Category Archives: Notes from Self

A Note from Self

I was surprised to notice that it has been three years since I launched my hobby website, PetFreeHotels.com — it feels like half that time.  I thought I might take a moment, with your indulgence, to share various morsels and tidbits from the endeavor.

To recap, PetFreeHotels.com grew out of my searches for hotels in the cities where our families live which, for my spouse’s sake, do not allow pets.  One of us (I won’t say who) thought we could make money producing a pet-free hotel listing website.  The other of us saw that more as a programming challenge than a productive economic venture.

The other of us was right, but I went ahead with it anyway.

I will say at the outset that the idea would have been moot if (a) my spouse did not have pet allergies or (b) if even one hotel booking site offered a pet-free checkbox next to the ubiquitous pet-friendly checkbox.  The latter is only a matter of time, and it will be the signal for me to close the shutters on PetFreeHotels.com.

• • • 

Websites are pretty much the last arena where 20th-century software hobbyists like me can still dabble, thanks mainly to the WordPress platform.  The 100 Billionth Person (the blog that you and 34 others are now reading), ART @ CHC (my rarely-visited photo site) and Pet-Free Hotels (consulted by 450-500 people a week) each have very different looks and functionality, but I built all of them with WordPress.

More accurately, I built them with WordPress plus countless “how do I do x” look-ups on Stack Overflow.  That was the go-to tool for amateurs like me in the Pre-AI Era.  Now, AI just hands you the code needed for the task at hand, whether you’re a grey-whisker coder or work for Microsoft, Meta or Google.

While I have yet to use AI-generated code in my sites, I do admit to copying code posted by contributors to Stack Overflow, code I haven’t taken time to fully understand but will use if it’s easy to incorporate and it works.  Notably, such borrowed code forms the basis for the search-a-city feature on PetFreeHotels.com.  Although I put lots of my own time into that feature, its core code came from someone else, and who knows where he/she copied that from, not that I’m asking.

So a software purist I am not… but I digress, one of only a host of my usual digressions.

• • • 

Out of a sense of duty to my visitors, I held off promoting PetFreeHotels.com until I had amassed 1000 pet-free listings — but even that figure averages to only 20 hotels per state, scattershot coverage by any measure.  To make early user visits worthwhile, I first focused on the most popular U.S. destinations: New York City, San Fransisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Las Vegas, Disneyland, and Orlando.  I also searched for pet-free hotel listings near hallowed American icons: Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Smoky Mountains, The Alamo.

This served to get PetFreeHotels.com off the ground, but my gut-feel told me that the site wouldn’t be legit until it had 2000 listings, and not all that useful until I hit 3000.  And so I went to work.

• • • 

How does one find a pet-free hotel?  It depends, because the exact wording of pet policies varies from brand to brand.  Marriott makes it easy — my search phrase for Marriott hotels (Courtyard, Fairfield, Sheraton, SpringHill, and others) is site:marriott.com “pets not” location, where you replace location with the desired destination.  Best Western also has a reliable search phrase: site:bestwestern.com “not accepted” location. 

Some corporate hotels hide their pet policies on pop-up windows (Choice, Wyndham) or drop-down text (IHG), silly obstacles in the way of assessing a hotel’s pet-friendliness.*  My take is that this is done for a reason, because corporations do everything for a reason.  I learned that I just have to bite the bullet and put “no pets” in the search phrase for these chains and hope my time is not wasted sifting out pet-friendly sites.  It was a big help learning the pet-friendly brands I can ignore (this cat is giving you the cold shoulder, Sonesta, Red Roof Inn and La Quinta!)

I search for independent hotels using the phrase hotel location “pets not”  (or “no pets”) followed by a long string of “exclude this term” items such as rentals, condos, hotels.com, expedia.com, bringfido.com and the like.  The return on this investment is pretty low: independents tend to be pet-friendly and many don’t even bother posting a pet policy, but I feel like I owe it to users to offer some choices beyond the corporate brands.

• • • 

As of today, there are 3156 hotel listings on PetFreeHotels.com.  Although I ensure each and every entry is “pet-free” when I add it to my database, I find that the listings degrade over time.  Hotels close, change hands, change brands, and/or change their pet policies.  The down-range class of hotels seem especially volatile in that regard — I suspect owners become more permissive toward pets when they’re trying to balance their books.

Unfortunately, hotels don’t notify me when they change pet policies — which means that I have to periodically re-verify them all, state by state.  While this takes time away from my expanding the database, think of the visitor experience: what good is a pet-free hotel site if 10%–15% of the listings are pet-friendly, re-branded, or closed?  I would like my listings to be 98% accurate but, given the amount of churn I see, that will be hard to sustain.

I’m in the process of doing a full site review now — in the past four weeks, I’ve done about one-third of the states, starting with the most-visited.  These represent about three-fifths of the listings.  It’s a rather mindless task:  I treat it like knitting (not that I ever knitted), something I can do in odd moments while I’m pretending to be productive.

Hopefully I’ll finish the review next month and then wait a year to do it all over again.

• • • 

I’ll close this fascinating account with a few statistics for the insatiably curious:

• What are the most-visited (and least visited) states on Pet-Free Hotels?

Over the past 60 days, the most popular states (based on page views, not users) have been Tennessee (561), Florida (507), North Carolina (429), California (355), and Georgia (299).  These states, led by Florida, typically comprise the top five over any extended time frame.  Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York and South Carolina usually round out the top ten. (I didn’t expect Pennsylvania.)

The ten least-viewed states were Arkansas, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, North Dakota, Delaware, Wyoming, Connecticut, Mississippi and West Virginia; West Virigina had 43 views in the last 60 days and Arkansas a mere 12.  No surprise here: other than Hawaii, these states aren’t the first ones that come to my mind as big draws for pet-averse travelers.

I am only able to cite these figures because I had the foresight to dedicate a separate page to each state in my WordPress website.  This makes it easy for Google Analytics to report visitor totals on a statewise basis, which helps me focus on the most popular states.

• So, how much money am I making on this?

I have a two-part answer.  Regards the first part, I allow Google to place one AdSense ad (whose content I do not control) on each page that lists 8 or more results.  Oftentimes, Google misfires and inserts an ad for pet products or services — just what my visitors are looking for!

While I have never been impressed with Google’s ad choices, Google thinks my ad-views are worth $7–$9 a month, depending on clicks.  Over a year’s time, that would pay for a one-night stay at the Red Roof Inn in Washington, D.C. (two pets allowed, first one free).

As to the second part, I also display a “Buy Me A Coffee” appeal when the search yields 20 or more results.  (Because how dare I ask for money if you only see 2 EconoLodges and a Microtel!)  “Buy Me A Coffee” donations from kind supporters have totaled $84 in the last 6 months.  This had paid the cost of the petfreehotels.com domain name and hosting the website, with some money left over for more generous tips to restaurant servers and fast-food workers.

• How much time am I putting into this so-called hobby?

You don’t want to know — which really means I don’t want to know.  There’s obviously an opportunity cost here, in that activities like music, photography, reading, writing and my household to-do list have taken a back-seat, because I’m busy with PetFreeHotels.com.

But right now, given the events of the year, I’m happy just doing my knitting.

_________

* As comedian Mitch Hedberg observed about double-wrapped Pepperidge Farm bread: “I don’t need another step between me and toast.”

Dear Readers:

First of all, I can’t believe it’s November already.  Where did October go?

I don’t care to say much more about Helene’s devastating aftermath.  For one thing, the tragic stories are anywhere you care to look and I have nothing to add to them.  For the other thing, our personal experience falls mainly into the nuisance category — a nuisance of hours, of physical and mental energy, of dollars (not sure whether FEMA will help on that account) that would not have been expended save for the deluge of rains and wind.

You don’t expect to hear the phrase “we were fortunate” from someone who lost power, phone and data for 17 days, running water for 20 days, and drinkable water for weeks to come.  Yes, we were fortunate, and saying this carries the weight of those who were not.

Consider that schools in Yancey County, 40 miles to our north, will remain closed at least through November 8.  Roads there are still impassable for school buses.  Many parents can’t drive their children to school or themselves to work, if their workplaces are still open in those parts.

Bad things dealt out by fortune, or by circumstances set in place long before their victims were born, form the basis of survivor’s guilt and one’s dealings therewith.

• • • 

Will Asheville recover?  Or will impatient tourists just move on to the next trendy place, leading to further economic struggle?  Local businesses are doing their best to rekindle the Blue Ridge Mountain flame from the waterlogged embers of our pre-Helene reputation.  But this will take years, and many businesses will not have enough capital to survive. Hundreds of service workers will leave to make a living elsewhere despite the draw of our ostentatious mansion and our colorful fall leaves.  Let’s hope that Appalachian tourism does not succumb to the same forces that doomed its furniture and textile manufacturing many decades ago.

• • • 

A mini-slide undermined a neighbor’s driveway, an expensive nuisance from Helene.

• • • 

The Asheville NextDoor website (your town must have one too) has witnessed a flood of “helpful” people post-Helene, offering used furniture for sale, handyman services for sale, massages for sale, everything for sale.  Because this is America, and America invented the idea that there’s no time like the anxious present to make a buck.

I do understand that many people might be desperate to raise cash.  However, the recent spate of sales pitches on our NextDoor site surprises even me.  It nearly surpasses — but not quite — the number of posts about lost cats and found dogs.

• • • 

Americans think that democracy means you can believe anything you want and that facts are up for a vote.  Which is why, on post-Helene NextDoor, I have been reading too many comments like this:

“The dust has some bad bad contimantents in it that will burn your skin, not to mention the lungs. I have a mammogram appointment coming up in November, I pray it rains enough to wash away all this mess!!  Stay away from this dust if you know what is good for you”

“it’s not lake water the water is not safe in any way get wa water test kit off amazon it has heavy metals chlorine is off the charts 8x stronger than safe human exposure all the chemical treatments they are doing in the north fork to settle the sediment is not safe for Humans to use no joke to and boiling it will not help even tough they are telling us that why do you think water is free everywhere a friends dog got gardia from drinking it fema gives you a hotel voucher to everyone to shower”

“I’ve seen too many posts from people who have gotten rashes and burns and skin peeling OR have gotten sick after showering in it. Supposedly it’s a combo of both bacteria and chemicals. I have showered in it twice but had intense dry skin that flakes off (never had that before!) and intense itching that lasts for days. When I washed my hair, it felt dirtier than before I washed it. With all of the chemical spills and findings in the water, I’m beginning to wonder if we will ever have water in our homes that we can shower in.”

For the record, I’ve been showering in the City of Asheville water and so far only four of my fingers have fallen off, which left me just enough to type this post.  If I stop showering now, I should be able to write another one next week.

• • • 

I want to hide in my bed starting Tuesday, November 5 at 6:59 pm and ending whenever the sirens stop sounding.  I will take a crossword puzzle book with me, with no dictionary.  Leave me alone until Thursday morning, then bring me a strong cup of coffee brewed with FEMA water and tell me the news.  Not that the people on NextDoor will have magically become astute between now and then.

A Kentucky country singer named Larry Redmon wrote and recorded a number called, “Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone,” which could very well have been the theme music for the many days I have spent cleaning/fixing/rebuilding our modest water feature over the past decade-plus.

But, didn’t you break your toe and decide you were done with all that last year, my readers may well ask!  Well, here’s the latest and greatest (unmute to hear water and bird sounds):

The big change I made this spring was installing a low platform in the pool, over which I laid a sheet of filter fabric to keep debris out of the pool, and then laying flat stones on top of that.  So the water reservoir itself is now invisible — there’s only a little water on the surface of the rocks, to make it easy to blow leaves out.  And hopefully no more sludge to scoop out in the spring.

Here is a brief history of the Pool at Pooh Corner.  Click the links, there will be a quiz.

2012:  The original platform for the statue, with just a dribble of water.

2016:  In the quest for ever more splash, I added the double cascade.  The water reservoir was just a 10-gallon pail hidden in a drain in front of the statue, which only accommodated a small pump.

2017:  We paid some people to rebuild the water feature and dig out a proper pool so that a bigger pump could be installed.  The thing turned into a rock quarry and took a good bite out of the walkway as well.  I had misgivings from the start.

2022:  Now known as the Pit of Despair, the water feature was continuously plagued by leaks and debris.  I decided that I would take matters into my own hands and rebuild it myself in the spring.

2023:  My rebuild project came to a pathetic halt after I fell and broke my toe.  The people I hired to finish the job did OK but I could see their hearts weren’t into it — it wasn’t their usual line-of-business, they acted like they were doing me a favor, and they really weren’t on board with my objectives (minimal maintenance).   But it looked nice.

Which brings us to now.  I never read Moby Dick but I wonder if I unconsciously turned the water feature into a Captain Ahab kind of retirement obsession.  It bothers me that such a trivial thing has grabbed so much of my mind and my time.  But in the words of Texas gospel blues singer Blind Willie Johnson, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.