Atlantis, Bahamas

I haven’t posted much in the last few years, but I figured I would share my experiences at Atlantis in the Bahamas. Overall, we had a pleasant experience at the resort. Though, at times, it could be over-stimulating with all the music and the hoards of people all around. We visited the Bahamas from March 4 – 15, 2013, granted during Spring break for many schools, which could account for the multitude of people at the resort. The weather was passible as it was warm, but windy every day. The Bahamian flag flying over one of the hotels was consistently stretched out and there was the constant noise of the wind and the water from the man-made streams that are throughout the resort. We only had one rainy day during our 10 days there, which just happened to be one of our golf days (fortunately, we had just finished our round when the skies opened up). There is a lot to report, so let me try and recount our time there.

We left on a 9am non-stop flight on Jet Blue from Boston to Nassau which was pretty uneventful, so it was a good flight. We arrived in Nassau where we waited in a long line for immigration. Once through the line, we were met by our limo driver which was part of our package. Our trip to Nassau was interesting in that there was a lot of construction going on. Apparently, the “old regime” government started a lot of projects which they just cannot afford. The “new regime” government are completing the projects which include a new hotel which should be completed by the end of 2014. Apparently, the hotel project is going to be bigger than Atlantis, which will remain to be seen. Their golf course, according to our limo driver taking us back from the airport, is supposed to be a lot better than the Ocean Club, which is the golf course that Atlantis offers to their guests. The roads are British (driving on the left) with both British and American cars (steering wheels in British cars are on the right, American cars have them on the left). We make it a point to not even try and drive when the roads are reversed.

We arrived at Atlantis, by going over a bridge where there is a $1 toll to pay. Atlantis is a series of hotels. We stayed at the Royal Towers which is the middle of the hotels, with other hotels on either side of it: Beach, Coral, Cove, Reef and Harbor Side… Staying at Atlantis can be referred to as an adult Disney World or living at Sea World. They bill themselves as a full-service resort and not an all inclusive resort. You can pick a meal plan, which we opted not to, but everything is out of pocket expenses with the exception of the massive 171 acre water park which is complementary to the guests. Non-guests can purchase a pass for the day to use the facilities. There are slides, lazy rivers and pools. The slides are exhilarating which some have you going through complete darkness before emerging into a pool. We did not have a chance to do the signature slide which has you going through a glass tunnel which has sharks and other sea life swimming above you before you are given a “water wedgie” as one guide so eloquently described it as. The lazy rivers are a great deal of fun. There are two types, one is called the Current which is a mile long with multiple access points. It is a big circle, so you will eventually get back to where you started from. There are rapids which have you going pretty quickly to a wave machine which is pretty difficult to catch the wave and propel you forward because of all of the other people. But loads of fun. It takes about 30 minutes to make the circle. There is one part where you can either take a path to go to the slides which has you going through complete darkness before ending in a stream which rejoins the loop. Sometimes the line can be long waiting to be taken up a conveyor belt for the slides, so patience is a virtue. The other river is a smaller river which has you doing a loop in about 10 minutes. It is only 1/4 mile long. We did not take that one as it was over on the other side of the resort. Probably now is a good time to talk about walking.

I hope you are used to walking as everything is a hike. You will be doing a lot of walking around the resort to get to the different venues. Bring some comfortable walking shoes. I decided to count the number of steps to get from our room in the Royal Towers to the restaurant where we were eating at the Marina (which is a very good value). It took 1100 steps. By my calculations, 2-3 feet per step, that is over 1/2 mile to eat plus the 1/2 mile to get back. Fortunately, the hotels are connected by paths or corridors. If you don’t want to traverse the hotels by going through the casino, you can opt to use the path that is outdoors that serpentines in and out of the shade. The strange thing is that there are several places where you have to “prove” that you are a hotel guest to get through by showing your hotel card or your wrist band that is complimentary for the water park. This apparently does not apply during the night. No idea why they have certain times where they check your “credentials”.

Restaurants. There are plenty of restaurants. The best deals are in the Marina (which offer the best views of massive 100 foot yachts. One had a helicopter aboard and others had jet skis and boats which had their own winches that lowered them into the water). The Marina has reasonably priced meals which all can be charged to your room. 15% gratuity is automatically added to any restaurant you go to in the Bahamas whether it is in Atlantis or Nassau. If the service is especially good, you can add additional gratuity. According to one talkative cab driver we had, minimum wage is $4 and the gratuity is pooled in with all the other checks and everyone gets a slice of the total gratuity. The restaurants in Atlantis serve large portions. Beware of family-style type restaurants, especially if you are a relatively small family. A single entree can easily feed a family of 5 easily. One restaurant we went to was Virgils B-B-Q which is a family-style portion restaurant. My wife and I ordered an appetizer of chicken wings and an entree of pork ribs. Couldn’t finish either. The ribs easily had 12-14 ribs on it which tasted really good and the chicken wings were about 12. Unfortunately, we could not finish the portions, but it taste very good. We found that the Delicatessen, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner was our default breakfast place. We paid about $50 for a family of three. The Marketplace in the Royal Towers is a buffet style breakfast which is pretty expensive (~ $35 each) which tasted good, but we didn’t get the value out of it. There are a couple of Starbucks around. The one we frequented the most was on the bottom floor of the Coral which also has some teen/kid activities which I will get into later. If you want to go off island (off Paradise Island and into Nassau, that is), we tried and loved The Poop Deck which is located just on the other side next to the bridge. Also we liked the Fish Fry (which there are two locations, one near Cable Beach and the other closer to the middle of town.

We did a bunch of activities. Atlantis has a full dolphin and sea lion sanctuary called Dolphin Cay which they built for the dolphins that were misplaced when Hurricane Katrina came through and destroyed the marine park in Louisiana. They have added to their numbers and are currently rescuing a Manta Ray, which at this time of writing will be let go into the wild in a month and a half. They have many activities to get close and personal with the dolphins and sea lions from hour interactions which you can pet and have your picture taken hugging and kissing the dolphins and sea lions. They are very well trained and the trainers all have a sense of humor which make the experience fun. There is also a program Trainer For A Day which you follow around a trainer and learn about all the animals as well as feed them, learn about them and get to go to some areas that are not usually for the short programs. Trainer For A Day costs about $500 per person and you are with a trainer from 10-5pm. My son enjoyed it so much, he did it twice. We took the opportunity to get some golf in at that time. The Ocean Club is a private club that guests have the opportunity to play. Greens fees are expensive: $250 per player. But the course is gorgeous. Doesn’t look too intimidating at the looks of it as it is flat, but there are definitely some holes where course management definitely is a must. We also took the opportunity to go fishing. We chose a boat which turned out to be a great experience called Three Queens captained by Stephen Rolle, who has a lot of experience fishing. He offers deep sea, light tackle, shark fishing, as well as snorkling, sunset cruises in half or full day charters for around $660 – $1000. We did a half day with my son and we caught some small fish when we just casted out and then caught a large 8 lb snapper when we trolled. Upon his recommendation, we took the snapper to a local restaurant just next to the bridge on the Paradise Island called the Green Parrot which overlooks the harbor. It is basically a small outside bar with a couple of tables and a trailer which has their kitchen in it. They fried the fish really well and it was our dinner one night. We decided to go out fishing with the same captain and boat again and this time we brought my wife who had a wonderful time. Caught another snapper (this time 10 lbs) and had it for lunch at the same place. The Green Parrot knows how to cook fish! I mentioned the water parks above. There are several stations where you can get a wrist band by just swiping your room key and a wrist band is printed out with your departure date printed on it and the day you are using the water park. You must get a new wrist band every day. There are multiple pools around, but they were crowded and with music blaring from the speakers embedded in the ground around each pool, it was hard to find a quiet spot. One pool had a live DJ spinning todays best hits: Gangnum Style, Call Me Maybe, etc. There are a lot of food places in the park, but as you might expect, the choices are hamburgers, hot dogs, nachos, etc. that was pretty expensive (I think $5 for a hamburger).

Our family is not one to go gambling or partake in the night life that Atlantis has to offer. The Royal Towers has a large casino which offer slots, black jack, roulette, etc. We constantly had to pass through the casino in order to get from Royal Towers to the Coral hotel, unless you wanted to take a slightly longer walk outside. The Royal Towers offers nightlife for the adults called Aura. I did not visit Aura, but they did showcase several musicians who perform there. I am not sure where she is going to perform, but Alicia Keys is going to be there in April, 2013. The teen and tween set have their own place at the Coral hotel called Crush which caters to the aforementioned with dancing, games etc. My son was more interested in another attraction called Atlantis Speedway where you can build your own remote control car and then race it against other kids/adults (yes, I partook in the event… it was pretty cool). The “race officials” were very enthusiastic and created several different types of races where sometimes you had to go around cones, or knock off a small tire and push it over the finish line, or push a basketball into/out of a hoop or tunnel, or push your way through a myriad of cones, stuffed animals, etc. etc. etc. all for some tokens that you can redeem them for prizes.

Let me take some time to talk about the Bahamas themselves. The people are pleasant. The cab driver I mentioned before said that they are scraping by and living there is an expensive proposition. All imports are taxed at a high rate. The taxi driver said a Honda Civic would cost around $40K. We took the opportunity to go into Nassau and visit the Straw Market. Row upon row of T-Shirts, souvenirs, mugs, etc. which could be bargained for, but still end up paying more than what you could get in the US. Going from row to row, you can get a sense of the Bahamian style of art. You were hawked to buy their goods and you could bargain with them on the price.

Overall, it was a pleasant experience. Would I go back? Eventually, when the new hotel is built. I look forward to any comments or questions. Give me some time to respond since my job has most of my time.

Add-in to paste plain text in Lotus Notes

Alan Lepofsky posted a great trick on how to paste text directly into Lotus Notes instead of pasting the formatted text that it defaults to.  Basically, you download a .DLL and add a line (or append) to the extmgr_addins line in your Notes.ini file and restart Notes.  It allows you to do a Shift-Ctrl-V or Shift-Ctrl-Insert to paste plain text.

“iTunes +QuickTime” has an invalid signature. It will not be installed.

I recently ran into this issue when running Apple Software Update on my Windows XP machine and searching the Internet did not give me any good leads.  What I did seems to be working so I will share:

Go to Task Mangler (Task Manager for those who want literal names) and End the Processes anything to do with Apple.

Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\ and remove the Apple folder.

Launch Apple Software Update and it should have the iTunes and Quicktime under the Optional software again.

Complete Uninstall of Lotus Sametime 8.5.1

I was having an issue with my Lotus Sametime 8.5.1 where when I started up the program, it would hang while loading my buddylist and logging into the Sametime Meeting server.  In order to do a complete uninstall of Lotus Sametime, run the Add/Remove Program Control Panel to remove the program, reboot your machine and finally delete the following directory in Windows XP:

C:\Document and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Lotus\Sametime

 

Lotus Notes Single Signon Failure

It has been a long time since I posted, but came across this bizarre fix for Lotus Notes Single Signon failures.  I had uninstalled Lotus Notes completely on my machine (Deleted registry entries, removed directories, etc) and reinstalled Lotus Notes 8.5.2 All clients (Designer, Admininstrator, Client).  For some reason, my single signon stopped working.  I found this tech note from IBM.

In summary, here is what you should check:

Blackberry Enterprise Activating Troubleshooting

 Invariably, if you have been a Blackberry Administrator for any amount of time, you have gotten some Enterprise Activation issues where the device doesn’t fully activate, or it activates but the address book is not populated.  Here are some troubleshooting tips which I am compiling here:

My Opinion On The Olympics

  I have watched the Olympics for as long as I can remember and I have come to the following conclusion:  Get rid of all judged sports.  This includes all gymnastics, diving, ice skating, synchronized swimming, freestyle skiing and the like.  I see no reason why medals should be awarded based on someone else’s judgement.  I have seen and have been disappointed numerous amount of times by error, inexperience, etc.  How can there be a full point differential in judging?  Obviously, there are problems with the system(s).  There should be no more than a .5 differential in the scoring.  As long as there are human judges, all scores will be suspect.  I hope in the future there will be a couple of computers set up at different angles which can analyze using computer modeling that can pick up the subtleties of each movement and accurately and unbiasedly score the event.  

Which sports do I like in the Olympics?  Any sport that is timed-based and/or point-based.  There is no ambiguity in time or points.  Who ever scores more or finishes first wins.  Those results are not determined by a third party (with very rare exceptions where the referee actually makes a poor call that decides a result).  They are definitive.

Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) – Java Upgrade Caveats

 Be very careful when upgrading Java on a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).  The Blackberry Collaboration Service and the Blackberry MDS Connection Service may not start up properly.  Fortunately, this is an easy fix:

McAfee Secure Content Management and Verisign Certificates

Maybe someone out there is using the McAfee SCM appliance for TLS communications using Verisign Certificates.  What has your experience been?  We currently have McAfee Support and Development trying to make it work.  They have mentioned that they do not support certificate chaining.  Has anyone gotten TLS to work on their SCM box?

Edit: OK, the process went something like this:  Use OpenSSL to generate a private RSA key.  Then using OpenSSL again, generate the CSR.  Merge the private key with the CSR using WordPad or linux command cat.  Go to Versign (or Thawte…) and get their CA (and in some cases their intermediate CA) and import it to McAfee SCM.  Import the certificate in PEM format.  Apply All Changes…  To make matters more interesting, they pointed us to Cisco’s directions on how to do use OpenSSL.  Sigh.  Hoping it will work…

Edit:  Well, apparently we  have a certificate type mismatch with one of our certificates.  We created the certs using the same private key and started running into issues on one box.  Looks like we are going to have to go back to Verisign to have a certificate reissued.

Blackberry Web Desktop Manager

I am currently testing the Blackberry Web Desktop Manager v 1.0.0 and it seems pretty good.  I have yet to see if I can upgrade Blackberry handheld OSs using it.  I would be interested to hear from other people who have used it.