Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Last Cruise of the Season

Well the last cruise of the season has started, and we are very much on our way to Dry Dock soon. We finish this cruise and head to Freeport, Bahamas on April 29th. We then arrive back in Florida to pick up Guests on May 6th and head to Europe.

We finally recived our Genie Super Straddle. This is a device used to elevate a Genie Lift over seating. This enabled us to be able to get our new Mac 700 lights installed and move some of them to the missing light positions. So now every light in the theatre is working.

But still so much to do before I can get a good nights sleep without having to think about work, and maybe have time to go out for a beer or two.

In a few days we will take the last 2 lights down for our Centrum upgrade project. We also recieved the rest of the new lights that will be going along the elevators. More new toys!!!!

I am totally finished with the Seconday Lounge [Safari] and every light works, has a scroller, and is addressed correctly. The only thing left is to blow out the dust.

More updates in a couple of days. Now if only the Thin Mints from Mother would arrive!!!!

Thursday, April 07, 2011

So Little Time, So much to Say

Wow, I know I have been very bad at not updating this Blog, but I just looked and I haven't posted anything since I arrived. Just goes to show how busy I have been.

First of all updating from the last blog, yes the lights did come back from Martin, no they did not all work. I wasn't too happy that I had to fix one of the lights myself, all said and done it was about 6 hours of work, but I digress.

Currently I have everything onstage working, all new lamps (well a month ago). Dimmer belts changed in some lights, shutters in others. I have rotated out four of the profile lights with the two units that had gone for repair and then repairs of my own. I still have 2 broken units, but I am not worried about them as I have 2 other units that will be taking there place soon.

Above the orchestra pit in the area we call the Black Zone, my front lights that are used as specials mainly I only have 3 out of 4 units, but soon I will be replacing all 4 of these with newer model lights. Two of the units will then take the place of the missing 2 side specials that have been missing for a very long time. The last unit will then have to be repaired; the poor light needs a tilt motor so bad.

We tried to put up my new lights (I have had them ready to go for so long) but we don't have enough pieces for our scaffolding to reach them, and it is a very dangerous spot to use our Genie Lift at. We have ordered what is called a Super straddle for our genie lift. This allows us to put the genie over the top of the seats. It's going to make our lives so much easier.

I now have both of the lights that are above the sound console fixed and reinstalled. The shows look so much better with them working.

I think that is about it for the theatre, as for the rest of the ship things are looking good, well except for the disco.

The Centrum is in good shape at the moment. All the lights along the elevators are working, except the missing lights on deck 11 that no one notices are missing. I'm not putting those back up because we are getting new lights in Dry Dock anyway. Most of the elevator lights are being replaced, all but 2 decks. Three decks will get new Martin Smart Macs, and 2 decks will get Martin Mac 101 (LED) moving lights.

We are currently replacing all of the lights over the Centrum stairs and above the band will Smart Macs. It's a slow process.
Step 1 - Take down the old non working light and the ceiling mounting plate.
Step 2 - Take the plate to the repairman to have the new Smart Mac mounting system welded on. These are supposed to be bolted to the wall or ceiling but that's impossible, so we are welding them to the old plates. The repairman also has to remove the parts from the pates that held up the old light.
Step 3 - After the welding and grinding we have to take the plates to the Bosun to be painted.
Step 4 - Find time to remount the plate in the Centrum then hang the new light. The new lights hang so much easier.
Step 5 - Power and address the fixtures.

Currently we are done with step 4 for 1 out of 6 lights, 3 lights are done with step 3 and step 4 in a couple of days. The last 2 lights will be done right before Dry Dock as the old lights are still working.

None of the lights can go to step 5 till all 6 are done with the first 4 steps and the programmer comes on.

When all is said and done in Dry Dock and we have 12 new Smart Macs and 4 Mac 101, it's going to look amazing.

The secondary lounge at the back of the ship (Safari Club) has all new LED strip lights over the stage. I finished installing them last week, and programmed them into the lighting computer. They still aren't programmed into any cues so the lounge tech as to manually set them, but that's alright.

I have repaired all the broken lights in the crew bar and also the kids disco.

Some of the things going on in the upcoming dry dock.

The Safari Club and the Theatre are both getting new digital sound consoles, and if they arrive in time, the whole ship is getting new wireless microphones.

For Lighting, in the theatre we are getting all new LED lights to go around the edge of the Proscenium. That will look great. No other new toys other then my new Mac 700's that I have had for a while. I talked about them earlier.
We are going to replace all the gel in the strip and cyc lights, and in all of the side light CXI scrollers. I hope to get the supplies for these tomorrow so I can start before Dry Dock.

The new LED's on the pool deck (installed before I arrived) will be getting wireless DMX control installed.

In the disco, I have many repairs to be done on the Mac 250's and some on the wizards. We used to have a set of Martin 918's around the outside of the disco, but they all needed so much repair, and being that they have been discontinued for so long, it just wasn't cost effective to fix. I have 6 new Mania SCX 700's coming to replace them. The total cost of these units is probrobly less then it would have cost to fix 2 of the old lights.

Well I think the next time I will update this will be after Dry Dock.

I want to say Happy Birthday to my niece Izze, she turned 2 last week, and my nephew Korban turned 3 a few weeks ago.

Big hugs and kisses to both of them, and also to there new little brother's and sister's, Beetze, and Sha Sha. Uncle David misses all of you very much.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Like Riding a Bike

Well I am now back on my old ship the Jewel of the Seas. It's like riding a bike, not very much has changed. The main thing is so many lights are having problems. The lights have not been taken very good care of in the last two years. I have already fixed so many things I am starting to loose track, and we are in cast change and handover. It means we have been working very long days. It will be great next cruise when I can have the stage a lot to just work on things, and not have to work such long hours.

The ship has four lights out for repair at Martin and I hope those come next week, it will make the shows look so much better.

I still have to check the rest of the ship, I have been so busy that I haven't even been out of the theater yet.

I have so much to do to get ready for Dry Dock in April. Then we cross to England.

Well we might be having a blackout test soon so I have to cut this short in case I have to turn the computer off.

More later.

Monday, October 04, 2010

Once again the End is in Sight

Well the time is finally coming to an end. Less then three weeks remain till I head back to the states again. This contract has been very long, and vacation can't come soon enough.

I still have a quick trip to Florence this week. This is one of the last places on this run that I have not been too. Then next week I have my return trip to Rome with my Italian Masonic Brother.

Then a week handover and that will be then end.

I will be heading back to the Jewel at the end of January. A few months in the Carribean then a few months in the Baltic again.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Fantastic Day in Rome

Well I just got back from a fantastic day in Rome, so I am going to try and write this all down before I forget anything.

The day started off without being able to sleep much last night. This usually happens when all I can think about is having to get up early the next morning. So at 6 am I was wide awake, an hour before I wanted to be. It was nice to be able to be out on deck and watch us pull into port, I don't get to see that too often. We arrived about 15 minutes late.

As soon as I saw that the gangways were out, I grabbed my stuff and headed to the gangway, my friend Seth arrived at the same time to go with me.

We got off without any problems, it was boat drill day so we were both excused. The main reason for the trip was to try and get my computer fixed.

We headed out of the port on the shuttle and my masonic connection was waiting for us outside McDonald's. That is right next to the shuttle drop off point. We headed straight to Rome after a few introductions. The weather in Civi wasn't all that good and it looked like it was going to be a rainy day. It turned out not to be, the bad weather was just on the coast and Rome was bright and sunny.

It only took about an hour to get to Rome, were we went straight to the brand new Masonic Home. This is where my driver works, he is retired Italian Military and lives in Civi. He is also the Secretary for the district of Rome. The brand new part of an office building is where all of the Lodges (or Orients as they call them) meet in Rome. Its about 15-20 of them. They are still under construction, and will have their first meetings at the end of the month. I am going back to see it in October when it is finished. They have 7 Lodge rooms, most are very small, to me they looked like closets. Their large lodge room is about the size of the small lodges in Spokane.

Once I have my computer back I will send him some of my photos and he can see what some American Lodges are like.

So after the Masonic Home visit we headed to the Mall that has the Apple store. He wasn't very familiar with this side of Rome, he said it was like the Bronkes in NY. I guess he meant the slums. The Mall was very nice, and the Apple Store was just like in America, just in Italian and Euros. I checked in, my friend had called ahead and made my appointment. I was first in line, but still had to wait 40 minutes till they saw me. They were activating iPhone 4's all over the place. The place was packed. Did I mention this is one of only two Apple stores in all of Italy (I got lucky).

When they finally looked at my computer, they tried everything that I did to turn in on. Looked up my serial number to check my Apple Care. They told me the Logic board and left I/O board need replaced, it will take about a week, so it should be done on Monday. I love Apple Care, if you ever buy a Mac laptop, spend the extra money on the apple care, it will pay for itself someday (I have already got a new hard drive out of it).

So My friend will pick up my computer hopefully on Monday when it is done, and I will meet him again on Wednesday when the ship comes into Civi again.

After we left the Mall, we headed back toward downtown. We stopped at this little hole in the wall on the Appian Way. Its a set menu with only a few choices, lets say what ever Mama wants to cook that day, that's what your choice is. It was a great meal.

Seth hadn't been to Rome much before, so we drove around the Colosseum and St. Peters and a few other stops. Then he surprised me and drove to the Grand Orient of Italy (aka Grand Lodge for the Country). It just a small house with administrative offices and a huge library, but it was special. I was given a special Calender (I haven't opened it yet).

After this we drove back to Civi and stopped to see the Lodge in town. It is very small but nice.

Well that was my day in short form as we call it. I will update on my computer when I know more

Monday, September 06, 2010

Computer don't like ship power

Well my Mac died the other day. This is the second time it has died, the first time the hard drive needed to be replaced. I think it is the logic board this time. Thanks to a fellow Mason in Italy I have a ride to Rome on Wednesday to go to the closest Apple Store (only 2 in all of Italy). He has been great, and I haven't even meet him face to face yet. He called the Apple store for me and got me a Genius Appointment. They say it will be 14 days to fix it. I have so much to do on it before I leave the ship it will be good to get it fixed. The last thing I wanted to have to do was land in America and go straight to the store to get it fixed. Thank goodness I still have Applecare on it. I think it might be time to get a smaller laptop, so I can have one in my room, and leave my big one at work. Less ware and tare.

Sorry for not posting anything for the past 2 months. Things are very busy around here. The cast is past the halfway point, and we get a new ice cast in 2 weeks.

After many months of waiting for new lamps to arrive, I finally got them a few weeks ago, so my rig is looking very bright and clean. I have gotten many broken lights working. I have one more to try and get working before I leave, but if I don't its not that big a deal.

I have never started to count down to when I am leaving so eary. I started at 10 weeks. I guess it's because I have so many exciting things to do at home. I can't wait to see my niece, she is growing up so much. I will have not seen her in 7 months. She is talking and walking now. I have heard she loves to use the video camera. Future Tech I think.

Anyway I will let you know later in the week how my adventure to the Apple store in Rome goes.

Monday, June 14, 2010

5 years

Well I can't believe it's actually been five years with RCCL. I just found out I'm getting my five year service award. Not too much details yet, I will let you know if a few days.