AllenA07

I got the iPad this morning. I am using voice dictation to write this post, which is the first time I've tried this feature. This thing is pretty cool.

I'm going to be on Mariner.

I was on Carnival Conquest a few years ago and had a great time. With that said however I was aware it was not the perfect trip. I will agree that the food was a let down pretty much the entire week. My wife and I really were disappointed with the quality of everything and frankly the complete inability of our waiters in the main dining room to get an order right and out to us in a timely fashion. I wish I could say that I thought the review of the food being terrible was over the top and blown out of proportion, but honestly it was spot on. I did however enjoy the melted chocolate cake. One of the things that did stand out for me on Conquest (as opposed to Monarch of the Seas) was how much nicer the stateroom was. However I can't fairly make that comparison because on Monarch I had an inside cabin, and on Conquest I had a balcony. However I've heard from others that Carnival does tend to have fairly decent rooms as compared to the other companies. Now I will say, that my opinion of Carnival is a little bit higher likely because about a week before the cruise I got a phone call asking me if I would be interested in changing my stateroom from an ocean view to a balcony. When I asked the cost, the guy on the phone said it was a free upgrade. Not sure why the upgrade fairy decided to show me some love, but that's a great way to start a trip! I was thrilled with the staff on our cruise on Conquest. I found them to be friendly, several of them learned our names, and our room was always clean. The activity staff was friendly, not terribly over the top, and overall made for a fun week. Where my problem with Carnival was personally was that it was lacking in elegance. I remember going for one of the formal dinners and was shocked at how many people changed into their "formal shorts and t-shirts" for dinner. I mean you could tell these people tried a little bit harder, but a clean T-shirt and shorts (as opposed to a bathing suit) isn't my idea of formal. I went with a suit (and was worried I would be underdressed not wearing a tux) and felt somewhat out of place wearing a jacket. I frankly left the formal nights with the feeling that this was catering to a lower class. Overall I did enjoy my trip on Carnival Conquest, though it was not without complaints. As I've said in other places both my wife and I are very curious to see the difference when we sail on RCCL in a few weeks. We both have this feeling that after that cruise, our opinion of Carnival is going to take a bit of a hit.

I'll maintain that I had fun on my 7 night on Carnival Conquest. However this thread did make me remember the service in the main dining room from that ship. We would get to the dining room for the earlier of the two dinner services and would be sat down pretty quickly. However after that we never actually got any service! About 45 minutes into dinner our waiter finally came and took our orders for the appetizers. By the time we got them most people were getting their desserts. One night it got so bad that they had to rush us out of the dining room (telling us to go to deck for dessert) because the 2nd dinner service was starting to get their main course, as we were just finish up our main courses (again we were the first seating). We ended up not going back to the main dining room because 3 hour long dinner services didn't do it for us. By the way, just to add insult to injury, we never once got our food right. One night I asked for a second baked potato, the waiter brought it during the middle of my dessert. Awesome.

To be fair I didn't find my cruise on Carnival (Conquest) to be all that bad. The ship had nowhere near the amount of neon on board that you guys seem to have. With that said, in a month I'm going on Mariner of the Seas for a week, and I'm very interested to compare the two trips when all is said and done. I've also been on Monarch of the Seas, however as that was only a 3 day cruise it is hard to compare it with a longer 7 day trip.

I see this topic becoming a hot bed for politics. In my personal opinion I don't believe that the United States should stand alone as the worlds police force. In theory the UN is in place to take that role and therefore any possible arrest should be done through them. I could say a whole lot more on this topic, but I don't want to dive into a political philosophy debate on TPR.

That kind of reminds me of when the plans for Goliath leaked years back. Some employee who had managed to snap a picture threw them up online. I wonder if anybody here remembers the fun days of waiting for posts by "The Insider".

It's that time of year again. Looks like the Ipad 3 is going to be announced tomorrow so i thought I would revive this thread. This will be my first iPad, considering that I'm a bit of an Android fanboy it is a big move for me. I had actually attempted to buy the Asus Transformer Prime eariler in the year, but after getting three defective models and reading about all the other problems people were having, I decided to wait for the iPad. I'm hoping this thing can work as a laptop replacement for most functions. I've got my work desktop which is great, but I need something portable that I can take with me to meet with clients and for inside the courtroom. This seems like it will fit that need pretty well. Not to mention that during the time I'm not working, a tablet just seems like a pretty awesome toy!

It's because guys who act like jerks tend to have more self confidence. The girl is more likely to go out with the guy who talks to her and acts confident rather than the guy who mumbles and is afraid to approach. Seriously if I would go back and give my high school self some advice, it would be to have more confidence and take more chances. I think I've already said it here before, but who cares if you get broken up with? To those saying that it's better to wait for college, I strongly disagree. Date some in high school so when you get to college you have some idea of what you're doing. Remember you're looking for some a girlfriend, not a wife. If it isn't meant to last then it will end and you'll be that much better for it. Again my standard disclaimer, I was terrible with girls until I got married. The only thing I think I've learned is why I was so bad with them.

Someday if I ever finish LA Noir I am going to play Uncharted 3. I have it sitting, still in it's originial shrink wrap waiting to be played.

I'll play along. For me it is going to be a 3 way tie. KROQ Weenie Roast 2003: This show had a great lineup, Staind, Foo Fighters, Godsmack, Chevelle, Deftones, Finch, Sum 41, AFI, and a bunch of others that I can't recall right now. To make the show better I was rocking pit passes and backstage passes (including free In N Out in the back) which didn't hurt that show either. Overall this is very possibly the best show I've been to. Out of the three I'm going to list I'm very tempted to put this one out as the best overall show I've gone to. Seether in a random club: I can't even recall the name of the little club I saw these guys play in up in the Anaheim area. Basically it was a smallish club with maybe 150-200 people in attendence. The concert had Smile Empty Soul open which was another plus for me. As a final plus (kind of) of this concert was the Evanescence happened to be in town the previous night and were off the day of the Seether show. This ended up meaning that there was the bonus of Amy Lee coming out and joining in a duet of Broken as well as signing Bring Me to Life. I personally like the version of Broken without her, but still a nice surprise. Breaking Benjamin at the Ventura Theater: This was the first time I saw Breaking Benjamin (I would see them another two times after this) and it really was the best show I had seen them play. The Ventura theater is a great venue! It is small, less then a mile from the beach, and if you want to meet the bands there really isn't a better place. I spent the day down at the beach and then we headed up to the concert. In front of the theater we meet the guys in Breaking Benjamin, and then later the guys in the Exies and Theory of a Deadman. The guys from the Exies may have been the most friendly group I have ever meet, really took the time to talk to us and just hangout. For what it's worth, the worst show I've ever been to was likely Incubus in Bakersfield. Just a disaster of a show in every possible way.

Which biography did you read?

Being as how I'm always a little behind everybody else, I'm closing in on the end of LA Noir right now. As soon as that one is done I'm moving onto Uncharted 3.

When I think back to High School I think I a lot of people (guys mostly) confuse attention for flirting. Just because a girl says hi to you, laughs at something you've said, or smiles at you doesn't necessarily mean that they want to embark on a life long relationship with you. Not that I ever had great luck/skill with girls, just in hindsight I'm pretty sure I read way more into things that may not have actually been there.

I'll just admit it, Ninja is my personal favorite coaster in the park. Sure it isn't the most extreme, intense, or record breaking ride. However each and every time I ride it I have fun. So in my hear tI have a soft spot of the little coaster on the hill.

A long time ago I realized that I love my gizmos, and therefore if they make me happy I can splurge every once in a while.

I recall being at the park many years ago with a few people from Gooses site (in fact I think you may have been there) and one of the people in the group ended up hitting their hand on Log Jammer while riding Gold Rusher. If I remember they said their hand was numb for the rest of the afternoon.

If I wa the one getting to do some advising here I would tell the passangers to decline the first offer. In a situation like this where there was such a high degree of gross negligence I would bet that the settlement amount will increase with time. That being said, I would be tempted to take the settlement, walk away from the whole damn mess and get just get on with my life.

From what I understand the reason that they would want to bring the suit in the US is that we don't limit recovery whereas I guess Italy does. I have very little opinion on the legal matter here because I don't know a thing about Italian law, but I can comment that it doesn't seem like it is going to be easy for the US to gain Jurisdiction over this matter. My guess is that those passengers are stuck in Italian courts. With that said, if I get a phone call tomorrow to lead the class action suit against Costa (other then being surprised and confused) I would be happy to help, and then would fund the TPR Carnival Cruise. I've been on a 7 day Carnival Cruise (Went on Conquest) and I loved it. I had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat. With that said however the only other cruise I've been on was on RCCL and that was only a 3 day. Comparing a 7 day to a 3 day just doesn't really work in my mind so I've never really tried. Later this year I've got a 7 day cruise on Mariner of the Seas planned. I'm very curious to see how I'm feeling about that Carnival cruise from a few years back after going with RCCL for a 7 day. Everybody I've talked to has told me how much more I'm going to enjoy Mariner.

I believe the "magic" temperature for Ninja is anything above 55. Anything colder and the ride may valley. I could be slightly off on that temperature, but I'm sure that I'm pretty close there.

With everything come out I seriously envy the attorney who gets hired on the coming lawsuit. It's like the captain is trying his hardest here to make a slam dunk case for the plaintiff(s).

As far as people on board comparing this to the Titanic, I get that. Clearly this wasn't anything close to the Titanic, however when I've getting loaded onto a lifeboat and my ship is sinking, I'm going to be pretty freaked out. I'm curious to see what this does to the industry as a whole. I saw a report this morning that the industry is already feel a strong effect and that cruises are being cancelled. I'm not really sure i see the logic of cancelling your cruise (I don't cancel my daily commute each time I see a bad car accident) but to each their own. I've got a cruise coming this April and I'm curious to see if there might be some industry wide price reductions because of this.

Flames have been on the verge of a re-build for a while now.

After watching Robb's POV I'm just not sure how the coaster world will survive the loss of what appears to be such a fantastic ride. Robb, from my computer screen it looked like that thing was having a really hard time making it up the lift. Was it actually that bad in person, or is watching the video just making it seem worse then it really was?

I ended up buying La Noir, Call of Duty: World at War, and a subscription to Popular Science for $27 shipped off of Amazon. Pretty sure using Amazon though isn't really in the spirit of Black Friday.