busy girl thoughts

Time for me to compare hotels in New York, mid-town area before my memory fades. I wish I had stayed in more hotels to do a really thorough comparison, but hey i’m not hotel.com. And compared with my friends and random people on the street, I probably lived in amazing number of hotels.

Best Hotel Gym

The best hotel gym-I gotta give credit to Marquis. It’s about 2000 squarefeet (I think), has at least 10 elliptical trainers, probably more than 20 treadmills (sorry I never pay attention to treadmills since I don’t use them), and a lot of bikes and a few stair climbers. The number of cardio machines is astonishing. If I have you blindfolded and drop you off in this gym, you’d never guess it’s a hotel gym. All the cardio machines have individual TVs on. It has more than basic weight training machines, and abundant choices of free weights. It even has a spacious corner padded area to do stretches and other floor exercises, supplied with yoga mats, medicine balls, resistence balls and other Reebok powered equipments. And it’s 24 hours.
W hotel The Court/Tuscan has a decent 24-hour gym. The Court and Tuscan are right next to each other, so if you stay in Court, you have to get out on the street in order to access the gym. Hey don’t ask me why they choose to have two hotels on the same block. One time a cab driver pulled up in front of Tuscan, refusing to believe W the Court is right behind him, and I had to drag my luggage back to the Court

Best Bed
Starwood’s Heavenly Bed is definitely the best. Westin, W and Sheraton are part of Starwood. Come to think of it, I don’t remember anything spectacular about Sheraton New York though. Having been traveling for so long, I really appreciate a nice thick, firm and well padded mattress and a comforter. Unlike traditional hotels that offer a bed spread covered with you-know-what, and washed once a month, Starwood give you a real comforter with washable comforter cover. Do they wash the cover is still a mystery. But Westin’s cover is white so I’m guessing they’re forced to wash it more often than once a month. There’s subtle difference between W and Westin’s comforters too. W’s comforters are as comfortable however the cover is somewhat slippery and they usually end up on the floor the next morning. Quite a nuisance.

Unique

Two thumbs up for Library Hotel. It’s not a chain, so the drawback is you don’t get hotel points, but they compensate that with better price and much better and personal services. The most interesting part about the hotel is that the floors and room numbers are organized by the Dewey Decimal System. For example, if you stay on the eleventh floor, the whole floor is Philosophy themed. Room #6 on that floor has books related to “Love” since it corresponds to 1100.001 in DDS. The first room I stayed was “Library Management” (worst luck or what) and the second room was architecture related. I really liked that room because I got to read all about the fantastic architecture around the world.

It serves free breakfast (continental with hard boiled eggs), and 5-8pm it serves free cheese and wine. It doesn’t have a gym in the hotel, but they give you free daily passes to New York Sports Club 2 blocks away from the hotel.

For the budget-conscious
Three hotesl I stayed over a moth each: W hotel the Court, Marquis by Marriott, and Westin at Times Square. My best overall experience was with Westin, mostly because I got free upgrade to a corner suite. I’d say it’s at least 600 squarefeet with two sides of openable windows and heigh ceiling. It feels like a New York Loft. But if I ever go back to New York out of my own pocket, I’d stick with Marquis by Marriott. The rate is really good. I remember it was $219. The rooms are very spacious (rare in NYC), even bigger than a standard Westin room, and as mentioned before the gym is amazing. The only thing everybody hates is its elevators. It uses the so-called smart elevator that you punch in the floor you’d like to go before you step into the elevator, and the system assigns you an elevator. Once you step in, there’s no button in the shaft and it goes to the floor(s) that the system designated it to.

The problem with the design is that a lot of times tourists go by a big group. So if an elevator is assigned to go to 10 floors, chances are there will be more than 10 people for the ride, so one elevator doesn’t take all the people. The guests that failed to squeeze in the elevators in the first place usually would go to some other elevator that they’re not assigned too, and in turn squeeze out other guests assigned to another elevator. Now you can see the compounded chaos. In summer peak season, it’s easy to wait for half an hour for an elevator. And if you forget something in your room? I’m telling you’re better off buying it on the street.

I would NOT stay in W the Court. It’s nice on corporate account, but it’s over $330 and it’s really not all that great. The staff are snooty and they play this W theme music everywhere in the hotel. Every time you turn on the TV it’s automatic loudest volume tuned in the W channel playing that music. After a few weeks in the hotel, the music was officially adopted into the soundtrack my reoccurring nightmares.

I’ve been on the road since last late september. Living out of the suitcases for over a year is starting to wear me out. To be exact, what i’m feeling right now is probably not just from traveling; 14hour-days probably have much more impact. Come to think of it, it’s really the combination of the two.

There are some exciting aspect of traveling and living off of corporate account. I don’t have to cook anymore (well, personally I really miss cooking); I order whatever I want without looking at the price first; I don’t have to laundry anymore; I don’t have to clean up my room; I don’t have to pay for my cell phone bill, ….

But after the initial excitement phases out, the reality starts to hit.

The most depressing aspect of it is that after work, I have no friends to go to. Yes coworkers hang out once in a while, but coworkers and friends are not the same. It’s true that New York has the best lounges and restaurants, but what’s Happy Hour without good old friends? I remember I used to have this Happy Hour multi-tab-spreadsheet that we passed around to record the location, phone number, happy hour hours, special deals and review of all the restaurants we heard of, had been to, or wanted to hit. Aaaaah, and the power of FRESH WILD SALMON in Pacific Northwest!

The other thing has to do with fitness. Do I miss 24 hour fitness!! The gyms in NYC all closed around 10:30. I don’t know how New Yorkers do it. They work crazy hours yet they don’t have 24 hour gyms? Back in NY I could rarely make it to the gym. The hotel gyms weren’t bad though. The best hotel gym-I gotta give credit to Marquis. It’s about 2000 squarefeet (I think), has about 10 elliptical trainers among other things. All the cardio machines have individual TVs on. And it’s 24 hours. Westin Times Square wasn’t too bad. Although it’s fairly small, it had 3 elliptical trainers and all cardio machines have TVs on. The only thing was they closed at 10:30 too.

Now that I moved to Westin at Princeton, my fitness life dwindled to almost none. The gym has one elliptical trainer that doesn’t work. Refusing to use treadmill, I’m left only with a stationary bike. No individual TVs on the machines. There’s a small TV in the room WITHOUT A REMOTE. Good thing I always carry tons of exercise DVDs with me when I travel, so that’s now the main source of my workout routine. However, I can’t really do weight training anymore, so my muscle has been loosing up and flab has slowly, umm no quickly, crawled back.

Since I work most of the weekend, wardrobe choice is severely limited. I have less than 5 sets of outfit to mix and match. It doesn’t really bother me anymore though. My coworkers, clients and I spend so much time together, I honestly doubt anybody cares what I wear. But lack of wardrobe choice and lack of working out have downward sprial effect on each other. I don’t feel I look good cuz I have nothing to wear, so I feel less motivated to work out, and now I never want to dress up because I’m so out of shape…

I suppose i CAN live without gossipy friends (just kidding!!) and get used to my new flabby arms and thighs. Eating without a budget is the major killer. I was actually happy leaving New York’s worldclass fine restaurants behind, and I thought I could finally quit eating at Princeton. I miscalculated. Now instead of gaining weight on exquisit fine cuisine, I gain weight on greasy Chinese, deep fried chicken and ribs, and tons of chocolate and candies. Really, it’s not worth the calories! But loneliness and stress has got the better of me, and I can’t stop stuffing my face with junk food.

I can’t wait to move to San Francisco, the part of the world that 24 hour fitness rules, that people don’t work 25 hours a day–hmm come to think of it, I’ve heard some rumors about SF office’s crazy hours, and people bike, hike, camp, basically have a life outside of work.

Google RSS Reader rolls out by ZDNet’s Dan Farber — At the Web 2.0 conference Google took the wraps off its RSS reader–Google Reader. Like other Google products, the RSS reader has a simple interface, makes good use of AJAX and shows how the company is scoping out all the kinds of applications and services that Web users will want to have. It’s beta and […]

Relax!

DILBERT’S GUIDE TO STRESS
An alternative guide to stress in the workplace from Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip.

1. I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow is not looking good either.
2. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
3. Tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you how to get along without it.
4. Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days the statue.
5. Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If they aren’t there the first time, chances are you won’t be needing them again.
6. I don’t have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem.
7. Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling?
8. My reality check bounced.
9. On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.
10. I don’t suffer from stress. I am a carrier.
11. You are slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.
12. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
13. Everybody is somebody else’s weirdo.
14. Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
15. A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
16. Don’t be irreplaceable - if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
17. After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
18. The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
19. You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry clipboard.
20. Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
21. People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn’t.
22. If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
23. When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
24. Following the rules will not get the job done.
25. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger handle this?

I read yesterday that Google might provide free city-wide WiFi services for San Francisco. Google officials say San Francisco residents (and visitors) will enjoy a free 300 kilobits per second, always on connection anywhere in the city. As part of its proposal, the company says it will be offering wholesale access to other service providers, who will offer higher throughput connections to their customers. Google says it plans to use its own authentication services. (That explains the Google WiFi VPN client to some extent). The company is going to use San Diego-based WFI, a cellular network builder company to build out the WiFi network. Here’s more details.

What are google and City of SF’s motives of such a great public service?

I remember seeing free WiFi posters throughout Philly downtown a couple months ago while I was traveling, so I dug up old news stories related to that. It turned out to be a long and painful process.

Apparently Mayor Street announced the plan in Sep 2004, and since then, it aroused heated debate and nationwide interests. At that time a specific budget wasn’t set, and it hadn’t been determined if the service would be for free or low-cost. A recent update from Ms. Neff, CIO for the city, indicated that it’ll cost about 15-20 million for the 135 square feet area. It won’t be FREE though. I think now the pilot programs in Philly are free, meaning there are quite a few hot spots throughout downtown philly. But eventually when the city-wide network is built, the city will charge the service for $20 a month, or $10 for low-income households. It costs about $60-70 for the device. This would especially benefit neighborhoods where the existing infrastructure is not capable of supporting broadband service.

Everything sounds wonderful, but the city is facing powerful skeptics. First of all Verison was pissed. Verizon lobbied the Pennsylvania legislature and had a law passed and signed that would “prohibit a government or any entity it creates from offering broadband for a fee.” [Philadelphia Faces Wi-Fi Woes PC World 11/23/04]. Comcast had somethig to say as well. “Because of numerous financial and technological questions about the city’s plans, and the substantial risk to Philadelphia’s taxpayers, we have not endorsed the city’s efforts,” David L. Cohen, Comcast’s executive vice president, wrote in an e-mail message. “Investment in a competitive, challenging and risky business like broadband is something better left to private companies.”

Ms. Neff’s defense against critics is that, it’s estimated by the third year, Philly will be saving $2 million a year on their $150 million IT budget by not having to pay Verizon for Internet access at their 24,000-employee city offices.

No that’s not good enough. Heartland Institute issued a paper on Why Muni Wi-Fi Is a False Hope (02/01/05). This largely argues that because prior attempts at wired networks failed and that gosh, it’s going to cost $75-150 to set up so they can’t afford it anyhow (never mind how much more it would cost to set up and buy broadband access from Verizon or Comcast), it shouldn’t be done. Cato institute (funded by telecom giants) conducted a study to attack municipal wireless services.

GIVE ME A BREAK.

Municipal WiFi was first started in Spokane, Washington. It’s only free for government employees but paid access is also offered. Many other cities have since followed.

Australia has turned all of Sydney into a high-speed hot-spot, and users get much faster broadband service than we do - for less.

I guess we should thank telecom giants for protecting the public from… um.. socialism invasion (free for all!)? Capitalism is the foundation of this country and let’s all pay wireless phone companies $79.99 a month for wireless connection. The poor telecom giants, after all, having been waking up in the middle of a night covered with cold sweats with the mere notion of cheap municiapl WiFi services.

I wish city of San Francisco the best luck.

I used to think about getting Dell stock since it appears to be cheap, until I came across this article on business week, here’s the excerpt:

It didn’t seem as if he was asking for much. When the CD drive on Peter Ulyatt’s Dell desktop computer failed this summer, he called the support crew at Dell (DELL ), where he’d bought the $1,600 machine nine months prior. Armed with an extended warranty that cost him an extra $300, the Pasadena (Calif.) retiree got on the phone and waited. After sitting on hold for 45 minutes, a technician whom Ulyatt could barely understand came on the line and diagnosed a “software problem.” Ulyatt’s call, transferred to the software technician, was dropped. Calling back, Ulyatt waited on hold another 45 minutes, asked for the software desk, and waited a half-hour more before hanging up. “At the moment, I’m not high on Dell’s service,” says Ulyatt, who plans to buy two new PCs in a year or so. “When I buy again, I will look at others beyond Dell.”

Ulyatt’s ordeal is not an isolated case. All tech companies have some unhappy customers, of course, but recent surveys suggest the ranks of frustrated Dell Inc. owners are growing. Complaints to the Better Business Bureau rose 23% in 2004 from the year before, and they’re up another 5% this year. … “We’ve never seen a drop like this,” says professor Claes Fornell, who ran the survey.

Plenty of people are going public with complaints. … Web sites such as ihatedell.net have popped up. …

Could such sentiment lead to trouble for the world’s largest PC company? Over the past decade, Dell’s dependable support, combined with competitive prices and build-to-order convenience, made it the default choice for millions of consumers. Its market share continues to rise overall, and it holds 28.8% of the U.S. consumer market,…. However, a sagging reputation could slow sales, … In the most recent quarter, Dell missed its sales target, one reason its stock has dropped 18%, to $34, since the start of the year.

….Other key PC makers are increasing the pressure on Dell. Apple, which consistently ranks high in customer surveys like Michigan’s, recently decided to start using chips from Intel Corp. (INTC ), making it a more direct competitor to Dell. And Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ), Dell’s biggest competitor, seems intent on distinguishing itself with customer service.

Over the past year, HP has launched several initiatives to build loyalty. One lets HP employees key in information on product glitches they hear about from customers, who then are supposed to receive a call from a rep within 48 hours. Another is a diagnostic tool HP developed to help consumers figure out what kind of problem they have, even if it doesn’t involve HP gear. Dell won’t help customers with non-Dell problems unless they pay extra. “Given today’s digital lifestyle, it’s vital,” says Diana L. Bell, HP’s senior vice-president of total customer experience. “We have to do more than say, ‘here’s the product, and catch me if you can.”