And we’re on the flip side of the “rowdy” march…
October 20, 2007, 8:09 AM
Just as an update, I made it to the flip side of the rowdy march. That was something, with everyone in full black bloc going through Georgetown on a very wet night. But most people got out unscathed, and to my knowledge, no pepper spray was used on anyone. But that was an intense little march.
But we made it through. We were soaked, mind you, but we made it through. Now today is the permitted rally. This should be pretty tame, but draw a bigger crowd.
Remember – the cheer group meets at 10:30 at Tenleytown Metro and then will ride down together, and the main rally is at 12:30 at Franklin Square.
Categories: Black bloc, World Bank
It’s short notice from me, but…
October 19, 2007, 12:04 PM
World Bank protests this weekend in DC! Friday night (as in TONIGHT) at 9:00 PM at Washington Circle kicks off the “rowdy” march through Georgetown. Who knows how long that will run, but I’m bringing goggles, if that gives you any idea about what kind of march I’m anticipating this to be.
Meanwhile, Saturday at 12:30 at Franklin Square is the march that I’m really looking forward to. That’s the one where we’re cheering! Anyone who wants to cheer should meet at Tenleytown-AU Metro station at 10:30 AM tomorrow on the side where the AU shuttle picks up. That would be the entrance that’s not in front of Best Buy (Hollywood Video and Whole Foods are on that side). We’ve got a whole new cheer going on, and it’s going to be a real hit, about third-world debt. And I’m going to be dressed in my complete radical cheerleading outfit. Look for it. It’s going to be fun.
Categories: World Bank
Every time I see one of these…
October 19, 2007, 11:01 AM
Continue reading…Categories: Products
I remember this day from three years ago like it was yesterday…
October 17, 2007, 2:32 PM
It’s 2:30 PM on October 17, 2007. Three years ago today, possibly down to the minute, I was running around with Teapot and crew looking for the guy in the hot dog suit and the chicken suit. Then right after that, I met Jess for the first time.
Yes, the Million Worker March was three years ago today. Three years ago today, I was in DC, and supporting the labor movement. Three years ago today, I was in front of the Hotel Washington, supporting the workers. Three years ago today, I visited the Infoshop for the first time. What a great find that turned out to be. Three years. Wow.
That demonstration produced a lot of memorable images, too…
Radical cheerleaders…
Categories: Activism
This is looking like it’s going to be a fun weekend…
October 16, 2007, 11:36 PM
It’s looking like it’s going to be a fun weekend coming up, with the protests surrounding the meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. And I’m psyched about it, considering it’s been a year and a half since the last time we protested this organization. Friday, I’m partaking in a “rowdy” march through Georgetown, and then Saturday, I’m participating in a more conventional march.
Friday’s “rowdy” march meets at 9:00 PM (yes, 9:00 at night) in Washington Circle. Hope to see you there. Considering the unspecified “rowdy” nature of the march, I’m going in full black bloc, and probably bringing goggles as well, just in case. Can’t be too careful, after all.
Then Saturday’s march starts at Franklin Square (i.e. take Metro to McPherson Square). For that march, I’m planning on getting together with RCDC, where I’ll be doing some radical cheerleading. So yeah, my radical cheerleading costume from last halloween is finally going to see the sun at an actual protest. I can’t wait. Then I have cheerleading practice for Saturday on Thursday night. This way I can get the moves down pat, because on September 15, the last time I was with RCDC, I didn’t have the moves down, and so you could see a “learning curve” as the day progressed. By the way, if this whole thing of my being affiliated with a local radical cheerleading group is coming as news to you, that’s okay. It goes with the Life and Times set for the September 15 protest, which has not yet been released.
Categories: World Bank
You know you’ve always wanted to do this…
October 15, 2007, 2:41 PM
You know you’ve always wanted to do this:
I can’t believe, first of all, that this guy actually did it, and that he did it and got caught on camera. Of course, he kind of got it in the end, so to speak, as the glass broke on him, and, well, I know I’d hate to have my naked butt that close to shards of broken glass. One can only imagine how this guy tried to tap-dance his way out of that incident, especially having been caught on camera. I also wonder how much he had to pay out to fix the copier, since my guess is that it was probably more than glass that got busted. Additionally, I wonder how much injury he got to his behind. I’d hate to have to tell the doctor, “Well, I was sitting on the copier to copy my behind, and the glass broke.” I hope he came up with a better story than that.
Some people…
Categories: Amusing
He went from Crozet to DC in FIVE MINUTES!
October 14, 2007, 4:11 PM
While I was at Target yesterday, I picked up a copy of Evan Almighty, which is now available on DVD. I figured it ought to be nice to finally see the movie that I experienced during various stages of filming. You may recall that I showed you the ark in June 2006, and the Downtown Waynesboro Photography set was done while the area was still dressed up for the filming.
And now, I’ve seen it. Not a bad movie, no matter what the critics said. In the first part of it, I thought it was going to be a bit over-the-top religious, considering they had a big discussion about prayer and grabbed a Bible, but in the end, it wasn’t too bad. The filming they did in Staunton got shown right up front, as we saw Evan (Steve Carell) campaigning on the stage in Gypsy Hill Park, and riding up Johnson Street. Then Waynesboro got some air early on, too, as he rode up Main Street in his Hummer. Got to see everything. That was fun. Even the museum-turned-coffee-shop got some air, though I couldn’t read the sign in the window. The last thing to be seen in the Waynesboro shot was the Wayne Theatre, with its “40 Year Old Virgin Mary” marquee. That’s something for the Wayne Theatre Alliance to aspire to, as the building was portrayed as a working theatre in the movie. And then the Old Trail neighborhood in Crozet looked pretty good, though Evan’s house and those right immediately around it were fake instant-houses. Seriously, those things are just exteriors, and go up and come down in like a day. Too bad that the neighborhood got destroyed in the end of the movie.
Categories: Movies
Bells, bells, bells!
October 14, 2007, 12:23 AM
I got to experience something new on Friday – a fire alarm at work. It was around 11:30 AM, and I’m working on some odds and ends in my office, and I hear a bell start ringing. So I look up. I see flashing lights. We all know what that means. Something set off the fire alarm in our building.
Now as the fire marshal for our floor, I have special duties when the fire alarm goes off. I put on an orange safety vest and hard hat, and do a sweep of the floor to ensure that everyone has cleared. Once that was done, I headed out, and joined my coworkers at our designated meeting place. The fire trucks quickly came and went, and it turned out that the alarm was caused by burned food.
Categories: Fire alarms, Work
I certainly picked a good day to check up on my “local” news…
October 10, 2007, 8:08 PM
On my lunch hour today at work, I took some time to read about what’s going on in Stuarts Draft. I went over to The News Virginian and The News Leader‘s sites, and took a look around. By the way, Target’s now open at the site of the former Outlet Village.
But the story that really caught my eye was in the Staunton paper, about a man who is suing the Staunton city government over their swear/spam filtering system – a program called MailMarshal. According to the article, Dr. Adrian Riskin, a mathematics professor at Mary Baldwin College, filed papers in general district court seeking to obtain the list of words that triggers the software, after the city denied an earlier request for the list. The city denied his request on the grounds that it was proprietary information, and therefore was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Riskin argued that if the city edited the list, it is no longer proprietary. Additionally, Riskin is quoted as saying, regarding an unmodified list, “it cannot possibly be proprietary since the software vendor provides it for a free download from their Web site.”
Categories: Virginia local news
Does anyone know how to set up an RSS feed for a custom design?
October 5, 2007, 5:20 AM
Welcome to my world, where I’ve wanted to have an RSS feed on my Journal for at least eight months or so. Yes, eight months. In moving that direction, as well as making all kinds of other site upgrades, I changed hosts and converted to PHP, for one.
So now I have this snazzy mySQL database and my little custom design, and I’ve been having the darndest time trying to get a working RSS feed. And before anyone asks, yes, I’ve tried the various content management systems out there, and for purposes of Schumin Web, hated all of them. The Journal does not run under Blogger, WordPress, etc. It’s my own design.
My previous attempts at setting up an RSS feed for the Journal came from my attempts to follow directions from here and here. In the end, what did I get? A pile of unusable code, lots of errors, and some very bad words out of me.
So I am obviously having issues with getting this to work. So… can anyone help out? An RSS feed for the Journal is one of my most-requested features, as it turns out, so this is kind of important. But I’m kinda stuck…
Categories: Schumin Web meta
I get this feeling I’m going to be backed up to my fiftieth birthday…
October 4, 2007, 1:36 PM
I get this feeling that I’m going to be backed up to my fiftieth birthday with the Web site at the rate I’m going. Seriously. Right now, I have five projects going on, and a sixth will be added soon. I have the restoration of Transit and Today’s Special (these are more than restoring the status quo), and I have the Borf show, September 15, and my recent weekend with Katie. The last three are all going to be part of Life and Times. Then add “October Rebellion” to the list, which is about the upcoming World Bank/IMF march that I’m going to be attending, also for Life and Times. So that ought to be interesting.
Right now, only the Borf show is in any advanced state. The new Transit Center is still “vaporware” at this point, and then as far as Today’s Special goes, I’ve gotten MediaWiki set up, but not much else. For September 15, the narrative is totally written but that’s all there is so far, and then the weekend with Katie narrative is in a very early stage. Then of course “October Rebellion” is vaporware, as the event hasn’t even happened yet. That last one is going to be a logistical challenge for Big Mavica, since it’s going to need to be recharged possibly faster than I can feasibly recharge it. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll have to make use of that electrical outlet like I found on Rohr 1297 (if this makes no sense to you, I go into more detail on it in a yet-unpublished photo set narrative).
So, yeah, I feel like I have lots still to do. But one way or another, we’re going to get through it. Hopefully it will all work out in the end. After all, a lot of it is Life and Times, and that’s a LOT of fun…
Categories: Schumin Web meta
And the new colors reach the 4000s…
September 28, 2007, 3:44 PM
Metro has done something I didn’t think they’d do before at least 2011. They’ve started changing the color scheme on the 4000-series cars, which were built by Breda in 1991. Take a look at Breda 4063, shown here…
Categories: WMATA
The things you see at Dupont Circle…
September 26, 2007, 8:19 PM
Here’s why I love working near Dupont Circle. It’s because you never know what you’re going to see. And this isn’t even political – it’s sometimes just downright off the wall. Seriously.
Now coming out of the Metro through Dupont Circle station’s south entrance in the morning, you’ll normally see several people. There’s the guy handing out the Express, the guy handing out the Examiner, you’ll possibly see a person playing music, and sometimes people handing out flyers for the deal-du-jour. Today, there was a guy handing out flyers… wearing a chicken suit. Well, actually, I think he was supposed to be a rooster, based on the appearance. But regardless, there he was. Check it out…
Would you believe it’s been two years already?
September 25, 2007, 2:42 PM
Categories: Anti-war, Black bloc
Four days and counting…
September 24, 2007, 2:33 PM
I am excited! In four days, my friend Katie is coming to visit me up in Maryland. She’s going to be taking Amtrak from Charlottesville to Union Station, and will be staying three nights. It’s going to be so much fun! I’m taking the day off on Friday, and so after I spend much of the day cleaning and scrubbing and making the place look really nice for Katie’s arrival, I’m going to hop on the Metro and ride into DC to go to Union Station to meet her. We’re going to have such fun, too.
Otherwise, I finally finished College Life last night, and so now it’s all back together and looks goooooood. It’s designed a little differently than it was before, with a left-hand menu like Schumin Web. And it’s also up to my current design standards, which required a bit of retrofitting. But we’re done. I’m tickled.
And now, the next thing to do is a small update on the discussion forums, and then Transit Center. That’s going to be fun. Transit Center is not going to be a simple restoration. No way. Transit Center was incredibly cumbersome to handle before, which is why updates were so few – because it was too much of a pain in the butt to deal with. Now, I’m rewriting everything from scratch.
So all in all, I’m excited about this weekend, and in the meantime, I still have plenty to do…
Categories: Katie, Schumin Web meta