mail@davemoral.es

No equivocation, Rhonda and I totally, completely, utterly struck out with a choice in hotels this weekend. I wont go so far as to say it was the hotel from hell, not quite there, but close, close in all the wrong ways.

My wife had only the best of intentions; she was being thoughtful, considerate and spontaneous. A weekend of rain and cancelled beach plans lay ahead of us on Saturday afternoon. Rhonda went online, found an inexpensive hotel in Williamsburg (30 minute drive) with an indoor pool. She booked two nights stay, counting on a spur-of-the-moment family get away, permitting David to enjoy the pool and a hotel room (he is still at the jumping on the beds, hotel adventure phase). More important, she pre-paid in full to receive a 25% discount, a fatal mistake.

We planned to drive down, spend the night in the hotel, order pizza, rest up, then have all Sunday to take a family day and enjoy shopping, touring Williamsburg, the College (William & Mary), a purposeful family day.

All those plans held until we arrived at the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel. Now I know, you get what you pay for, and $50 for a night at a hotel is not the Ritz, nor the Hilton, but this place was a dump. Leaking ceiling tiles, dirty floors, the “bar”, “restaurant” and “tea room” all closed and under “construction and renovation”. One got the impression that these spaces had been under a permanent state of “renovation” for months if not years. The “pool” was unheated, a half dozen dirty towels tossed on a table in a corner. The Plexiglas roof that covered the pool had not been cleaned in decades, to say nothing of the excessive rust the lined the steel beams.

The rooms and their decor was plucked right out of the 1970′s, with brick interior walls covered with thick layers of white paint. The toilet had perhaps 1/2 pound of water pressure and backed up constantly. Maintenance personnel were non-existent, and calls to the front desk brought no resolution. After several calls, “Phil” finally came upstairs with a plunger wrapped in a trash bag, and then spent ten minutes trying to dislodge a clog.

Close inspection of the elevator revealed that it had not been inspected by the county in two years and had an air of a death trap. Essentially the whole “Plaza Hotel” gave the impression of an establishment barely staying in business or on the way out of business.

To make matters worse the weather has remained overcast, rainy and humid. In total, the Morales’ experienced an eventful and challenging weekend away.

Thought I should post a long overdue update on what the Morales family is up to:

• David Matthew started school a few weeks back.  Our new second grader is back in the school routine, doing homework, loving reading, making friends…
• Work for me progresses as always.  I am still at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton and making the commute down from Richmond each day.  I just launched a new version of the college website which I am particularly proud of.  Work also continues full speed on a campus-wide streaming video initiative and a major push on podcasting and iTunes U, which I am leading.  Beyond that, just trying to keep my head down during times of change and uncertainty with the college leadership picture and state budget problems.
• Rhonda took a job with Sun Trust as a Business Process and Efficiency Analyst, working on the mortgage-side of the house.  Her job is safe, no worries, and truth-be-told, her department is thriving in time when the company is looking for efficiencies…. imagine that (lol).  Reagardless she loves her work, telecommutes most days and works from home, which has a great impact on our gas bill for the month. *grin*
• Not much else news around the Morales home.  We did install an irrigation system recently as we make plans for a hoped-for move in the spring.  Other home improvement and projects sap up a great deal of time (who would have thought).  If the home market kicks up (Richmond has been stable on the home values front) we hope to sell and move down closer to Williamsburg or the Virginia Peninsula, settling around some better schools and closer to family and life in this part of Virginia.
• Free time has been occupied by lots of World of Warcraft (to the annoyance of Rhonda) and I have become quite hardcore in my commitment to a group of friends as we do raids (10 and 25 person events, many hours in length) and other activity.  David Matthew and I also bond over a lot of video game playing.  He takes after his dad in that regard, as he loves, not only Warcraft, but most anything on Xbox 360.  David is spooky good on some action games, well and beyond the level of proficiency I would have expected with a seven year old.  Who knows? Perhaps he has a future in game development…

I have been a Sid Meier fan for years, I’ve loved his games dating back to the very first Civilization on the Mac, played the whole series, Alpha Centauri, all of em…  Never in a million years would I have expected the quintessential PC game to translate well to video game consoles and a controller.  The thought of controlling Civilization with anything other than a mouse and keyboard seemed like a pipe dream.  I picked up Civilization Revolution on the Xbox 360 today and was very impressed.  David Matthew and I (he serves as my military advisor ) ) have sunk about four hours so far into this…. I am sure there are dozens more to come.  Very highly recommended.

After a long time, far too long, I have returned to the notion of a personal website.  For many years I maintained a personal site, posting and pontificating.  Then day to day life got in the way, I wandered in the wilderness, but have now come full circle.

Don’t expect the return of webcams, lots of video and other flash… but I will do my best to keep a steady flow of news, photos and pontification on topics…