Last week my family went on a cruise to the Western Carribean. There were 8 of us in all -- Vicky and I had an outside stateroom; our oldest son Bryan and his wife had a room, and my remaining 4 kids had the other two rooms. We had a great time. I love cruising -- I take my laptop along and can code to my heart's content out on the ocean. Plus there is great food, and plenty of things to do and see. We were on the Carribean Princess -- the third largest cruise ship in the world. Highlights included swimming with stingrays at the Cayman islands, watching the NBA finals on the top deck by the pool on a 300 sq foot screen, Cozumel, being with family. The only negative was how hot and humid it was. So far my favorite cruise is Alaska. Next year I am going to try to go to Scandinavia.
I gave my notice to my boss -- I will be officially on my own after July 31. Jumping off the ledge at last! I will still do some contract work for my present company, but will concentrate mostly on getting our new product installed at our first 10 locations.
While on vacation last week I read a book. It had been a while since I had read any fiction. At my brother Que's recommendation, I read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. Oh my gosh -- where have I been? The book was written back in the early 80's, and I had never heard of it. It blew me away. It was amazing -- I ended up reading it twice within about 5 days. There are about 8 books in all written by Card about Ender. On the way home from vacation I found the 2nd book ("Speaker for the Dead") at the Atalanta airport, and I read it in a couple of days. Now I am on the third one ("Xenocide"). These subsequent books are "what happened next" stuff and they go in a different direction (kind of) from the original book. I hear that "Ender's Shadow", which is number 5 in the series, goes back to the original story. I won't say anything about the book -- you should just read it if you haven't. Also I just learned that Ender's Game is being made into a movie that will be out sometime next year. Cool!