I think that we need to have a discussion about news sources…
4 minute read
February 27, 2017, 9:14 AM
Over the course of the last several days, whenever I’ve gone on Facebook, I feel as though I’ve had to play fact-checker a lot more than usual. Most of the stories that I’ve had to verify and debunk are about Donald Trump, but there have also been a few ones about the toxin-du-jour and other miscellaneous topics. And having to constantly stay on my game and do the same sort of research over and over again gets tiring. I started out making this post about the problem:
This post got eight likes and one comment, so it didn’t do as well as I would have hoped. Maybe it’s because I posted it in the middle of the day on a Friday. But in any case, the bottom line is to think before you share.
Continue reading…Categories: News, Social media
My life according to Clive and the Cowboys…
4 minute read
August 6, 2016, 5:12 PM
I was going through my Facebook “memories” feed today, and one in particular struck me as amusing. My sister made a post on this day in 2009, called “My Life According to Disney”. It was one of those chain posts where you fill in the blanks and then tag fifteen of your friends. Here were the directions:
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “my life according to (band name)”.
She chose Disney. Technically, “Disney” casts a very wide net, since their body of work is very large and spans multiple generations of authors, artists, composers, etc. But she made it work. She also tagged me, encouraging me to do the same. I commented thusly:
And then I gave a proper response:
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “my life according to (band name)”.
Pick your artist: Clive and the Cowboys (yeah, Today’s Special – sue me)
Are you a male or a female: “I am thunder and nothing can happen ’til I bellow and I rumble and wake everybody with my roar…” (A Visit to the Opera)
Describe yourself: “Hocus pocus alimagocus, I can bend, I can stretch, I can see…” (Family)
How do you feel: “Let go of your busy day, let it all just drift away…” (Sleep)
Describe where you currently live: “When I’m at home I just relax, put on slippers, shirt, and slacks, settle down to watch TV, and dunk a donut in my tea.” (Homes)
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: “Let’s not get carried away, Sneakamore! Still, I will admit… I’m nasty, I’m not very nice… the heart that’s inside me is as cold as ice…” (Storybooks)
Your favorite form of transportation: “All aboard, the whistle blows, a rumbling starts beneath your toes…” (Trains)
Your best friend is: “When you’re with me, I’m not afraid of anything…” (Flight)
You and your best friends are: “Who’s the one I like to play with? Who’s the one I’ll spend all day with?” (Sharing)
If your life were a TV show, what would it be called: “Today’s Special” (main theme)
What is life to you: “We’ve got a store that I explore when the customers aren’t here anymore…” (Sleep)
Your last relationship: “Just give a snap, a clap, and a chuckle any time you feel a bit dismayed…” (Storms)
Your fear: “I love the rain, I love it when it’s raining…” (Storms) coupled with “Riding along the highway, singing a song and going my way…” (Cars)
What is the best advice you can give: “Let your smile shine through in every thing you do… don’t hide that special you…” (Teeth)
How I would like to die: “Without ever leaving, I’ve been everywhere… I’ve been to those lands ’cause you’ve taken me there…” (Memories)
My soul’s present condition: “Blue! Blue! The cow was blue! She jumped high like a kangaroo!” (Dreams)
My motto: “A singin’ yo he ho, sailin’ across the ocean blue, singin’ yo he ho, I’m a comin’ home to you!” (Costumes)
For those who don’t know, “Clive and the Cowboys” is, as far as I can tell, the name of the group of musicians that played the accompaniment for the songs on Today’s Special. They were referenced in “Sleep” when Sam was talking on the radio, and also in “Records” when Jodie made the record. On that later occasion, she referred to the group as “Jodie and the Cowboys”.
Some of these responses are obvious, and some not so much. With the passage of time, I couldn’t tell you why, for the “male or female” question, I quoted Thunder from “The Rainmakers”, other than that Thunder was a male actor. The “If you could go anywhere” question, I assume I meant the “Land of Make Believe”, because that’s a song that the two villains sung together explaining how evil they were. “Your last relationship”, I don’t recall why I chose “Snap, Clap, and Chuckle” for it. I suppose that 2009 me had a rationale for it, but it’s lost on 2016 me. And then I also apparently didn’t like driving through storms in 2009. Still not the most fun, especially since larger vehicles slide surprisingly easily in the rain. You wouldn’t think that a vehicle the size of a bus would slide more than a much smaller car, but they most definitely do. I also can’t explain what the Blue Cow song has to do with my soul’s present condition. Maybe I was in a silly mood, and that’s certainly a silly song.
And then there was my sister’s comment on the post, in response to my original comment on hers:
In any case, though, this was a fun exercise, both in writing it at the time, as well as revisiting it now. Facebook memories can be so much fun to go through. Unlike a photo album, Facebook memories are like going through an album of our thoughts. Facebook, without a character limit for posts, allows the space for more explanation of one’s thoughts, and therefore the ability to express the entire idea. What we were thinking at the time often helps give perspective to what we’re thinking now. After all, we may not realize it at the time, but we all are constantly growing and changing. What was important a few years ago is laughable today. What was considered a dream years ago is now reality. You know.
Categories: Family, Social media, Today's Special
“Wait, isn’t that…?”
4 minute read
May 12, 2016, 1:01 PM
Imagine my surprise to sit down at my computer this morning to check Facebook, and be greeted by this image from ABC affiliate WJLA:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Weather, Wikipedia
Fun with music…
3 minute read
December 20, 2015, 12:41 PM
This past Thursday, among other places, Elyse and I checked out a store called Bill’s Music in Catonsville. What a wonderful place this was, with professional-grade equipment for sale at professional-grade prices (but you’re paying for quality). The store has every single piece of musical equipment that you could imagine, including some stuff I hadn’t seen in years, like real xylophones and such. Elyse actually knows a thing or two about music, unlike me.
The first thing that we discovered was a metallic xylophone (metallophone?). I hadn’t played one of these since sixth grade music class, a six-week “exploratory” course at Stuarts Draft Middle School. It was pretty awesome, working not so much with singing, but mostly with musical instruments – primarily xylophones. We learned some very basic songs on them, and apparently I still remember a couple of them:
Categories: Baltimore County, Elyse, Middle school, Music, Today's Special, WMATA
“He offered her the world…”
2 minute read
October 14, 2015, 11:50 PM
I’m always surprised to see how some of my photos are used. I recently got a membership with Pixsy, which skims the Internet for potentially infringing photo usages, and then allows the user to go after infringing users to get them to pay for their usage. One photo that surprised me as a frequent candidate for infringements was this one from 2003:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Roanoke, Schumin Web meta, Television
Finally, a road photo that I didn’t have to research…
2 minute read
July 11, 2015, 10:12 PM
Whenever I find a photo online showing something amusing on the road, I always like to find out the location. I’ve become rather skilled at looking at background details in photos to sleuth out locations after posting and geotagging countless photos on Panoramio, as well as researching filming locations for Project TXL (a planned overhaul of the Today’s Special site). So imagine my delight to see this funny road photo, showing Thomas the Tank Engine being transported on the back of a truck:
Photo: Imgur
Categories: Harrisonburg, Popular culture, Roads, Today's Special
Okay, folks, story time…
8 minute read
March 25, 2015, 2:03 PM
After hearing far too many people on Reddit spew out the “fact” that you can’t get unemployment insurance if you quit your job, I think it’s time to share a story about one instance why that “fact” is not the case. It is not, in fact, a hard and fast rule that, if you leave your job on your own, you don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, and it doesn’t make a difference if you head it off by quitting or let your boss fire you. I should know, because it happened to me.
You may recall that in July 2013, I posted a Journal entry about my last day at Food & Water Watch. For those of you solely know me through the website, that post probably came as a surprise to you. Save for a note on a photo feature, I didn’t give any hints prior to that entry that I was leaving Food & Water Watch, and I also never gave a reason in the entry about why I left. All you knew is that I had left, with no reason given regarding why. And that made enough sense, because I didn’t want to go into detail while I had an ongoing job search underway in the same field. Now I feel as though I’m in a place to share, especially now that I’ve changed fields, going from nonprofit operations management to public transportation.
In 2011, I had started to change a bit as a person. I grew up. My interests began to shift. I had also noticed that my own interests and those of the organization had started to diverge. The organization had also begun to change, with the introduction of anti-fracking work into its fold, beginning its morph from a consumer group into an environmental group.
I made the mistake of commenting intelligently on a thread populated by very ignorant people…
8 minute read
December 12, 2014, 11:07 AM
…and for that, I am filled with regret. I thought that perhaps these people would be able to respond to some level of reason. I was quite wrong on that point. This time, it was on the “Wilson Memorial Hornets Football” page on Facebook. I don’t remember how I ended up landing on this page, since I don’t really care about Augusta County high school sports, but somehow, there I was.
For those not familiar, Wilson Memorial High School is located in Fishersville, Virginia. The school was built at the same time as Stuarts Draft High School, i.e. where I went to high school, and is identical to Stuarts Draft architecturally. The two schools are traditionally rivals, and play each other every year in football, though now, I believe, as an exhibition game, since the two schools are now in different conferences.
This Facebook page for Wilson football, however, has been a bit controversial. On December 6, the page’s owner made the following post:
Categories: Religion, Social media, Some people
Here’s a blast from the Internet past…
4 minute read
November 20, 2014, 8:28 PM
So for Throwback Thursday, here’s a little blast from the Internet past: my old AOL Instant Messenger away messages! Yes, AOL Instant Messenger, otherwise known as AIM, i.e. this:
I was recently shuffling some files around on my computer, and found these, which I had preserved as a backup in February 2007, when I moved my computer from the Gateway to the Dell. I want to say that I used AIM for about fifteen years. I started using it the summer after I graduated high school, and stopped using it earlier this year, telling the two people that I still talked to primarily via AIM (both in-real-life friends) that I was dropping AIM and for them to use Facebook chat to get a hold of me.
Categories: JMU, Social media
“Not fooling anybody” in DC…
10 minute read
October 31, 2014, 11:50 AM
This past Saturday, I did some photography in Washington DC, but not the usual sort of photography that I do when I head into DC. This time, I photographed repurposed commercial buildings, i.e. buildings constructed with the standard architecture for a specific chain, and now operated by a business other than the one that the architecture would suggest. “Not Fooling Anybody” on Reddit, where people share photos of such conversions, describes it as “former chain businesses that have been converted to other uses, yet still strongly resemble their former use.” Some people might call these bad conversions, but I prefer to call them “obvious conversions”. After all, some conversions can look quite elegant, such as Italiano’s in Baltimore, which is a former KFC, but nonetheless still resemble the former tenant’s distinctive style.
It’s also worth noting that these sorts of buildings have no historical value of any kind, so they’re worth photographing while they’re still there, because they will be demolished when someone comes up with a more lucrative use for the land.
For this trip, I did my research. I had assembled a list of some places that I had spotted over the course of going wherever over the years, and then augmented that with some others that the folks on the DC subreddit brought to my attention, particularly on some corridors that I had never had any reason to travel under normal circumstances, such as Bladensburg Road and Benning Road. I then used Google Street View to visually verify all of the suggestions so that I knew what to look for in the field, plus I also did a virtual drive down a few roads using Street View to see if there were any others, as some corridors tend to be just teeming with them.
Categories: Converted buildings, Maryland, Netculture, Washington DC
“I am always so thrilled when people realize how much better a place can look with just a few simple changes!”
10 minute read
October 12, 2014, 12:07 PM
This past week, I finally finished the work that I’d been doing at my house for the past two months. The way I figured, since there was a period of time while the various processes related to onboarding at the new job were still coming together, I might as well take the time to finish a few things on my to-do list. It’s funny, however, what inspires a person to decorate. Back in July or so, my friend Suzie described my house as “a hot mess”. I thought about that over the next week or so, and came to the conclusion that she was right. And I admit – it was looking a little bit too “lived in” at the time, with a lot of unfinished business all over the place. The closets were not being used to their full potential, I had a pile of stuff on the counter between the kitchen and the living room, the table was full of junk, and there were things in visible locations when they should have been in closets.
I started out on August 5, doing what I called the “demolition” phase. This was where I cleaned out the closets and determined what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to get rid of. It’s amazing how much junk can fit in a one-bedroom apartment. I ended up getting rid of a ton of stuff. I had long-outdated information about the 2008 Democratic National Convention from the Unconventional Action consulta that occurred in January 2008. I had the banner from the black bloc at the National Equality March from October 2009. I had an expired bottle of generic Solarcaine from the time when I got sunburned at Splash Down Waterpark in June 2008. I also had a carton of fabric softener from 2007 that I had never opened, where all the liquid had been absorbed by the carton itself, leaving a blob of whatever solids were in the softener at the bottom. No, seriously. Take a look:
Categories: Fire alarms, House, Mercury Sable, Photography, Power Rangers, Schumin Web meta, Today's Special
When is the Internet going to understand that diabetes jokes are not funny?
2 minute read
August 20, 2014, 6:50 PM
So I was going around Reddit today, and saw this posted to the food subreddit:
Image: Imgur
Categories: Reddit
And this is why I should never be allowed to go to Micro Center unsupervised…
5 minute read
August 14, 2014, 1:27 AM
First of all, I apologize for my silence as of late. I’ve been busy working on various things plus having some computer issues, and that’s caused me to neglect the website somewhat, save for changing the photo features and splash photos.
However, the good news is that I’ve received job offers from a few different area transit agencies (that I’m not naming) for the position of bus operator. I should be starting training with one of them soon, once all of the various onboarding processes are completed. From what I’ve seen, these are not quick processes, but they’re done correctly the first time, and I’m fine with that. In deciding to become a bus driver, I realized over the course of the job hunt that my heart just wasn’t in it for more nonprofit work. I also realized that I wanted a career, and not just another job, and I didn’t really have a passion for the issues that the organizations that I was applying to were about. In looking at my interests, I came to realize that I had a real interest in starting a career in public transportation. And a job as a bus driver is a foot in that door. In pursuing that, I took a commercial driving course at Montgomery College over the winter, and I now hold a Class B commercial driver’s license with passenger and school endorsements, plus no air brake restrictions. So life is good on that front.
I also had a big day on July 26, checking out the new Silver Line stations. I received an invitation to ride the VIP train before revenue service began, and I brought my friend Matthew as my guest. I’m going to do a full-on photo set for Life and Times for this day (along with a few other subjects in the photo set queue), so I’m not going to say much about it now, but we had fun. I got to see a number of congressmen and other various elected officials, I got to talk to former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, and then Matthew and I rode the first revenue train from Wiehle Avenue to Largo. Then after lunch, we toured the new stations on the way back from Largo.
Categories: Computer, Homestar Runner, WMATA, Work
So I found an app that lets you take stereo photos…
8 minute read
July 16, 2014, 10:24 PM
Last night, I found an app called 3D Camera for my Android phone. The idea behind the app is that you take two photos a few inches apart from each other, you line them up, and then the app makes a stereo image for you to look at. Depending on how you shoot them, they can come out as either crossview or parallel. I tested it out late last night on a Wheelock 7002T, and came up with this:
(By the way, I strongly recommend clicking each of the images on this entry to view them at full size in the lightbox)
Categories: Photography, Reddit, Retail, Rockville
I completely nerded out on Sunday, and it was awesome…
14 minute read
June 24, 2014, 10:21 PM
I went out on a miniature road trip on Sunday, and I had a blast, taking photos of anything that vaguely interested me. It was more or less spur of the moment, when you consider that for what ended up being a photography trip, I only had my cell phone, and then, I didn’t bring my spare battery along. Thus it was a bit of a continual battle to keep a sufficient charge on the phone with only the car charger, but somehow, I managed, and the results came out pretty well despite my leaving my real camera at home. The way this trip came about is that I wanted to go up to and explore Westminster, Maryland. I’ve been wanting to explore Westminster for a while, ever since my father took an overnight business trip to Westminster a few years ago and I didn’t find out about it until it was too late in the day to go up and visit, because Dad didn’t realize that Westminster was as close to me as it was. That sucked, because I would have totally gone up if I had known. I’ll gladly travel an hour or so on relatively short notice to hang out with family.
So early Sunday morning, I just decided to go up and see what there was. I like doing these sorts of trips, because it’s basically a scouting trip, seeing if there’s anything that I want to explore and photograph in more detail in the future. Getting to Westminster is pretty easy: turn onto Georgia Avenue (MD 97) and take it all the way to Westminster. Seriously, it’s that easy. I got to Westminster just as the sun was coming up. After a quick drive through the main commercial area along Route 140, I located the downtown area.
The downtown area in Westminster has what I consider an unusual feature: a single-track rail line for the Maryland Midland Railway running diagonally through the main intersection in downtown. Main Street goes one way, and Liberty Street and Railroad Avenue (both MD 27) go the other way, and the rail line runs diagonally across the intersection. I would have loved to have seen a train come through here while I was in the area, but unfortunately, I did not get to see that this time.