Archive for category Economy/Business
Tulsa Extended Stay Inn and Suites Hotel Review
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business, product tests on July 27th, 2010
I recently went on a little road trip with some friends for a dodgeball tournament. We traveled to Tulsa Oklahoma, from Dallas, which is about a five hour drive. It was tons of fun and I’d go back in a heartbeat, however, I would definitely stay in a different hotel. Attracted by the low rate and free breakfast, we stayed at the Tulsa Extended Stay Inn and Suites, and boy, was it a mistake. Here’s my review
This was without a doubt the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at. An absolute disaster hotel. Let’s go ahead and start with the check-in. I arrived at a little earlier than 5 pm and had to wait at least 10 minutes before one of the hotel staff was able to check me in. Apparently there was only one worker on the clock. So with check-in out of the way, I went to my hotel room only to immediately start laughing with my friends at the small size of the room. However, the joke on us quickly became very apparent as we walked into this filthy room. There were holes in the carpet, chip in the paint, the bathroom door would barely close, and when you opened it, you would swear that you were about to rip it off its hinges every time. The toilet made a really weird loud running sound, so loud in fact when I first walked into the room I thought someone was showering in our room!
As the night continued things really only got worse. My friends and I had come to the area for a dodgeball tournament. After the tournament was over we wanted to go swimming. We walked to the front desk to get some extra towels (as the hotel room only came with ONE hand towel and ONE shower towel) we were told by the security guard on site that the pool was closed after 11pm (apparently since the pool lights weren’t working, we couldn’t swim). We were walking back to our room when all the sudden we hear “POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!” My friend turned to me and said “I think we just witnessed a drive-by,” less than 200 yards away. Soon enough we see a ghetto looking van racing down the street.
Later that evening since we couldn’t go swimming we bravely went back outside to the front desk, this time to ask for some extra towels, blankets, or pillows (Which I really needed an extra pillow because I turned over one of the ones on my bed only to find a very large yellow stain on it). The employee we talked to was out having a smoke break, and didn’t even bother to put out his cigarette, but at least he was helpful, sort of. He brought back ONE HAND TOWEL, and apologized, “Sorry, that’s all we have”. Honestly, what hotel doesn’t have a few extra blankets or pillows? Judging by the parking lot, the hotel wasn’t even at half-capacity.
After not a so great night’s sleep morning came and I was really excited for the continental breakfast – one of the main reasons why I booked this hotel over another one. Unfortunately it consisted of pre-packaged blueberry muffins, warm coffee, and warm milk. After chugging my coffee I went back to the hotel room and made some of my own with the room-provided coffee maker. And this is where something really, really strange happened. I poured myself a cup of joe and as I bring it to my nose to smell the aroma, I am alerted that this is not ordinary coffee. It took me a few seconds for my sleepy brain to recognize what it smelled like, but after a bit, I finally recognized it, and I kid you not, the coffee smelled like seafood. Everyone else in the room testified. I didn’t even want to try and drink it. I poured it down the sink (which leaks by the way) and poured myself another cup, hoping that I don’t know, maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. But nope, same result.
The only decent part of this awful hotel is probably when I went to checkout. Despite the employee behind the desk clearly on a personal call (she was on her cell phone, arguing with her boyfriend or husband) the checkout was very quick and when I did talk to the employee she was very nice and wished me a nice day.
Overall, I can’t really say I recommend this hotel, at all. There were only two things that made my trip enjoyable, and that is 1, I look at things as being “half full”, despite the hotel’s faults, I found character in the hotel and went with it. And 2, I had a lot of friends that I went with and we all had a great time. The hotel was cheap, and we got what we paid for, or less. But all in all I did have a good trip, despite the hotel not making things better, it could’ve always been worse. Actually, no, it couldn’t have been worse. I just stayed in the worst hotel in all of Oklahoma.
Google is so incredibly powerful
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on June 20th, 2010
So today I was looking up some books on Amazon, I want the book right away so I decide to look into the Amazon Kindle thing. I download that, try the trial version of the book, seems okay. But then I notice that I can’t print with the Amazon Kindle. This really doesn’t surprise me, but I figure that there’s away around it, so I start to google it. I come across a program that converts the kindle books to PDF and right before I click the download button, I see that they offer another program, "google books to pdf". "What?!" Google Books? Never heard of that. So now I come to find out that there’s essentailly a library right in Google. I can create my own bookshelf, etc, etc. Then I come across how my bookshelf is not compeltly ready because my profile is not fully updated and cannot be searched. So I’m updating that and I stumble upon Google Reader, which at first, I thought might be something like the Kindle. It’s not, but it still tickles me pink how big Google is yet they still do everything incredibly well. There’s Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Buzz, Google This, Google That, soon Google will be making us breakfast in bed!
I love Google, they’re probably one of my most favorite companies. The entire company has a sense of humor and isn’t afraid to interact with their customers (unlike a lot of other tech companies). I’m glad to see that they’ve done so well in the marketplace and I hope they keep on chuggin’ along.
Artstin on Facebook now!
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on May 30th, 2010
So in an effort to promote my business and collect new clients I have created my own facebook page. I’ll be providing some updates on the page as well as giving members who "like" my page exclusive discounts. So check Artstin.com’s facebook page!
Go Facebook, Go
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on February 13th, 2010
If you have used Facebook the past year or two like I have, there’s no doubt that you’ve noticed changes to the site’s layout multiple times. It seems like every time Facebook changes their layout out it’s met promptly with criticism. "Why’d they change it", "If it’s not broke, don’t fix it", "I hate this new layout". Those are just some of the comments I hear about the style of Facebook whenever they change. All of them are valid points, Facebook has never really had any show stoppers with their UI (user interface), so why do they always change it? I can say I’ve been a critic myself, while I’ve never seen the layout change so dramatically that I can’t use Facebook, I’ve never really seen the reason to change it in the first place. And that’s exactly why they should continue to change their layout.
Yes, that may sound absurd, but that’s what they need to continue to do. Do we all remember when Myspace reigned king of the social networking websites? And do we all remember the vast UI changes that Myspace went through? Oh, you don’t? Well that’s exactly why Myspace isn’t a social networking dominance anymore. Yeah, some could argue that it’s for other reasons like it’s slow, it has too much ads, etc. and they’re right, but if it’s made well enough, users will put up through those ads - I mean they did, for the 4-some odd years that Myspace was king of the hill, right? Here’s the issue with Myspace… they never changed their UI- whether they needed to or not. This caused a huge lack of innovation. It was always the same with no change and people got tired of that. I can guarantee you that if Myspace would have made changes to their UI, they would have stumbled upon some of the things that people flocked over to Facebook for. But they didn’t.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that Facebook changing their UI is a good thing. With their changes they will continue to innovate and create a better user experience in the long run.
A word about customer service
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on February 3rd, 2010
First off, sorry I haven’t posted anything on this blog in months… I really haven’t had a whole ton to write about, but I see that changing in the near future.
I have a little story to tell about how just the way a company can handle a mishap can make your relationship with that company 10 times better. Some of you may know that I like to lift weights. I got into weight lifting over the summer and have really just stuck with it ever since. As every good bodybuilder knows, you need some protein supplements to build good muscle. Well anyway, I needed some more protein so I ordered some protein and creatine off bodybuilding.com. I had ordered it last Friday and was enthusiastic to learn via my tracking number that it was scheduled for delivery on Tuesday. So Tuesday rolls around and I get home from school and look on my front porch… nothing’s there. I figure oh well, it’ll probably come in a few hours and I head back out to go to track practice. So about 6:15 I get home from track practice and look on my front porch again, and still, same result… nothing’s there.
So now I’m at the point in the story where things can really go downhill quick. I’ve never had a package stolen from me, so I’m a bit disconcerted as to what to do. I decide to give bodybuilding.com a call and explain my situation to them. An actual person answered quickly at bodybuilding and assured me that everything was going to be okay and that they would call the shipping company and go from there.
Now, the customer service was great and all at bodybuilding.com, and I was impressed, but what really made me happy was the customer service from FedEx. About an hour after I called BB, I was out getting some food when my phone rang. It was an unrecognized number, but I figured I’d go ahead and answer anyway since I thought it might be bodybuilding. To my surprise however, it was FedEx. I honestly would have never expected a corporation this large to contact me personally in order to help get this straightened out. After all, I’m just one guy, right? So I explain to him my story and he says he’ll contact the driver and see what he thinks. The next morning at about 8:45 as I’m getting ready for school, I receive another telephone call, this time again from FedEx. I again explain my situation and the man on the other end says that the driver believes he just delivered it to the wrong house. Hoping he’s right, I’m already reassured as I had just received a new tracking number from BB for my reshipped order. Anyway, later that day at about 3:45 I hear someone knock on the door, and to my delight, it’s the FedEx man, there with my package! He had sincerely apologized to me about the mishap, but I explained how it was okay and that FedEx had treated me well.
So what exactly is the moral of the story here? What did we learn? Well, FedEx screwed up. They delivered my package to the wrong house. I could have been very easily turned away from ever using FedEx again, but in fact, I think the exact opposite might occur. You see, nobody ever wants to have a packaged mis-delivered or stolen, but the facts of life are that some things like that happen. FedEx or BB could have easily just said "Sorry, your loss", but they didn’t. From the very beginning, both companies let me know that they cared. Even though I hadn’t placed a big order - my order total was sub $40. Now from FedEx’s point of view, they never want this kind of thing to happen. So will I ever ship with FedEx again? Absolutely. Yeah, UPS might have handled the situation the same way, but now I know exactly what I’m getting with FedEx. Customer service on the personal, real, person-to-person level, something often missed with large companies.
Government Motors
Posted by Snowy in Cars, Economy/Business on June 1st, 2009
Yeah, how about that GM? Love me some GM. In fact, I love GM cars so much, I decided to own a piece of them. Oh, and so did you. GM went in for bankruptcy today, and the government has agreed to give some 50 odd billion dollars to keep some 50 thousand jobs. Wait… how many jobs have been lost this recession? 3 Million. So effectively what the government is doing is saying that if you work for a car company, your job is more important than any other job that has not been bailed out. Despicable. If I would have lost my job (which I currently have none), I would be completely outraged by the governments actions. Why bailout a failing automotive company, but not bailout someone that makes an honest living? It just doesn’t make sense. There is no such thing as "too big to fail". That phrase is just an excuse for congress to put their hand in large corporations. Oh, but there’s a bright side right? President Obama has "no interest in running GM"? Yeah right. I wish. You can bet a pretty penny the government is going to have some HEAVY influence on what type of cars GM and Chrysler makes. You don’t think they’re just going to hand them $50 billion on good-will, do you? HA!
I don’t want to sound like some anti-democrat, "this administration is for socialism", kindaguy, but whatever happened to capitalism? People will never learn from their mistakes if you bail them out. Is it not obvious that they’re just going to want another bailout when they run into some more trouble down the line? It’s just preposterous.
Donut Club
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on April 19th, 2009
So a few weeks ago I decided to start a new club at my high school - Donut Club. The idea came to me one night while I was just laying in bed. Donut club works on quite a simple principal, in which everyone wins. If you join donut club (which there’s a 1-dollar fee), you are eligible to receive a 10 percent discount. How do you receive that discount? Present your Donut Club Membership card of course! Now I bet you’re wondering, how in the world did I get the Donut Shop to agree to give 10% off to hundreds of donut club members? Well, it’s quite simple. In order to get 10% off, you have to go to the designated donut store. This way, the specific donut store not only gets all the business, but more importantly, takes away business from other shops. It’s a win-win for everybody!
Are you taking notes?
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on April 7th, 2009
There is no doubt that things are changing in America today. We’ve had one of the worst recessions in decades. Check out Boston.com’s "Scenes from the recession". For better or worse, things are happening in America today. This brings up an interesting question… are you taking notes? What exactly do I mean by this? It’s quite simple really, just write in a journal once every couple of nights regarding the economy. Things like how the stocks are doing, what people are protesting, what Obama’s doing. This recession is one of the worst in history, but writing about it now, and your experiences now, could pay off in the future. You could publish your journal, or perhaps sell it to a historian down the road and make a decent amount of money. Or heck, it would just be really cool to let your grandchildren take it to class one day for a school project.
It’s something to consider, even though it’s not the most joyful thing to talk about.
Outta Money, Outta Time.
Posted by Snowy in Cars, Economy/Business on April 6th, 2009
Well it looks as though it could be the end for GM and Chrysler. Both companies have been struggling eminsly for a long time now and it doesn’t help that the government doesn’t want to bail them out any more. Good idea, bad idea? Many feel that they should have never been bailed out in the first place. Do you think that would be okay? Not to bail out the auto companies? They employ millions of people after all… too big to fail? Perhaps. I really believe in the free market economy, but thinking about all the jobs that would have been lost, it’s almost a lose-lose situation. I don’t believe government should have interacted the way they did with GM and Chrysler, but I sure don’t want to see them go down. After all, if Chrysler went down, how would I get my Dodge Challenger? (I have a plan, I’ll get to that in another blog post ;)) Do you think it’s fair that the government is bailing out the big automakers, but leaving the smaller ones to suffer?
Good questions to ask before you’re for-or-against (another) bailout.
Legalize Marijuana, save the economy?
Posted by Snowy in Economy/Business on March 31st, 2009
Let me first get this out of the way: I have never, nor intend to smoke pot, marijuana, cigarettes, or any other substance that is smoked.
There is currently a big push among younger people to legalize drugs. While they may be right when they say that prohibition doesn’t work, and medical marijuana is useful, their latest argument that legalizing marijuana so you can tax it will save the economy. This is just downright silly. If you think that one product is going to save the economy, you’re insane.
Making marijuana legal would have some good effects: you can tax it, you spend less money on cops to enforce it, etc. While it would have a few positive affects, what would you do with those that have already been convicted with possession of illegal substances like marijuana? Would you just let them go? Hardened by prison, do you think it’s safe to just let them out of jail? How do you think they would feel towards law enforcement after they were released?
In a lot of ways it makes sense to legalize marijuana, but in a lot of ways it makes sense to keep prohibition active. I don’t support the use of narcotics, I think it’s a waste of time and money, but I’ll leave the decision on whether to legalize it or not up to those who have done more research on it.