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Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
So there is totally going to be at least an attempted terrorist attack on this thing, right? Apparently they still have to sell about 1/3rd of the tickets to it.

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Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

quote:

A stray dog inside the hotel, building dust everywhere and debris scattered all around. That's what some Olympic-accredited visitors have found on arrival in the mountains above Sochi.

...


Joerg Reuter, a German who is working at his fifth Olympics for the European Pressphoto Agency, was one of the unlucky guests when he arrived on Jan. 19. After seeing several unacceptable rooms, including the one with the dog, he was forced to travel back down to the coast to find a place to sleep.

...


"The outdoor area and floors/staircase/elevator inside were still under construction and completely dirty," Reuter wrote, adding that the room he was shown "had no light in the main room, the water out of the tap was yellow/brown, the air conditioning, TV, kitchenware were all not working ... Beside this the room was totally dirty and everywhere covered with dust."

The next room was worse.

"In some rooms you actually saw that there are still the construction workers sleeping and living," he wrote.

...

Almost every room is missing something: lightbulbs, TVs, lamps, chairs, curtains, wifi, heat, hot water. Shower curtains are a valuable piece of the future black market here. (One American photographer was simply told, “You will not get a shower curtain.”)

...

Hotel reservations are lost, then found, if you’re lucky. German photographer Joerg Reuter arrived in the mountains and found the first room offered to him to be full of construction debris, with yellow-brown water and appliances that didn’t work.

...

(They are reportedly now killing the numerous stray dogs here, which makes every adorable mutt you see the hero of a Disney movie, directed by Quentin Tarantino. At a press conference Tuesday, Sochi 2014 spokeswoman Alexandra Kosterina said “There is a special service that catches the stray dogs and this, as far as I know, they have a special shelter for the stray dogs, and make a medical examination of them. Like pest control.” It was not comforting.)

But the hotels are where the Russian Games are visibly straining at the seams. In the Ekaterininsky Kvartal hotel, the elevator is broken and the stairway is unlit, with stairs of varying and unpredictable heights.

Outside the Chistya Prudy, there is a bag of concrete in a palm tree, leaking grey down the trunk. Inside, some of the electrical outlets are just plates screwed into drywall.

Sports Illustrated’s Brian Cazeneuve had to clamber through a window to get out of his hotel on Tuesday morning, since the doors were all unexpectedly locked. Chris Stevenson of Sun Media was without electricity for the first day.

My Postmedia colleague Cam Cole’s bathtub came loose from the wall, and therefore rocks like a ship. He has a shower curtain, though. In the Rosa Khutor section of the mountains, Stacy St. Clair of the Chicago Tribune was told by the front desk that if the water worked, “do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.” When it did come out of the tap, it looked like a lot like cloudy urine.

...

Oh, and one journalist in the Omega hotel complex had to refuse a colleague’s request to stay a night in the second twin bed because … well, there’s no easy way to say this, but when the first journalist arrived, someone had left an indeterminate amount of semen on the sheets of the second bed, and those sheets had been taken away for cleaning, and hadn’t come back.

I kind of want to visit one of these hotels. I mean not stay there but just see the trainwreck first hand.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.


For people that hate pooping by themselves.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.




Multi-level toilets:


Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Good Citizen posted:

Ha ha


Hmmmmm better open this suspicious russian e-mail i just received

what? hacked? Who are these computer wizards?

He says his Mac, Galaxy S4 and Windows computer were all hacked, if they were up to date and he didn't stupidly open up a trojan are there even known un-patched exploits for those devices? Did Russia just decide to unleash a bunch of zero day exploits?

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Time posted:

American authorities are warning airlines with flights to Russia for the Olympic Games to be on the lookout for bombs in toothpaste containers or other similar cosmetic tubes.

Citing unnamed government officials, CNN and ABC News report that the warning was issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to both domestic and foreign airlines. The warning says intelligence reports suggest such containers could be used to store the ingredients for a bomb to be assembled aboard an aircraft. Authorities cautioned that they haven’t identified any specific threat to the U.S., CNN and ABC report.

I thought it was interesting that other news reports were more specific in the threat only applied to Russia.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Al Borland posted:

Needs more chinese drywall and electrical cords hanging everywhere.
But a good start.

I insulated the dog stairs to my bed with this chilly weather.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
I think one of the amazing things about Russia is if you look at their high profile billionaires they are all corrupt as gently caress criminals, like, it's not even a secret that they made their money criminally, many of them have actually been convicted multiple times of major criminal activity.

And no one gives a gently caress, sure it is known fact that the gained their wealthy through criminal activity and stealing state assets but no one does anything about it, it's just accepted as fact, what are you going to do? And not just in Russia, they are openly stashing away assets worldwide and buying up billions of dollars of real estate and no one gives a gently caress that it is plainly money derived from criminal activity.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
What the hell is this music?

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
When does the terrorist attack happen? Do the women in the stupid hats and rings blow up or something?

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
So there was an attempted hijacking of a plane from the Ukraine.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
This music, I just can't.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Fool and the World posted:

I figured you'd be into it of all people

I haven't snorted a bunch of cocaine or taken some E.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
I just noticed the people in the white coats dancing, WTF?

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Morpheus posted:

That floor projection really allows for some cool effects though

I wonder how they are doing that, I assumed it was from the ceiling but I noticed there are no projection shadows, back projection seems like it would be incredibly difficult.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
Air flute.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
Those dresses are what happens without gays.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

myshl0ng posted:

I guess I can't buy the projectors they are using from the store

http://www.barco.com/en/Products-Solutions/Projectors/Large-venue-projectors/40000-lumens-2K-3-chip-DLP-projector.aspx


I'm guessing several of these.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
This is bleak.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
F-16s from Turkey forced down the hijacked plane, poo poo almost got serious.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
What the hell is she wearing?

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.
The best thing about the door is that it is a simple everyday kind of problem bound to happen with construction on the scale of the Olympic Village but the overall narrative is that the Olympics are a disaster so a minor problem like this gets amplified by social media.

And just for reference this is Johnny Quinn:



:swoon:

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.


And Waldi is unquestionably the best Olympic mascot:

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

I have to give her credit for that recovery.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

Pleads posted:

That bobsledder's door honestly was, right? Like, it had the whole corrugated thing going on and was cardboard, that's not how doors look inside, right?

That's how a lot of modern interior doors look. Cardboard is a surprisingly durable material, especially in a rigid structure like a honeycomb, it's why we use it to pack all sorts of expensive poo poo.

Seriously that door is fine, if it were was an exterior door it would be one thing but for a bathroom door it is fine.

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Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

Don't forget Hitler's contributions to medicine.

quote:

This is an Excerpt from Johnnie Balfours blog, it was taken down hours after being put up, and for obvious reasons.
Sochi Update Number 1: January 21, 2014

I arrived in Frankfurt feeling like I had been hit by a bus. I had an old lady sitting behind me who used my seat as a handle to get up out of her seat, and she got up A LOT.

No sleep for me on that leg of the trip.

I headed to the gate for my flight with Aeroflot to Moscow then on to Sochi. No boarding pass for me. I wasn’t even listed as a passenger. So while they sorted that out, I logged into the wifi and checked my emails to see what the plan was for when I arrived at Sochi. I needed to know how I was getting to my hotel. At this point, I didn’t even know the name or address of the hotel. This is pretty important information when you are travelling alone in a foreign country.

The email I received, just added to the confusion. I was told that there would be nobody to meet me and there was a bus schedule attached with some very poor instructions.

At the last minute, the girl at the counter just hand wrote me boarding pass, I chugged some water and she shoved me through the door. I guess that’s how Aeroflot works. This would be last fluids I would get for the next 24 hours.

You know when you see the truck on the highway full of cows all just shoved in there, piled up on each other? Well that is how Aeroflot works, I’ve never been so squashed and uncomfortable on a flight before. There was no safety demostration, no food or drink service, nothing!

I somehow arrived at Moscow in one piece and was met by an army of volunteers in Sochi 2014 uniforms, they checked my accreditation and I was swept through the airport like a rockstar. From the moment I exited the aircraft to the moment I boarded the next one, I had a volunteer with me. I was escorted though all check points, customs, bagagge claim, baggage check for my next flight by an attractive Russian girl who pushed me to the front of every line, all the while talking to me in Russian. I have absolutely no idea what she said the whole time but the whole process only took about 20 minutes from plane to plane. This has been the only efficient thing I have seen so far.

I boarded another Aeroflot flight and was squashed next to two huge Russian guys who looked exactly like the Russian gangster stereotype that you see in movies. Six foot tall and six foot wide with leather jackets that are way to tight. Hooray, another comfortable flight.
Once I land in Sochi, everything becomes a mystery. I still have no idea where I am staying or how I am getting there.

Sochi airport just a small domestic terminal and doesn’t look finished. It was pretty simple to get through the place and grab my bags. I spotted a Sochi 2014 desk surrounded by volunteers and attempted to ask what the hell I do now. I got blank stares. One girl finally stepped up with her hand out and said “Accreditaion”. She checked my accreditation and said, “No this is wrong, you must get it fixed”. I finally worked out that she was telling me to go to the main office at the resort of Rosa Kutor and work it out. She then turned her back and walked off leaving me standing there completely lost. Well, I guess I should try this bus schedule.

Just before I walked out of the main doors and into the rain, I was grabbed by yet another volunteer. “Name! you tell me name now!” I complied and was told to wait. A couple of minutes later I was met by Oleg, the sport manager for snowboard and skicross. I was then piled into a car and we were off and a ridiculous speed in the pouring rain and fog and on the wrong side of the road for most of the time. There were police everywhere who didn’t even give us a sideways glance as we ripped past them at light speed on the wrong side of the road.

We pull into a driveway of a block of buildings that look like a council housing estate in England. It looks like it was built 50 years ago, not 2. The road is half built and there is mud and water pouring down the street off the mountain. This place is a dump and looks like it could fall down at any moment. I am pulled from the car and shoved in front of a pimply kid seated behind a plastic table. He is surrounded by boxes of building supplies and broken tiles, the place smells of concrete dust. Pimple kid hands me a key and points at the next building, “Top floor, room 10”. I turn to leave, “No, you come”. He drags me to another room full of folded laundry, he hands me a two sheets, a pillow case and a roll of toilet paper. As I am signing for my issued bedding and toilet paper, I feel like I am back in the army, this is exactly like basic training. I didn’t sign up to go through that again!

I enter my room and my heart sinks, this is no hotel. There are two small metal framed beds in the centre of the room with thin mattresses leaning against the wall. I turn to ask for some directions about tomorrow and find myself standing on my own. My “room” consists of two small rooms and a bathroom. Before I get a chance to explore, Nick Roma turns up, soaking wet with a “gently caress this” look in his face. Turns out he got onto a bus from Sochi airport and was told to get off in the middle of nowhere. He stood in the pouring rain for almost an hour before another bus showed up. The second bus dumped him at a bus depot. While standing there lost, he heard a familiar voice “Roma!” It was our friend from home who had arrived a few days earlier. Somehow, Steve Morrison and Nick Roma just bumped into each other. Luck was on Nick’s side. Nick and I are sharing this little room and Steve is living next door with the other three guys. The six of us are finally together at least.

Check out the video I posted yesterday to see what our place looks like. We did a little rearranging of the bed situation before I made the video which really doesn’t show how bad this place is. The toilet flushes muddy water, there is no hot water, the shower floor is covered in dirt and mud, there was piss all over the toilet, the water is undrinkable (it’s brown) it’s even sketchy to brush your teeth with it and the idea of having internet in this place is a joke. If we want internet, we have to wait till we get to the mountain which is a two hour commute via bus and by foot. I guess I won’t be talking to Willa and Toby for the next month. I’m ready to just grab my bags and head back to the airport. We all eventually get to bed at 0300. I have still not eaten or had any fluids since I left Frankfurt over twelve hours ago.

I’m up at 0600 and we begin our commute at 0700. No buses run until 0800 so we stand in the dark getting rained on for almost an hour. I must also point out that we are just winging it at the moment, we have been given no directions for anything and my accreditation doesn’t work, Nick is in the same boat. After a short bus ride, we then have to walk to rest of the way. If it wasn’t for Steve who has been here for a few days already, we wouldn’t have found our way to the resort. Nothing is finished here and there is piles of garbage everywhere. Muddy water is pouring off the mountain and flowing through the streets and the coblestone pavers are all lifting up or disappearing into sink holes. This entire place was built in the last few years, it looks nice at first glance but look a little closer and you can see that it was just thrown together. Most of the buildings are not finished and with only two weeks to go before the games start, they never will be finished. It is pouring rain and close to 10 degrees above zero. The little snow they have is rapidly disappearing.

I still haven’t eaten or had fluids and it’s been almost 20 hours. I had one Tic Tac this morning, it was delicious. I also haven’t showered since leaving home three days ago. I smell amazingly bad. WE FOUND MCDONALDS!!!! I’ve never been so happy to find McDonalds and even happier to find that it has wifi. After a quick feed a lot of water and some messages sent home, we head off to find the accreditation office. Without valid accreditation, we can’t do anything.

The accreditation office doesn’t open till 10 so we lie in the hallway and wait. This is going to be the story of our day. Nick and I finally get into the office to be told that there is something wrong with our details on the computer system and we will have to wait. A few hours go by and we walk off to find some lunch. You guessed it, nothing is open because nothing is finished being built yet. We eventually find a coffee shop resturant type place and pick up a menu that is completely in Russian. They guy tells us in broken english that they make fantastic pizza so we order a couple of small pizzas and a small drink each. Food was pretty good, the bill was not. Total of the bill was 2450.00 rubles. That works out to $75. HOLY CRAP! I guess we will not be eating out anywhere over the next month.

Back to the accreditation office to continue waiting. After convincing them to give me the wifi code, I log in and find a bunch of travel warnings popping up with increased terrorist attack warnings for Sochi and Rosa Kutor. Being told to avoid public transport, awesome! This just keeps getting better. I fall alseep on the floor.

Finally at 1530 I am issued with my new accreditation, we can now get through security to the gondola and head up to the venue for a meeting at 1730 with the managers and to go over our contracts. What a waste of a day so far.
If you think everything so far sounds bad, wait for it, it’s going to get a lot worse!

We are seated around a big table in a boardroom. At the head of the table is the sport manager, his assistant and another big wig who we are never introduced to. At the other end of the table are the two head builders, Nicko and David. The rest of the table is surrounded by the six of us and we have big issues that need to be addressed. Hot water, accomodation, the commute, food etc are all briefly discussed before we get onto the biggest issue. How they propose to pay us.

In the six months leading up to this moment, we have been in constant contact with these people, sorting out contracts, methods of payment etc. So far nothing has gone as planned. They have wanted to pay us into Russian bank accounts for a few months now and we have fought them long and hard on this point. Yes, you read that correctly, they want us to open Russian bank accounts. How do we do this? Well, we don’t, apparently they have already opened accounts for us! How the hell they can open an account in my name without my details or signature is beyond me and sounds very dodgy!

Before we left home we didn’t win the fight about the bank accounts but we did win the fight for them to pay us within ten days of us signing the contract. Well, that has now changed too. They are now telling us that they will pay us ten days AFTER we have gone home. I have a very strong feeling that we are never going to get paid. During the meeting I told them on no uncertain terms that what they are trying to do is total bullshit and if they had disclosed this information earlier, I would not have agreed to come here.

The two hour commute home seemed to take even longer and the six of us finally sat down together at home to discuss our options. I can’t post what we discussed yet, but all I can say is I am not backing down.

That was the coldest shower I have ever had in my life.

Three Olives fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Feb 8, 2014

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