I am back from vacation

Carol and I just got back from a cruise from San Diego to Hawaii to Ensenada Mexico and back to San Diego. We have done this cruise before but several people in our extended family wanted to go and we enjoyed the family time. The best part of this particular cruise is that you get about 10 "sea days" which I enjoy.

I took this picture from the Promenade Deck where I spent most of my time reading (and I hate to admit, hacking some Haskell NLP code):

Carol and I don't gamble but she received a birthday gift from the cruise line of some free slot machine time, as seen in this picture:

We had a lot of fun on shore also. Brother Ron, sister Anita, Carol, and I went snorkeling in Maui on a reef 2/3 mile offshore where we saw many green sea turtles. Here is a picture of me that my brother Ron took and a picture of a sea turtle that I took with Ron's camera:

We also had fun on the big island, Oahu, and Kauai. When the ship stopped in Ensenada a few of us went inland to two wineries - a different experience than in wineries back home: more wine and lots of tasty food to go with it. Here is one last picture of my Dad, me, and my brother Ron in the ship's library:

I have a new phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note 4, that was great for the trip. It takes 4K ultra high definition video with video stabilization and great pictures. I put together an 11 minute video for my family that is really pretty good. The advantage of using a phone is that you always have it with you. The huge size of the Note 4 also made is great for reading Kindle books and listening to music and audio books. Now that I have the Note 4 I don't use my iPad mini very often. Except for 3 or 4 one hour Haskell hacking sprints, I never had to use my laptop; everything (email, web, reading, etc.) was done with my phone.

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