Happy Sysadmin Appreciation Day!
Today is Systems Administrators Appreciation Day. This always makes me think of When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (available to read for free on the internets!) a story about the brave souls who keep the internet going after an apocalyptic disease outbreak.
It’s an inspiring read, go check it out.
Random Dinosaur Comics Panel Twos.
I love Dinosaur Comics. I also love this script that generates a random second panel from the comic when included in an image tag. Just refresh and get a new, awesome non sequitur! I sincerely hope that Ryan North (creator of said comic) is printing these up as business cards as we speak. I like Moo cards.
Well I think we finally have enough boxes to pack all of our things into. It’s starting to get to the point of trying to find enough stuff to fill some boxes full, and actually I’m pretty happy with how small things have compressed down to. I don’t think we’ll have too much problem fitting it all into a truck.
Anyway, time’s a wasting. The days right now go: pack, clean, work, sleep.
Red Spiders
I’ve seen these guys before and wondered what they were. They’re tiny and swarm all over stuff, walls cars plants etc. They look like spiders but they don’t bite. Well now I know what they are! They’re Clover Mites and not in fact Red Spiders from XKCD come to destroy us all. Thanks, Wikipedia.
Testing out P2.
Well I’m home now, and working on getting things going for the big move to Portland. It’s crazy stressful, moving is. Whenever I move I think of my high school sociology class in which we talked about some scale of stressful life situations that some sociologist or other came up with. The top 5 included things like death of a spouse, being incarcerated and of course moving.
In an unrelated note, I’ve switched themes here on the ole blawg over to the P2 theme and am giving it a little bit of a test run. It’s like twitter++ or something. Very nice. I think if it works out I’ll probably end up writing things here a lot more often. I can already say that I wish there was a way to have comments collapse down in some way, so they took up less space. Or maybe it’s better this way, not sure yet.
[edit] and just like that I found the ‘hide threads’ button. Whee!
[another edit] Looks like my gallery page is a little broken. I know that took a bunch of doing to make non-ugly with the last theme. I guess I’ll have to poke around at it when I get a chance.
Well this is not the blog post I was expecting to make. Nor are these the pictures I was expecting to upload.
Background: I am in Portland (actually Beaverton now, all will become clear in time) and the purpose for my trip 2000 miles out here from Michigan was to look for a house for my family to rent. Looking for a house is plenty hard enough without having to go through what I have just gone through in the last couple of hours.
So after a hard day of stressing out about what houses were available in what time frame at what price in what neighborhood etc etc, I came back to the hotel hoping to get some sleep so I could get started early in the morning making calls and driving out to neighborhoods to check out the potential houses.
Something I have started doing lately every time I stay at a hotel is check for bed bugs. Apparently there’s a big resurgence in the population lately, and we had a bad experience once with a hotel that was swarming with them. But I’ll come back to that.
Anyway, one good way to check for bedbugs is to strip the sheets off and check in all the corners of the mattress and under it, and around the edges of the headboard and other parts of the bed. The little guys crawl into spots to hide, and will sometimes leave little black poo markings on the way, so those can be a good indicator that there’s a problem.
Anyway, the hotel I was staying at last night, which was the Budgetlodge at 9th and E Burnside in Portland was not real clean. Yeah I was cheap and just got the first thing that I could find that looked reasonable and inexpensive and hoped for the best. I was a little disappointed when I got there and the place stunk like pee, but even that was manageable.
Tonight (yesterday?) while checking for bedbugs I found a dealbreaker under the mattress. No, there were no bed bugs that I could find. I did find this though:
Woah, that totally sucks! Don’t let it hurt your impression of Portland though, it’s a great city. I don’t know how you found that Travelodge (whether through something Travelocity or Expedia) but I recall a co-worker of mine a few years back who came in from out of town and had booked a room there and them commenting on how nasty it was.
Anyway, I’m not sure what part of town you’re looking at to rent a house, but I live out in Northeast (near Alberta Park). Occasionally I notice houses for rent, so if I spot anything this weekend I’ll drop a note here or via Twitter. Good luck!
Frank,
You have every right to call the county health department as that is a MAJOR health hazard. Places like that are junkie havens.
Good luck with the house hunt. I can’t believe you guys are actually moving so far away but am happy for you. My best to Becky & Rowan.
I have family that lives in and around Portland. It is one of my favorite places on earth. Check out Lake Oswego for houses, its a great area. Best of luck!
Toilet of a chain in a nasty area. On Burnside, only the Jupiter Hotel is nice. I live in SE Portland, Woodstock area. Lots of nice places in SE to rent; like Hawthorne/Division area as well. Any of us on Twitter could have warned you against TraveLodge. Beaverton is boring and a horrid commute to anywhere unless you work there. (L.O. is nice but far away from everything.)
Phil was right about one thing – the police aren’t interested in needles, as they have their own. When they banging crank, ‘roids etc, they use brand new, clean needles.
HEY! You made consumerist too! That at least is a good thing. Sleeping and then waking up at 3 with a heroin ass would NOT have been…screw that hotel! Stop by my message board. HEYJON.com! -Jon
I stayed at this hotel one night. My girlfriend and I planned to take advantage of the late night check in at Jupiter but it was booked. So we were left with no other option. This hotel was absolutely disgusting. The sheets where dirty and the room seemed like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while…
I gotta say– I mean, did you google anything at ALL about Portland before getting there? Burnside is the last place in the whole city I would go to to look for a hypodermic-free hotel. Be glad the needles were between the mattresses and not strewn in various places all over the room.
But then again, the numerous homeless shelters, strip clubs, and prostitutes around the area should have also tipped you off.
I think you should be glad you got a refund at all, honestly, as nothing in that area is very famous for its customer service. As expensive as the Jupiter Hotel is you`ll still find the occasional wacky present in the rooms.
“Shocked and angry” at finding needles? Stupid. Naive at best. You chose to stay in a run down budget hotel – it actually isn’t uncommon for junkies to use places like that, or even nicer places as the clerk pointed out, as fixing outposts. If that was it and you handled it gracefully, naivety would have been your only fault.
Confronting some poor clerk with your attitude and demands for compensation is tacky and cheap. If you can’t stomach being in that room/hotel, get a new one. Don’t use the fact that you were grossed out as a result of your own naivety to try and strong arm compensation out of the establishment.
Asking for a refund is fine. Asking for the person to pay for your new hotel room is not. Asking the manager politely for a refund is fine. Copping an attitude with the minimum-wage-earning clerk who probably has no authority to grant you anything is not.
A more graceful way to handle this would have been to just throw the needles out, ride out the night in your cheap budget hotel, and move on. A less graceful way would have been to politely ask the clerk for a new room. Even less graceful would have been to check out, find a new hotel, and contact the manager for a refund the next day. Pretty much the entire way you handled it seems tacky and petty.
Sorry. That sucks, but don’t give up on Portland. We’re a good city. We’ve got some prblems, like all the big cities, but we make up for it in fun and beer (best around, if you know where to look)! Stick close in though. Any farther than Beaverton and it gets boring (like out in Boring)
I agree with Richard’s comment above.
But disclaimer I’m a type 1 diabetic, and use syringes like this daily. Unless other nefarious drug material was found I’d assume to it belonged to a diabetic.
1. I’m lost at why they would be under the mattress. Unless the previous guest wanted to hide them as not to freak out the maid during cleaning, and simply forget them.
2. Why threaten to call the police? It is a civil matter. There’s nothing the police can or would do.
I travel with a blood sugar meter, finger pricker, syringes, and test strips. Any good diabetic is going to have test strips with dried blood on the ends found in the crevices of their bathroom, or in the counter, or next to the trash (that didn’t make it in the bin.)
It probably sounds disgusting, but that’s just the way life is – and it’s a small part of life.
I always scan the bathroom of a hotel, and my office desk before leaving work, so nobody has to pick up my “biological waste,” but I could have done the exact same thing as my first point: stowed them and forgot them.
If I (or a nurse/doctor,) was checking in, was tired, and had seen these syringes and they looked like they belong to a legitimate “user,” I probably would have just thrown them in the garbage myself – or shown them to the clerk and told them to a better job cleaning in the future.
At MOST I’d ask for a new room. I certainly wouldn’t spaz out about it. Telling someone to a service worker doing the night shift to fuck off is completely uncalled for.
I am surprised you asked the owner for money to cover the cost of your hotel stay. Come on! It’s one thing to complain about your dissatisfation with the service at a business, it’s another to DEMAND that the business pays for your use of their competitors. The owner granted you a refund (as he should since you didn’t sleep in the room) but he certainly doesn’t have to pay you any money.
Also, threatening the clerk with Police is so not productive. That’s like calling the police ‘cos you don’t like your nuggets.
Jame, I’d have probably just picked them up also. Ten years with a diabetic child gets you used to syringes. I’ll probably get locked up for drug paraphernalia if the police ever have a need to search my Jeep. Must be a dozen used syringes in the compartment between the seats. Not sure what my reaction would have been eleven years ago. I might not have taken it so calmly.
The White Eagle Hotel on N. Russell is a good cheap place to stay, for future reference. $45/night! You might want to bring earplugs, though (live music downstairs). Still, clean and friendly and CHEAP!
I think generally you get what you pay for. A cheap motel called “The Thriftlodge” cannot be expected to provide a pleasant lodging experience, especially on a busy street in a relatively large city. Granted, finding hypodermic needles under the mattress is totally unacceptable, but I hope this experience doesn’t inform your whole impression of Portland. This is a great city to live in, and seedy motels can be found anywhere. Good luck with your search!
“He told me that was my decision to go elsewhere and that he didn’t make me do that, so he wasn’t going to pay up.”
Technically, I think you could challenge him on that. By his subordinates refusal to contact him (the manager) he was forcing you to go elsewhere by being unavailable for what was obviously a major customer service issue.
This is my current internet footprint, all the places I can be found these days.
Xmitter is my main blog, and a place I put experiments and writings and things on a not at all regular basis. It runs on the Laughing Squid servers, and I currently have it set to cross post to various other places and services.
Twitter is another thing I do, and will post things there oh I dunno a couple times a day or more. Sometimes in great bursts of activity, sometimes quiet for whole hours at a time.
I also have an eponymous Tumblr blog. I got the domain on a whim and cause it was cheap. Currently I have blog posts from here, Flickr uploads and Youtube uploads reposting there. Lately I’ve been reblogging some other random stuff there, too. I’ve been wondering if maybe I should do something different here. I dunno. Maybe I should have a big picture of my nose or something at this particular domain (this is what Rebecca suggests.)
Flickr is where I have been putting all my photos.
I’m on Facebook, like everyone else on the planet, and will happily add you there if I know you.
That’s about it. It seems a bit random and disjointed, but that’s the internet, and hey it’s where I live and work.
I kind of feel obligated to do this kind of post since I’m preparing for a really big cross country move in the real world. It is my hope that by staking out my area on the interwebs, and being active out here where everyone can see me that I can keep in touch easily with everyone I know.
The always brilliant io9 has an excellent interview with Grant Morrison about his new Batman and Robin series. I haven’t read the Bats, or really any underwear pervert comic in a long time but I may have to at least check this one out. I love almost everything Grant Morrison does, and this tasty quote definitely makes me want to see what’s going on in that universe these days:
I prefer to focus on the wilder, weirder nights of his career and I like to see him facing devilishly brilliant, flamboyant psychos who can actually put him under pressure and take him to his limits. Watching a billionaire Batman disarm poorly-trained, poverty-stricken muggers effortlessly or beating up skinny junkies might be fun for a scene or two but does tend to raise thorny issues of class and privilege that the basic adventure hero concept is not necessarily equipped to deal with adequately.
Hi. This is a reminder that I am still here. I’ll have a real post or two up soon enough. Carry on.
Macross 10:02 pm on July 14, 2009 Permalink
it just isnt the same without the European accent voice-over.
TJ 10:29 pm on July 14, 2009 Permalink
I’m glad you’re giving it a go. I was intrigued by the demo you tweeted about.
Noel 2:47 am on July 21, 2009 Permalink
You can always grab the latest from the svn:
http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/p2/