Always make sure you read the warnings before you use something…
July 12, 2006, 10:16 PM
I went to Water Country USA in Williamsburg on Tuesday, and it’s doubtful that I’ll be going back any time soon, since I didn’t have that good of a time, plus it just costs too much money anymore.
I think part of the reason I didn’t have that great of a time was because it was so crowded. It seemed like everyone and their mother was in that park and trying to get everywhere. As a result, all of the lines just about everywhere were insanely long.
Additionally, they’ve gotten worse over the now-six times I’ve been there in regards to how badly they get you money-wise. Of course, food and drink is expensive as hell. In fact, a 20-ounce bottle of Aquafina, which I can get at Wal-Mart for like $1.10, cost $3.00 at Water Country. Then there’s the parking. It’s $10.00 to park your car for the day. That’s pricey. Then it’s $15.00 for “preferred”, which is parking up close next to the entrance. Then the fee to actually get inside the park is $37.95. Locker fee is $10.00, with $4.00 refundable as a park voucher. It used to cost $6.00, and they gave you $2.00 back in cash. Now they give you what basically amounts to store credit, which you can only redeem in the park. So that’s $57.95, not counting the bottled water.
Continue reading…Categories: Companies
Vacation’s over…
July 10, 2006, 7:06 AM
Unfortunately, my vacation is over, and has been over for a few days now. As I write this, I have three post-vacation workdays under my belt, and am going to start another one in less than two hours. However, the vacation did do what it was supposed to do – it left me refreshed, and not feeling like I want to strangle someone by the end of the day.
Otherwise, I’m just tickled about the new Transit Center design that I’m implementing. I’ve already got the section on the rail pages, and I’m getting ready to make the changeover for the buses. It’s got a tan-colored background, and the Transit Center logo is now orange. And you know how I describe the color scheme? I refer to it as the “Breda” color scheme. For those of you who are unfamiliar, I based the color scheme here on Metro’s 4000-series cars, which were manufactured in 1991 by a company called Breda. I was tempted to add “Made in Italy by Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie S.p.A.” to the page somewhere, complete with horse logo, but I don’t want anyone to think that the page was actually made in Italy by Breda.
And then as far as reconfigurations go, I’m also launching a new main page design. This reconfigures the photo feature so that I can carry horizontal images on the site, and also sweeps the sidebar menu off the main page to make room for it. Losing that side menu isn’t too much of a loss because the main-page menu just carries information that’s linked to the bottom of every page. So we’ll still get along fine if we lose it. I’m just tickled, though, to be able to run horizontal photos in the main-page space.
Categories: Schumin Web meta, Travel
Twenty-three different trains!
July 5, 2006, 6:14 PM
I chose to go to Washington on July 4 to do a little railfanning, since Metro runs a special service pattern on that day, which means that some of the lines go to different places.
In the final accounting, I rode twenty-three different trains. That breaks down to four Rohrs, four Breda 2000s, three classic Breda 3000s, four rehabbed Breda 3000s, three Breda 4000s, and five CAFs. That also breaks down to ten Orange Line trains, seven Blue Line trains, four Yellow Line trains, one Red Line train, and one Green Line train.
One Metro employee tried to give me a map of the July 4 service, and I did not take it, because I admitted I had the whole thing committed to memory. I really impressed them when I then rattled off the entire service change, including no service to Smithsonian, and shuttle bus service from L’Enfant Plaza to the Pentagon.
All in all, it was a lot of fun railfanning Metro’s July 4 service. It’s all a matter of remembering that one cannot catch a Blue Line train before Rosslyn, and that every westbound train from Washington to Virginia goes to Vienna.
“This is the Orange Line to Largo Town Center.”
July 4, 2006, 3:47 AM
Hey, it’s the Fourth of July. That means once again, and for the first year with Dan Tangherlini as General Manager, Metro is running the special July 4 service. So today, Orange goes from Vienna to both New Carrollton and Largo Town Center. Blue Line starts at Huntington (vs. at Franconia-Springfield, aka “FRANC-SPRINGD“), and goes to Rosslyn. Yellow Line goes from Franconia-Springfield to Mt. Vernon Square. Then Red and Green run their regular routes, but will turn back some trains at Silver Spring and Fort Totten, respectively. And then Smithsonian is closed all day.
So all in all, I think I’m going to have a good day. See you when I get back.
Categories: WMATA
I don’t know where that hand has been…
July 3, 2006, 8:35 AM
I’m going to say it straight up: I don’t like handshakes. And here’s why: I don’t know where that hand has been, and most people aren’t as meticulous about their hand washing as I am. Whenever someone shakes my hand, my first instinct is to find a restroom and re-wash the hand that was shaken. I also have to suppress the urge to smell the hand that they just shook (to see how dirty that hand was) right in front of them, and to wait until after they’re out of sight before going into “damage control” mode.
I don’t know why it is, but I don’t like handshakes for that reason. I don’t know whether the person whose hand I’m shaking washed their hands when they last used the restroom, or what that hand has been up to and into since the last time it saw soap.
The reason I mention this is because I was over in Charlottesville on Sunday night, doing some night photography over in the Corner District, which borders the University of Virginia. The bars and restaurants in the Corner are popular places for UVA students to go to get “polluted”, shall we say. Now when I’m photographing with the tripod, I’m far more noticeable than when I’m photographing without it, since I take up more sidewalk space, and have to be more stationary as a result. So I get far more attention than otherwise. And the males, some of whom smell of beer, more often than not want to shake my hand. It would be quite rude to say, “I’m not touching that!” and so I just go ahead and shake. And then I feel unclean afterwards.
Categories: Charlottesville, Myself
I visited Foamhenge, and it was…
July 1, 2006, 6:25 PM
I visited Foamhenge in Natural Bridge today. It was interesting. Realize that Natural Bridge itself is something interesting. It’s a little collection of roadside attractions on US 11 in basically the middle of nowhere. There’s the natural bridge itself (for which Rockbridge County gets its name), plus there’s Natural Bridge Zoo, a wax museum, and probably other stuff I’m not remembering.
But this is Foamhenge:
Categories: Photography, Places
If you really want to know your WMATA information…
June 30, 2006, 8:55 PM
I just found out that the full report about the November 3, 2004 accident at Woodley Park-Zoo came out on the NTSB’s Web site. And I’ve been reading the 66-page report for a while now. I’m on page 18 out of 66 total. So I’m getting somewhere.
And it’s great to finally read exactly what happened in this accident. You may recall that I was in Washington the day after the accident happened, and actually got to see the accident scene firsthand. It was something.
I was amazed, though, about how the first several feet of Rohr 1077 were just plain gone. In my photos, the roof was hanging down from what remained of the car. I received an interior shot of 1077 after it had been taken to Brentwood, but it wasn’t quite the same as seeing it in the accident scene. The NTSB report had a photo of 1077 in place at the accident scene:
Photo: NTSB
Categories: WMATA
I would like to know what I was thinking…
June 30, 2006, 10:48 AM
I would like to know what I was thinking back in 2003 when I was laying out these “Photo Essay Blitz” sets. Usually, I try to make the final photo numbers go in order down the page, even if the pictures aren’t arranged in chronological order. This, however, is ridiculous. And it makes my current work retrofitting captions onto these older sets all the more complicated since I have to hop all around the database to find the entries for these photos.
This is why the 2003 set A Protest Against the War received an update last night. I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. The numbers were all out of order, plus the navigation didn’t flow logically. I fixed the numbers by renumbering all the photos. Now they start at 1 and go to 122 in exactly the order that they appear on the page. I fixed the navigation by going from the old descriptors (Freedom Plaza 1 and 2, McPherson Square, Farragut West) to straight parts (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). The navigation also bugged me because the descriptors were inaccurate, which I noticed in becoming more familiar with DC. The “McPherson Square” section was a block or so away from the square, and then the “Farragut West” section was at 18th and K Streets NW, a few blocks from Farragut Square, though only one block from the Metro station.
I can tell you why I did it that way originally, though. I set it like that because I picked out the photos, numbered them, and put them on the page, and then laid them out on the page like a big storyboard. Thus the numbers ended up all out of order. Compare to now, where I sort them in CompuPic, and don’t pin them up on the Web site until it’s nearly done.
One thing I have to say is that it certainly makes maintenance and updates easy if the numbers go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. It gets to be a real bother if it goes 1, 7, 23, 15, 12, 34, etc.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
I didn’t know this existed!
June 29, 2006, 8:21 PM
I had no idea that there was a place called “Foamhenge” near Natural Bridge, which is a little ways south of where I live. And with my being on vacation this week, and with the weather forecasted to be nice all the way through the weekend, I might just have to pay Foamhenge a visit, and perhaps do a photo set on it (as if I’m not backlogged enough already).
And no, this is not some cheesy substitute for a visit to the real Stonehenge. I went there in June 1998. See?
Eight years after visiting Stonehenge, a visit to Foamhenge should be fun.
Categories: Places
An interesting little trip…
June 29, 2006, 5:37 PM
I took a little trip to the DC area via Richmond and I-95 on Wednesday. Fun trip. I went that longer way instead of my usual I-81 to I-66 route because I wanted to visit Fredericksburg and Potomac Mills.
My visit to Fredericksburg was fairly simple. The question before the house was whether it was worth it to make a trip to Fredericksburg, which is somewhat hard to reach for a day trip, to do a photo set. My determination for Fredericksburg was that while it was indeed charming, and definitely a place to visit when I eventually find a job in the DC area and move up that way, I didn’t see anything on this drive through that I would really want to make a special trip for, and that I couldn’t do using a similar feature in another city that is easier to reach.
However, I did see a sign that was, to say the least, surprising.
Categories: Alexandria, DC trips, Driving, Shopping, Washington DC, WMATA
And here are the photos of the ark, as promised.
June 29, 2006, 2:20 PM
As promised, here are some photos of the ark from the upcoming movie Evan Almighty in Crozet:
You know, I could finish this right now…
June 28, 2006, 7:13 AM
If you’ve looked at my site updates, I just released a new photo set in Life and Times called Night March. I wasn’t planning on finishing it this morning, but I got to working on it, and I realized that I was very close to completing it, so I just decided to go ahead and finish the set, and get that out there. So now you can view that protest against the World Bank and IMF that I went to on April 22, where a black bloc snaked through the streets of DC. It was fun.
My only issue with the set is that the dark and the rain, combined with the constant motion of the camera, led to pictures that I don’t consider my best work. Of course, Life and Times is there to showcase events, where capturing the action, rather than creating beautiful photos, is the point. Still, I’ve done better. A16 and the Million Worker March are two Life and Times sets that I consider to be really nice photography-wise. On this one, with the camera having water issues during the event and the need to heavily retouch some of these photos to show the action, it leaves me wishing that the photos had come out better. Still, though, I do like the set, and the photos certainly demonstrate the hostile environment in which they were taken.
For the next set to go up, it’s either going to be one about downtown Waynesboro or Breezewood for Photography, or the “No Armageddon” rally in DC for Life and Times.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta
Made it! No work for nine days!
June 27, 2006, 7:19 PM
I have made it to my vacation, and I don’t have to return to work until July 7 at 7:00 AM. Very nice, indeed.
And then tomorrow, I’m going to go to Washington DC by way of I-95 to do a few things on the way up.
All I have to say, though, is that I hope that when I do go back to work, that I feel totally refreshed and ready to continue, because I was about at the edge of my tolerance threshold.
Rohr relaxation…
June 22, 2006, 2:48 AM
I went to Washington DC on Tuesday, and it was a fairly typical “regular” trip. I got in right on time, parked at Vienna, and then the main mission this time was to check on some jobs I’d applied for. I also paid a visit to my friend Tristan and then paid a visit to Pentagon City.
On the Red Line en route to Rockville, I encountered a person that knows how to relax on a Rohr train:
Categories: DC trips, Video games, WMATA
“I don’t look at porn!”
June 18, 2006, 2:35 AM
Funny what comes up in the breakroom sometimes…
A few of us were discussing churchgoers and possible hypocrisy regarding them, and the idea came up that a particular coworker, about whom customers had said “looked like Jesus” when he had a certain hairdo coupled with a beard, should start his own church. Someone suggested that he would make one related to porn, which elicited the response, “I don’t look at porn!”
What made us all turn our heads was when another coworker, who was just passing through the breakroom to get to the smoking room and caught wind of our discussion, said, “I do!”
The thought that crossed most of our minds was, I did not need to know that. Seriously, we did not need to know that. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at this coworker with a straight face for a while. Of course, people didn’t look at me with a straight face for a while after the pants incident from a couple of months ago.
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Some people, Walmart