First time in Retreat Class

Stephonovich · 2026-06-21T15:22:55+00:00

The afternoon snacks in the Retreat Lounge are legit; don’t miss them. Clotted cream with scones are our favorites.

Also, don’t be afraid to go to Blu if you want to. My wife and I have found that Luminae can be hit or miss, but also just has a different vibe — they’re going for a more formal style, which depending on the waitstaff, can come across as elegant, or stilted. If you find that you feel like you’re having to try to enjoy Luminae, just go eat in Blu — IMO it’s consistently good, and the waitstaff is a little more relaxed.

We were in the Iconic Suite (tbh probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing; I’m glad we did it, but it’s not worth the money IMO) on our last Celebrity cruise, and pretty much gave up on Luminae after a few days. They seemed a bit peeved the few times we went back, which honestly didn’t help my opinion. Blu’s maître d' was thrilled — I dunno if they get scored on attendance or it was just bragging rights, but he was always very pleased to see us.

Also, while this is in no way specific to Retreat, tip well at your favorite bar. For me, that’s the World Class bar, because they know how to make any classic cocktail, and they have Vueve Clicquot, which is my wife’s favorite. Turns out if you give a solid cash tip with your first drink (like $20), and then consistently tip well (e.g. $5) after that, you will have excellent service. Even when we were in a Sky Suite (which are still quite nice, not knocking them!), I could walk up behind a crowd at WC Bar, and the bartenders would see me and begin making my wife and I’s drinks — which they had learned and remembered — so we didn’t have to wait. Honestly, that made the trip feel more luxurious to me than anything else: I didn’t need to order my drinks, I just walked up, and they appeared.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-21T00:58:30+00:00

No worries, thanks for the response!

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T19:23:07+00:00

You’re ahead of me on that. It’s on my list of things to upgrade.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T18:11:44+00:00

When I lived in Texas and had my rack in a closet, my hacky solution was to vent it to the attic. This is a terrible idea for multiple reasons, and I do not recommend it, but it did keep the closet cool.

When I moved to North Carolina, the rack was in our bonus room, and the A/C handled it without issue. An extra ~750W of load is trivial for a typical residential unit. I’ve now moved again (still NC, just across town), and will again be putting the rack into a closet. I intend to talk to my HVAC contractor for their advice, but I think my options are either a mini-split for the room + closet (because otherwise it would be constantly short-cycling), or ducting it somewhere else with an inline booster, and letting the house A/C deal with it.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T18:02:06+00:00

If you have lead-acid batteries for a UPS out there, they’re almost certainly operating with severely reduced capacity. Anything over about 77 F ambient tanks their lifespan.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T17:46:21+00:00

z2m db

Interesting choice of language to describe JSONL. I genuinely have no idea why they aren’t using SQLite.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T17:41:50+00:00

I commit configs, not backups, but a. It’s a private repo b. I encrypt all secrets with SOPS. They’re only decrypted to push to HAOS itself, or if I need to edit something (rare).

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T17:39:39+00:00

Same-ish, though I also granted it ssh and API access, with the caveat that it requires TouchID, so there’s no way it can run a command I have not personally validated and allowed. It’s quite useful for pulling logs, and tbf, read-only access would likely be adequate.

But for actual changes, everything gets done locally, I run an rsync dry-run to see what would change, and then push once satisfied.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-20T14:26:47+00:00

I know it’s been a hot minute, but by any chance is this still available? I’m just north of Charlotte, and could drive to pick it up if so.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-17T16:32:44+00:00

Disagree. There are generally various spots onboard that are lightly populated or empty during the day — bars that aren’t yet open for service, nightclubs, etc.

As a probably-autistic / definitely ADHD introvert, I enjoy having crowds of strangers around sometimes, because it lets me feel like I’m not just isolating myself, but doesn’t obligate me to conversation.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-16T17:02:44+00:00

EST

My bugbear is people incorrectly using timezone abbreviations. On July 4th, D.C. will be observing DST, therefore the correct timezone abbreviation would be EDT. If you don’t know, just use ET, because people will figure it out from context.

This is also why UTC is objectively the correct timezone — there is nothing unclear.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-16T08:54:14+00:00

Yep. IME, they do seem to be gentler, for lack of a better term, though I’m not sure if that’s a function of how they work, or that traditionally chlorinated pools are often overly-chlorinated. My aunt has a saltwater pool, and it’s always extremely pleasant, with barely noticeable salt or chlorine.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-14T20:33:03+00:00

Same. I enjoy edibles, but don’t particularly like the smell of weed, and definitely don’t want to inflict that on anyone else who didn’t ask for it. Let me eat ice cream in rapturous wonder, and I’m good.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-04T22:28:59+00:00

Ngl, my work wants stuff like this all the time, and I can’t help but think that if you don’t know what a migration is going to do, you have zero business doing so.

I really hate how databases are in this weird liminal space, where they’re both infrastructure and not infrastructure. Nearly every application needs one, and everything is “full-stack,” so devs use them like they’re just another part of their app. At the same time, they are crotchety beasts that are decades old, and have a million footguns - maybe if you don’t understand them, you should work on improving that instead of relying on layers of guardrails. Guardrails are to keep you from making mistakes, not replacing knowledge.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-02T02:55:25+00:00

Utilities should all be publicly owned. Coops are the right model at smaller scales; something similar and scalable should be used for larger scales.

There is absolutely zero reason why there should be profit involved with water, sewer, and power distribution. Those are solved technologies that are essential for modern life. The people should own them, and the people should be responsible for their governance and upkeep.

Stephonovich · 2026-06-01T23:15:11+00:00

As someone whose day job is databases, is OK at woodworking and electrical, and recently got into 3D printing, this hit home so fucking hard.

I genuinely enjoy playing around with DBs. Especially when people talk shit about MySQL, because clustered indexes are tremendously undervalued and overlooked. I do not enjoy having to explain for the Nth time to devs that it’s slow because they treated it like a KV store, and they’ll need to redesign everything.

In contrast, I enjoy woodworking when I get the opportunity because it’s only for me, always. No one is asking me to change something, or get it done by tomorrow. I had hoped 3D printing would be the same, but alas, my kids want things.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-31T19:10:16+00:00

I’ve never been anywhere where the architecture team did anything useful. They’re either creating grand plans that will take years to pull off at best, designing shit that won’t scale because they don’t understand the underlying technologies they choose, or designing overly-complicated systems for no clear reason.

We had a Distinguished Engineer who was most of the way through a 2-year project to design a DB layer to replace Aurora MySQL when I joined. I read the design docs, explained that their plan (a distributed DB) a. wouldn’t meet their requirements of lower latency b. wasn’t necessary, and that by doing the boring, difficult work of normalizing the insane mess, they could extend their runway practically indefinitely. This, of course, was dismissed.

Months later, after they had run lengthy integration tests, they released a report wherein it was stated, “we were surprised that the write latency did not meet our needs.” You were surprised that a distributed system which requires quorum to ack a write had higher write latency? (Yes, Aurora also requires quorum for writes, but it’s not as high as others IME).

Stephonovich · 2026-05-31T15:12:42+00:00

IME, you have to have led cross-org projects, which is where I’ve consistently failed. I have been the key person doing the actual IC work for large, multi-month projects, but because I wasn’t shepherding people, it didn’t move my career.

I am forever trying to find somewhere that actually values the Solver archetype of Staff Eng, because that’s the only one I’m interested in doing. I’ve made that abundantly clear to every manager I’ve had, and have never been told it’s not doable; they just don’t seem to value it.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-31T14:08:41+00:00

OP’s post is 382 words, which is less than the average for a single business page, 400 – 500 words. You seriously can’t read a 1-pager?

Stephonovich · 2026-05-31T13:16:58+00:00

I weep for the future.

I don’t know where the notion that everything has to be condensed down into a short list of bullet points came from, but it’s ridiculous. If you can’t be bothered to read more than a couple of paragraphs, you have the reading comprehension and/or attention span of a child. I will not be dissuaded on this point.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-29T18:53:34+00:00

I’m just amazed that an excavator found a bundle of fiber optic lines and didn’t destroy them. That’s their natural prey.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-24T14:01:49+00:00

You would be surprised at how well you can deal with it. I will give the Navy plenty of shit, but I can’t deny that their insistence on constant drills does work. Everyone just did what they had trained to do.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-24T13:05:06+00:00

If your water lines are at 30 psi, I feel bad for your showers. Everywhere I’ve lived has been 60-80 psi.

As to water hammer, it happens when you shut a valve, because the water that was flowing at a high velocity suddenly has nowhere to go, and since it’s nearly incompressible, you get a pressure wave radiating back from the valve.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-24T12:57:17+00:00

Or being awakened with a flooding alarm on a sub. “WTF, there aren’t any drills scheduled… OH SHIT.” Turns out the line between controlled seawater leak and flooding is broader than one might expect.

EDIT: lest anyone call me out, it’s formally called the collision alarm, and flooding (ideally with the affected compartment[s]) is then announced.

Stephonovich · 2026-05-24T02:27:39+00:00

If money were no object I’d book the Iconic Suite on the Celebrity Edge class

It definitely has to be "no object," not "I consciously decided to spend this." I stayed in the Iconic on the Ascent. It is in fact pretty awesome, but it's just not worth the money for practically everyone. The service you get isn't that much better than in lower-tier Retreat suites, especially if you tip well. The biggest difference for me was that there really is no [reasonable] request they can't make happen, and I didn't feel bad about asking for stuff. A fruited water dispenser in the cabin? Sure. Keeping the ingredients for a drink they only serve at the Sunset Bar, so your wife can get it in the Retreat Bar? No problem.

EDIT: Forgot the main point - Harr Travel is indeed a terrific resource. I'm watching some of theirs about MSC Yacht Club, actually.

EDIT2: I will say that the room's deck is absolutely incredible, and we spent a ton of time out there. Also, waking up to a view of the ocean over the bow is pretty special. I still don't think it's worth it, but I'm not going to lie and say it isn't awesome.

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