AllenA07

I required a little bit of a push last year to read the Hunger Games. Everybody I knew was reading it so I decided to give in to the peer pressure. Glad I did, it was a good read. ^^When I was in High School the Catcher in the Rye was my favorite book we read. Huckleberry Finn was another great one, as was To Kill a Mockingbird.

A bit of advice on your speech. I was never in speech a debate, but I do a lot of public speaking as part of my career. Don't get too tied up in following the script, especially if it is a debate situation. I see people get so stuck on their script that it takes away creativity and ends up hurting them.

This TR makes me really want to hit up Allure. I'm hoping Royal Caribbean decides to move it to Galveston once project Sunshine comes online. I'm very aware there isn't a chance of that happening, but one can dream.

I've been on a little bit of a classic run of late. I finished up 1984 a few weeks ago and I'm starting Fahrenheit 451. After that I've got Atlas Shrugged waiting for me.

Vezina is voted on before the playoffs. So not much hope Quicker steals it.

And by Superman do you mean...??? I may not be an expert on these matters, but last I checked 3 trains running on a dual track shuttle coaster is going to be a bit of a problem.

It's a good day to be a Kings fan!

I ate at the Margaritaville in Vegas once and it was ok. Nothing wrong with it but not really anywhere I'm going to go out of my way for. That being said I can see it working very nicely on a ship. On another topic I'm wondering if any of you are dive certified. My wife and I have really enjoyed cruising and we both see ourselves doing it more in the future. As part of that we are really considering getting our dive certifications and having some fun with that. Just curious if anybody here has done it and how they enjoy it.

I'm hoping my next cruise is on Allure. Thing looks incredible.

Your uncle is Gerg Maddux? Really?

I try and make sure every client I have with a marijuana related charge gets to come up to the courthouse today.

I'm happy not to be on this thread! But to each their own.

My guess is it is just questions about a name for a new ride. The park has been doing that for a while now, I still remember getting a survey about what they should name their new hypercoaster several years back. I wish I remembered the options, but I know that Goliath wasn't the one I picked.

They would be the first presidents trophy winner to be swept by the 8th seed.

I'm a Kings fan which I believe is a different team then the Pens. I think Crosby is great for the game, he is a marketable superstar which is something the NHL needs. I've been watching this sport for around 20 years now, and as much as I love rooting for the Kings, I really do love the game of Hockey. If a guy like Crosby gets more people to watch the games then that's great. In other news how about Daniel Sedin possibly playing tonight? With Dustin Brown hitting everything in sight right now, I'm a little surprised that Vancover would be willing to risk Sedin.

I'm all for big hits, and I do think things like fighting have a clear place in the game. I just hate hearing people hope for a player to be hurt.

Right and to be fair I've never done a short cruise with Carnival. I strongly suspect though that a 3 day Carnival cruise is going to bring out a much more wild crowd then a 3 day RCCL cruise.

I just don't get why people root for injuries.

Well with all the talk of RCCL vs. Carnival I thought I would drop into this thread and give my review, now that I have done a comparable cruise on both lines. The first thing that I will say is that in my opinion the biggest difference between clientele has not been based on the line but rather on the length of the cruise. As far as the wildest (and most trashy) crowd I've seen on a ship to this point, that would be on a 3 day cruise on Monarch of the Seas. However that cruise aside the two I'm comparing are a 7 day cruise on Carnival Conquest and a 7 day cruise on Mariner of the seas. Starting off with the ships this one isn't even close. In comparison to Mariner, Conquest was old and run down. That is saying a lot frankly because Conquest is only a year older then Mariner! Mariner was simply so much more of a high class ship. While Conquest was no where near as bad looking as what Robb was on for the "Klassy Kruise" it just wasn't even close to the same ballpark as the Mariner. My wife and I loved the Royal Promenade on the Mariner. I'll admit that before going I thought that the Royal Promenade was a terrible idea and couldn't see why they would build something like it. After actually seeing it though I love how it really pulls the entire inside of the ship together. Overall I found all of the public spaces on Mariner to be impressive, and well decorated and furnished. Overall I can't say just how thrilled I was with that ship. As far as the stateroom that remains hard for me to compare. Our room on Mariner was bigger then our room on Conquest (both Balcony staterooms). However we had a higher level balcony on Mariner which explains why it was bigger. I think in general Conquest actually has the larger rooms. Both the rooms on both ships however were fine. As far as the food, again it really wasn't terribly close. Mariner had a better selection and just did a better job at those things they made. I ordered a lobster tail one night and it came out and looked like a Lobster tail. When I ordered the same thing on Conquest it came out on a skewer instead. I liked the idea of getting the full tail where I could personally see that it was fresh lobster. Overall though the food was just in a different ballpark. Staff was great on both ships in my opinion. The only exception I'll bring up is that our waiter on Conquest was terrible. We had the first setting for dinner on Conquest and often would be getting our main course as the second setting people began filing in. That was never an issue on Mariner, I was very impressed with the wait staff. I was also blown away by the quality of the shows on Mariner. Honestly the ones on Conquest felt a bit more thrown together and I figured that is how they all feel (you're on a ship, not on Broadway). The shows on Mariner were all really top notch and were quality productions. If any of you ever go on one of the RCCL ships with an Ice Rink don't miss the Ice Show! I'm not really one for ice skating, but the show is amazing. So overall how do they compare? My wife and I talked about it and the only thing that we could come up with that was done better on Carnival was that they did a better job letting us know who the cruise director staff was, and even there it is a pretty close. Now I won't come on here and tell you all that I had a terrible time on Carnival, because I didn't. I actually had a great time on Conquest. In fact if you've never taken a cruise before and are a little lower on the funds, I would still go as far as recommending Carnival. In my view it's not that Carnival does things that bad, it's that Royal Caribbean does things better. As far as if I would ever cruise on Carnival again, I guess it depends. I would maybe consider it if there was such an outstanding deal I couldn't say no, or if it went somewhere interesting enough. However generally speaking I just don't see myself putting down any real money on doing another Carnival cruise, RCCL just did things better overall. We ended enjoying the trip enough that we took advantage of their "future booking" option, where you pay the deposit for a cruise that you select at a later time. We are shooting for a 2014 trip on either Oasis or Allure!

Yep so does anyone know what those white buildings are in between each of SEFKs track is? Those little buildings are a retirement community for the Trolls. They've been out of work for over 30 years now and couldn't afford anything nicer. Or they're where mechanical equipment for the LSM's are kept.

Five Guys is good but terribly over priced for what it is. I can get a Burger and fries from Chili's for less money then I can at Five Guys.

I'm an astronomy nerd, but I really enjoy Sky Walk and Solar Walk on the iPad. When working with the telescope neither are going to replace a traditional Star Atlas. However it does a good job of giving you a general idea of where things are and gives some great information about the objects yours looking at. The back light does cause some havoc with my night vision however, even in "red mode." The telrad mode is also really useful! Now if you're looking for a "boring app" I can't say enough good about iAnnotate. If you work with a lot of PDF's this is really a fantastic program. I'm already amazed at how much money this one is saving me in printing costs.

I'm running an HP desktop: I've got an AMD Athlon II Processor running at 3.2 GHz. I've got 12gb of RAM, 1.75 TB of storage. My screen is a 24 inch LCD monitor. My iPad covers my personal computing needs.

Since we're playing that "what would I do with $640 million" game I'll join in. First thing I would do is take the cash amount. I can get a better return by investing the money myself rather then take the annuitized jackpot. Once I have cash in hand I would take a large amount of the money (figuring that my post tax return on this would be roughly $200 million) say somewhere in the range of of $150 million and move it into long term investments. Basically put it out of sight and out of mind. Second move would be take the $50 million, and cut that in half. I would put $25 million into various savings accounts where I could access the money in an emergency, and then take the remaining $25 million and go on a pretty nice spending spree. Figure that I would pitch a decent amount towards family. I would do some travel, buy a house, and all that other standard stuff. I would likely make a pretty sizeable contribution to UCLA. I don't know if I would quit my job. I enjoy what I do and figure with that kind of money I could further specalize and get rid of the things I don't enjoy about my work. If I did decide to really shake things up I think I would take some money and go back to school. I like being a lawyer, but a Ph.D in American History would be pretty fun. Other then that I think I would just try to enjoy life knowing that money is no longer a concern. And for the record I have 3 tickets. As for the odds of winning, if every one in the United States buys a single ticket the odds say that roughly 1.5 people will win. And just saying if somebody wins and needs a lawyer I would be more then happy to help out for a small 1% fee.

if only they could get Marky Mark to open. It would be a Walberg family reunion.