If this turns out to be the end, I think that they had a good run…
9 minute read
June 13, 2020, 11:43 PM
Some of the news that has come out of the various retail groups that I’m in on Facebook has centered around the rather dire financial situation that CEC Entertainment, the company that owns Chuck E. Cheese, has found itself in lately. In short, with the coronavirus pandemic and related closures, that has put the company in a bad financial situation. The articles that I’ve read have indicated that bankruptcy and liquidation are probably in the company’s near future. And really, if that is how it ends, that’s not the worst thing in the world.
First of all, though, I find the moves that the company has made since pandemic-related restrictions put the kibosh on their normal business to be rather curious, because it has tended to lay bare certain aspects of the business that they would probably rather not have everyone realize. One thing that I’ve seen posted online is that the company is selling the prizes outright, whereas normally, they are only available by redeeming prize tickets from the games. The asking prices show what the company thinks that those prizes are really worth, including a profit margin, rather than having the games and tickets as a middleman to obscure the actual value of these things. It makes me think of the mug that I won at ShowBiz Pizza for around 100 tickets, mostly via an arcade version of Bozo the Clown’s Grand Prize Game, played for tickets. I remember that the game was relatively generous with tickets, giving out one ticket per bucket successfully hit. That’s why I played it, because this game gave up to six tickets per play, while most games only gave out one or two tickets per play. Thus if I wanted something good, this was the machine to do it with. So assuming a perfect play every time, to get 100 tickets would have required 17 plays, or $4.25. But it probably ended up costing us a bit more than that because at around eight years old, I was not capable of doing a perfect play every time, and even getting to the sixth bucket at all, let alone making it, was pretty rare for me. A more realistic estimate for my size and skill at that time would be three tickets per play, which would require 34 plays and cost $8.50. And this was not an $8.50 mug, by any means, especially not in 1989 dollars (around $18 in today’s money). The thing was probably only worth a dollar, even back then. We paid a lot more for it because you had to redeem tickets from the games for it. I imagine that if they sold the mug today for cash rather than tickets, it would probably reveal that we paid way more than we should have for that mug. But for the time, I accomplished what I was trying to do, and left with the mug, the satisfaction of having gotten a good prize, for once, as well as a massive headache. I did some major hurling that night, too. Totally worth it.
Continue reading…Categories: Companies
What a washing machine might see…
3 minute read
May 24, 2020, 11:06 AM
I’m currently working on a photography project where I’m going through my old photos from the period before I started using Flickr seriously, which means stuff prior to around September 2013, with the goal of putting more stuff from the back catalog on my Flickr feed. What I’ve noticed is that of all of the photos that I took, I took a lot of stinkers, but there is a lot of good stuff that got passed over in the past, mostly because the Life and Times and Photography formats tend to tell a story through the photos, with various levels of narration, and if an otherwise good photo doesn’t help to tell that story, it typically won’t get used. Flickr is a different format from Schumin Web, and photos tend to be viewed individually rather than as collections, though that capacity does exist. So photos that are good but otherwise irrelevant to the story will “work” there. The recent Journal entry about my trip to Hampton Roads is a good example. That entry used 79(!) photos from the four-day trip, and there was a lot that I didn’t cover because that was already an obscene amount of photos for one Journal entry, and I already found pacing to be a challenge when writing that one, wanting to cover a lot but not go on for too long.
In any case, I found a group of photos that I did on February 26, 2013 that I never used anywhere. I set a camera inside the washing machine and the dryer in my apartment building, and set the shutter timer, and posed for the camera. I believe that my intent was to use one of these as a splash photo, but I ultimately didn’t like any of them enough to run them on the front of the website, so this whole set got shelved. I think that I rejected them primarily because it was rather late at night, and I wasn’t really looking my best. However, in going back through these for the Flickr project, they made me laugh a little bit, because the even though the concept was a bit ridiculous, the results aren’t as bad as I thought at the time.
Categories: Photography
Drive carefully, everyone…
3 minute read
May 17, 2020, 12:21 AM
You may have noticed the photo feature that is currently running on the front of the site depicts a vehicle on its side following its being involved in an accident. First of all, before you ask: we were not involved in this accident. Elyse and I saw a car with a bashed in front in the middle of the road and a second car on its side at the intersection of Montgomery Village Avenue and Lost Knife Road while we were on the way home from dropping off a package at a UPS locker, and, seeing no emergency vehicles around, stopped and called it into 911. Thankfully, no one appeared to be seriously hurt, as both drivers were able to walk away from their respective vehicles. However, I suspect that the driver of the smashed car hit her head on the windshield, as there was damage to the windshield consistent with that sort of impact. Additionally, both drivers did ultimately leave the scene in ambulances, presumably to get checked out.
Once we were finished talking with 911, we got some photos of the scene. Here are some of mine:
The overturned vehicle, an Acura MDX. The driver had not yet turned the car off when this photo was taken.
Categories: Driving, Montgomery Village
Photographing a very large plane…
3 minute read
May 12, 2020, 11:30 PM
Today, Elyse and I headed up to BWI in order to photograph an Antonov An-124 Ruslan that was coming in for a landing. For those not familiar, Antonov planes have helped transport various medical supplies to where they are needed in the fight against the coronavirus. As I understand it, these movements are generally not publicized in advance, but the plane shows up on various aviation tracking apps, and as such when one is found, people tend to head out to spot them. Elyse let me know, and after I warmed to the idea (I don’t take too kindly to requests for adventures before I even get out of bed), we went up to the aircraft observation park (we’ve photographed here before) to await it.
When we got there, there were a bunch of guys with cameras that had really big lenses, as well as radio scanners. Then the winds shifted, and the planes started landing on another runway that is not very visible from the observation park. All of the guys with the big lenses then left and headed to a nearby Royal Farms, which is an excellent vantage point for the other runway. We followed them, assuming that they knew what they were doing. Then after we got there, we saw all of the guys head back to the observation park, and we followed. And then the plane, tail number RA-82042, came through:
Categories: Airplanes, Anne Arundel County, COVID-19
The more they talk, the more irresponsible they sound…
8 minute read
April 23, 2020, 10:45 AM
So I have a new story about my experience enforcing copyrights, this one involving materials posted to YouTube. First of all, though, for those not familiar with how YouTube handles DMCA copyright takedowns, it is worth noting that their takedown form is a bit lackluster, though they’re usually pretty quick to respond. The problem is that YouTube doesn’t allow a claimant (i.e. me) to fully make my claim to ownership of a piece of video content, which has led to problems in the past. Here’s the relevant section of YouTube’s copyright form:
Categories: Copyright infringement
A trip out to Hampton Roads…
18 minute read
April 19, 2020, 10:15 AM
From April 3-6, Elyse and I made a trip to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia to visit friends and do some photography. The way I figured, the trip was already paid for, and so as long as we took adequate precautions, I saw no harm in running it as planned. After all, I go out every day to go to work transporting the public, so it’s not like we were “breaking quarantine” or anything, since I’m out in the environment on a regular basis throughout all of this. All that said, if you don’t like that we took this trip, keep it to yourself, because I don’t want to hear about it. On our trip, we stayed in Williamsburg, and had a fun time, mostly photographing architecture and infrastructure with friends Aaron and Evan Stone.
Meanwhile, leaving the house, I had the worst shotgun passenger ever:
I mean, despite his sour disposition, you really didn’t think that we’d take a trip without bringing Woomy along, did you? Elyse quickly threw him out of the front seat so that she could ride, and so Woomy rode in the cup holder.
Categories: COVID-19, Hampton Roads, North Carolina, Richmond, Roads, Ships, Transit, Travel, Woomy
Stack ’em up?
7 minute read
April 1, 2020, 1:25 AM
So my latest experiments with photography have been with stacking exposures. For those not familiar, the general idea behind stacked exposures is to take several short exposures instead of one long exposure, and then “stack” them on top of each other in order to simulate a photo with a longer exposure. It is useful in situations where a true long exposure is impractical, such as when shooting in daylight. The way it’s done is that you take all of the shots that you intend to stack out in the field, preferably using a tripod and a remote control for the shutter, and then do the stacking at home.
Whenever I test a new technique, I typically will shoot photos of something that I’ve photographed before. This way, I already know what the photo is supposed to look like, and I know what works as far as angles go. That eliminates a few variables so that I can just focus on the technique. In this case, I did two field trips. One was out to Point of Rocks and along Route 7 in Virginia and ultimately into DC, and the other was to Burnt Mills Dam off of US 29 in Montgomery County. The Virginia trip was mostly for nighttime shots, and the Burnt Mills trip was for daytime shots.
At Point of Rocks, Elyse went trainspotting at the nearby MARC station while I wandered around with my tripod to photograph some stuff. My focus was on the Point of Rocks Bridge and the Potomac River running under the bridge. My focus was mainly on smoothing out the water.
Categories: Frederick County, Loudoun County, Montgomery County, Photography, Washington DC
The signs of social distance…
7 minute read
March 28, 2020, 12:40 AM
In the era of social distancing brought on by the novel coronavirus, I have definitely observed some changes in how the world looks. As a person who works in an essential industry (people still have to go places, yo), I still get out quite a bit. In my work, service levels have been reduced, and all trains are now eight cars in order to allow people to space themselves out, plus it’s strange to go through some stations in the middle of the day and pick up nobody. It’s also strange seeing the message boards on the Beltway advising people in big letters to stay home. It’s also strange to see so many people wearing gloves and surgical masks, even though those don’t do anything when the general public wears them as a preventative measure, and may actually be harmful if the person wearing them thinks that it excuses them from things like not touching their face, washing their hands, and so on.
In any case, most of the time when I’m going out, it’s to pick up a few things at stores, mostly on my days off of work. The first thing that I noticed was the panic buying, as seen on March 14 at the Target in Rockville:
The toilet paper aisle, picked completely bare.
Categories: COVID-19, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Montgomery County, News
Enhancing the curb appeal of the house…
3 minute read
March 14, 2020, 8:15 AM
Categories: House
Fun in Pennsylvania…
8 minute read
March 7, 2020, 10:00 AM
I guess that you could say that my March came in like a lion. On March 1 and 2, Elyse and I did an overnight trip to south-central Pennsylvania, a 350-mile journey that took us to an abandoned motel, to Breezewood, through three of the four mainline tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, to Harrisburg, and then back home. All in all, we had a fun time.
Our first stop was the aforementioned abandoned motel. This was a former Days Inn near Breezewood, and from what we could tell, it had been abandoned since 2013, and, from the looks of things, it will never be occupied again. Just about every piece of glass in the place had been shattered, the ceiling in the hallways had either fallen down or been pulled down, and there was mold everywhere. Lovely place.
Welcome to Days Inn!
Categories: Breezewood, Harrisburg, Travel, Urban exploration
These photos could have been taken anywhere…
4 minute read
February 28, 2020, 8:30 AM
While on an outing on Thursday, I stopped to photograph the former Walmart store in Leesburg, Virginia. I had been planning a photo shoot here ever since the store closed in May 2019, upon the opening of a new Supercenter store elsewhere in the Leesburg area. I was drawn to this location because, unlike a lot of former Walmart stores, this one left a massive labelscar on the building due to repaintings over the years, as revealed in photos taken by Aaron Stone. Other Walmarts that closed have had lesser labelscars, and Walmart has also been known to paint out their labelscars. But this one had “WAL★MART” still easily readable in blue. I felt something of a sense of urgency in getting down to this location, because who knows how long a former Walmart will sit idle. Other former Walmart stores in the DC area have been scooped up relatively quickly, such as the former Manassas Walmart, which was quickly converted to other uses. So who knew how long this might remain in this form.
Arriving on site, I couldn’t have gotten better shooting conditions. The skies were partly cloudy, with only a small amount of cloud cover, which worked to my benefit. Completely clear skies make for slightly bluish photos that need to be color corrected in post-production, while partly cloudy skies tend to lend to more accurate colors that require less work at the computer. My only complaint about the conditions was that it was cold and windy, which was not fun to shoot in. By the time I finished this shoot, which took about 25 minutes to do, I was quite cold. It took me some time to warm back up once I got back in the car.
Categories: Loudoun County, Walmart
The remodeling of a Walmart store…
5 minute read
February 19, 2020, 4:33 PM
Back in 2005, I was living in my parents’ house and working for Walmart. I tended to go out a bit after work in order to unwind, and when I did, I would usually do a circuit that took me from my store in Waynesboro up Afton Mountain, down the Blue Ridge Parkway as far south as Route 60, go west on Route 60 to Lexington, and then head back home via I-81. When I did this, the Walmart in Lexington tended to be one of my stops, as it was a logical place to get up, walk around, and shop if I needed to (I didn’t like shopping at my own store because I didn’t feel like a customer there, nor was I treated like a real customer). For a few months that year, Walmart remodeled that store from the late-1990s design that it was given when it was expanded to a Supercenter to the then-current store design, which was the mid-2000s black signage with brown walls. For some reason, I documented this remodel throughout the process via cell phone photos. So here it is. Forgive the quality, because cell phone cameras at the time didn’t take much better photos than a potato, and using Big Mavica would have been too obvious.
A Facebook comment should not bother me this much…
5 minute read
February 11, 2020, 11:11 AM
Recently, I commented on a post on the Facebook page for WHSV, the local ABC affiliate for Harrisonburg, Virginia, and got some unusual feedback. The original post was for an article about Trump’s participation in the “March for Life“, an anti-choice demonstration held annually in DC on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.
Before I continue, though, it seems worthwhile to explain my stance on the matter of abortion. My stance is that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. But ultimately, it’s not my call. What other people do with their bodies is their business, and it doesn’t affect me.
I also believe that abortion is more or less a settled matter, but that it has value for the GOP as a campaign issue. In other words, the Republican Party will talk a big game about it, but ultimately, no one is going to ban abortion. Ever. Why ban it and settle the matter decisively in your favor, when you can bring it up as a campaign issue every election cycle and raise money and get people to vote based on it? To actually ban abortion would be to kill the golden goose, and also hand a massive fundraising opportunity to the Democrats. Maybe I’m a bit cynical about the whole thing, but I imagine that if they were really going to act on that issue, they would have done it by now, during the various periods where the GOP has controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. That they haven’t done that tells me that they are not interested in settling it.
Categories: Middle school, National politics, Social media, Stuarts Draft
It’s been a month since the sleeve…
8 minute read
January 19, 2020, 2:05 PM
It has been a little more than a month since I had the gastric sleeve surgery. As of my one-month follow-up appointment with the doctor on January 7, I had lost 23 pounds since the surgery. That is on top of the 16 pounds that I lost while I was on the pre-op liquid diet, for a total of 39 pounds lost in about six weeks. Not bad. I will get weighed next in the middle of February when I have my DOT physical, and so I’ll see how my weight loss is continuing at that time.
The time in the hospital was certainly an interesting experience, and my discussion of it in a previous Journal entry was a bit inadequate, since I was not quite feeling like myself again when I wrote it. I’ve also learned a few things since then about what I experienced that I didn’t know at the time. For one thing, I realized that the reason that I hurt all over was from the gas that they use with the laparoscopy. As part of that process, they pump your abdomen full of carbon dioxide, and that stuff has to go somewhere once the surgery is over. When everyone said “gas pains” about the surgery, I was expecting something more akin to bloating like when you eat something that doesn’t agree with you. You know the kind where you go into the bathroom, you produce a little tiny Brazil nut-sized poop and then just fart a lot but feel better afterward? That’s what I was expecting. This was not that. It turns out that the body has to absorb that gas, and it makes everything hurt, including things that had nothing to do with the surgery. My upper back was sore. My shoulders were sore. My calves were sore, too. It went away after a couple of days, but it definitely made for an unpleasant night at the hospital, since I was sore from that, and all of the stuff that they had attached to me made it difficult to move around in the bed. Let’s just say that I was thankful to sleep in my own bed again the following night. That pain from the gas was a lot more manageable when I was in familiar surroundings and not hooked up to a bunch of stuff.
You’ve also got to love the things that you say while you’re under the influence of the various things that they have you on in the hospital. They gave me all kinds of anti-nausea meds, for one, but then when it was time to go into the operating room, they gave me some stuff through my IV that made me a bit loopy just before wheeling me in. I got into the operating room, and I was thinking, oooooooooooh, look at the pretty lights as I studied all of the reflectors on them. Then when they gave me the gas to put me out, all I could think of was that I wasn’t feeling sleepy. Then the next thing that I remembered, it was done. Later, as two nurses were wheeling me to my room on a stretcher, my hospital gown was apparently disheveled, because they asked me if my testicles were swollen. I said, “No, I just have long nuts.” I imagine that the nurses kind of died a little inside when I said that, but I suppose that such is what happens when the anesthesia is wearing off, because I certainly wouldn’t say that in real life. But it made for a good laugh later on.
Categories: Weight loss
The sounds of Metro…
2 minute read
January 18, 2020, 10:37 AM
Back on July 8, 2007, my friend Matthew and I went on a railfan adventure with a different purpose than we would usually do. Normally, a railfan adventure involved lots of photos and videos. This time, instead of a camera, we brought a laptop and a microphone. The goal was to get some audio recordings of the trains from the interior, for use in BVE, which is a train simulator program for Windows. We worked from the double-ended seats, which were located more or less directly over the wheel trucks and traction motors. I worked the laptop while wearing headphones, while Matthew held up the mic. I’ve never been a big train simulator enthusiast (I prefer watching the real thing vs. operating a simulator), so I don’t know if these recordings ever got used in any of the final versions of these trains, but I loved doing the field work for these sorts of community-built projects. I also did a set of Red Line announcements for the simulator. As I know, there has never been a commercially available train simulator for the DC Metro, so for that, I enjoyed contributing in a small way to what was the only WMATA train simulator out there.
Our adventure that day took us on the Red, Orange, and Blue Lines, and we got recordings of cars 3273 (Breda original), 3185 (Breda rehab), 5028 (CAF), and 1130 (Rohr).
Original Breda car 3273 from Forest Glen to Silver Spring
Categories: Arlington, Matthew, Silver Spring, Washington DC, WMATA