My trip to Stuarts Draft… via Amtrak!
September 27, 2011, 10:41 PM
So this is actually a Video Journal entry. And here it is:
Continue reading…Categories: Amtrak, Cell phone, Family, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Video Journal, Waynesboro, WMATA
And tomorrow, I’ll be treated to a lovely view of Virginia from the inside of an Amfleet coach…
September 20, 2011, 10:57 PM
Indeed, tomorrow is going to be fun. I’m going down to Stuarts Draft to visit the family, and unlike every past trip I’ve ever made between DC and Stuarts Draft, I’m doing it via public transportation. Specifically, I’m taking the Cardinal, Amtrak train 51. Since it’s only a four-hour train trip, I’m going in coach. That will be a new experience, because aside from like ten minutes in coach on the Capitol Limited in 2007, I’ve always traveled in a class higher than coach, being in the sleepers on the Capitol Limited, and then traveling business class on the Acela and the Downeaster (though it should be noted that the Acela does not have a coachclass section – business class is the lowest class of service).
The reason I’m taking the train is because I will be hosting a visitor as soon as I get back to DC. Specifically, Mom! The reason it worked out like this is because of a perfect storm of events. Sis and Chris are going to be in Virginia to attend a wedding in Blacksburg, stopping by to say hello and have lunch with all of us on Thursday. And of course, I just won’t pass up a chance to see my sister and my brother-in-law, since they live so far away and I don’t get to see them often. Then there’s the National Book Festival in DC, which Mom has attended for a number of years. So because of the timing, it seemed silly to drive down to Stuarts Draft in the Sable, and then take two cars back to DC. So the Sable is staying in Maryland (and it’s likely already parked where it’s going to stay for about four days), and Mom’s Scion is making the trip up and back. But we’re going to be leaving at 4 AM – yecch. I’m not going to the Book Festival, though. I’m just going home. So while Mom’s out meeting authors, I’m going home and taking a nap, getting the rest of the sleep I won’t be able to get on Friday night.
Categories: Amtrak, Cell phone, Family, Swimming, Weight loss
And so the second round of car shopping begins…
September 18, 2011, 1:08 PM
For those of you who don’t know, I’m looking for a new car. As you may have noticed over the years, the Sable, while certainly a comfortable car, has been needing about one major repair a year as of late, and I’m tired of dealing with it. So I’m trolling around car manufacturer Web sites and dealerships looking for a worthy replacement for the Sable.
The first round of selection is complete – that was done from the comfort of home, compiling a list of cars to check out. I think the term for the kind of car I’m looking for is “subcompact“. In driving the Sable around for these last few years, I’ve realized that for most of what I use the Sable for, I have too much car. I don’t take passengers very often. It’s extremely rare that I’ll carry more than one passenger. In the entire time I’ve had the car, I’ve taken more than three passengers once – that time during the Boston Megaraid weekend when I carried six other people in the car, including one across three others’ laps and another one in the “trunk” – and that was only for about a mile (if that). Then it is also rare that I will ever fill the cargo area. I think I filled it completely up once or twice when I was moving things to Maryland, but otherwise, no. Buying groceries doesn’t even fill the back area up. So I end up transporting a lot of empty space around, and extra space (and the weight of material needed to enclose it) comes with a fuel penalty. Plus the car is simply too big for a lot of the spaces that I try to squeeze it into. There are plenty of instances, like the parking garage at work and the Whole Foods on P Street in DC, where I have a really hard time getting into and out of spaces because it’s a tight garage and my car is a few sizes too large. I have scuff marks on my car from where I’ve been less than successful in my maneuvering. If I had a smaller car, I’d be a lot better off.
So on Saturday afternoon, I went over to the Toyota dealership on Route 355 to try a few cars. I tried one car strictly for fun (but never tell the dealer that you’re doing one just for fun), and two were serious.
Categories: New car
So how much smaller am I now, anyway?
September 15, 2011, 10:50 PM
So it’s been six months now since my journey towards physical fitness and a slimmer figure began. Now I’d like to show you some results. Last Friday after work, a coworker and I were discussing how a lot of my clothes don’t fit right anymore, and my coworker wondered how the black zentai fit me these days. I admitted that I hadn’t worn the black zentai in over a year, and so I had no idea, but I was kind of curious as to how it fit as well. Somehow we came to an understanding that I would try it on and see how it fit these days.
So that evening after I got home, I pulled out the tripod, set the camera up on it in the kitchen, pulled out the black zentai, and put it on. Now the benefit to this setup (with the camera on a timer) is that this is pretty much a straight apples-to-apples comparison, with all variables controlled for except the one we’re trying to demonstrate. See, I took a series of photos of myself in the black zentai in July 2008 in the same location and under the same conditions. So here’s a side by side comparison:
Categories: Clothing, Weight loss
Well, I’ll be darned – Metro passed the test.
September 10, 2011, 9:08 PM
Well, I did exactly what I said I was going to do in my previous Journal entry. I did some railfan photography on the day before the tenth anniversary of 9/11, expecting to be confronted so that I could give ’em the smackdown about not following the WMATA photo policy. And (surprisingly), Metro passed the test. 176 photos later, I left the system for the day at Glenmont without a single negative word from a Metro employee.
I was impressed. And I was being really blatant about my photography, on purpose. At one point, I was holding the camera in the air above my head and snapping photos on the platform while going through Gallery Place. I even specifically photographed the kiosk at all of the stations I visited – Glenmont, Fort Totten, and Gallery Place. Take a look:
Glenmont kiosk on the way in, photographed from the elevator.
Categories: Photography, Security, WMATA
It is time to put WMATA’s knowledge of its own photography policy to the test…
September 9, 2011, 8:02 PM
Let me tell you… tomorrow is going to be fun. I’m heading into DC tomorrow for a Wikipedia meetup. On the way over, I’m going to be doing a little railfan photography.
The railfan photography is going to look something like this, I’m sure:
Categories: Photography, Security, WMATA
This is the interesting part of all the photo work I’m doing on the site…
September 5, 2011, 1:28 AM
I made quite the interesting find while digging around for a few images. Take a look:
Categories: Fire alarms, JMU, Schumin Web meta
Nobody told me that converting the site to WordPress would be this painful…
September 4, 2011, 6:20 PM
So the conversion of Schumin Web to WordPress is going along quite well for the most part, aside from the odd having-trouble-locating-an-image kind of issue, where I really have to go hunting through the discs to find an image. That’s annoying, but not insurmountable, since I am a bit of a pack rat when it comes to these things, as I keep everything, whether it’s actually worth keeping or not.
First of all, my organization in the early days was less than efficient. While I arranged photos that were taken together into folders like I still do today, they were not content-neutral in relation to the site. For most of my photos, it’s arranged by date with a note as to the general topic of the day. For instance, if it was a protest, the folder would be called, for instance, “October Rebellion – 10-19-2007”. But with the really old material, stuff was arranged under “Miscellaneous”, “Photography”, “College Life”, and “Life and Times”, and then by date and topic. And since the time that I arranged the material on the disc, some material has changed locations on the site, and some things aren’t on the site anymore. It definitely makes researching photos a challenge, that’s for sure.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
I am now part of the SmarTrip pass test group…
August 31, 2011, 11:20 PM
So I was waiting for the bus this morning, and was checking my Email on my phone. I got a message with the subject of “Pilot Invitation” from a sender called “noreply”. Turns out that “noreply” was short for “noreply@wmata.com”, and the Email was to notify me that I was randomly selected to participate in the load-your-passes-onto-SmarTrip program. Here’s the message:
To SmarTrip® Account Holder
You have been randomly selected to participate in a pilot of several new system functions.
We sincerely regret to inform our MTA customers that the MTA system does not yet support these new functions.
We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause our MTA customers.These functions will enable you to use your credit card to purchase stored value and passes for your SmarTrip® card.
You will also be able to save your credit card information to use for future purchases, and to print detailed receipts.The next time you log in to your SmarTrip® account, you will see several new links on your account pages. For example, on the page with the header “View Card Summary”, you will see the following changes:
– A shopping cart icon on the left side of the screen
– A new group of links under the heading “Online Purchases” on the upper right section of the screen; and
– Within the text in the middle of the screen, there are links to “Add value” and “Add Pass”.Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the new functions, and the steps that you will need to follow to load your purchases onto your SmarTrip® card.
These new features are intended to make it more convenient for you to manage the balances on your cards and avoid the lines at ticket vending machines.
We encourage you to take advantage of these new features. If you have questions, or experience any problems when using these new features, please contact the Regional Customer Service Center at 1-888-762-7874.
Your SmarTrip® Account Team
Categories: WMATA
And at last, we finish Chicago…
August 30, 2011, 10:16 PM
Just in case you thought I forgot to finish my description of Chicago, let me disabuse you of that idea. Here’s the last installment of the trip to Chicago.
First thing Sunday, Mom and I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant with Sis and Chris. To save money, since my main complaint about the trip in 2010 was that we spent too much on food, we bought food for breakfast, and had something reasonably healthy for breakfast that we bought at a nearby grocery store. I had oatmeal and some fruit. Yes, I did my darndest to be good on this trip, despite it all. But this being the last day, we splurged a little, and ate in the restaurant.
Then we went down to Rogers Park. Sis and Chris promised us a farmers’ market, and so we saw the farmers’ market in Rogers Park. It was initially raining, but we managed. Since I couldn’t buy anything on account of the train trip that Mom and I would be taking later in the day, I decided to have a little camera fun, photographing the fruits and vegetables for sale. And unlike the CTA workers, who think that when they harass photographers, they are doing it in the name of national security (puh-leeze), the folks at the farmers’ market were more than happy to show off their wares for the camera. And here are some of the results:
An earthquake? In DC?
August 23, 2011, 3:42 PM
Yeah. It happened.
It’s funny how it happened, too. I was at the office, helping a coworker move offices, and I felt the floor start to shake. My first instinct was to look out the window, since you occasionally can feel vibrations when trucks are moving around in the loading dock area. But there was no truck. Then I realized that the whole building was shaking, and that it must be an earthquake, and so I ended up standing in the doorway of the office next to mine (where my coworker was moving), waiting for the shaking to stop. From that vantage point, I saw everyone else standing in their office doorways looking as perplexed as I was. The lights flickered once for half a second, but once everything stopped, that was it. No further shaking occurred, and there was no damage that I could see. I was half expecting the fire alarm system to start up, but it never did.
A number of my coworkers left the building for a little bit, just in case, but I stayed in, and, like a number of others, tried to figure out what was going on. The Twitter and Facebook certainly lit up with earthquake-related buzz. I cross-posted a message to both services:
Okay… that was interesting. An earthquake in DC. Is everyone all right?
August 23 1:55 PM
And the conversion is underway!
August 23, 2011, 12:38 AM
It is time.
The conversion of Schumin Web from an HTML site to WordPress is officially underway. The work of my two testing sites, Falcon and Raven, is complete. “Raven” was hosted locally on my computer, where I could test things close to home. Then “Falcon” was the live testing site to see how things would behave on the actual Internet. Now Raven is kind of being set aside, and Falcon is currently being used as a development location, where the site is getting put together under WordPress.
And look at this:
Categories: Schumin Web meta
“I feel braver when I’m holding a weapon!”
August 19, 2011, 10:37 PM
And now, back to Chicago following that little detour into complaining about pain. After all, I’ve only told you about half the trip!
On Saturday, we headed into the greater Chicagoland area – much further out than our hotel in Evanston. We actually went out to Lisle, Illinois, which is home to the Morton Arboretum. We went to the Morton Arboretum to participate in a Theatre Hike, where we see a play as we walk all around the arboretum. We saw a classic – The Wizard of Oz. Chris, my brother-in-law, was playing the Cowardly Lion. The whole day was a lot of fun from the moment that Sis and Chris picked us up at the hotel in their 1997 Saab.
First of all, Mom and I had never done much exploring outside the city, and so we were seeing the scenery, as we went through Skokie and a couple of other towns. We were also amazed to see how many companies had large corporate campuses in the greater Chicagoland area. It was something, all right. Plus we got to see Sis and Chris interact as they figured out where Morton Arboretum was and how exactly to plug it into their GPS. As it turned out, they had to Google it on Sis’s phone since the address they had didn’t work on the GPS, and so they navigated off the phone. Whatever works, I suppose.
The pains of getting in shape… oh, the pains!
August 18, 2011, 1:50 PM
Ever have those weeks where you feel like your body is just going to pot? Welcome to my world this week. Four parts of the body have hurt this week: both ears, back, and right foot.
Ailment #1: Ears. I have somehow managed to get swimmer’s ear in both ears. Gross. The right ear is just sore, but the left ear is a full-blown infection. Big swelling in the ear canal, and the outer ear was warm and painful to touch. This actually has caused a feeling of fullness in the left ear, and some minor hearing loss on that side (due to the ear canal’s being mostly blocked). That started on Thursday, and by Friday morning, we had a full-on infection on the left side. Then on Saturday night, the drainage started. I have never seen fluorescent-yellow drainage before – like the color of a yellow highlighter. Gross. Even worse is that I can feel when the infection is draining. It tickles, and then causes some pain. Again: gross.
Ailment #2: Back pain. I don’t know what I did there. I mean with the ears, duh – I swim five days a week. But the back, no clue. That started last Friday morning just as I was leaving for work as a dull ache in my lower back. By the time the day was over, I was having trouble standing for long periods. Of course it would happen the day before a big demonstration, too. The DC SlutWalk was happening the next day, and I vowed that I didn’t care if I was screaming in agony at the event, but I was going no matter what. Thankfully, the back managed to work out for the SlutWalk, and I had a good time. But then it came back on Sunday. No good.
Categories: Personal health
John Hancock Center, Schumy Lunch, and Lake Michigan!
August 14, 2011, 10:25 PM
Okay, so I’m late in posting this, but I think most would agree that it’s better to have worn myself out so completely at the pool (and giving myself swimmer’s ear in the process – yay me) and being so tired from it that I go right to sleep when I get home is preferable to not getting my exercise in and writing Journal entries on time.
So aside from the previously-discussed argument with the unprofessional CTA employee, the rest of that day went very well, though the argument did leave me a bit shaken for a while. But when that discussion happened, we were on our way back down to the Magnificent Mile, since Mom and I were going to visit the John Hancock Center observation deck.
We quickly found the Hancock Center, and found the ticket counter for the observation deck. Interestingly enough, the ticket counter is actually one level below street level. I find that kind of ironic when you consider that you have to go down to go up to the 94th floor where the observation deck is. Meanwhile, the lady at the counter, who looked like she was my age, asked where Camp Rainbow was. I told her that it was from Today’s Special, and was created for the show. It clicked with her, and she immediately recognized the shirt. SCORE! Let’s admit it – “Camp Rainbow” is a really obscure reference in Today’s Special, considering it was one episode (“Summer Camp”), though Jeff’s shirt made a cameo appearance later in “Storms”. But the lady at the counter was on her game! I was impressed.
Categories: Chicago, Family, Today's Special