Jennifer and Dave's Disney Adventure ReportDates: 12/3 - 12/11, 1999 (9-Day Trip) Adventurers:
Copyright 1999-2006 |
Thursday, December 2,
1999: Pack Up and Prepare Day This trip is a bit out of the ordinary, so our preparations and packing are also a bit unusual. What's not unusual is the rush to tie-off loose ends in the office. Jennifer spent the earlier part of the week completing a writing assignment for IDG Books, which publishes our books about America Online and Macintosh computers. We then played catch-up with PassPorter-related office work and continued work on PassPorter Walt Disney World 2000. We prepared and mailed dozens of sample PassPockets to the folks who requested them and sent review copies of PassPorter to a bunch of publications. Now for the unusual. We printed and assembled 400 16-page Pocket Guides to the 4th Annual Holiday RADP Meet with the intention of giving them away at the Meet. Among other things, that meant a 4:00 am visit to Kinkos to use their very cool and efficient paper cutter (we needed to cut 800 sheets of paper). In the end there wasn't quite enough time to staple and fold all those booklets, so we packed staplers, too. We also made sure we had plenty of information for PassPorter and packed-up two dozen copies of PassPorter to give as gifts at the Meet. When we gathered all these materials together, we had nearly two suitcases full of books, papers, and office supplies! We vowed to give away as many books and booklets as possible while we were at Walt Disney World. After all, we knew we'd need that space for the Christmas gifts we planned to buy while we're down there. We also made a last-minute decision to buy a Palm Pilot "handheld personal organizer" to augment our laptop computer and replace the notebooks we normally take with us on our research visits. This turned out to be an ultra-cool decision. We maintain several databases on our office computer network so we can efficiently gather and organize information about Disney's resorts, restaurants, rides and attractions. With the Palm Pilot (and appropriate software), we are now able to load current copies of those databases onto our Palm Pilot, and add to and update the information while we're in the parks. When we return to our room we can automatically merge that information back into the master databases on our laptop, and when we get back to the office we save days of effort by not having to transcribe information from our notebooks. We also are using the Palm to time rides, attractions, wait times and the like, and it has a full copy of the appointment book, to do list, and address book we keep on the office computers. And it's so small! Can you tell we're computer geeks or what? Anyway, we got to sleep very late, but that wasn't too bad because our flight wasn't leaving until mid-afternoon the following day. Whew! Jump to the next day: December 3, 1999
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