February 13th, 2008
Continuing where I left off last week, I recently sent off a letter to David Kong, the president and CEO of Best Western International. In this letter, I explained the situation we experienced while we stayed at the Best Western in Nashville, and asked for his help resolving the matter. Most people told me not to expect much to come from it, but I definitely hoped for some sort of positive outcome.
During the first week of February, I received a letter from Best Western International. It wasn’t from the president directly, but from Greg Trotter, who is manager of Customer Care. According to the letter I received, Mr. Kong was made aware of our situation and the issues we faced while in Nashville. In the reply, I received an apology for the poor service, as well as some comments about how Best Western strives to provide excellent service and value for all of its customers.
Mr. Trotter went on to explain that he’s aware travelers have a lot of options available when selecting accomodations, and he hopes we will consider staying at a Best Western again in the future. To make things right, he is sending me a check for $80 (Canadian) to cover the cleaning fee and is also sending me a Best Western travel card worth $25.
Best Western locations are all independently owned and operated, so I can see why, despite their best efforts, the level of service provided is not always up to par. It sucks that I had to write a letter to the president to get any sort of help, but I am happy with the way they handled the situation and the end result. My faith in Best Western International has been restored, but I don’t think I’ll stay at their Nashville location again.
November 23rd, 2007
In the past few months, I’ve heard and read a lot of stories about companies recalling toys made in China. Most of these toys have been recalled because they contain high levels of lead or other chemicals that make them unsafe for children to play with.
Obviously, this isn’t new, and I’m sure this has been going on for years and years without the attention it is now getting in the news. This really makes me wonder how much lead and other dangerous chemicals I came into contact with playing with toys as a kid. I’m sure the rules have become stricter over the years, but as we’re seeing, the toys of today are being recalled for safety reasons, so I believe the toys of the past were even more dangerous.
I don’t really know what else to say about this, except I hope I don’t die an early death because I used to play with lead-infested toys…
November 8th, 2007
I really like Halloween. I like when people take the time to put together a cool costume. And I really like Halloween parties. Here’s a couple of pictures from two weeks ago:
June 15th, 2007
The other week my brothers cleaned up our basement and finally took back all of the empty liquor bottles we’ve been collecting over the past year or so. There were also a few cases of beer. I’m glad I was at work and didn’t have to help carry them all.
In total, they got $55 back. There were about 270 beer bottles, 20 empty 40s (1.14L) and 60 empty 26ers (750mL) and a handful of mickeys. By my quick math, that’s over 90 litres of beer, and 70 litres of liquor. In total, it was an estimated $2300 worth of alcohol.
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June 7th, 2007
It was five years ago that I registered robmaeder.com and started up my own website. That was back when I was still in college and I originally planned to use it to showcase projects, post my resume and store some files.
Over time, I redesigned the site a few times, attempted regular updates, and added in some actual content.
Below is a brief rundown of robmaeder.com through the years. Click the screenshots to see how the page looked and acted back in its day. The archived copies of my site are available thanks to the Wayback Machine.
First off, the original look. It’s pretty plain and kinda not good. I created a simple php backend that allowed me to update the news section through an admin form.
The second edition of the site was pretty different, being very minimal and light.
This third version of robmaeder.com was quite good for my skills. I put a lot more work into it and it contained a lot of pages showing off some of my projects and experiences.
The site you’re looking at now is the fourth and latest version. I made the switch to WordPress a while back, and I really like how simple it is to add new content. I’m getting kinda bored of the design and the broken stuff, so I might mess around with it sometime. I also want to move a lot of the pages from my old site to this one, so I can consolidate everything in one place. I get a lot of obscure hits from Google searches that lead to my old site, and it would be nice if everything was in one spot.
There you have it. Solid proof I have been a nerd for at least five years.
