So, the stars lined up and we booked a Western Caribbean cruise with Royal Caribbean aboard the Freedom of the Seas just two weeks from departure.

Now, keeping things in perspective, the last time we took a cruise was 21 years ago.  A 5 day cruise on the Bermuda Star Lines SS Veracruz.   Now it was a ‘smaller’ ship back then, Carnival and other cruise lines had it beat, but we had a budget and it was still highly rated at the time.  It was an awesome experience.  Sailing to Playa Del Carmen and Cozumel Mexico.   Weighing in at a killer 10,000 Gross Tons.  The newer Freedom of the Seas weighing in at 160,000 gross tons, was going to be a completely different adventure (yeah 16 times larger).

If you read this blog, you know how I tend to write my reviews of things.  I call things how I see them.  At the end of the week we had a fabulous time, and we’ll do it again I’m sure.   If you’re looking for a cruise, thinking about a cruise, there are things you should know and avoid.

First and foremost, Royal Caribbean is first class.  I suggest you book directly with them.  We used a travel agent, and while she didn’t cost much, the value provided was basically non-existent.  The flights she booked were horrible choices, in both timing and accommodations.  Our flight into Orlando landed at 12:36, and the cut-off for the last Royal Caribbean shuttle was 12:30, which meant we had to make alternate accommodations.  Again, not the end of the world, we were originally told we’d have a limo/town car waiting to pick us up.   That turned into; call them when you get there, you shouldn’t have to wait for more than an hour for them to pick you up.   Well, we didn’t have an hour to wait so we found an alternate shuttle.   Not the end of the world but an inconvenience we should have not had to deal with using a travel agent.  After looking at the transfer debacle we did some flight searching and found much better options.   It was too late to change but they were there.

So bypass the agent, you don’t need one to book a cruise.

Pre-buying off ship excursions.   Don’t do it unless you really, really feel the need.   We were told from day one that certain things were ‘sold out’ and other things were ‘filling up so you better book them now’.    In Labadee Haiti, we were told the Zip line was almost 100% booked two weeks before and that the jet boats were already full.   Turns out we could have participated in either the day of had we chosen too.

The one thing we really didn’t like was the over-hyping of activities and the push to get you to sign up for things.  While I realize that some of these things do actually fill up, we honestly had our pick of just about anything we wanted to do.   Also, unless you have a compelling need to be hand-held and given deadlines or step by step instructions for your excursions, you can almost certainly do better doing it yourself.  Example: the excursion to the Duns River falls in Ocho Rios Jamaica was $80 per person, plus your $15 entrance into the falls ($95.00 each) and you’d be there with 60 or more other strangers being ushered up the falls.    We got a cab to the falls for $14 each, that included taking us there, picking us up, dropping us off in the shopping district, picking us up again and taking us to the pier.  Our cost for the same thing on our time was $29 per person.

Our story starts with an very early flight out of Dayton International Airport.  One of the best places to fly out of and into because it’s so small.   The security check point has one of the body scanners.  When they say take ‘everything’ out of your pockets, they mean everything.   I left cash in my front pocket, the scanner picked that up and earned me a shake down and a talking too.  Other than that it was a pretty plain airport security experience.

From Dayton we flew into Atlanta, with a 1 and a half hour lay over.   (Note to travel agents, there is no reason NOT to fly people from Cincy to Orlando ‘direct’.   No need to take a 2 hour flight and make it a 6-8 hour experience).

From Atlanta to Orlando, pretty routine.   We grabbed our Luggage, called our shuttle, had to wait about 20 minute, but got to the pier with an hour to spare.   We were on-board by 3pm.

Our first impression of the ship, or at least mine was “Holy Cow, this thing is big”.  We were parked in Port Canaveral, next to two Carnival cruise ships which were quite small in comparison.

I didn’t get a shot that showed them both together, but the size difference was significant.

Our room was in the bottom of the boat (Deck 2), which initially I wasn’t excited about.   We’d hoped for an upgrade, but the ship was full, and no such upgrade presented itself.   We had a rather large portal window and the close proximity to the elevators made it work out well.

All ship rooms are somewhat small, but we found ours to be very comfortable.   The online photo showed a couch in the room, but that turned out to be a chair.  With only two people it was very comfortable.  Four would have been too crowded.

After getting settled, we waited for our luggage and took a tour of the ship.  Not a guided tour, just a walk around and get your bearings.  Where are the stairs, elevators, bathrooms, bars, and most importantly where is the Casino?

We also wandered up to the Spa to book our first massage.  We got roped into a Spa tour, which sucked.  It was each station, hocking their wares, from massages to facials and even Botox, if you wanted it.  Of course everyone claimed they filled up quickly so book your appointment NOW.  We really didn’t like the hard sell every time we turned around.  We did take advantage of a first day special that let us book our couples massage early and save a little money.   We booked our massage for Monday morning and then got out of the Spa as quickly as possible.

With all of that out of the way we waited for the mandatory lifeboat drill.   My cruise tip for you:  Don’t be early to the drill, we stood around on deck for nearly an hour waiting for it to get started.  Once you’re in your designated spot you aren’t permitted to leave until the drill is over and the Captain is happy.

Beverages

Cruises aren’t all-inclusive anymore.  I remember 20 years ago that I didn’t pay for much.  Even some alcohol was free (your basic Budweiser/Miller, etc).   Now days, water and Ice-Tea are free, nothing else.   On the way on the ship we signed up for the unlimited Soda, which gave you a Souvenir cup with an RFID tag.   We were told there were fountain stations on board and we could refill at any time.  Turns out there is only (1) guest accessible fountain station and that was up on the pool deck.  You could get a refill at any bar though, provided you had your card with your special sticker.   Unlimited Soda was $45 each, we obviously didn’t do the math properly.  I would much rather have been charged $40 more for my ticket just to not have to hassle with this.   If you have kids, traveling with you, then the math might make sense but for adults, even if you don’t drink alcohol, it’s probably not worth it.   Soda was only $2.00 per drink if you bought it so you’d need to drink 6 per day to make it worth while.  On the other hand it wasn’t hot when we were there.  Temps ranged from 70’s to low 80’s.  Had it been much hotter I may have drank more.   I just didn’t like having to provide my card every time I wanted a beverage, and the waiters kind of, sort of frowned when you had the package.  I guess that meant they didn’t get the 15% automatic gratuity for serving you a coke.

We knew bringing alcohol on board was prohibited.  But had we known we could bring soda, we’d probably have brought a 12 pack of something and saved quite a bit.

Overall, beverage prices were about $7 for just about any drink.  Some beers were $6 others $8.  Knob Creek on the rocks was $7, margaritas were $6.50, but others drinks were more.  Figure about $8 a drink and you’ll be good.

Dinner the first night was casual.   The food and the dining room experience was outstanding.  We had good service, others including the elderly couple at a nearby table did not get good service.   We only experienced poor service once, and that was at breakfast and it wasn’t with our normal waiter.

Dinning

Because we booked our cruise sort of last minute, our dining options were limited.   There were two fixed dining times plus the ‘My Time Dining’.   My Time dining was already booked as was the early seating so we were stuck with a late dinner time.   We were a little disappointed at first, but this turned out to be a good thing.   For starters, the My Time Dining, which allows you do come to the first two floors of the dining room at any time between 6:00 and 9:30pm to get a table, almost always had a line, and what looked like a 20 minute wait.   I’m sure there was probably some ‘sweet’ times where you could get in without waiting but were were glad to not have to deal with that.    A late meal meant we got to get all of our activities and off ship excursions done without having to rush back to the ship.   It worked out well for us in the end.

Again, our dining experience was exceptional for the most part.  I only had one bad meal and that was the first night.  I opted for the pork medallions and they simply were not good.  Some of the toughest pork loin I’ve ever had.   Our waiter, Rodel, was very good.  He pretty much had us figured out after the first night.

We had requested a table for two, and lucked into a table by a window.  Since we were dining late at night, it turned out that looking outside meant we’d see nothing after dark.

After dinner was Casino time.  The slot machines were not kind to us the first night, but we did win a little bit at Blackjack.   Enough so that we were ahead by the end of the evening.  I also signed up to play in the Texas hold-em tournament, with a chance to win a cruise aboard the OASIS and a seat at the $100k tournament.

Day (1)

Day one was an at-sea day.  Cruising on down to our first stop in Labadee Haiti.  We spent the day chillin, hanging out on the pool deck and time in the hot tub.   It was still a day of getting familiar with the ship.  Our massage at 10:30am was perfect.  1pm was tournament time.  It started out well, and was in the final four when I went all in with two pair (Aces and 5’s) but the other guy had pocket 5’s to kick my butt.   That’s how it goes sometimes.  We rounded out our day just being vegetables on a cruise ship.

It was however the first of two formal nights.   If you know me, you know how excited I was to get to dress up for dinner.    But we had fun, and yes I do actually own a suit.

After dinner was the first of many shows.  The first Broadway type production was a medley of music from our generation and was outstanding.  No I don’t remember the name of the show but even I, a hater of plays and productions was impressed.

Day (2)

Labadee Day.   Our first off the ship day.  I actually got up with Claudine to watch the sunrise (yep you read that right).  Of course I also wanted to see them dock this big behemoth in Haiti.

Labadee, Haiti.    Isn’t the smashed by an earthquake Haiti you’re thinking of.  It’s a private island, or part of the island that’s owned and operated by Royal Caribbean.   This means you get the service of the cruise ship while you’re there.  Everything is staffed by crew from the ship.   On the island/resort, the food barbeque is produced on the ship, or by the ships staff.   

There is anything you could want in terms of Beach stuff.   Great surf, calm lagoon, great sand, tons of shade, chairs and hammocks everywhere.   Kids could play in the water park, and you could rent jet ski’s or ride the zip line.   We opted to park our butts in chairs on the beach for the first half of the day, then had lunch.

That sand is clean, the walkways are paved and easy going.  There was an Artisan’s market.   Word to the wise, unless you really need a Haitian wooden shot glass, or some other crap made in China, just avoid it.  The vendors were horrible.  If you’ve done a Caribbean cruise or trip before you know how aggressive they can be.  “Come here, I have something just for you”, etc, etc.   This was that only 10x worse.   I was actually really disappointed that for a private beach area that this wasn’t controlled a little better.   It was made worse by the fact that once you entered the area you were pretty much trapped and forced by all of the vendors on the board-walk.   Very irritating to say the least.

We managed to get through though, and migrated to the other side of the beach after lunch.  Found a couple hammocks and relaxed some more while watching the Zip liners fly over the cove.

After our day was over, we headed back to the ship.  It’s just amazing how large that thing is.  Also amazing was the security to get back on board.  It was like the airport all over again, only with less luggage.

The rest of the evening was fairly anti-climatic and involved hot tub time, and other activities not appropriate for this blog.  Since the show the first night was so good we made it a point to see the magic show on Tuesday night.  It also didn’t disappoint.  If you’re a magic fan, see this, but don’t see it from the balcony as we did, you’ll discover that some of the magic isn’t in fact magic.

If you wanted to, you could learn to DJ…

Day (3)

Originally, our itinerary called for stopping at another private beach area in Jamaica.  Falmouth to be exact.  But apparently it wasn’t quite ready so they took us to Ocho Rios instead.  We didn’t have any killer excursions planned.   One of the big things here is the Dunns River Falls.  We decided this was something we wanted to do but didn’t want to pay $80 each to do it.  We got off the ship, and negotiated with a taxi driver, who then took us and a few other folks up to the falls and on a tour.  We were the only couple to get off at the falls.  Some didn’t want to pay the additional $15 to get in.   We knew a head of time there was a charge but it felt a lot like a bait and switch.  The taxi driver told us we had two hours, more than enough time to do the falls and left us.

Much like Haiti, the folks were a bit overbearing, offering to braid our hair and sell us junk.  After the Haiti experience we decided we’d simply bring our iPod’s, put the ear buds in and ignore them.  That strategy worked out well.

Claudine didn’t wear her swim suit and didn’t want to get in the water so she walked along as I climbed about half the falls.  I too wasn’t in a position to get into water that was waist deep (or more) so I chose my path carefully.

The falls are well worth doing.

We were done with plenty of time to spare and were beginning to wonder if our taxi was going to make it back to pick us up.  It wasn’t crowded when we got there, but by the time we were done the place was packed with tour busses.

(note headphones, also known as our Jamaican-beggar shields)

The taxi arrived pretty much on time, about 2:05pm and took us to the shopping district where we had a nice lunch at Mama-Marley’s.   Some really good Jamaican Jerk Wings.

We had just about wrapped up our lunch when the Taxi driver informed us we needed to go, the other folks were ready and needed to had back towards the ship.   We wanted to hit a shopping district that was recommended on the cruise ship but settled for the area near the pier.  

We found a few really nice, or what we thought were nice prices on jewelry but didn’t buy any of it.  We did pick up 2lbs of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, and a Cuban cigar for me for later.

We still had an hour to kills so we did so at Margaritaville.

This is your standard $17.50 (US) Gold Margarita with souvenir glass.  The entertainment at the bar was *special*

And by that I meant very entertaining.   In this instance 5 different women were trying to win a T-shirt, trying to fill a cup in this poor volunteers lap by squeezing a bottle of water between their legs.

Yeah, good bar entertainment.

That pretty much wrapped up day 3, the rest of the evening was spent in the hot-tub, casino, etc.

Day (4)

Was supposed to be a stop in Grand Cayman.   Unfortunately this ship is too large to dock so the plan was to tender us in.  Weather prevented that from happening so it turned into another full day at sea.   While we really wanted to see Grand Cayman, we were fine with a sea day.   Plenty of activities on-board.

The weather was awesome.  Seas picked up to 15-20 foot swells.  Not quite the ‘Deadliest Catch Seas’ I was hoping we’d experience some of but still pretty active nonetheless.    Waves were crashing up against our portal window and the boat was rocking pretty good.   Even so, that meant you could finally feel some rocking.  That thing is so big that you really don’t notice much movement at all.  While we did see quite a few people throughout the week wearing anti-motion sickness patches, we didn’t see anyone get sick at any time.

Even with these seas, playing shuffle board wasn’t a problem.

It’s really hard to get a feel for the scale of the waves.  It was a pretty busy day at sea.

It was also formal night again.

So I again got to play dress up with my lovely wife.   It was also the captains dinner, which meant we got to eat extra-good.  Which for me was quite a few lobster tails, and plenty of escargot.

It also meant another show.  This time a medley of Broadway and opera stuff.   Which in my opinion was not nearly as good as the first show but we made it through followed by more Casino action.

Not as many pictures taken on this day.

Day (5)

Cozumel.  This stop was kind of important to us as it was also a destination on our honeymoon cruise 21 years ago.   While in port the Voyager of the seas pulled up and parked along side us.  Man these boats are huge.

Also in port were two Carnival ships so we figured it would be a busy day.

We had toyed with the idea of a couple different excursions but again decided to set out on our own.

There were plenty of shops right inside the terminal where you could buy just about anything including our diet pills, Viagra, and of course your anabolic steroids.   We considered stocking up on antibiotics, but with $4 prescriptions at Wal-Mart it just didn’t make sense.

Right off the ship and outside of the terminal we picked up a Scooter and rented it for the day.

Tip #1, don’t rent from the first person you see.

Tip #2, if you rent a scooter test ride it for a mile or so before you commit.

We paid $40 for the day plus $5 for gas, the attendant couldn’t make change so he asked me to pay the $5 when we returned.   I thought that was kind of shady as it wasn’t on the paperwork that we had to pay $5 for gas.  But what the hey.

We were off.  It was about 5 miles down the road that I realized just what a pile of junk this thing was.  The suspension was shot, and it pulled to the right.  The roads were horrible, so that meant instead of enjoying the view I got to fight the scooter.   Heck I only had another 40-50 miles to ride it how bad could it be?  It was bad.  (Still fun, but bad).

We stopped every now and then to play on the beach or check out some of the beach clubs, and/or resorts.  Doing a 4-5 day all inclusive resort on Cozumel was one of the things we had considered so why not check them out.

Outside of the crappy scooter, and the horrible roads, we never once felt unsafe.  For the most part we traveled on the ‘old road’ which had limited access and limited traffic, as well as limited pavement.

Beaches a-plenty.

We stopped and had lunch at Coconuts.

Food was good, pricey but good.  The Margaritas looked excellent, but since I was still piloting the ‘Scooter of Death’, I decided not to have any.

After Coconuts the weather looked threatening so we beat feet for the ruins.

Which as you would expect were just a big pile of rocks.

I’m a helmet advocate.  I wouldn’t ride without one, but to be honest I was more afraid of what this helmet might do to me in the event of an accident.

After 50 or so miles of scooter torture we turned that sucker in.  I tried to explain to the guy just how unhappy I was with it, and that I felt it was unsafe.  He just kind of scoffed.  I probably wouldn’t have said anything but we came across plenty of other scooters that were in much better shape.  I asked how you say Piece of $@#$ in Spanish.   He didn’t much care and just wanted his $5 for gas.   He was holding my Sea Pass and I was holding the key to his scooter.   I explained I wasn’t going to pay that $5.   He explained then that I wasn’t getting my sea pass.  I said *fine*, you keep it, and I have a souvenir (holding up the key to his scooter).  I had my passport and wasn’t worried about getting back on the boat, and they could make me another sea pass.   I walked over to security and told them I’d lost my pass, and handed them my ID.  They stated to make a big deal about it, and asked for my wife’s ID and sea pass.  Fortunately she was there to show her stuff.

The scooter guy walked over and showed the security guard that he had my pass, and said I owed $5.  I clearly explained that he wasn’t getting $5 from me, it was a matter of principle at that point.  It wasn’t on my receipt, and wasn’t listed as part of the deal.   He looked a bit disgusted then handed my sea pass to the security guy.   Once I got my pass from him I handed him the key to the scooter.    It was kind of exciting for a moment.

All in all we had a great time in Cozumel, but I would never rent a scooter again.  At least not unless I test rode it first.  I should have taken it back, but by the time I realized how bad it was we were too far away.

So shop your transportation.  Don’t take the first deal you see, that was our mistake, and I learned a lesson that day.  Fortunately it didn’t cost me much to learn it.  No one was injured.

Back on the ship we hung out on the deck and watched the sunset as other boats departed.

The evening was wrapped up pretty much the same as the rest.  A little more Casino, a little more hot tub, etc, etc.

Day (6)

Day 6 was our final real day at Sea.  Both Sunday’s were really partial days, one arriving and the last day we’re out at 7am so I’m not sure that really counts as a day.

We spent the day at a very leisure pace.  Up for a relaxing breakfast in the Windjammer restaurant, lots of shuffleboard, and hanging out on deck here or there.

We finally managed a nice sunset at sea.

Dinner was casual again and we got to deliver our tip envelopes.   Which was a pleasure since our service was fantastic.

I wrapped up the evening with some Knob Creek and the Cuban Cigar I bought in Jamaica.  It was a perfect evening. 

We packed up our bags and debated the early departure versus fighting to get off with everyone else.  In the end early departure won and that turned out to be a smart move.

We got to the airport early, perhaps a little too early, but that’s better than being late any day.

The flights home were uneventful.

More photos are here in the Google/Picasa Gallery:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mdisher/Cruise2011#

I do believe cruises are the best bang for the buck, that is if you don’t get sea sick.  Even if you’re afraid of that, today’s ships are so big that there is just enough motion to be settling and know you’re on a ship, but none of the really bad action.   Even on our worst days, it wasn’t bad at all.

Conclusion

Royal Caribbean, if you read this, these are the things you need to know.

1) Just charge everyone $30 more and drop the whole Soda/Drink thing.  The people don’t like it, the waiters don’t like it, and it’s just a hassle.   You have accountants and bean counters, do the math, I’m sure some people will abuse it, but the same folks can game the current system if they want too.  It will all average out and things would just be smoother if you did.  In the same vain there are just too  many premium services and items. I understand you can’t make everything free, but charging for fresh squeezed orange juice wasn’t not a good plan.  I actually didn’t see that sold at any time that I was watching.  It’s sad that the only good ice cream with the exception of dinner desert was a premium.   It’s these little things that add way more value than they would or should cost.  If you can’t kill the drink thing, add more public walk up places to get drinks.  We shouldn’t have to hassle a bartender for a soda.   That would make it much easier all the way around.

2) Graham the cruise director is outstanding.  You need to keep him at all costs, but you probably already know that.

3) Jazz up the food at the Windjammer.   While it’s nice and generally good, it should be better than Golden Corral and most of it wasn’t.  (Not that there is anything wrong with Golden Corral).

4) Put a stop to the hard sell everywhere you go.  We probably would have bought 2-3x more Spa services if we hadn’t been so turned off by the hard sell.

5) Same thing for Haiti, and your private beeches.  You really need to patrol the vendor areas.  While I respect their right to try to make a buck, getting the same aggressive spiel from all of the vendors selling the same stuff just isn’t much fun.

6) Bring back the bridge tour.  It would be great to have been able to have a ‘behind the scenes’ type of your of that ship.  I understand a ‘paid tour’ is in the works.   I probably would have paid for that, but think that should be something you should be able to do without charging.   I’m also sure there are parts of the ship that would be cool if they were exposed.  Windows into the kitchen, engine room, etc.   They could be tucked down a hallway but a look at some of the stuff you probably don’t want us to see would be pretty cool.

7) Bull and Bear Pub?  It’s not a pub if it doesn’t have pub food.  An English themed bar that doesn’t serve anything different than any other bar is kind of a waste.  Serve some pub grub.  Please.

Kudos for some great shows.  While I don’t care for or appreciate ice shows, one at sea is impressive.  Even if there aren’t any sticks or pucks.

9) Kudos for the great over-all service.  We had a few no-so bright spots but they were few and far between.

10) Pizza shop.  Free Pizza is always good, but it could have been just a tad bit better.  The basic pizza’s were pretty plain, as in just a notch above frozen pizza.   We just sort of expect a bit more on a cruise ship, especially one of this caliber.

11) Kudos for having a lot for the kids to do.  While we didn’t bring ours, we didn’t feel as though any of the kids onboard were problematic.  They all seemed entertained.

Well that pretty much sums it up.   I’m sure more will come to me over the next few days as things sink in.

Again, I highly recommend Royal Caribbean and the Freedom of the seas.

This trip was very similar. 

The first part of the trip was to move the office and get the internet connectivity and telecommunications setup as well as wrap up some loose ends.

We left Cincinnati (CVG) Saturday May 8th, connecting in Chicago, then straight into Heathrow, in the UK.   I was fortunate to be traveling with our VP of sales, who makes this trip once a month.  As such he’s earned his rewards and status with the airlines and the benefits that come with that.  As his traveling partner I was able to better enjoy the road warrior lifestyle for a week.  Being able to visit the international clubs in the airport and getting ‘upgraded’ has it’s advantages.

This time however we did rent a car.  Figuring we’d be driving back and forth between offices and making the occasional run to the store for something we figured this would be easier than cabs.

We picked up our car at the airport and headed to the hotel.  As things usually go, they didn’t have the car we reserved so we settled on a VW Passat, and a free GPS as compensation.

Driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road is interesting.  But  not nearly as difficult as I was led to believe it would be.  We arrived without incident.

While in the UK we tend to stay at the Twickenham Marriott which wraps the Twickenham rugby statdium.  It’s new so it’s still very nice.  Twickenham is on the west side of London, and honestly there isn’t a whole lot around that area in terms of quick and dirty tourist attractions.  You can hop the tube into downtown London if you have time, but we didn’t.

The room (at least the one I stayed in) is pretty straight forward:

The View

We didn’t do much Sunday, other than recuperate from the flight(s).  We did venture out in search of another US/UK power adapter and ended up a Bentalls, a shopping center and mall about 20 minutes away.  We at lunch/dinner there, and I picked up a Tea Pot for my lovely wife.

Monday morning we met Ashley at the office, got our bearings and went to the old office to retrieve our communications gear.  Loaded it up and headed back to our new office in Kew. 

Where by we commenced to assembling furniture and getting our phones system and internet connectivity up and running.  A good part of the afternoon was spent getting our phone service re-tooled from the interfaces we had at our horrible Regus office to lines we now had control over.  To this end we use eVelocity, for Cisco voice configuration we’re not comfortable messing with.   While things never go as planned, things actually went quite well.

With day 1 complete nearly everything was working as planned.

On Tuesday, we did more of the same, mostly clean-up and tweaks.  For lunch we wandered out to the Kew Greenhouse Cafe.   Ashley claimed it was simply a tourist spot and no, UK people rarely eat at places like this.

Lunch was a Tuna Bake and a Becks Beer.

Then back to the office for more office move related stuff.   Our landlord occupies the 1st and 2nd floor of this building (2nd and 3rd floor to US folks).  I took some time with Paul and discussed their business, the building and other stuff.  When they renovated the building, they added the 3rd floor.  It has somewhat of a nautical theme, seeing as how they are in the shipping business it all made sense.  The windows are like port-holes on a ship.  The 3rd floor is an all-purpose conference room and space for entertaining.  Complete with a temporary bed, shower and other luxuries.

The whole office reminded me of Apple in Cupertino.  They are Apple users and the whole place was quite sanitary looking.

We showed off our iPad’s knowing they’d be interested and couldn’t actually get their hands on them for another couple weeks.

Later in the afternoon I took about an hour to run over to the Chiswick Honda dealership.  At this dealership they have everything Honda.  From lawnmowers and generators, to motorcycles and cars.  My goal was to sit on a new Honda VFR 1200 and check out a couple of bikes that aren’t available in the states.   Mission accomplished, but I have to say, the folks at the dealership were less than friendly.

That evening, we stopped at Tesco’s, the UK version of Walmart to get a few snacks and drinks for the room so we didn’t  have to spend 5 GBP (or about $7.50) for a pepsi at the hotel.

Just like Walmart you can get everything at Tesco, including your home loan, and car insurance right at the check out.

Kevin had to get his Walker Potato chips, “Prawn Cocktail” flavor to be exact.  I’m pretty sure these are just lays potato chips.  But they had a number of really interesting flavors. I opted for a combo pack that had ‘Steak and Onion’, ‘Smokey Bacon’ which I though was extremely ironic since these folks don’t have a clue what bacon really is.  A slice of honey baked ham, without the honey or the baking is not bacon, it’s simply a slice of poorly grilled ham, and ‘Roast Chicken’.  Much to my surprise all of these flavors were accurate, and quite delicious.

Wednesday was wrap up day.  I didn’t have a lot to do, but was hoping I’d get to get out and see some stuff.

We took a quick road trip to IKEA of all places, in an effort to find a conference room table.  Kevin was fairly certain the conference room table we had in Austria came from IKEA.   On the way we stopped for lunch at the world famous ACE cafe.   Which was really an American diner/motorcycle hang out.

Cool place, lots of history.  The Ace Cafe – London, was bombed in World War II.  History can be found here.  Ashley’s dad used to frequent the place in his younger years. 

Out trip to IKEA was uneventful.  No real office furniture to speak of, thought they did have the little lantern that Matthew was playing with at home on our front porch before I left.  Which I believe was a gift we received at Christmas.  It tickled me to see them in London.

We returned around 3pm.  It was a little late in the day for me to make a run to Stonehenge, which was on my short list of things to go see.  It’s about 80 miles from the office but knowing that I’d run into traffic and that we had to leave for the airport at 5am I wasn’t much in the mood to risk it.

I took a little walk around the Kew train stop area, around our office and took some photos.

Everything here is old, including the bridge over the train tracks that I walked over and took the above photo from.  Built in 1912.

Given the amount of pure ugly people, most of whom are only ugly because they need some dental care, I was shocked to find a dentist on the other side of the tracks.  (That’s sarcasm and humor in case you didn’t notice.)

That evening we had dinner at the Inn in Kew Gardens, a standard pub/hotel.  Very much like the Golden Lamb here in Lebanon, OH.  The food was good and on a vacation visit I would probably stay there, though I didn’t get to check out any of the rooms.

The night was uneventful, I slept well, but didn’t get my 4:15am wake up call.  Grrrrr…  (yes 4:15am, necessary to get up and out by 5am, to get to the airport, return our car, clear security and all that entails to make a 7am flight to Munich, Germany).

Still we got out of the hotel in time to return the rental car, and make our flight without too much trouble.

The flight into Germany was uneventful.  We flew Lufthansa and of all the flights so far this was the worst.  The dirtiest aircraft, and the loudest.  It had a horrible buzzing/vibration.  But hey, it’s all good if you don’t crash right?

We landed in Munich and took a cab to the Munich Marriott, which is really in Freising.   We pretty much had the day to kill since it was a Holiday.  No real estate agents were working.  I had in mind to visit either the BMW museum in Munich, or Dachau, the 1st concentration camp.   But as fate would have it, we didn’t have a car, and being a holiday we feared things may not be open.   We walked down to the hofbrauhaus with the intention of eating well and having a few beers.

But it too was closed.  To be honest the whole town was very quiet.  We walked back to the hotel and had a good meal and beer at the restaurant then just relaxed in our rooms.  I watched “The Hurt Locker”, and promptly fell a sleep.

In the morning Rob picked us up and we went office shopping.

I won’t bore you with the details of that.

The bottom line though is that you could probably take someone from West Chester, blind fold them, drop them off near the Munich airport and they wouldn’t know the difference.  The drive on the right side of the road, and it’s wide open.  Plenty of farmland.  Very Cincinnati like.

Our trip was successful, at least at this point I think it was.   We viewed 8 different offices, had lunch at a little Italian bistro, then spent a couple hours at the airport office park where our current office is.

We flew back to Heathrow at 7pm, less than 48 hours after we arrived.  We spent the night at the Heathrow Marriott, then headed back to the US at 7:30 in the morning the next day.

The flight home was equally uneventful, until we needed to board our flight from Chicago to Cincy.  The plane needed some maintenance attention but they gut us underway in less than 40 minutes of our original departure time so we were only 30 minutes late.

I can’t wait to go back, but I can certainly wait to do those flights again.

12 + hours in airports and planes just kinds sucks like that.

Google hasn’t updated their satellite imagery so you’ll need to bear with me.

The house is done, ready to move into.  The In Laws, hate Time Warner about as much as I hate Cin Bell.  They already have DirecTV but they need internet.  So they ordered up Zoomtown/DSL from Bell.  Easy enough.

The demarcation point for Bell is a phone box in the right hand corner of our yard up by the road, and all of our telecom stuff is buried.

About a month ago they installed a temporary line, which I’ve been mowing around for a few weeks.  Last week they came to burry the cable but they did it wrong.

We still farm most of our 13 acres that are not attached to the house.  It’s currently hay, which we use for our horses.  It is due to be replanted or rotated which likely means a year of corn, a year of beans, then back to hay.  We put the house where it is to keep a much contiguous farm land as we could.

Now enter Cincy Bell or ATT depending on who you want to trust as they are each pointing fingers at each other.

Instead of running the phone line along the road (where utilities go), they decided it would be easier to run up our grass driveway to our barn, and across the field to get to the new house.

Which normally would be fine, provided (a) they asked us if they could do that, and (b) we weren’t still planning to farm that area, which we are.

So now we have this:

In addition, the line going up the grass driveway is also at risk if we get to the point where we want to put in a real driveway, gravel or not.    Where it crosses what will be farmed.  It will definitely be dug up when the soil is turned.

I’ve now spent about 4 hours trying to get this through to the folks at Cincinnati Bell.

I’ve gotten responses like:

- Well the line works, and since it works we’re not going to come out and fix anything because there’s nothing to fix.
- We can move the line but it will be at your expense.
- ATT: that’s not our line or our responsibility, even though we installed it, we’re not the carrier for this line.
- Bell: ATT installed that and screwed it up, you’re going to have to deal with them.

I have half a mind to ‘fix’ it for them, but don’t want my in laws to be out.  I did finally get a phone call today from a customer service rep from Cincinnati Bell.  He promised to look into it (again).

We’ll see.

UPDATE 10/17/2009:

As of now, they have buried a new cable along the path that it was supposed to be buried.  However, they didn’t take up the initial cable.   So we’ll take care of that for them in the spring and and they’ll be on the hook if the equipment gets damaged.

I will say that Tom at Cincy Bell is persistent.  He called me every day to see if it had been moved.  The last time I looked they had not cut their house over to the new line despite the fact that it was installed.

He whines about being indistinguishable from an employee, other than the color of his badge. Yet he doesn’t get to partake in off-site team building activities that employees get to partake in. Temp workers get no real benefits from Microsoft. (Duh, that’s why they are temp workers).

How can you be that stupid? He wants temp workers to unite and stand up for their rights. Rights that, well, as temp workers you don’t have.

Here are the facts jack:

• You’re a temporary worker, i.e. contract worker.
• Your Job could go away at the snap of a finger. There are a million and one reasons a company like Microsoft uses Temp/Contract workers, the primary reason of course is to control costs.
• You agreed to be a contract worker.

Now if they are being treated poorly because they are temp workers, that’s different. That’s simply poor management. But they are NOT employees; hence they don’t have the same rights and privileges.

This is a horrible ‘Woe-is-me, I’m entitled to something story’ that is all too common with ‘The Story’. It’s very, very frustrating.

Pay cuts, temporary or otherwise aren’t any fun. Not fun for those taking the cuts, or those who have to implement them. Get over it, 10% less is far more than you’ll get from the unemployment office.

Here is the Seattle Times article on this clown.

Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.
The next day the farmer drove up and said, ‘Sorry Chuck, but I have some bad news, the donkey died.’
Chuck replied, ‘Well, then just give me my money back.’
The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.’
Chuck said, ‘OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.’
The farmer asked, ‘Whatcha gonna do with a dead donkey?
Chuck said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’
The farmer said ‘You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!’
Chuck said, ‘Sure I can. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’
A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, ‘What happened with that dead donkey?’
Chuck said, ‘I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00.’
The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’
Chuck said, ‘Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.’
Chuck now works for AIG where he’s about to get a huge bonus!

We have a decent amount of land just outside of Trenton Ohio that surrounds the 3 acres that our house sits on.   On that 13 acres, my in-laws are building a house.   Ask me in 5-10 years if that was a good idea or not.

As a result of this we (they) had to have our property surveyed so that we could get a legal description of the land we’re giving them (or allowing them) to build on.

This has turned up two areas of encroachment.  One we were aware of and one that we were not.

In the front of our property (see drawing), we knew there was a small triangular piece of property that is actually ours.  The previous owners told us about it when we bought the place.   But they had a gentleman’s agreement with the neighbor at the time to allow them to fence a squared off area.   When we moved in they had goats in that small field, and later a cow.

Those neighbors have since moved on, a victim of the mortgage crisis before there was a crisis. (More a victim of common sense than anything but I digress).  The new owner uses the property as rental property.  When we met them we discussed the area in question but it wasn’t a big deal to us.   Now that the land has been surveyed it is a big deal.

It seems if you don’t protect your property, it will be squatted on and you’ll lose it.  By us continuing to permit them to have our land fenced, we’re risking losing it.   20 feet of road frontage is not something we wish to lose so we now we need to enforce the property lines.   As it turns out, the entire west side of the neighbors fence is on our property and will likely need to be removed.

We have an issue at the back of our property as well.

The Delaware Crossing subdivision behind us and to the west is legendary.  It’s been tied up in legal issues from day one.  The builder we believe went bankrupt and the City of Trenton now owns the property.

At the back of our property, there’s a small park for the subdivision.  A couple basketball courts, and play equipment.

The problem is where they ran the walking path, or the access path to get to this park.  It was originally supposed to go between two houses as you can see in the picture.   But apparently the folks who live in those houses didn’t like that.  So the neighbor closest to us suggested they run it along our fence line and his side yard.   The developer agreed.  The only problem was they paid no attention to the property lines.

It looks something like this:

The sad part about it, is that they had to tear down some of our fence to make this happen.

So here we go again.  We have to re-establish our boundaries or we risk losing this piece of land.

Our initial thought was to simply lease it to them.   But there is no ‘them’.  The homeowners association in Delaware Crossing is defunct.   The city now maintains the park, well they city and the residents that back up to it somewhat share that burden.

If we fence it, it will block their access.  They won’t be able to get a vehicle back to the part without tearing up our neighbors yard, and even then it will be tight, very tight.

We’ve talked to them and they will likely fence from our fence to their house which will kill all access to the park.

The City is encouraging us to put our fence back.  If people can’t use the park they don’t have to maintain it.

So the question becomes, what kind of fence?  Because what ever we put back there will be vandalized, you can count on that.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions, post them up we’re all ears.  Of course we want to enforce all of this with as little out of pocket expense as possible.

I think this image sums it up best:

So here we are.  The 800 bajillion dollar stimulus package has been passed by the Dems and signed off on by the president.

Here’s what it means to us based upon the info in this article on yahoo news.

First off, the Dishers are not rich.  We’re blessed but far from rich.  We’re technically middle class based upon my income and the fact that my income is our only income.

We still have some debt, but apparently far less than most Americans.   We didn’t buy more house than we could afford, and we pay our mortgage every month on-time.  Yep, even though it’s now worth less.   Not less than we paid for it, but less than it was worth 2 years ago.

Of course we could have bought a much bigger house, borrowed more money than we could afford and taken out a silly balloon or interest only mortgage but I guess we were smarter than that.  Or perhaps maybe not so smart.  We’re not getting bailed out in any way.

It looks like I can count on an extra $13 a week, or $52 a month.   Not sure what I’m supposed to stimulate with that?   I suppose that could subsidize our cable bill.   Though if we were to buckle down and trim expenses that would be the first things to go. 

“The $1,000 child tax credit would be extended to more low-income families that don’t make enough money to pay income taxes, and poor families with three or more children will get an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit”

This makes no sense to me.  We’re not low-income so I guess we don’t get this?  What benefit is a per-child income tax credit if you don’t make enough money to pay taxes to begin with?  Someone please explain this to me.

We’re technically middle-income so we’ll be spared the Alternative minimum tax what ever that is.

We’re not a first time home buyer so…   No benefit for us there.  Why would an $8k tax credit be limited to first time buyers only?  That seems discriminatory to me.

We can get a $1500 tax credit, if we spend a ton of money in an effort to get efficient.   We don’t need a new furnace, and to replace our windows (all 36 of them) even with a $1500 credit is still cost prohibitive.  The cost (over $20k) would buy a LOT of heat and AC.

So needless to say we won’t be stimulating the real estate economy because we’re not first time home buyers.   If you’ve been foreclosed on do you get your first time buyer status back?

We also won’t be stimulating the home improvement industry because $1500 isn’t applicable to us.

If I lose my job I’ll be happy that the first $2400 of unemployment won’t be taxable.

9 months of Cobra subsidy would also come in handy if I were to lose my job.  But why only 9 months?   If I’m still unemployed after 9 months I won’t be able to afford it then even though the Govt will let me keep it longer (up to 18 months?)

If I buy a new car, I get to deduct the sales tax?  Nice.   I’m not buying a new car, and unless you’re independently wealthy, you won’t be buying one either.  This doesn’t apply to used or pre-owned cars.  And it’s not clear if it applies only to the auto-makers they are about to bail out. 

If you want to give me $8k to spend on a car, I’ll happily buy a nice used car for about $10k.   That might stimulate the economy some, but no I’m not going into debt further to buy a new car that will depreciate 30% as soon as I drive it off the lot.

I also really don’t  understand how the Government can loan 43 Billion dollars to a company who’s current Market Capitalization is only 1.3 Billion.

So somehow we’re all supposed to save the economy with our $57 more per month?

I don’t get it.   But rest assured, if you don’t make enough money to pay taxes, you’re getting a tax credit.

Thanks President Obama.

(Note this was drafted a couple weeks ago, and forgotten about)

In Part 2, we ventured out and registered a domain name via the registrar Godaddy.com.

In Part 3 we’re going to tie the two together. (Though this functionality with WordPress.com is not FREE)

Our demo blog is:  http://smithfamilyweb.wordpress.com/ It was the best we could find when registering. 

You can go there now and see that it’s functional and looks something like this:

But it clearly is a WordPress blog at WordPress.com. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s limited and not very portable.  What if we need or want email? What if we already have a domain or find something we like better after we’ve registered this blog?

In Part 2, we registered the domain: smith-blog.com

It currently goes no where, and if you hit it, it points to a parked landing page at GoDaddy that looks something like this:

But we’re going to fix that.   We’re going to make the following url’s:

www.smith-blog.com and simply smith-blog.com open our new WordPress.com Blog.

To do that you need to change the DNS (Domain Name Service) Records for your domain.   If you registered your domain with GoDaddy as we showed in Part 2 you’ll be able to follow right along.

Log Into GoDaddy with the username and password you set up when you registered your domain.

Locate your domain in the Domain Manager, it should look something like this:

Click the domain to open up the settings for this domain.   From here we’ll be able to adjust all kinds of attributes for the domain and it it should look like:

Most of the attributes are beyond the scope of this series of articles.

Needless to say, having your domain ‘locked’ is a good thing.

What we’re going to work with here is the information on the right.    From the Name servers on down:

Our domain is currently registered with GoDaddy.   We are also going to continue to use their Name Servers since they are free and perform fairly well. 

They also have a pretty nifty, easy to use, admin tool to administer the DNS records.

But what is the DNS stuff anyway?

Put in simple terms, DNS tells people where to go. 

When you type in www.google.com, your computer asks a Name Server where do I go for www.google.com?  This name server is probably local, probably at your internet service provider.   If it doesn’t know, it will track down the authoritative name server for google.com and ask it, just where do I go to get to www.google.com.  The Authoritative Name Server will give it the answer and it will tell your computer.  It will also keep that information incase someone else asks.  The it won’t have to track down the Authoritative Name Server again.   At least not as long as the TTL value for the information it got from the Name Server.    The TTL value is like the expiration date on Milk.  When information expires, your name server will delete it.  It’s bad, or at least no longer good, possibly.  

So for my current domain, the Authoritative Name servers are:

NS27.DOMAINCONTROL.COM and NS28.DOMAINCONTROL.COM (there should always be at least 2 servers)

Click the Total DNS Control and MX Records link.

You’ll now the get DNS Manager interface which should look something like this:

If you recall, our domain wasn’t pointed anywhere, or rather it was pointed to a parked page.   That’s what 68.178.232.100 is, a GoDaddy Host for parking domains.  If you click the link you’ll probably get a ‘Sorry page’.

You’ll notice that your only host is @ and it points there.   The @ is essentially a wildcard.  For anything or ?.yourdomain.com go to that IP address, the 68.178.232.100.

Below that you’ll have CNAMES (Aliases) which are a little more specific. 

In the above example  www points to our wildcard @.  So anyone asking about www.yourdomain.com will get sent to the wildcard address. 

Fair enough?

Look at the mobilemail cname.   GoDaddy has that pointed at one of their mobilemail servers mobilemail-v01.blah blah blah.

That’s not important to us, if you won’t use their mobile mail product you could click the X and delete that record.

NOTE about DNS: DNS changes take time to propagate.  Remember my simple description about how it works and the TTL values?  This means that when you change something, all the other servers around the world who’ve asked for this information won’t ask for it again and get the new information until that other information ‘expires’.   If your TTL value is too high, like a week, then there are servers out there that may not get the updated information for up-to a week.  Even with short TTL values, there are servers that ignore these values because they don’t want to go asking all the time.  They are lazy.   Be extra-careful when making DNS changes.  Make sure you make them right the first time.   You don’t want to wait a couple hours to find out you didn’t do it right.

Add or Edit a cname to point to your WordPress blog.

We’re going to add a cname so that http://blog.smith-blog.com takes people to our blog on WordPress.com

We’re using blog, but you can use ‘www’ or what ever you like.

Note: The ability for WordPress to work with an external domain is an ‘upgrade’ to WordPress.com.  That means it costs money.  $10 per year to be exact which in my opinion is a bit steep.   But it is what it is.

The cost is also $10 per domain, so choose your redirect wisely.

In your domain manager, click the ‘Add new Cname Record’ button:

We’re going to fill it out like this:

We’re going to set the TTL to be pretty short (1/2 hour).

The result after adding will look like this:

We’ve done the DNS part, which can take a few hours to actually work.

GoDaddy’s DNS servers don’t seem to update very quickly and this stuff takes time to propagate.  If you run into trouble with the next step, the Servers probably haven’t updated.  In my case I made the changes late at night then performed the next step the following morning.

For clarity: we chose: blog.smith-blog.com which seems kind of redundant, but you could have easily changed the www to point to your WordPress Blog or anything else you think is easy to type and remember.

Adding the Domain redirect to WordPress.com

Log into your WordPress.com Blog, and go to the Dashboard.

On the lower left (with the current version, 2.7) you should find Domains under the settings:

Click Domains…

You now have the opportunity to add the redirect we or cname that we added:

At this point WordPress will check the DNS and make sure it’s working.  They will also prompt you for payment ($10) for one year to redirect this. 

If you elect to give them the $ you’ll be good to go.

The end result will look like:

Now, clicking the following link: http://blog.smith-blog.com/ will take you to your WordPress.com blog (if DNS has propagated and you didn’t mess anything up).

So you should get:

Instead of the GoDaddy Landing page.

In part (4) we’ll talk about email, specifically tying Google Apps for domain to your domain.   This gives you gmail for your domain as well as isolated Google Docs, Calendar, and a few other features.

(Part 2) deals with how to get your own Vanity name web site and the steps to get that set up.

The first thing you need to do is find an available domain name.

I recommend GoDaddy.com as your registrar.  The site is a tad overwhelming though.   What matters is right in the middle here:

For the purpose of this how-to, let’s say our family is the Smiths.

Possible domains are:

smiths.com
thesmiths.com
thesmithfamily.com

(though all of these are likely taken).

Back in the good old days, you’d use .com for commercial entities, .org for organizations (non-corporate entities).  These days just about anything will do. 

Start your search with smith

GoDaddy will let you know if it’s available, in any incarnation (.com, .org, .net, etc).  In this case smith.com is NOT available:

But since GoDaddy is in the business of selling you a domain registration they’ll suggest other possible domains you *might* like:

Note: Those highlighted in *pink* are currently registered but for sale.  Avoid these.  In the lower yellow highlighted box (all $9.99 each) are available.  How much you want to spend for a domain is entirely up to you.

I don’t like any of these so I’m going to keep searching and try another couple combinations.

After a bunch of searches I’ve decided that “smith-blog.com” is available and is the best I’m going to be able to get in this day and age.

(other domains were available but I’ve avoided .tv, .cc, .me and .net domains)

So the next step is to register it.   The minimum registration commitment is 1 year, but I suggest you go ahead and register it for 2-3 years. 

WARNING GoDaddy will try to get you to protect your domain, and encourage you to register any and all other incarnations (.org, .net, etc.)  You’re not a corporate entity so it’s not necessary.  If you really think someone will snatch up smith-blog.com and start up a porn site or something else that you’re against, then you might consider grabbing a few extra domains. 

All along the GoDaddy check out process, you’ll be encouraged to upgrade an add-on all kinds of services, like privacy, add-on email, smart-start web services and all that jazz.  All of it is Optional.  

I don’t have a lot of respect for GoDaddy hosting, but for a quick and dirty website there is nothing wrong with it.

After you log in or create your GoDaddy account, you can bypass most of these offers:

In the end my one-year domain registration looks like this:

Again, I encourage you to register for more than one year.  I simply don’t need to invest more than $10 to teach anyone how to do this

Once this is complete I’ll show you how to set up this domain to point to one of the vanity blog sites we talked about in (Part 1) then set up a cheap hosting solution at a 3rd party host.

to be continued…

It’s really not that hard.  Especially if you use a publishing platform like WordPress.  I recently offered to help a buddy set up their site, but figured since I was going to write instructions for him I’d also publish them for the benefit of others.

There are a million ways to do this and and it can be confusing.  I don’t claim that what I’m about to share is the ‘best’ way or the ‘only’ way.   But it is an option.

The Quick and Easy Way

Basically dishers.com is a blog.  It has some static web site qualities, but it’s basically a blog.   Blogs are FREE and easy.  If you’re not so concerned with having your own vanity domain name there are plenty of options here.  In fact I encourage you to set up a blog with one of the free services and play with it regardless of the route you take.

The top two places (IMHO) are:

(1) WordPress.com – They currently have over 5 million blogs.  It’s fairly quick, easy, and a basic account is free.   You might even be able to get something like “myfamilyname.wordpress.com”.   Then again you might not.

(2) Blogger.com – I have no idea how many blogs they have or host.  Blogger is now owned by Google and that’s a good thing.  Again a good cheap/free blog, that IMHO is not as feature rich or as flexible as WordPress but it’s a good place to start.

So with either of these two services you can set up a blog for free, with very little effort.  All you need is an email address for registration.

—

Poke around these two sites and see if they meet your needs.  For quick and dirty web based publishing they can’t be beat.   Neither provides you with a lot of storage though more is always available for a small fee.  

You’ll need to link in other services if you want to do heavy multi-media sharing or share a lot of photos.

For photo sharing:

I personally like Picasa, which is part of your Google Account.  You do have a Google account don’t you? 

Other popular photo sharing services like Flickr, webshots, or smugmug may also be used.

But what if you don’t want your site to be:  myfamily.someotherservice.com

What if you want to own myrfamily.com site.  You want it to look like you really know what you’re doing and amaze all your friends and family.

We’ll get to that in the next post (Step 2)