender. To work most effectively, the extender should be placed halfway between the wireless access point and your device.

Now, say you are docked and your cabin is not on the "dock side" of the ship. If you had access to a cabin that was and if there was a usable signal from a land-based access point in that cabin, you might be able to do this. Most of us don't have access to cabins beyond our own though, so while this is possible it's probably not practicable.