The "Technology, Oh, Technology!" Story

It was an ordinary day. Carol just brought home a print from a webcam located on the Gatun Locks in the Panama Canal showing our cruise ship while it was passing through the locks. We had emailed Carol's co-worker Debbie and gave her the approximate times that our ship, The Celebrity Millennium, would be going through the locks. Was supposed to be between 3:25 and 5:45 PM. on Wednesday, October 6. Lucky that Debbie pulled up the webcam early, since we traversed the locks at 13:54 which would be 1:54 PM. With the time change of one hour, it was really 2:54 PM. We were almost an hour early! But, she managed to save a frame of our passage. Pretty neat! A few years ago Carol and I traveled with a group that was led by our retired assistant minister at our church, Mary Lou. Our destination was Italy with naturally a stop in Rome. Carol's former boss, Rosalyn, and Rosalyn's daughter Melissa traveled with us. Melissa found out that the Albergo del Senato Hotel, which is located directly next to the Pantheon in Rome, had a rooftop webcam. She arranged with her husband to tune us in and take a shot off the webcam of our group waving to him. I made a big sign that said "Lancaster, PA" on it and held it up for the web cam. When we got to the Pantheon, Melissa called her husband in Lancaster and he was able to spot us on the web cam. Really neat!! Technology is amazing, but sometimes can be invasive. There is a webcam on Orient Beach in St. Martin. Seems like no big deal until you realize that it is located at Club Orient which is the nude section of the beach. Told Carol that we have to remember to put our swim suits on as we pass the area where the web cam is located. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.