Downtown Vancouver BurgerVille going away...

I just wanted to wish everyone who may has great memories of this great treasure that has been around for so many years. It will be closing tomorrow, Sunday September 4, 2011 at 10pm along 15th Street and C street across the street from the former City of Vancouver City Hall.

This is wonderful and I  hope others have a chance to have a great meal before going on with their days or nights.

How I feel about LGBT & Marriage?

Some might argue that Marriage is a paper certificated contract between two humans. And in some states, is engendered with as a man and woman only and some states, it is whomever you choose to love.

I have come down to a place in my life about this subject, which may be different from other local bloggers, community members or national speakers might feel about it. And it might be the first time in my life that I have finally had to make the decision to step up in my life and live it.

No, I am not LGBT or any other label that someone wants to slap on my forehead. I am just a simply person who lives a simple life.  This commentary may lose me some friends, family, business or engender further economic strain and stratification. And it might be the same way for many other families across this great nation.

Have you ever felt that someone else around you deserves to live their lives in peace? Without unearned slander, libel or label unless they so choose to apply it?

I believe two people should be able to live together and stay together, regardless of race, gender or any status, unless they so choose to bring it into their lives. And this may mean that they also will have to live with the stigma of past generations that may look down upon them as though they are not humans or people worthy of the basic rights of respect and love.

To me, marriage is about two people, who love each other. That are coming together to profess to their community that they are willing to take a step of a greater responsibility, to love, to nurture and to live the rest of their lives together. They may or may not choose to bring a child or multiples of children into their lives. That they are willing to make this union and bond for life that is enshrined on a marriage vow and certificated at a court house in their legal jurisdiction.

I feel that they are just looking for the same right, the same love and attention that anyone else wants. They don't want to be treated as spectacles, obfuscations, abhorants or problems.

Now I could spend a long time looking all over the internet for statistics two and fro about the subject. To defend, argue, debate, debase and honestly waste a whole lot of life tragically that our nation could be using to look at the REAL problems facing cities, our nation, our world.

Yet, this subject engendered so much anger, hatred and emotional tragedy. Does anyone else see a problem here? Why are we wasting time and energy on the subject, when there is so much other things that our nation needs fixing

As long as they are not hurting anyone, I'll go find some other subject to deal with and would love to take my community forward and on to the next thing? Hell, let them do what they want, even if they need to go to online paper mill for their marriage certificate....

Is there a real news media in Clark County?

So I have read for some time and heard through conversation over the past the past two decades that the people of Clark County wanted some form of local news and community connection to find out more about themselves and the state that they lived in.

Yes, there is a new radio station that plays twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week of syndicated conversative talk radio that was shifted from sister stations and other local conservative stations to KKOV.

And there is a local daily that does a small percentage of news of what is going on and spends resources to local charities and business partnerships. And it has an executive staff that ticks off the local political blogosphere. Yet does not do much more than that?

You also have FVTV, which offers low cost production classes, studio time and gear for local productions for non-profit and local community events. It replays all of its content off the PEG access channel on Comcast channel 11. If you are not a cable subscriber, how are you able to access the production content?

The Vancouver Voice was a local weekly sheet & blotter that broke a bunch of local stories like the Storrow Case, The Value Motel Saga and other stories. It is now on the chopping block by its owners. I am not sure if its going to get picked up by a new publisher and financial backing due to the economy and the newsprints continuing escalating costs and declining readership as more and more people move online to get their hard news.

Some other local options Daily Insider, Clark County Live, Daily Couve (local satire), Vancouver Business Journal are smaller readership but also fill the gap for important constituencies here in our little neck of the woods.

There are many other online discussion forums, Facebook conversations and forums and many other ways we can communicate. But where do you think you can find a place where all of us stand as one as community speaking to the nation about WHO we are. I would love to see some thing like that happen.

Walkways throughout Clark County.

I am hoping to figure out what kind of new walkways in Clark County that I don't know of. There are so many in Vancouver and Hazel Dell. Burnt Bridge Greenway, Salmon Creek walkway? I believe there is one around Lacamas Lake. What about Battle Ground lake?

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!