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Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

tynan.com

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Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#151

Post by fcoury »

I am currently on a trip to Miami where I am actively working every day. For me the worst part about being away from home is finding a decent workspace where I can really concentrate and get in the zone to program.

The chairs are usually terrible and anything more than a few hours seated makes me want to move somewhere else. Even when working standing (using a kitchen counter for instance) is bad: the height is sub optimal.

I would love to hear suggestions if anyone has insights or good tips for what you do in cases like this.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#152

Post by ssharp »

squidi wrote: post #131
bennyg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less people suing would reduce that. The problem is that people sue over everything, so why deal with the hassle when you can go into defense mode early and stave off frivolous court proceedings? I agree, it sucks.

1) In this case the cruise company was at fault, so that is why they went into "don't get sued" mode. No need rely on a stereotype here. 2) I'm not an American but I think your legal system is very good and many objective people do too: http://www.quora.com/Litigation-and-Lawsuits/Why-are-America... 3) I'd recommend anyone to watch Hot Coffee [1] which documents the lobbying and spin that encourages American citizens…

With language barriers, the people we initially had to deal with had no real capability to determine fault. I think the security people who took down the incident report weren't even the same security who had to deal with the actual incident. I'd have to imagine their practices are standard and are along the lines of "don't admit fault; make sure passenger signs what we want her to sign". They acted as investigators and signing coercers and little more. Any decisions that were made were made later on.

I was more upset with them trying to bill us three months later. We had filed a formal complaint on our last day of the trip over the poor response and had spoken with one of the guest services managers for close to 30 minutes. So when a letter from the cruise line came three months later, I was expecting an apology, not a bill.

When this happened, my wife was in the final year of law school, so our response to the bill was probably atypical of a normal customer response, but even when they told us we wouldn't be responsible for the money and that they'd give us a credit for a future cruise, they still made sure to dismiss their liability and deny that they breached any duties.

One of the gross things with the incident was that another passenger started cleaning up the blood because no crew was doing it. Another passenger was a doctor and stepped in to help stop the bleeding while we waited for a wheelchair to take us to the doctor.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#153

Post by apendleton »

kronholm wrote: post #89
philsnow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell if trolling or serious... Take a train.

He's serious, and so am I. Trains go on rails, so a driverless car can go many places trains can't. Can't wait for it to become reality either. Like in Children of Men, but with time better.

Are you sure Children of Men is the movie you meant to reference? Seems like an odd future to aspire to...

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#154

Post by Amadou »

bennyg wrote: post #118
sliverstorm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the crew went into "don't get sued" mode really quickly I hate this kind of thing. Why do we allow this sort of situation, where fear of lawsuits results in worse response/care? I don't know exactly what would need to change, but this the legal process at its worst.

Less people suing would reduce that. The problem is that people sue over everything, so why deal with the hassle when you can go into defense mode early and stave off frivolous court proceedings? I agree, it sucks.

The problem is that people sue over everything, so why deal with the hassle when you can go into defense mode early and stave off frivolous court proceedings?

I suspect that going into "don't get sued" mode actually encourages lawsuits.

I read an article a while back that indicated the doctors with the highest rate of malpractice suits were not the ones who made the most errors but the ones who were the least empathetic. There has been at least one study that concluded insensitivity and poor communication after the incident was a major factor in the decision to sue.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7911925

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#155

Post by aferreira »

brador wrote: post #66
drewbug wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, that work has already been done: http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-bro...

If someone could make this into an Android app with wifi hotspot functionality that would be awesome.

This actually sounds quite interesting. I might just go and do it. The question is, will SO approve?

Edit: I'm guessing SO probably won't have an issue with it.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#156

Post by sanskritabelt »

veemjeem wrote: post #147
sanskritabelt wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says room service is "free", which suggests that he's not tipping. Someone pointed out down thread that this guy's a pickup artist ( http://www.pualingo.com/pua-profiles/herbal-tynan/ ), which is empirically correlated with "asshole", which in turn is correlated with "does not tip".

Isn't your conclusion a bit of a stretch? Anyone who is a pickup artist is an asshole, and every asshole doesn't tip? Tynan is actually a pretty nice guy if you meet him in person. If I found an asshole that does tip, would that destroy your theory?

All PUAs are assholes. Not all assholes are PUAs.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#157

Post by bri3d »

chrissnell wrote: post #92

OP touched on another great remote work idea: the RV. Find a smaller model in good condition and outfit it with a Verizon mobile AP and you're in business. Sadly, I didn't move into remote work until after I got married and started a family but if I was 22 again, this is how I'd do it. I'd spend my winters in South Texas, around San Antonio and Port Aransas. In the springtime, I'd head up to Southern Utah, places lik…

I think the RV is ultimately a better lifestyle. Biking, hiking, sightseeing, canyoneering, etc. appeal to me a lot more than being stuck on a ship with a sad crew and tons of vacationers.

I don't think I'd compare the two directly, though. Driving an RV is probably more expensive per-day even discounting the food and services on a ship and assuming very little depreciation on the vehicle (i.e. you got a deal used), and it's a lot more work. Between finding places to park/camp, run the generator or hook up power, empty the toilet, maintain the drivetrain, cooking, and the inevitable RV disaster-breakdowns RVing is a lot of work - a far cry from "saunter to the restaurant, pick a meal, eat it, come back to a freshly cleaned room and more food."

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#158

Post by crusso »

chimeracoder wrote: post #109
ssharp wrote: post #54

Having been of a few cruises, I'd like to point out a few things: 1) Listed prices generally DO NOT include gratuities. Low level cruise employees like the cleaning crew, cabin stewards, waiters, cooks, etc. are paid ridiculously low wages, because cruise ships are registered to countries like Panama and the companies do not need to adhere to U.S. standards. I don't recall offhand, but for a 7-day cruise the "automat…

> Low level cruise employees like the cleaning crew, cabin stewards, waiters, cooks, etc. are paid ridiculously low wages, because cruise ships are registered to countries like Panama and the companies do not need to adhere to U.S. standards. On most major lines, the cleaning, etc. staff get reprimanded if they receive reviews from their passengers that are less than 5 stars. Even if it's only 4/5 (or the equivalent)…

but I always feel very guilty every time I go, because I see firsthand how badly the staff are exploited

You have to consider any situation holistically. What you call exploitation is often a tremendous improvement over the alternatives those folks have in their countries of origin.

Go on the cruise, tip well, and be polite to staff.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#159

Post by justathrow2k »

veemjeem wrote: post #147
sanskritabelt wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says room service is "free", which suggests that he's not tipping. Someone pointed out down thread that this guy's a pickup artist ( http://www.pualingo.com/pua-profiles/herbal-tynan/ ), which is empirically correlated with "asshole", which in turn is correlated with "does not tip".

Isn't your conclusion a bit of a stretch? Anyone who is a pickup artist is an asshole, and every asshole doesn't tip? Tynan is actually a pretty nice guy if you meet him in person. If I found an asshole that does tip, would that destroy your theory?

If you're a pickup artist doesn't this imply a certain degree of dishonesty and manipulation? Not sure these are things a nice person engages in.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#160

Post by tokenrove »

mathattack wrote: post #65
AlexMuir wrote: post #5

I too work from a lot of different places, but I find that I absolutely need internet to be productive. Pulling a Gem for instance, or checking Stack Overflow. My favourite places to work are all-inclusive holiday resorts. Lanzarote and the Algarve most recently. Being all inclusive means there is no thought process in eating or drinking. Nor any need to shop, clean, cook. The most difficult thing is finding out what…

I agree completely on the internet access. Very hard to work through issues without online resources nowadays. How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?

Last year, I spent about six months without regular Internet access. It was fascinating watching my muscle memory adjust, and it got me thinking about how I worked in the past. Not just StackOverflow (which I don't find very useful for what I do), but the tendency to immediately google for a library, or current papers on a class of algorithms, or a piece of code I can study to see the preferred idiom for something.

In some ways I was more productive than before, but I tended to reuse less code, and use less sophisticated algorithms and data structures to solve problems. Having good code around to read became a lot more important, as did having access to good books, and good man pages. (It reminded me why I loved OpenBSD so much in the 90s)

The most positive thing that came out of it was reading a lot more code; I realized one of the habits that had diminished most since sometime in the last decade was the habit of reading the source code for something when I had a problem with it, instead of immediately googling it.

It made me think that maybe younger programmers should try working without a connection now and then (say, for a week at a time). Also that open source has really changed things; there's so much stuff that I don't even think about writing myself now, because I know someone out there has already written and open sourced.

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