I guess I’ll be dumping the BlogLoc widget from the sidebar. It was someone’s side project which case explains why it rarely works. In addition, my login information doesn’t seem to get me in to the site to make updates now. Hey creator of BlogLoc, thanks for a great idea with subpar execution. Sell the idea to somebody with a lot of bandwidth and a server farm.

I’ve decided to add a new category to the old blog and I call it “Not A Fan.” I will use this category as a place to rant and rave about things I don’t like so much. Let’s get started shall we.

For my first installmet of Not A Fan I will be talking about fancy hotels. I have a laundry list (lack of guest laundry being on the laundry list) of reasons why I am not a fan of fancy hotels as well as some other things in and about fancy hotels which I am not a fan.

For starters fancy hotels cost more, but then charge you for what are now basic ammenities at other cheaper hotels. Parking, for example; fancy hotels charge you a boat load to park your car at their facility. How savvy of them to continue to price gouge their patrons after they’ve charged them an exorbitant amount for a room with a bed.

In addition to parking, high-speed internet access costs about ten bucks a day at fancy hotels and often times is not Wi-Fi. If you have done any sort of traveling in the last couple of years with a laptop you know that decent hotels have free high-speed wireless internet access. The exception to this is “Extended Stay” style hotels where you often pay 5 dollars for the duration of your stay up to a month.

Down pillows. Now this is obviously a subjective issue. Many people like down pillows. I am not one of those people. When I sleep on down pillows (even good firm ones) I feel like I have no support for my neck. Oftentimes after sleeping on down pillows I arise the next morning sore and ticked off because I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Of course, I was already ticked off about paying for parking and internet access before I even laid my head on the pillow that I couldn’t get comfortable on making matters even worse.

Guest laundry. See, I told you it was on the list. I live out of a suitcase for long periods of time. It is a wonderful convenience for me to be able to do my laundry at my hotel rather than find a coin-op laundromat in the vicinity. Here’s the rub. Many hotels offer a laundry service, but it costs a fortune and is often slower than doing yourself. Here we have a case of a service that is offered, but just costs too much for the added convenience.

I guess what it all boils down to is this; If I am going to pay an exorbitant amount for a hotel room, then I should get the amenities of a decent hotel room for free and more. This is not the case. You spend more to get less and then pay for amenities that should be free.

Fancy hotels… Not A Fan.

The map tool that I JUST started using is a bit flaky. Blogloc is back up and running now, but who knows how long that will last. I will continue the hunt for a better option that makes updating my location even easier.

I have found a new way to update my location that will push through to the blog. You may have seen it floating around the bottom of the sidebar. I can now update a location on a site and it pushes a static image of 2 maps to the blog. It’s not the prettiest implementation and ultimately I would like to update my Britekite service and have that push my location update to the blog. However, this will work for now and is much easier than looking up my location, pasting that into a new page and then uploading that page to the blog every time I go somewhere.

More to come today. Including that new category I mentioned. Get ready for “Not A Fan.”

Well, I dumped the last.fm widget altogether for now. The last.fm site has gone through a major redesign and that may be what’s causing the widget to malfunction. In turn, the malfunctioning widget was throwing everything else in the template into chaos even when commented out. More entries coming soon including a whole new category. Are you excited? YEAH YOU ARE!