We have pretty much officially moved our blog to HERE.

Thank You and have a great day!

Sincerely,

Peterson’s Convenience Store Blog.

Violinist Timothy Horner, originally uploaded by genogenogenogeno.

This talented musician visits our Morrison store frequently. Usually after performing for a few hours around the corner for the waiting Max riders and people passing through. He has soothed my eardrums many a time while on my lunch break, and I always find my state of mental being relaxed and realigned when I return to work afterward.

As part of our mission to promote the local community, we are honored to introduce you to this fine musician. You can usually find him along SW Yamhill, between SW 9th and 10th, across from Art Media and next to The Real Mother Goose.

We are working on a in-depth story on Mr. Horner, complete with music videos that will be filmed in Downtown Portland and vicinity.

Here is a very short test video of him playing the violin. The video had originally been edited and converted to a format that was to be uploaded to Vimeo, however there was some kind of issue with their Database at the time of this writing and the video could not be uploaded to our Vimeo account, so we decided to upload it to Google Video. Not surprisingly, the quality of the video is not so good because Google Video has different parameters for their videos than Vimeo does. But it’s still kinda neat.

WordPress.org is open source blogging software that is freely available to anyone to download. The software must be downloaded and installed onto a computer. WordPress, being internet software, must be installed on a web server–that’s a computer that is set up to serve web pages over the internet–and your personal computer probably isn’t a web server. So, to make the free WordPress software work, you have to own a web server or rent some space on one. That’s called hosting and it’s not usually free. There are plenty of good hosts out there who will let you install WordPress on their web servers for a reasonable fee. You can then do anything you like with your own copy of WordPress: install plugins and themes, etc.

WordPress.com is different. It’s a web site that provides blogs hosted free of charge. The software on WordPress.com is very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It is a multi-user version of WordPress that allows many thousands of blogs to be hosted on a single web server. The free blog hosting does not come with the ability to upload plugins or themes. Because any change in the software affects every blog on the system, some of the things you can do on your own hosted WordPress blog are disabled here. Some of these features may become available in the future as paid upgrades, comparable with traditional hosting fees.

WordPress.org Benefits

• Ability to upload themes
• Ability to upload plugins
• Great community
• Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded

WordPress.org Cons

• You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month
• Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
• You’re responsible for stopping spam
• You have to handle backups
• You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes out
• If you get a huge spike in traffic (like Digg or Slashdot) you site will probably go down

WordPress.com Benefits

• It’s free and much easier
• Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, backups, security, etc
• Your blog is on dozens of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
• Your posts are backed up hourly
• You get extra traffic from blogs of the day and tags
• You can find like-minded bloggers using tag and friend surfer
• Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi

WordPress.com Cons

• Limited customization of themes (though we’re adding more every day)
• You can’t hack the code behind your blog

It will take us a while to figure out all the details on how to make all this work. But our goal is to create a really fun, informative blog/website that is enjoyable to visit on a daily basis with interesting stories about our community and the people who inhabit it. We are working on having a Peterson’s Live Web Cam that is accessible 24 hours a day, from anywhere on the planet with an internet connection. We’re also pondering on adding other fun things like simple games that you can play while you are on your *ahem, lunch, *ahem at work. 

To visit our new blog site, click HERE. 

Which happens to be our old savepetersons.com website. We will getting a new domain to replace that one however, as we are working very hard not to have to use it again.

Thanks for visiting,

  Peterson’s Crew

Have a great weekend!

Although we do not sell loaves of bread, we do sell chances at winning some, and this Saturday’s Powerball Jackpot is NINETY TWO MILLION DOLLARS!!! Can you imagine winning that? Even after taxes that’s a lot of Benjamin’s! So why not drop a buck or two on your favorite numbers. You never know…..

And remember, ticket sales end for Saturday’s drawing at 6:29 p.m. Pacific time.

And if you win, you can buy a bakery. That way you’ll never run out of bread in more ways than one.

Therese, originally uploaded by genogenogenogeno.

Part of the charm of a 24-hour store is the veritable cornucopia of personalities one meets. Peterson’s customers come from all walks of life, and all corners of the world. The Morrison store is located across from the Western Culinary Institute, and many students drop by on their way to and from class.

This is Teresa. She came to Portland from Butte, Montana to study the restaurant business. She found hotel hospitality interesting, so now she’s studying that as well. Eventually she wants to return to Montana to open her own place, perhaps a restaurant or a bed & breakfast. She will go far, I’m sure. (At least as far as Montana…) If her skills match her personality, the Big Sky will be the limit!

Teresa is a big fan of Diet Coke, but she has been known to pick up a bottle of wine on occasion. (Relax Mom, it’s strictly for, ahem, cooking purposes, ahem.) She’s been seen buying candy, but doesn’t need it. She’s plenty sweet enough!

manna, originally uploaded by genogenogenogeno.

Neighboring businesses rely on one another for a plethora of reasons. Maybe the parking garage next door runs out of one dollar bills to make change with, so they’ll come in and ask if they can trade a [twenty dollar bill] for twenty [one dollar bills]. Or maybe we run out of one’s and ask them in kind. Or a bartender down the street runs out of Tabasco© sauce and then yells to the barback “Hurry down to Peterson’s and see if they have any Tabasco©, I’ve got a party of four waiting for their ‘Slow Burn Martini’s.“

And of course there is the age old, “Howdy neighbor, spare a cup of sugar?”, which I had to do one time when we ran out of sugar for our coffee bar and ended up purchasing a few dozen packets from a neighboring establishment until our order came in the next day.

Well tonight we had Rob from the Yamhill Pub stopping in for some bags of ice. The Yamhill buys quite a bit of bagged ice from us, and we are happy to oblige. I think it has something to do with the fact that most people like their drinks cold (duh). Whatever the reason, they are always very grateful that we have a good sized freezer stocked with the stuff, and Rob, as you can see from the picture above, is quite elated about it, and so were we.

Rob has lived in Portland for over 20 years. So I think that qualifies him as a local. Rob works as the door man and also as bartender. He tells me he sends business our way almost every night, and went on to say “Peterson’s is frickin’ awesome!” We think Rob is pretty awesome as well. 

Awesome is good, definitely good.

Faithful Customers, originally uploaded by genogenogenogeno.

We have lots of faithful customers, and we love each and every one of them. They are undoubtedly the back bone of our existence. One of our regular customers, B.Gibson, has been with us since the very beginning. She boasts proudly “I have known Mr. Peterson for almost 25 years, I met him when he first opened this (Morrison) store, and he is such a nice person.” B. Gibson told me she worked for the Phone Company for over 30 years, and now works part time at FedEx. She loves to play Lotto, and is partial to Powerball and Megabucks.

She thought she was having a bad hair day, and didn’t want me to take her picture, although I thought she was very pretty. But I respected her wishes and just took a snapshot of her filling out the Lotto, which she was totally cool with.

Jin Young and Kwang Hee are exchange students from South Korea. Both Jin and Kwang have studied Aerospace Engineering at University in South Korea, and are currently in the states for one year. They are currently attending a University in our neighbor state of Idaho, and are studying, you guessed it, Engineering.

When asked what qualities they liked best about Portland, they responded by saying “The abundance of beautiful roses here, and the MAX.”