portland

…..

Is there a need to say it?

Might as well at this point.

So, today’s contribution for me being the next oracle of delphi is fresh from the Oregonian. Mind you, this is the biggest paper in the region, and when I was beating the drums that we have problems back when we could have fixed it without major issue a few years ago, there had been some who had called me out for being pessimistic because the Oregonian didn’t talk about it. Go. Read the Opinion from the paper that people said they will come around when this paper does. While you do that please be aware of all the things in the past tense. The tense that things already occurred, the tense that actions have been committed.

The only reason I bring it up that I was right, was because I do not want to hear ow so many people could not have seen it.

https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2023/04/editorial-oregon-is-dealt-a-blow.html

Look at it all, read the article and let it echo especially if you were the kind thinking I as pessimist, because those people with high end college degrees? I was right. The city commissioners who said they know better? I was right. The people who lived in the pearl or in the expensive towers who thought they had a better grasp? I was right. People who thought measure 110 was going to happen and make the city perfect when I thought it would make it right? The only right was me, and all the others who could read to a third grade level and could see what was going on, and not be given nice words or pretty pictures when all of it is fake.

Between blog posts, less then seven days, no less then a business has shuddered a day. A day brings the death toll for a business some with thirty, forty, fifty years and all of them are now shells. Considering there are not enough to replace them means a bit of a problem. No longer helping the community, no longer making it better. Some may think I am being a bit crass, but when you are right, time and time again, and people do not listen, because I am not the only one, this is not some rocket science we are calculating on our fingers here.

I want Portland to be better, I want it to be the city I love again. However, the people who are so lost seem to put their hands up just saying an oops and then walking off like they did the right thing anyway. Well things have been a bit of a riddle, because I do not have the supplies to make any store or anywhere in Portland right now, not enough anyway to make more of a difference. Because one has to remember there is not a lot of help from the police, insurance is going to be higher, and often times one has to defend themselves, their has to be a way, but their needs to be a way to bring about ideas for business that bring back some of the safety of before.

Until the next time.

Stay Strong.

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Back After Semester Finals and Sickness

It has been a couple weeks. I am still alive. Although a lot has happened. First, finals always tends to be something that takes extra energy from me and I have done well in my classes, and that makes me happy. There has been some health issues that took some time of course, when your body runs on caffeine and spite sometimes you need to recharge every so often. That or the nerve damage gets the better of me sometimes.

The city is still a shit show, and while I can tell you how, there are others who do it better then me just look up on twitter PDXReal1 does a lot of good work showing how things are, People4Portland on twitter and now it seems more and more that people are getting the word out that we do have a problem in the city. So people are knowing, but now we have to make some impact, and that is been something that I have mused for the past few weeks.

Portland business journal recently had a survey of businesses where no one, I am sorry “99% do not feel supported by the city’s elected officials.” Damning by any count when almost every business believes they are not being supported by the city. That means you could go and throw a rock in the air and the sidewalk it lands on you got almost 100% chance that the business closest to it thinks they got no help from the city. Not like anything has been done to change that, Measure 110 has gone a major calamity because the government has not been fast enough to get the support out there. ( Big shocker, it is almost like someone called it.)

The city is in rough shape and the state is worse, but you know what sometimes it just takes a spark, a chance to get things rolling in the right direction. While the more well known businesses are running away from the city there is a chance to make it better, and if you can survive in the harshest conditions then it should be able to survive in friendlier conditions. It may be looked at as a bit of trying to find the sunshine in the dark clouds, but there is something to be looked at when bad things happen. One can always look at it more as a challenge to be overcome. Just seems honestly, that there are a lot more challenges then times of smooth sailing. These times will test those of the city I love, because there is a lot that seems to be wrong.

Try and stay healthy and hopefully I don’t need to do this again this week. I am sick as a dog.

Stay Strong.

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75 Days In

Portland has decided to at least hurry their spiral because at least if you are going to fail you might as well do it quickly. For those who do not know Portland has gotten much more violent having more then 900 shooting incidents in 2020 and more then 1300 in both 2021 and 2022 and it looks like its another year over a thousand incidents.

We have among authorized sworn members has only been able to this date keep the rate from he rate in 2021 when it was lower then 2005, that is almost twenty years ago. Portland still has a prosecutor that does not want to prosecute, and a city council that doesn’t want to deal with the unpleasant reality and a growing issue with businesses feeling more uncomfortable, almost a third of business vacancies in the city and that is going up in a year where people are learning they cannot survive in a city that very simply, does not care.

So we have 880 authorized sworn workers in the police and we have in a thirty day period 19,099 calls for the month of January, that is top to bottom. The average response times for high priority calls, your really nasty crimes, in January is 16.5 minutes. Considering it was at 20 minutes in October, it is going down but unfortunately it is not going down enough to make people safe. Here is a number that gets me angered.

81% of high priority calls will be responded to after 5 minutes. You got a four out of five chance that whatever is so bad you need cops yesterday you have a 4 out of 5 to survive 5 and anyone is been in an abused situation or has been hurting or bleeding. Those five minutes can seem like years. All of these numbers are all looking through the Portland police department data dashboard.

This is just to show that all the things are not getting better, but I think a different tack is needed. For this I have something I would like to ask anyone reading this.

If you had a chance to ask a question or a couple questions to the homeless of Portland, what would they be?

Let me know.

Stay strong.

Also, yes. I did have this lined up and just forgot to hit the post button. One of those days.

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Air Fryer Hard Boiled Eggs and Classes

College is fun when you can’t get a loan because the government (Sallie Mae) and the school don’t understand some crippled people are actually trying to gain skills for a future, but hey, so far, no loans. Look on the bright side of life. It will save you headaches in the long run. Outside of that, I found one can make hard-boiled eggs in the air fryer.

Fifteen minutes at 300F and letting cool naturally works excellent for some medium eggs. Suitable for some healthy snacks. Also, we had to do some shopping around, but we found a couple of stores had our five dozen eggs deal for 7 dollars, which we are going to take that all day. It is always nice to make a couple of new snacks. Good for something else to work on later. I would say try other seasonings against what I can make, but that would be humiliating to my opponents.

Photo by Jana Ohajdova on Pexels.com

For all that has happened in Portland, I am starting to look at some properties to see what I need, and right now, the cost can be best described as too damn high. It is going in the right direction. Most people want to avoid starting a business in Portland. I need to figure out what to ensure my employees in different areas are happy. Can I pay 100k each? Most likely not, but I can find the right combination of pay and benefits where people want to work with me for a position.

I would remark on the city of Portland itself, but that is a level of things that needs its own post. See you tomorrow.

Stay warm and stay strong.

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Choppy Waters

Welp, it’s been a couple of weeks again. Sorry about that. Unfortunately, some numbers have come out based on the city where it has to be said. Portland is now in a position where the problems they have constructed for themselves will be fixed slowly, which is unfortunate. This was brought up by KOIN 6 news and reported on by the News for Reasonable People channel( A name I get a giggle from whenever I watch their videos). Also, they are a channel with a view on more of the business and property lens. However, human issues make enough appearances to be counted on being shown.

So, what am I talking about? Currently, the violence in Portland has been growing, and the cost of living has been rising throughout the country, even more so in Portland. More drugs, less quality public education, and less business have been happening. Now we have a business vacancy rate getting close to a third. That means that about 73% of spaces are filled. Which would be good, except most people need to learn that cities account for something like 95% to be filled on a bad year for tax reasons. If businesses are not in buildings, they aren’t making money, no money, no tax, and the budget is reduced, and while a lot of places have had to deal with many of these things, Portland has been ranked third last in recovering from the pandemic. We are ranked 60 out of 62, with a wild guess being able to figure out the two below us.

This has now reached a point that, save for a miracle of high-class thought and action from our city commissioners, this will not be good for a while. Five years, maybe ten, maybe thirty. The time frame depends on how shit others are after this. What will be something is that now we are in a position where it will most likely be this way for quite a while, and a lot of Portlanders are okay with that.

Not because there is a wealth of ideas or thoughts. Actually, it’s because most Portlanders only know or care to know once they have to. As a result, portlanders generally boil down into two groups.

  1. They are in a position to ignore everything until something happens, as they get robbed, their children are in danger, or their life’s work is destroyed.
  2. They are so poor and just trying to hold it together; unfortunately, they just had to get used to it.

This is sad because what comes next is not going to be fun for a lot of people. It will not be able to be fixed quickly because people do not want to see it. It won’t be the end of the world, but for those who think Portland is going back to the 2000’s era dominance, this will be bad news.

Good times will come at some point, but we have some choppy waters.

Stay Strong and Carry On.

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2023 Goals

Something I hope to look back on and see a bunch of things crossed off, and if I remember it an easy and entertaining call back at the end of the year.

  1. Release something, now with projects going on what I have and if it may be under my name will be something different. As long as it came from me, under whatever name I use for different reasons I hope to release something like a book, program or something.
  2. I would like to live on my own. Currently I have been living with a roommate and have been doing it long enough, I need my space.
  3. Continue doing well in school, at this point I have had a problem in just one class and I am still on honor roll despite it.
  4. I would like for the blog to do better, although granted to define it as off the rails from original purposes is an understatement of the greatest caliber.
  5. Do a physical event again. Despite being disabled I feel I have been getting much better health wise especially over the last twelve months.
  6. Get my teeth fixed. Unfortunately why my body does not use some minerals despite ingesting them, like calcium is something we are still trying to figure out. Luckily we caught it before bones went fell osteoporosis.
  7. I want to do more on twitch, and been trying to push it further. Currently the goal is to get to 500 followers but I need to work on being more entertaining.
  8. I would like to travel to another country finally. I have never been to another country and there are a few places on my list. I would count something out of state or going to conventions again
  9. Start a successful business. Pretty simple as to why.
  10. Be happier then I was last year.

If I remember this I hope to go back and see how many of these got knocked off the list.

Stay Strong and Happy New Year

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At Worse There Can Be Change

The city of Portland seems to read my blog because a few weeks ago I made a post that I wouldn’t write on it unless it was just something abyssal. A new high in low. It seems that it looked at my blog post, handed me a half open bottle of some hipster brew and asked me to hold it because it seems every day since then it decided to just keep digging for the grail in stupidity and I wonder here if they had focused such efforts into something good the progress that would be made.

Never ask how bad dumb a group of politicians can be. I should have known.

So, rapid fire because Portland leadership is a font of idiocy so deep that we could only approximate the bottom. One. Jo Ann Hardesty One could lead a class on morals by taking what she had done in her job as commissioner and simply going, don’t do that. Now, that would be rude, she would have had to do one thing of good. Right?

Well, after running up debt and then being sued for it and then the hit and run debacle and then the uber debacle and then being an idiot in the pandemic, and the being an idiot during the homeless issue and backing the politics that drove business in the ground, and then not pushing for punishing the D.A for not charging those who had politics similar. I mean all of these are absolutely shameful. Calling a political opponent Republican when he is not just because he has a different opinion. Now, some may see that statement and think I support Rene. I have not seen his work and right now there has to be a major amount of work done for me not to count him as an abject failure just because he wanted the position. It is the risk that comes from people failing at it for long periods and really if one could fire the commissioners since Hales then many would.

The mayor before Wheeler I used to call him as interesting as wallpaper paste, now I have to say he had to be smarter then any person in politics. That or, he was one of the luckiest because after that things went down at the speed of gravity. Where things hoped to have change is after a cycle with the main morons and people went, there is no better candidate, no one wants to run and now we are happy with this. Well, happy is not the word I would use but people have shown they are willing to look away as long as things still stay as normal.

Wheeler, the mayor, went out to protest with people he thought would be the base of the city only to find out that he was wrong. Went on pushing the ideology and backed by the movements of the D.A crime spiraled out of control, police budgets cut, and then the spiral grew wider. There will be a time where Portland has to begin to grow but the ideology of the past decade needs to be discarded for the toxic process that it has been. Not because the political party is toxic, it isn’t but because what has taken Portland has been thought to be for some moral superiority and brilliant action when morally its often disgusting under the surface and tactically its as useful as a paper seat belt.

This is not going to Brown and what she did because she caused damages as well a lot of them, but everyone thought they could stand together against Trump instead of actually working on bettering their areas. If it had been done it would be the greatest flaunting against their foes because what the president had wished when those described above hated him, could look to their city and say. We are doing it and we got it. That would be too hard they found out and did the political thing of try to get people to look away except there was no place to look without their failings on full display. It is now something where other cities and states look at, and go ‘don’t be like that’.

I wish there was some good news, but there isn’t and won’t be for a while, but everything can change and Portland will too, it just may take some time.

Stay Strong.

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Three Tips For Your Future

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

Back in college, for the first time, I went to the Art Institute of Portland for a double degree program of video game art and design and media art and design. Considering what I have done since then, the things I picked up definitely helped, but unfortunately, I also had to pay my way then, which led me to work full-time at a gas station between short cooking jobs. Accelerated double degree with a full-time job is the fastest way to go from a thinking human being to something short of a crash test dummy without the impact.

Then it was not about staying up all night. There was one day a week that it had to be done because transit, work, and otherwise would not allow me to sleep. I got through a year, and when I had to stay up a week to study more, it all ended with a moment when I passed out in class. The teacher, after hearing about how there was no rest between classes ( which was once a week), called my roommates to take me back home and gave me a B for the course. Despite being three years with everything, I had only made it through one. My family didn’t want to help, and my roommates thought they would bury me if, for one reason or another, something didn’t stop.

Out of all the faults, I never wanted it to be known that I did not try. Often there would even be a point where people would get nervous if their body would break down. There was never enough backup to get enough rest, and there has been more than one doctor that past sins have come due, and my body is now footing the bill for it. With things going, there is always stuff to do and not enough energy, so if someone out there is maybe realizing the things-to-do list is getting a bit big, this post is for you.

Call it the learning of someone who crashed into a lot more times. Some hints from someone who may have walked down different roads.

  1. Find the value (in time) of what you are doing. We have all been in places where we have to do one thing after another, and the energy is just running out. There are times when you need to push on being tired and times when you will need to force yourself to rest because that will get you the greatest return. Look to what you need to and find at what point your time gets rewarded. If you need four more hours but can only muster two, you may be able to get to four, but after a certain point, the time you take for today will be taken out of tomorrow resting up.
  2. No one can go forever. Rest is not something that is needed just for the weak. Where people often forget in trying to act tough is that even machines will need some upkeep and often have people around them to make sure things are at peak efficiency. Rest is not a weakness. It is something to make sure your time working on things is going to be as close to a hundred percent as possible. 
  3. Never stop learning. One of those fortune cookie lines that touch on something people seem to still forget. When you stop learning, you stop growing. Does not matter if you are six or sixty, powerhouse or paraplegic. The moment you stop learning about something is when you need to figure out the exit strategy. Sometimes you will find things that may not give you value right after you put in. Sometimes, you will discover new ways to act in certain situations. Learning isn’t something that will provide a direct response. After you learn, you need to give it a couple tries. Other times what you know may not work for your situation. 

We will keep the pearls there for now, but I do hope this year you have made a lot of progress, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one. We still got a few posts before the year ends, though. 

Stay strong. 

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Portland Death Spiral

This blog was initially built on the idea that is going from homeless to a semi-productive member of society, there would be some things I can see that others would miss. One could even say that because of my intelligence and my experience, there are bits and details that politicians do not have or would only use in the political batoning for their own political side. Those who have read this know my politics are rather centered and may pull from both sides depending on what may be needed for specific problems to be removed or handled.

That being said, this is not against a side or a party.

Portland is spiraling into something not a lot of people want to be associated with. Stolen cars are being broken down in broad daylight. Homeless people all over, and laws that made it so there would be no problem carrying all kinds of drugs without a problem. The city commissioners went through protest after protest. Then, there was no movement when they had to rebuild from the ashes. All people who are against them have been deemed from the opposing party when they have made error after error, and the city right now is hurting to the point where no one wants to live there. Nobody wants to open a business there, and there are more taxes than in the surrounding areas.

There are so many problems that when you look at what is going on, you have to ask, where do you start? From that, I do not have an answer, and there is something that seems to be missing every day. Like the city had finally died, it feels passed on. While moments had been good, looking almost normal for small snippets, it is about what the normal is, and the normal in the city is a far shadow from what it once was. There are not enough good things coming, and a lot of the bad has been left to fester, meaning there is even more that needs to get done to bring it back. Again, it looks terrible, and there is not a lot that can be done right now without people enforcing laws and punishing those guilty. None of this is new, and if it is, look in the back posts; trust me, there is plenty to get mad about.

I haven’t written about my home city because unless it is more people not doing their jobs or people trying politically smack people only to get a riptide in the wrong direction, there just isn’t much to say. People in charge in Portland must be the most extensive collection of abject failures in politics. If any of them can look from this time and say they did a good job, I would love to hear their side because it looked like they just sat and played Genshin Impact all term.

Who knows, when things change, I will write about it, and if something is horrible, I will do that too, but right now, I really do not want to. May do some cheap and fun foods to make for later. With the cost of everything, we can all use a couple extra pennies for groceries. We shall see, though.

Keep your head up and stay strong.

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Panic Attacks and Amazons

People have bad days, sometimes they have days where you wonder why you got to a certain point and how they can do so without having at least a big migraine or you have a panic attack. Everything gets to the point where you just want to survive while doing something. This past week was sort of that to me. Roommate was spiraling, people did not want to do their job because they never had to, other people were getting pushed, and no one seems to be reading the rules and laws to which a modicum of civilized culture is maintained.

Overall not a fun time. Sometimes you need to get through the challenging moments. Now, some may be surprised to know I do get panic attacks. It happens when I feel things are slipping past me and are essential to me, like when I miss a point on a quiz or a test. I get into this feedback loop of my own self-depreciation, just going over how that point was the most important.

Now, one can pass a class when you miss one point. It is a rarity when that is not the case. Still, we need to remember when you are in a panic attack that, you are in a place where survival instinct is in one area, and your normal activities are in another. You are held between the two, where things feel both fast and slow to the point where you feel out of place, even if you are sitting down. The thing is that no matter what happens during your bad days, you just need to get by. You need to make it and finish whatever you are. Afterward, you are just sitting in a funk of hatred and wondering where you failed and how you go on but what happens when things are not going as you need them to go.

I am so happy for those who never have it because a panic attack is a royal kick to the head. Not fun to the degree that I would rather wrestle an amazon practicing leg scissors than do it again. It is a great pain, and I think suits did a great job showing it.

Particularly the last couple of minutes, but sometimes you just have to get through the bad times because, with enough practice and enough work, the good times will outnumber the bad.

Hope you have a good time, and stay strong.

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