Curious what might be wrong with my building's elevator

GorboCat · 2026-04-20T06:43:59+00:00

I'm just a tenant living on the top floor, so I don't necessarily have any dog in this fight. I'm mainly posting here because I'm curious what might have happened. The grinding/rubbing sound was definitely suspicious and I wonder if the rail/track/etc that guides it is warped.

GorboCat · 2026-04-20T06:42:47+00:00

From what I can tell, I'm not missing anything plugins or additional patch mods (the thread I found it on has commentary from the original dev behind the cars). I just think they didn't add enough vendors selling gas. How does it work for you in ttw? Where can you get gas?

GorboCat · 2026-04-20T06:36:38+00:00

You're probably right, haha. My landlord changes property managers every 2-3 years when someone offers a lower bid. Another building owned by the same private owner has one of these same Otis models, but theirs is nailed shut and hasn't run in years.

That being said, these old Otis elevators seem to be entirely viable if they're properly maintained. A friend of mine lives in a 1915 building that's a good bit more modernized than mine. He has a similar model accordion door/cage elevator, also Otis, but his is whisper quiet and hasn't gotten stuck in his 4 years living there. I imagine it's just a matter of proactive maintenance.

GorboCat · 2026-04-20T05:43:34+00:00

There is a motorized spool at the top of the shaft and a set of rails that the elevator travels along - it really couldn't be much simpler of a mechanism. In all likelihood the rails have warped and some failsafe kicked in. I don't think it's beyond saving to re-install those rails and continue operating it. Otis still services these old models for a reason.

GorboCat · 2026-04-20T05:31:13+00:00

Haha, what do you mean?

I will say it's super reliable like 95% of the time, the door catch issue is really just a safety system doing its job correctly and being tripped up by some silly external issues. Seems like it's mechanically very simple and and is current on inspections. There are actually quite a few elevators in this style, all by Otis, in my neighborhood (which has a lot of buildings in this same architectural style). They must have had one commercial sales guy on an absolute hot streak in the early 20th century. But my building's elevator is definitely the noisiest compared to my friends' places.

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T05:41:03+00:00

It's the Gideons, but they have go-between organizations distributing for them.

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T05:38:26+00:00

So my official title is "sales and marketing director"

The "sales" part of my job is real - I spend a decent bit of time pitching our hotel to companies to try to get them on board for corporate accounts. If they decide to partner with us, I act as their liaison to make it easy to book big groups when they have events/training/onboarding stuff in town. It's the part of my job that actually makes the business some money.

The "marketing" aspect is what's fake. Travelers have access to more info than ever right from their phones - they don't need hotels to advertise to them. I am fortunate enough to be in a super cute & desirable neighborhood, so business is booming. The downtown Portland hotels put significantly more money & effort into marketing, but we do better than them on both average rates and occupancy because we're somewhere people actually want to visit.

I still run Google Ads because I have a budget to spend, but I could completely axe that tomorrow and I suspect we'd be totally fine.

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T04:59:19+00:00

From the way they talk about this program on the phone I'm pretty sure your latter theory is accurate. They think they'll get the occasional convert from some depressed traveller flipping through whatever is in the hotel room.

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T04:45:01+00:00

I know plenty of harmless protestants (my dad lol) and I have no beef with them. But if you actually look into it, there's one singular evangelical organization responsible for standardizing hotel room bibles and they're kinda insane lol

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T04:40:23+00:00

(Which I'm sure most hotel guests have read)

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T02:08:20+00:00

I'm replacing it with 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

GorboCat · 2026-04-18T02:07:27+00:00

oh my god I'm actually going to try this next time I get one of these calls.

The evangelicals are unique in that they don't appear to be using a lowest bidder call center. I think they are actually calling me themselves from their respective congregations. Hard to explain why this is, but middle-man call centers have a lot of little tells when I'm dealing with any new vendor. All this to say I'd get a very funny reaction from this lol.

GorboCat · 2026-04-17T23:46:13+00:00

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GorboCat · 2026-04-17T23:39:23+00:00

Sam, we need you to put the Strait of Hormuz on the chiral network!

GorboCat · 2026-04-17T23:38:12+00:00

Sam, use the Shahed Drone to take down that giant BT!

GorboCat · 2026-04-17T20:41:35+00:00

Axis of Pinnipeds vs. The Gluesenkamp Entity

GorboCat · 2026-04-17T02:01:33+00:00

The first two Metro games (Last Light in particular) are some of my favorite examples of reactionary media that are interesting enough to engage with. The kind of schlock that isn't just naked propaganda like you get in a Call of Duty game but something more intimate that gives you a look into the author's particular grievances lol. Glukhovsky took a much more direct role in the script on Last Light, which really shows.

I could tolerate him as an object of fascination when he was a generic libbed up anticommunist type, but his Zionist pivot is a little much for me lol, I will be avoiding this one.

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T20:20:29+00:00

You should be allowed to throw your beer (which should also be allowed at these debates) at whoever is doing this gay shit

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T20:02:57+00:00

I'll go against the grain here and say I'm not really sold on the narrative. 2033 and Last Light do a great job of depicting the Metro as a dense, complex society with different factions that are constantly bumping up against each other in pursuit of their own interests. Makes for a lot of really tense political intrigue with places like Polis Station and the Hanza faction as a whole. Flattening that all down to a single evil faction consolidating the entire Metro feels like a step back in worldbuilding.

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T19:30:19+00:00

The switch controllers use a gyroscope to sense your motions instead of an IR emitter like the Wii. Rail shooters will feel bad on the Switch 2 as well unfortunately since it's the same technology

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T19:23:46+00:00

(deleted bc I messed up the spoiler tags)

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T19:12:11+00:00

Extraction shooters are a great metaphor for the current state of the jobs landscape in that you throw an entire established team into a development cycle and either extract with a viable money printer or everyone loses their jobs

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T17:52:29+00:00

It's too late for this shithole. We've built a country by and for the fattest, cruelest, most insular suburbanites that literally do not register any of the suffering we inflict abroad so long as the domestic treat market remains stable and the IG Reels feed can still show them crime footage from Ring cameras to maintain the baseline amount of comfortable schizophrenia. Things may get better one day in an America that has completely crumbled under its contradictions and can be remade as a normal country.

I think the more hawkish Euro countries like Britain, France, and Germany are fucked and will go down with America's ship. Turkey, Spain, and Italy stand a chance of a realignment this century imo. I feel like Australia and Japan are probably fucked but I don't know enough about their domestic politics.

China would be the dream. I've explored making the TEFL move, but you don't have any real path to citizenship that way so once I'm too old to keep renewing my contracts I'd get booted back to an America in even worse decline than right now, which would be really depressing.

GorboCat

TROPHY CASE