Since I’ve been reviewing resumes for our organization’s new receptionist/office assistant, I’ve come across quite a few interesting email addresses used by applicants.

I think I’ve bitched before about people who use unprofessional email addresses. As easy as it is sign up for free accounts with the likes of GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc., there’s just no excuse (in my opinion) to conduct a job search with the likes of these:

shortyhiggy(@email-host.com)
hotlatina498

and my two latest favorites:

poodyman
versoboy

Not one to discriminate, I still reviewed these resumes but thankfully they weren’t from people we’d consider for the position.

Current Mood: Lethargic

Is a hotel money hungry when they charge per minute for the use of their internet?

Last week, I attended some work-related training at a Doubletree hotel near the Pentagon. At a point where we were given a break, I walked past their Business Center and decided to see if I could check my email only to be greeted with the following message on the screen:

$2.99 to connect (first minute included), $.59 per minute. Please swipe your credit card.

Well shit! That’s as expensive as a damn pre-paid cell phone, if not more so.

On some level, I can understand the need to charge for access. The Business Center is easily accessible by anyone, meaning non-guests of the hotel like me could sit and hog their bandwidth all day if they didn’t have some limitations in place. Many airports do this for their wireless access, but at least they charge more reasonable fees like $5.99 for two hours. Two hours on the computer at that Doubletree will set you back over seventy bucks!

You know hotels like that aren’t hurting for money with their $150+ per night room rate along with the fees they charge for groups to use their meeting rooms. I just think it’s overkill.

When I first got my digital camera, I carried it with me almost everywhere I went because I wanted to be able to capture something photo worthy should I encounter it: a place, a happening, an animal, something odd or interesting to me… you get the idea.

After about a month, though, carrying it all the time became cumbersome. I had to either have a jacket or baggy pants with pocket space or a bag with room to stash it. That wasn’t always feasible. Since then, I’ve been a number of places where I discovered something that caused me to immediately wish I had my camera and ultimately cursing the fact I did not.

I don’t want to say this happens regularly, but enough that I think about it pretty often. When you live in a densely populated city, there are many great photo opportunities if your senses are tuned in to your surroundings. Even if you’re relatively oblivious, you can still be surprised. My walk home from work the other day provided one of those missed opportunities. It was raining just enough to require an umbrella and in passing one of the several schools on my route, the rain pattering on an in-ground spotlight in a grassy patch at the front of the school immediately caught my attention. The light illuminated the droplets and as they crashed into and bounced off of the glass cover, a mist of steam from the heated lamp wafted a few inches in all directions.

This might not seem interesting to many people, but I found it intriguing. Had my digital camera been in my possession, I could have tried a number of settings to freeze the raindrops and perfectly capture the steam as it disappeared from sight. My cell phone camera is never good enough in cases like these, though I did try in vain to take a picture with it. Of course, I was very disappointed with the end result.

I’m interested in getting another camera, with better zoom and more manual options. Inevitably this means the size will be much larger than my current, which means there really is no solution to my frustration. Oh well.