26 February, 2007

WATER!? How Preposterous.

It’s nice, how one must rely on a supply of personal bottled water just to have a Reliable source of hydration…

There is no water fountain located in the facility that I have spotted. I’ve asked about water, and they tell me that they bring in this cooler of water.

They average 104 men in the shelter each night.

The result is, I have to spend what little money I have to procure water on days that no charitable organization has dropped by to give us food or water on, to actually be able to have water on hand, and not meet the usually empty when I need it cooler.

This, for a facility designed to help out those who are in need of a place to stay out of the elements, does not make the slightest bit of sense whatsoever.

Salvation Army Rules: Two Bags Per Person.

Bed numbers 23, 24, Dorm 4, Men’s side. From my observations, this stuff all belongs to one person.

Last night, many were rejected, or halted at the door with orders to break down what they have, for the amount of stuff they had.

One elderly gentleman, perhaps in his late fifties, or early sixties, has one very long bag with all his stuff in it, and a rather small handbag. He was rejected at the desk, being told that the long bag was too big.
This man had to go sleep somewhere outside last night, and I do not feel that this was an appropriate action for them to take, especially with the following:

1: He had been staying there for a month already, from the commentary I gathered.
2: There was no advance notice, whatsoever, that this was a rule that they were going to strictly enforce, to allow people time throughout the day to actually sort things, and get it disposed of, or put away, or what have you.

I was halted at the door, personally, because I have a rolling suitcase, a backpack, and a handbag. The suitcase holds my clothing. The backpack holds most of the food that was given to me, as well as a few books I’ve checked out from the library. The handbag holds the rest of the books I’ve checked out (I go through plenty of books, with the bus rides I take, as well as the time I have to sit in waiting rooms of some sort to get things done), as well as paperwork that I need to keep in good condition for various reasons.

The homeless look out for each other, though. One guy offered to take my smallest bag — the handbag — in for me, since he had nothing, in exchange for a couple of oranges and a pudding from my backpack, which was an offer I graciously accepted.

Another guy had to completely give up his suitcase, because they refused to let him in with it, a garbage bag, and his backpack. He had been staying there for a while, as well.

The question to you all is:
Is this appropriate, even, and fair treatment of Tampa’s homeless, by a group with such a name as “The Salvation Army”?

[tags]Salvation Army, Questionable Ethics[/tags]

I’m at the library this morning before I go to my appointment at 10:30 today, checking my email, and making sure that the spammers aren’t goofing up the blog with their crap. I had one ‘comment’ to moderate, which was spam, as usual.

I went to check the stuff that Akismet had protected me, and noticed that Akismet has blocked (a bit past) its 20,000th spam comment on this weblog.

I can remember when I used to have to delete spam manually, and the ungodly amount of false positives that I managed to get with everything else in place. While I’d really rather put something in that would spare this server the trouble of even processing these stupid messages in the first place, I’m grateful for the protection that I get by even using Akismet in the first place.

[tags]Akismet, Automattic, WordPress, Spam Protection[/tags]