some of the ship's entertainers took charge and managed to keep people safe enough until they were rescued.

That's funny, because I was about to say that the captain staying with the ship is like a stage manager being the last one out of the building (or the house manager in case of the audience). I have actually been working in 2 theatre's that had minor fires start during a performance-- both times I was head of wardrobe-- and there was no way I would leave before the dressing rooms were cleared and I reported this to the stage manager. So anyway, it actually doesn't surprise me that the entertainers took charge

Zuisa is not the captain!!

I'm going for three in a row because I just thought of this contrasting story:

When I was in 4th or 5th grade I was sleeping on the sofa for some reason. I woke up to the smoke detector and the house filled with smoke. I did what I was taught in school. I got up and exited the house. With my mother, my uncle, my grandmother and my grandfather still asleep. I didn't even yell to wake anyone-- I just got up and went outside with the dog, who had been sleeping next to me.

It turned out that my grandmother had fallen asleep with the kettle on, so my mother got up, found the kettle smoking, and put it in the sink. And then couldn't find me, because I was outside on the lawn, just waiting.

And she was so very angry with me, but I couldn't understand, because they drummed into us at school the thing about exiting immediately, and not looking for other family members, etc, etc.

I blacked out both of my main sites (but not stuff like support or beta sites, which aren't really public anyway.) I also spent a lot of time resource-gathering and -sharing and nagging the twitters and generally being professionally pissed at SOPIPA.

It's possible that some of this was a procrastination mechanism disguised as doing good.

Well, part of the job of the entertainers (and the room stewards, and the waiters, and everyone else on board) is to man certain duty stations in the event of an emergency. On ships that have predominately english speaking passenger manifests it is not at all unusual for the entertainers to be the leads in these positions since they typically all speak english pretty well and outside of their performances are very available to make it to the muster stations.

When I've been on board even as a contractor working for the cruise lines I've had a specific muster station and emergency duties that I'm responsible for. They are usually quite minimal, but one of them is to do what pretty much any other member of the crew asks me to do in the event of an emergency.

I'm giving up on Google Reader today - too many of my regular blogs are blacked out. I keep clicking through to read the comments and seeing the STOP SOPA message instead.

I didn't black out my site because I'm just that lazy, but I didn't post the blog I was going to, either. And I retweeted and all that.

zuisa's not captain *yet*.

My shallow royal jewelry and fashion blog is not blacked out. This allows me to waste happy time scrolling through dozens of tiaras to my heart's content.

I am what's wrong with America today.

So they sent us home because of the snow at 11AM.

Given that it's been snowing all night, wouldn't it have made sense to just cancel the whole day, rather than have people drive in and then (in some cases) turn right around and go home?

Yes. Yes, it would.

I'm giving up on Google Reader today - too many of my regular blogs are blacked out.

Huh. Most of mine are not.

Not sure what that says....