iPad Madness

We are heading west again toward French Polynesia.  This is the second day of the 10 sea days until we see land again.  The seas have been gentle and the breezes light.  The humidity is starting to rise as we near the equator.

There are plans for a crossing the equator party.  This usually involves dunking someone or a few someones in the pool where King Neptune and the Mrs. hold court.  I am really looking forward to this.  We cross the equator either tomorrow or the next day.  

Michael had a full house for bridge today.  If more people show up, I don’t know where he will put them.   I helped make some new handouts on the computer and didn’t have to play today.

I spent the afternoon cogitating on how to teach the iPad class.  I went down to the room allotted for the session and was not happy with it.  It was set up for the art class, with tables taking up most of the floor space.  My class was to begin at 5pm and the room was full by 4:45pm.  The room was full with about 50 people, and we had to turn away another 50!  The staff brought in some chairs, but even that was not enough.  People were sitting on the floor.  I am quite sure the cruise director had no idea how big this class was going to be.  It seems that the only monitor that has an HDMI cable is located in this room.  At the last minute, they wanted to move the class to the Grand Salon – hoo ha!  I’m moving up in the world.  However, that did not happen as I needed a VGA connector to connect the iPad to the screen in that room, and neither they nor I had one.  I heard that they were going to get one when we arrive in civilization.  I think that means they plan on me teaching quite a few more classes.

So there I am with a room packed with people who want to know how to use their iPads.  I usually limit my beginner classes to 8-10 people so I can help them when they follow along with me.  But I could not do that with 50 people!  So I went to Plan B.  I created some slides on the iPad (gee whiz, I am really good at this device – I impressed myself with what I did).  I mostly lectured and demonstrated what you can do with the iPad.  Then I went on to describe the different settings, and then ended with some snappy emailing photos and manipulating the icons on the home screen.  My 45 minute class lasted 70 minutes and I was asked to do some private lessons.  I have to check with the cruise director (CD) to see what to do about that.  I am repeating this class tomorrow for the folks that couldn’t get in today.

We went out to the Grill for dinner and I was told by many people that they heard the class was great.  People came up to Michael to report the same. This is way good for my ego.  Others told me they couldn’t get into the room and were very disappointed, and told the CD about it.  I have a funny feeling that I am going to be giving multiple classes during each segment of the cruise.

Update on the "dead guy."  The guy is NOT dead; it was just a rumor. We got back to Panama late the night before last and he was removed from the ship and sent to the hospital. He had had a heart attack.  He is doing well.