Barbados - First Full Day

The Bridgetown Hilton is in a bit of an industrial area, not much around so snacks and quick meals are pretty much limited to the hotel ($$). There is a shuttle that runs into town, I might give that a try today to scope the place out for Sharon and I for the weekend. For now, its off to find some breakfast.

I took a walk down the beach - the Hilton definitely has the best beach in the area. A guy tried to sell me some aloha vera leaves for sunburn and such. I talked to him a bit - his job, as he states it, is actually to make sure that visitors have a good time - aloha vera, coke, weed, girls - or boys - whatever makes the tourists happy. Thanks but no - but need to lookup the Amarillas Hotel, it looks nice. The beach is not too bad just a bit south of the Hilton and this hotel might be more in our price range if we ever want to come back here. The Savannah Hotel is there also - AVOID - the beach is covered with rocks and the space between the hotel and the beach is overgrown with trees, leaves, and stuff - it didn't look good at all.

I had brunch at the Hilton beach bar - a fruity rum drink, sparkling water, and quesedillas - and then toured the old fort that is on the Hilton property at the point at Needham's Point. The cannon are a bit fake since they aren't really mounted for firing, they have been remounted just for show. Interestingly, there are a bunch more cannon below the walls in the water that have rusted together and have formed part of the break-water at the base of the fort.

Barbados - On My Way !!

Sharon has been sent to Barbados for business, left early Sunday morning, so I have decided to take a few days vacation and join her for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
I used my Aeroplan points for the ticket, cost me 55,000 points plus I had to pay ~$140 in fees and taxes, so almost free but not quite. I wanted business class because its a long flight, but the web site didn't give me the option. Turned out okay though, I had an empty seat beside me and the seat spacing was actually reasonable!

Mom and Dad are going to look after the boys (thank you very, very much!) - I think Dad is going to stay at the house each night and call the dog-walker (Tracy, from Noah's Ark Pet Care - great people) if he needs to go out during the day - really appreciate this everyone!

Sharon has a limo guy that she uses occasionally for work stuff, Ahmed, so I put the call into him for a 6am pickup. As usual, I was running late - not because I slept in, but because I had left too many little things to do for the morning. It started to thundershower just when Ahmed arrived (about 10-15 minutes early) and the boys wanted nothing to do with going out in the rain... If you could have seen the look on Gizzy's face! I had gotten them all excited about going outside and then threw open the door - and out they ran... Once those big rain drops started hitting Gizzy, he stopped dead in his tracks and gave me the look - the "you bastard" look. Anyway, the boys wouldn't do anything but look at me with squinting-in-the-rain looks on their faces, so I hope there weren't any accidents when Dad arrived.

The drive to the airport was slow because of the rain and then there was a dead traffic light on Hwy 50 - thank you Ahmed for getting me around this - I would have been late for my flight if I was driving.

I made a HUGE mistake at the airport by having some breakfast. What was I thinking?! A sausage "mcmuffin" type sandwich with spicy sausage, greasy hasbrowms and strong coffee - ACK! I was in gastric distress for the ENTIRE flight - 5 hours of rumbling and grumbling and extreme discomfort - my own fault, I know better - coffee and greasy food is never a good idea, and spicy sausage should be reserved for outdoor, breezy location (not a confined metal tube with lots of other people packed in all around you).

And now I am here... Beautiful. I'm staying at the Bridgetown Hilton. The sand is soft and plentiful, the water is turquoise, clear, and warm, and the weather is hot and humid - a perfect holiday situation! Since the room is paid by Sharon's trip, and my flight was just points, I am trying hard not to care that the food is so expensive. The people are great and the place is beautiful. I have been on my own since I got here because Sharon has been working late, but the staff are friendly and helpful so far I am loving this trip. Pic from our room =>

PVR Intelligence Suggestions

I do like my PVR and the online program guide, there is some good stuff out there, but typically the good shows are buried in a pile of crap. There needs to be some AI built into the on-screen guide, such as:

• option to sort channels by number of hours watched on that channel with most popular channels appearing at the top, mixed with any new or free preview channels. Need to include an option to easily mark a channel as "don't like"
• tracking of specific show episodes played and the option to mark a show as seen or don't like
• tied to above, option to search and record (automatically) show episodes that I haven't seen. Example: punch in Battlestar Galactica, and it records every time the show is on unless a) it already has that episode in memory (including quality check for satellite outages), b) I have tagged that episode as seen, c) or has a log that the episode has been seen in the past. At the start it would catch a lot of the older shows that I have seen, but these could be quickly marked as seen and deleted from memory, and then they won't get recorded again - also allows me to catch old episodes that I might have missed.
• option to identify a show series that I don't like - and being able to differentiate somehow - specifically for things like the various versions of Star Trek and Battlestar - I only want to see the new episodes of Battlestar, not the ones from the '70's, and only selected Star Trek spin-offs, not the old

I really should just ditch the TV - and internet access is suspect too... I'd likely be better off cutting the Cable and just buying / renting DVDs when I want to watch something.