Disney worker killed by parade float

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida (AP) — A costumed Disney World employee was run over and killed by a float during a parade at the Magic Kingdom. The death occurred in a backstage area near the Splash Mountain ride Wednesday afternoon, said Jim Solomons, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

Disney spokeswoman Rena Langley said Javier Cruz, 38, of Orlando, was about to enter the park when he was hit, and she wasn’t sure if any visitors witnessed what happened. She said Cruz had worked at the park since 1995 and was the Pluto character in the parade.

Sheriff’s spokesman Carlos Torres said the investigation showed the death was accidental. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also was investigating.

In 1999, a worker in the loading area of the Skyway ride fell to his death, and OSHA fined the park $4,500 for what it called a serious safety violation. The ride was closed later that year.

Thankfully, no kids saw that…

I am participating in a Bowl-A-Thon for Special Days, a children’s cancer camp. The Bowl-A-Thon is sponsored by the Michigan Columbian Squires. Please pledge me by clicking on the button below:

The button will take you to PayPal. The Bowl-A-Thon is February 28th and 29th. Please help with this very worthy cause.

If you are reading this, you can see that I’m back online. The problem that plagued me while I was away? I had a bad memory chip that I added in just before leaving for Lotusphere “…to improve performance.” HA! The reason I didn’t get back up after Lotusphere was over was that I’ve been down in Florida all this time. (Actually, I came back up to Detroit on February 4th.) After doing a couple of other things with the box and removing that ‘chip from hell’, everything is back to where is was. As you can see by my other posts, I was still blogging to a local replica of my blog. I’ll have a Lotusphere wrap-up soon.

I’m waiting for lunch to open up. My server still isn’t up and running back in Detroit. (I really gotta think of another solution.) Last night, we had the Lotusphere Party at Universal Studios Orlando. Kiara had her first ride. She sat BY HERSELF on the E.T. ride. She was okay for most of it, but started crying in a couple of areas where it was very dark. In all, it was good. The food lines moved except in a couple of areas. I had no problem getting a beer…or two…or three…or four…. Jennifer and I both rode E.T. with Kiara, then we switched off to ride MIB: Alien Attack. That was a blast, and I scored 210,400. (I had to carry the rest of the riders in our car…they sucked!) We then went to see Shrek in 4D and the Jimmy Newtron ride. I won VUE exam voucher from yesterday’s CLP Lounge raffle. Not sure what I’m gonna use it for yet.

I’m sitting in the Overflow room watching this right now. Great stuff! I’m glad that I’m going to get the slide rather than writing down all of the useful tidbits. Like Turtle, I’m also glad to see an overflow room again. My legs are really starting to get tight from all the walking. Maybe my body is telling me to get off my ass and exercise.

Why do I waste my time on these? All I got out of it is that the Rich Client is coming, and people still don’t understand what it is. I figured that because the word ‘Introducing’ is in the title that perhaps someone would have a running copy there…NOPE! There were 3 IBM/Lotus dudes with a bunch of people wanting LW Rich Client to work in their infrastructures without tweaking. I also figured out one other thing: The Marketing Dorks at IBM are playing a cruel joke on all of us by seeing how long we will put up with changing these product names (just before a major conference) to the LONGEST NAMES POSSIBLE before we start going nuts and hold Ed Brill hostage until they change them to something reasonable. (Actually, I really wouldn’t hold him hostage. He’s uber-cool, and I suspect he’d go willing with us because I think that he’s tired of the names also.)

Big spoiler here: This came out of the Focus Group… There will be a separate certification program for Lotus Workplace. There will probably be an announcement sometime in March. Learn your J2EE and start thinking OO (Object Oriented)!

Attended a Focus Group led by Bill McCook, who is the Certification Exam Development Manager for Lotus Software. Besides Bill and myself, we were joined by Rudi Knegt and his friend (sorry, I didn’t get your name), who are a couple of the coolest guys from Germany that I’ve met so far. This focus group was mainly designed to see what Lotus needs to do to get people going with Lotus Workplace. The Saturday morning session is always “light”, but there are 2 more sessions over the next 2 days.

After the one hour delay for the flight and the forty minute delay for de-icing, we made it to Orlando at 11pm. We then proceeded to stand in line at Alamo Rent-a-Car for 1.5 hours! By the time we got to Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort, it was 1:20am. Finally got to sleep at 2:30pm. Jennifer and Kiara get to sleep in while I have a “Focus Group” (formally known as a JTA, or Job Training Analysis). Good night!

I can’t believe how friendly people become when your daughter becomes the center of attention. The pride got here around 4:45pm for a 7:14pm flight. From the time we got out of the car, everyone has been great. A special Lion King “shout out” goes to the folks here at Detroit Metro Airport. Everyone from the custodian to the airline service reps have been extra friendly. Compared to my other experiences here, I feel like I’m in “Bizarro Metro Airport” (obscure Superman reference). Personally, I think that it’s my daughter, but who knows…
In other news, the flight out is about 35 minutes late, and my daughter is getting cranky. Wish us luck…
Once again, our apologies to the flight we are on for any evil attitude coming from my daughter. She’s just a cub…