VanPortlander

A couple weeks ago I noted that if you wanted to go manage TriMet’s operational headaches, they were hiring.

Now, they’re looking for someone to work as a Community Relations Representative.

I assume that involves attempting to happily tell folks that things aren’t as bad as they seem.  The first listed job function is:

Provide personal assistance to customers during planned and unplanned service disruptions.

Heh… these folks should be busy.

Various Portland media outlets’ weathermen are reporting on a significant storm headed our direction this weekend. Perhaps a few inches of snow tomorrow followed by a powerful sustained windstorm on Sunday.

Are they right?

Generally whenever they predict a significant weather event (namely snow) it fails to materialize. And often the snow and ice which brings our city to a halt arrives without any real warning. Remember last year’s snowstorm, with area school districts not canceling classes until students were already at (or en route to) school?

Sarah Gould says she’s a snow scrooge. I don’t mind the snow at all… bring it on! I’m not looking forward to the winds. Last year’s December storm took off a significant portion of our roof.

Are winter weather forecasts this messed up everywhere? In Minnesota can they predict when it will snow? Is this because Portland weathermen aren’t as familiar with the white stuff, or are we in a special climate where the prediction is impossible…

The Portland/Vancouver area has seen property values increase dramatically over the past decade, and although housing prices are starting to level off and fall in most locations across the country, Portland is an exception. When housing prices and interest rates were lower, many buyers got into adjustable-rate loans and loans with balloon payments. Now, a few years later, those rates are increasing and payments are coming due. This credit crunch is impacting the lives of millions.

Washington state currently has a program where seniors and disabled homeowners can defer some of their property tax payments, with those payments being due upon the sale of the home. There is a proposal by Washington State Senate Democrats to extend that program to half of the population.

On one hand I’m sure half the homeowners in the state would love to avoid paying property taxes until the house is sold. But I can see a few drawbacks as well. Will revenue be adequate with the missing taxes? What about the issue of someone who defers payments for several years, and then sells the house? That ever-growing chunk of tax money will be taken away, potentially leaving the seller with far less cash from the sale than anticipated. Will the state charge interest on the deferred taxes?

I’m definitely skeptical…

This is the tenth in a series of weekly interviews/profiles of various local bloggers (links to all interviews). It’s good to learn a bit about the people behind the websites and I hope that you find the responses interesting.

This week’s featured blogger is Dieselboi.

1. Start off by telling us a bit about your current blog project(s)… where do you write?
   
   I am currently the co-captain for Portland Metblogs and one of 15 authors on that site. As a captain, I assist in managing the authors, recruiting, cheerleading and paying for beer once a month. I also write a post and put up a photo now and again. I also have a personal blog called WalkingPortland.
2. How did you get started? What was your first online blog or journal about?
   
   I first started blogging with a one or two post blog about my BMW 2002 named Hazel. We were doing some restoration work and I wanted to document it. It lasted all of 2 posts. I then started a blog about my master bedroom. We had guests coming and had just demolished the entire second floor. The blog documented the project with photos of all the work needed to get the room ready for sleeping before the guests arrived. In the end, we didn’t finish and slept on the floor in the living room that week. Three years later, we’re finally getting the room done….. I then moved on to WalkingPortland and now Portland Metblogs which is where I found my muse.
3. What’s your favorite part of blogging about local issues?
   
   I don’t really think of myself as an issue oriented blogger even though I often post about issues concerning us all. I think of myself more of an ambassador. I have lived in Portland all my life except for some periods in college and the Peace Corps. What I love about blogging is that it connects me to people who I would never have met in real life. Over the past few years, I have become friends with some great people through our blogs. I also enjoy informing people about going’s on or maybe an interesting tidbit about Portland’s history. So many Portlanders are transplants, so I feel it is my job to tell them there is a cool fortress type structure at the top of Rocky Butte with amazing views of the mountains and so on and so on….
4. On the flip side, what do you find most challenging when blogging about Portland?
   
   Blogging about Portland isn’t that challenging, but I would say blogging in general can be difficult. When you voice an opinion, not matter how banal it is, someone out there in internetland is always willing to get into a fight about it. It actually gets a little scary some of the ways people engage each other when it is anonymous. We have a joke. Someone could write a post saying “Puppies and Kittens are cute.” Within a few minutes, some troll will come along, cuss you out and tell you that puppies and kittens are indeed not cute and liken you to Hitler.
5. What has been your favorite moment while blogging? Do any particular posts or reactions/coverage of posts stand out in your mind?
   
   A favorite moment that comes to mind was when 6 bloggers got together on the roof of the Dekum building a few years back. My wife and I were new bloggers and we had befriended two additional bloggers here in Portland and they in turn had befriended a blogger friend of ours from Vermont and we all go together and took a photo. It just proved how small the world actually is. I don’t really have a particular post that stands out since there have been so many. I did like the “100 things you don’t know about me” meme a few years back. Some of those items shocked my friends. I find it funny that a single post about Storm Large on RockStar Supernova was one of our biggest hitters for over 12 months even after the she left the show. The Internets will always surprise me.
6. Let’s get technical for a moment. Do you have any favorite blogging tools? Platforms? Online or offline editors? Anything you use to make your blogging easier?
   
   I’m a geek, but not that kind of geek. I started on blogger and it did the job. That was enough for me. At Portland Metblogs, we’re on Movable Type. Meh. Don’t really have an opinion about the tool as once again, it does the job. I never learned html even thought I’m a techie as a profession, so the arguments back and forth on tools falls on deaf ears with me. I am a huge proponent of MoBlogging with a camera phone. For the longest time, I worked with a Treo 700p. While not the best smartphone out there, it did the trick and I was able to snap a photo, write some text and publish in less than 2 minutes. Great for breaking news or something quick or when you can’t get to a computer. I currently have an LG ENV and am just getting up to speed on how to use it for MoBlogging. Lastly – Flickr. I have been disappointed as of late with some technical issues, but Flickr is my secret lover. I have almost 7300 photos up there and plenty of them are associated with one blog post or another.
7. Finally, what bit of advice or words of wisdom would you give to someone considering starting their own blog? What do you wish you’d known from the start?
   
   Like everyone else says – Just Do It! Sit down and write about something you are passionate about. Don’t try to be an end-all-be-all destination point for information because it takes a lot of time and effort to get there. But do be a source for someone. My mantra is – “If it sounds interesting to me, its gotta be interesting to someone else too. At least one person.” And that is what I post. Oh, and don’t blog about work. Remember, everything is captured by AT&T and the NSA in a secret room. Oh, and eat more pie!

Thanks to Dieselboi for his participation in this effort. I’ve always enjoyed the variety of his posts over at Metroblogging.

Up in Battle Ground, it appears that stealing from a church isn’t quite crooked enough to interfere with being elected.

How do you make your fleet of vehicles as green as possible?

Why, you put summer-grade biodiesel in the tanks in sub-freezing weather.  If the truck won’t run, it’s zero-emissions.

Hopefully the fact that the Water Bureau folks didn’t do their homework didn’t delay the response when a water main broke early Sunday…

I’ve been asked if I’m a registered Oregon voter a LOT lately.  When and where?  On MAX platforms (and a few times on the train itself).  I’ve wondered about TriMet’s policy on the fact that their customers get nagged frequently by these folks.  Here’s TriMet’s official response:

Because we are a public agency we cannot deny signature gathers.  If they become threatening or hold up our service then you can call 911 or notify an operator.

Seems to me that if the signature gatherers have carte blanche access to any public spaces, they’d probably have a higher percentage of registered voters if they concentrated on the Courthouse and City Hall, don’t you think?

When I caught wind yesterday that a local school superintendent was blogging, I had to check it out. Sure, it’s a tiny school district (Hockinson) a few miles away from where I live, and when you go to the blog it’s missing several typical blog features (like an RSS feed).

Is it a blog? Maybe… depends on how you define blog. It’s a weekly update from Delcine Mesa-Johnson offering her thoughts on current school district happenings. I looked at a few of the major school districts in the area, and while most of them offer some sort of “latest news releases” section, Mesa-Johnson is the only leader who’s blogging. Good for her.

Local blogger David Appell has spent a bit of time looking at the city’s recent claims about greenhouse gas emissions, and he has some questions.  Is he right?  Perhaps.  Is the city right?  Appell theorizes that it’s not likely, given the amount of assumptions in the numbers…

Looks like Amanda Fritz is going to continue in the tradition of Vera Katz in extending a giant middle finger to the hundreds of thousands of folks who live in Southwest Washington and also work and/or shop in Oregon.

The fact that I-5 southbound on the Oregon side of the river is wholly inadequate for existing traffic volumes is nothing new… back when Katz was mayor, she commented that the reduction in travel lanes in North Portland was good because it made things inconvenient for those traveling from Washington; it was a “meter” of sorts.

Now, Amanda Fritz wants to continue the tradition of inadequate automobile infrastructure.  She notes that this week the city council will discuss the Columbia River Crossing, and instead of advocating upgraded infrastructure (which was needed 20 years ago), Amanda is suggesting the city act as a roadblock and “pull the plug” on bringing Portland’s major highway up to speed.

As I’ve mentioned several times on this blog, it’s time for Portland to realize it’s part of a metropolitan area.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize there’s a problem with I-5.  There are solutions on the table for helping to relieve the congestion and the bottleneck at the border.  Hell, they’re even talking light rail, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Instead of fighting progress and actually helping folks out, it would be neat if Katz and Fritz and the rest of the city folks would do the right thing.  Oregon government bought a tram, they’re going to build a tax-funded hotel, yet the notion of providing transportation capacity for demand which has existed for decades is a foreign concept.