Safeway finally giving us a wake up in the morning?

If you have not been to the Safeway on Main Street in Vancouver in some time, they have been under a 2 year remodeling project to improve the store with paint, new landscaping fixtures, restripe and take down a douglas fir and other trees that looked like they were going to fall a year ago.

Though I have I have been to some of the other stores in town, this one is one of the smaller in town and I wish they had expanded it in some form or another or moved it to another place to make it bigger.

But the reason for this post is that they installed a new Starbucks station on the northside door. So if you are shopping, go up when it opens soon and chat with the new barista.

How many Indian Casinos can YOU count?

Some might not know that I used to hang up near the Canadian border for years and again. Tonight I counted from Seattle North to the border along Interstate 5, six different opened casinos and cardroom operations opened. And one being proposed by a landless ~ non-reservation Samish tribe. ( source: Seattle Times http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015985686_samish23m.html ) are wanting to build a tribal gaming hall ~ casino operation.

They are right now at the very first step in the process. The Samish have identified land in Arlington Washington near their ancestral home that they would like to take into trust through the federal Beura of Indian Affairs ~ Interior Department, which can take anyone from three to ten years or longer, depending on the process.

The Swinomish have a casino very close by and are looking to open a hotel on their land site some time soon. The Lummi, Skagit and Nooksack also have with some varying degree this same setup ~model  that was started by the Tulalip tribe about a decade ago in planning after their tribe, outlet and box store campus and ampitheater complex near Quil Ceda contined to grow and expand near Marysville, Washington.

Now Clark County has its own version of this as well. The Cowlitz Tribe is proposing to take land into trust near La Center and build their own casino and hotel complex. There has been much discussion, concern and in some cases outright hostility to this proposal. This melodrama is still being played out many different fronts from county, regional, state, federal and external tribal fights over the Portland Metropolitan area. And one might also surmise through search engine querying that there is a LOT of money being thrown around in this fight.

Though if you look around, the Warm Springs wanted to move their Casino near Cascade Locks but this may have been put off and change recently within the past six months. The Lucky Eagle Casino and Great Wolf Lodge own by the Chehalish tribe  up near Chehalis is also competing with this same group of traveling bangos from both Portland and Seattle that pass by that the Cowlitz will also be catering to.

And finally the tribe to lose some significance and fighting the most, the Siletz  and Grand Ronde tribes are fighting the Cowlitz casino as it would be direct competition to their own reservation casinos that are on the coast or out-of-the way locations and probably directly depend on the Portland metropolitan to feed their operations. And there is no major urban populcation within 150 miles of the coast or near salem area operations.

So the nearest operation is Portland or Sacramento if you want to make a LONG drive to these operations. 

But the thought I finally came up for this post, is there a direct correlation of casino shopping going on?

 

What to do what you meet a FanBoi...

Have you ever been around technology circles and all someone can do is just cop a feel on the trigger of hate for a piece of hardware or operating system? Do you just get tired of someone who just plain wants to dump on you all of their troubles about X brand machine?

Well, here is my fix for this situation.

1) I ask myself, "Is there any educational value exchange for me or the other person to learn some thing?"

2) Is someone freeloading and wanting me to babysit their problems or waste my mental hours of computer persuasion and experience in such a way that I am basically doing it for free when our economy so desperately needs jobs? Basically they're looking for a free handout.

and finally: 3) Is there some fix out there that they could simply go out, find out or help with? (my usual answer to this question is to ask the person to search Google, Yahoo, BING or some other search engine that they prefer. That is how I am going figure out the answer to their question. So why not have them do their own research and take me out of the equation?)

 

Those are my general questions I ask. I also apply the priniciple of "don't reinvent the wheel, use what WORKS." Nothing is worse than buying an expensive doohickey that requires hours, days or weeks of tech support phone calls, friends coming over to help you fix or continues to give you problems. I also use a metaphor, what truly does not work because the most expensive doorstop or boatanchor.

Have you ever bought your expensive piece of  "_______" brought it home and come to find out, it is just a big boatanchor? Even worse, you bought it on clearance or no returns policy? It does not even have to be computer software or technology, it could be any thing. And later into the future, you can look back at this foepaw from the past and laugh at it.

Yes, I have done this many times. And it is a learning experience!