May the HR-V rest in peace…
October 20, 2022, 8:32 AM
In the early morning on October 9, I was involved in a car accident on the way home from work. At the intersection of Montgomery Village Avenue and Christopher Avenue/Lost Knife Road in Gaithersburg, the driver of a red Nissan Pathfinder on Christopher Avenue ran a red light at what appeared to be full speed as I was going through the intersection, and despite my slamming on the brakes, there just wasn’t enough space to stop in order to avoid a collision. As a result, my car got T-boned on the left side on the front fender and the driver’s door, with enough force to deploy the side curtain airbags and knock my car about 150 feet before it came to rest next to a curb.
After the impact, I remember that I was sitting in the car and noticed that the airbags had gone off, and also noticed that the windshield was shatered at the bottom left. Then I remember hearing a male voice telling me that I needed to get out of the car. I quickly realized that would probably be a good idea, because considering that the car had just gone through a pretty hard collision, for all I knew, it might be on fire. I tried to open my door, but I couldn’t get it open, so I ended up climbing out through the passenger side door. I was quite shaken, I was bleeding above my left eye, my left knee felt sore like it had been scraped, and I wasn’t wearing my glasses anymore for some reason, but nonetheless, I had managed to walk away from it. Then I saw the person who had been telling me that I needed to get out of the car. It was a gentleman wearing black eye makeup (kind of like what the band Kiss does) from an event that he had been at earlier who was also an EMT, and who had witnessed the entire thing. He also quickly told me that the accident was absolutely not my fault, which I appreciated hearing. There was also a woman present who had witnessed the accident, who also agreed that I was not at fault. One of them must have also called 911, because I certainly didn’t, but the police and EMS were there pretty quickly.
When EMS arrived, they quickly took care of me, wrapping some gauze around my head for the bleeding, and taking my blood pressure. Yes, they took my blood pressure. I’m standing on the side of the road next to my now-wrecked car, visibly shaking from the accident, and then the guy tells me that my blood pressure is “kind of high”, coming in at 172/116. I did not need to be told that. I’m usually pretty nice, but I just shot back, in a pretty sarcastic tone, “Gee, I wonder why.” He removed the blood pressure cuff from my arm and went away. Yeah, I just survived a pretty major car accident, got hit by an airbag, had to crawl out the other side of my car, was bleeding from my head, had no glasses, and was shaking. My blood pressure is high? No kidding. I would have been more surprised if it was 120/80 right then rather than some astronomical amount. I refused transport, feeling that it was unnecessary. Then the cops got my information, and took my statement. I also let Elyse know what had happened, and she quickly got an Uber to take her to the scene.
Continue reading…Categories: Driving, Gaithersburg, Honda HR-V (2018), Montgomery Village, Scion xB
When I learned the answer, I was not at all surprised…
October 10, 2022, 9:20 AM
Recently, a question that I had been wondering about for a long time was answered definitively. For many years, I had suspected that I had some form of autism spectrum disorder, and over the summer, I took myself in to be evaluated in order to finally get an answer to that question. And the answer is yes, I have Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1, which was formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome. I kind of knew this all along, but I really didn’t want to self-diagnose and then act based on a self-diagnosis. I’m not an expert here, after all, and for something like this, I wanted to do it the right way. I never really discussed it much on here, but just about all of my friends who are autistic had suspected that I was autistic as well. They knew what they were looking at, and they saw it in me.
It certainly took me long enough to get around to getting diagnosed, though. I had wondered if I was on the autism spectrum for quite a number of years, and I had found Dr. Kara Goobic, a doctor who diagnosed autism in adults, about three years ago. I then kind of mentally filed it away for a while, as I had other things going on, though I did ask about other people’s experiences with Dr. Goobic on Reddit one time in a comment and got no response. Then this past spring, my curiosity about the autism question finally got the best of me, and I began communication with Dr. Goobic via email. We discussed what the process would entail, we determined that her practice was able to take my insurance, and we scheduled appointments around my work schedule. The first two sessions discussed my history growing up and as an adult, I completed some questionnaires (Elyse also completed one questionnaire asking about her experience with me), and then the third session was feedback and discussion. The appointments were great. Dr. Goobic and I got along quite well, and the various sessions went smoothly. And in the end, on the third session, which was feedback, I got a lot of different resources and such to check out, and overall, it was a very positive experience. I went into the sessions with Dr. Goobic with the assumption that I was doing this primarily for my own edification, and that from a functional/practical standpoint, having a diagnosis would change nothing for me other than making me a more informed person, and therefore, I had nothing to lose from it, and everything to gain.
The diagnosis confirmed what a lot of us had already suspected, so my reaction was something along the lines of, “Well, there you go.” That was exactly the diagnosis that I was expecting, so I was not surprised at all. A surprise would have been if the process had completed and it had turned out that I wasn’t autistic in some way. Regardless, it’s good to know what the name of the thing is, because when you know what it’s called, then you can do some research on the thing based on its name, and get a better understanding of what it is.
Categories: Autism, Childhood, Elementary school, JMU, Middle school, Myself, Work
A little adventure in Virginia, mostly in the woods…
October 6, 2022, 8:06 AM
From September 13-15, Elyse and I had a little weekend adventure in Virginia, where we went down to Augusta County stayed in Staunton like we usually do. This one was a little different than most because it was partly a solo adventure. Prior to this trip, Elyse had been down in Roanoke attending to business related to a nonprofit that she volunteers with, so she traveled up from there on Amtrak, and we met up in Charlottesville. My original plan was to go the easterly route down, taking I-95 to Fredericksburg and then taking Route 3, Route 20, US 15, and a few other routes that would take me through Locust Grove, Orange, and Gordonsville. However, at the last minute, I had a change of heart, deciding that (A) I didn’t feel like wading through traffic on the Beltway or 95, (B) that easterly track would get me to Charlottesville far too early, meaning that I would have to kill time before Elyse would arrive, and (C) I had ideas that necessitated taking other routes. So I took the westernmost route, which primarily utilizes I-81, and took the “alternate” version of that, which goes through Harpers Ferry and Charles Town in West Virginia via US 340, and then taking Route 7 to meet I-81 in Winchester. Yes, I’m going north to head south, but the distance and time for going out to Harpers Ferry is almost the same as it is to go through Northern Virginia on I-66, so it works.
My first point of interest was a relatively obscure sign in the middle of a field in Verona:
Image: Google Street View
Categories: Afton Mountain, Augusta County, Blue Ridge Parkway, Charlottesville, Nature, Recreation/Exercise, Some people, Staunton, Staunton Mall, Stuarts Draft, Travel, Vintage business, Waynesboro
Thoughts about carpetbagging…
September 26, 2022, 9:00 AM
Lately, I have had very mixed feelings on the subject of carpetbagging when it comes to congressional races. First, though, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, “carpetbagging” is an American term that was historically used to describe northerners who came to the south following the Civil War, and who were perceived to be exploiting the local population for their own gain. The term comes from their luggage, which was typically a traveling bag made out of scraps of carpet. In modern usage, it is generally used to refer to anyone who is running for political office in an area where they have no local connections. Among others, Hillary Clinton fits the modern definition of a carpetbagger when she ran for a US Senate seat in New York, as she had never been a New Yorker prior to her running for the Senate.
The reason that I have very mixed feelings about carpetbagging comes from two people who have a history of running for Congress, and who have had varying results. Additionally, I feel cursed by being able to see the issue from both sides. Of the two politicians that I’m thinking of, one of them is David Trone, who has represented Maryland’s sixth district in Congress since 2018. The other is Jennifer Lewis, a politician from Waynesboro, Virginia who has become something of a perennial candidate, having unsuccessfully run for Congress in Virginia’s sixth district in 2018 and a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2019, and who is now is running in the sixth district again this year.
In the case of David Trone, the sixth district was not his first rodeo when it came to congressional races. Trone first ran for Congress in 2016, when he ran for the eighth district seat, which was open that year after incumbent Chris Van Hollen declined to run for his House seat again in order to run for the Senate to succeed retiring senator Barbara Mikulski (he ultimately won). Trone ran in the Democratic primary for the eighth district, which was a nine-way race between a bunch of politicians whose names I won’t bore you with because unless you live in Montgomery County, you’ve probably never heard of any of them and never will. I lived in the eighth district at that time, and I recall having voted for Trone in that primary, because he seemed reasonable enough. He finished second in the primary behind Jamie Raskin, who took the nomination with 33.6% of the vote to Trone’s 27.1%. For a nine-way primary, Trone did respectably, but with this being a first-past-the-post system in a single-member district, Raskin advanced to the general election, and Trone was eliminated. I figured that would be the end of Trone, politically, since Raskin would probably hold the seat for a while, and Trone would return to the private sector and his Total Wine & More business.
Categories: State and local politics
A question about what is okay to critique…
September 19, 2022, 12:04 PM
This is something that happened back in November of last year, and it’s something that I still question because it leaves something unsettled that I had previously considered to not be a question at all. My understanding was, when it comes to a person’s appearance, the only things that are okay to to critique are hair and clothing, because those are choices that the person made, and that they can readily change. That comes with a lot of caveats, though. You don’t critique things about hair if it’s something that they can’t change, like baldness, though anything that they can still change is fair game. Likewise, with clothing, you wouldn’t criticize the fashion choices of someone who clearly can’t afford anything else.
So, with that said, here’s why I ask. Last year, I was off on Black Friday, and Elyse had planned an adventure for us on that day. She planned a shopping adventure that day, and she wanted to go out and check out the “doorbuster” events. Me, having spent four Christmases working in retail, I wanted nothing to do with any of it and would have preferred to just sleep in and work on the website or Flickr, but I wouldn’t have gotten a moment of peace if I stayed home – so out I went. We chose to go to Annapolis so that I would have something to do, with the idea of my going out to Sandy Point State Park to fly the drone over the water while Elyse shopped. Unfortunately, however, when I got to the park, I judged the wind to be far too strong to fly, so the drone never even came out of its carrier. After sitting in the car for a while feeling annoyed about the circumstances, having driven out to the bay for nothing, I headed back to the mall, feeling somewhat defeated, and met back up with Elyse and joined her on her shopping adventure, because nothing was going up into the sky other than my frustration.
Categories: Annapolis, Shopping, Social media
Thirty years ago, we arrived…
September 5, 2022, 6:10 PM
August 31, 2022 marked 30 years from the day that my family came to Virginia, after having lived in Arkansas for the previous seven and a half years. Thirty years is a little less than three quarters of my life thus far. It just seems so weird to think about it that way. But it really does mark the beginning of an era in my life, because unlike more recent moves, the move from Arkansas to Virginia was a clean separation, leaving a lot of elements of my life behind and starting new in Virginia, especially in those pre-Internet days, when there was no social media to keep in contact with everyone. Additionally, having no family out there, I have not been back since we left. The moves since then were not quite as clean of a break as the move from Arkansas was. My 2007 move to Maryland was only me, and my parents stayed where they were. Plus, as it’s only a few hours away, I can go down there almost any time I want, including down and back in the same day. Then my 2017 move was local, so nothing else changed in my life other than the location of my house, and my commute to work. I just upgraded my living situation, and that was it.
The move to Virginia was the culmination of something that was a long time coming. My parents never really wanted to live in Arkansas to begin with, but it was a good career move for Dad with Scott Nonwovens, so they begrudgingly did it, and so we left New Jersey for Arkansas in February 1985. I remember Mom’s mentioning a number of times early on about wanting to move back to New Jersey. And in all fairness, that was understandable. Dad had something to do in Rogers, as he was the one with the job. Mom didn’t know anyone, and her primary role at that time was to take care of a newborn and a preschooler. She had left everyone she knew when we left New Jersey, and it took a while to meet people and form new relationships, though that improved once Mom got a job at the Walton Life Fitness Center in Bentonville. We also didn’t get along with our next door neighbors on one side, as their kids were out of control. That ultimately led to something of a falling out. We put slats in our existing fence on that side so that we wouldn’t have to see them when we were in the backyard, and they built an entirely new spite fence on their side so that they wouldn’t have to see us. The neighbors on the other side were a retired couple, and they were awesome.
Meanwhile, the education situation in Rogers had really come to a head. I had just completed fifth grade, which was my worst year from kindergarten through high school, without question, and that had followed third and fourth grade years that were pretty rough as well. My parents had gone about as far as they could with the school system, and no one was looking forward to another year at Bonnie Grimes Elementary. I was also hearing all kinds of rumblings at the time from my parents about changes afoot. One was that we would not be returning to Grimes Elementary again, and I was also hearing things about moving, which made me think that something big and life-changing was coming, but nothing concrete as of yet. It had been rumored that Scott had wanted to transfer my father to their corporate office in Philadelphia, and so it seemed like we would probably be moving back to New Jersey, as Mom had wanted all along. I didn’t want to move, because unlike my parents, Rogers was pretty much all that I knew, and I was used to it.
Categories: Arkansas, Childhood, Middle school, Stuarts Draft
An afternoon looking at Legos…
August 21, 2022, 7:06 PM
On August 6, Elyse and I headed out to Chantilly for BrickFair, which is a Lego show held at the Dulles Expo Center. This was my second time going to BrickFair, following my previous visit in 2018. Like in 2018, I had fun, and I photographed a lot of Lego creations with my phone, while Elyse checked out all of the vendors. I am always impressed with what I see at these events, because it puts whatever Lego creations that I made back in the day to shame. My stuff was decent, and I always took pride in the way that I engineered things to work with the parts that I had available, but this stuff is worlds beyond anything that I ever did.
There was so much to see here, and while I got around to all of the tables, I definitely didn’t see everything there, because there was just that much to see, and we had only budgeted four hours. Here are some of the highlights of what I saw:
The Chicago Theatre.
Categories: Events, Fairfax County, Ships
A trip to New Jersey with Elyse and Woomy…
August 14, 2022, 7:57 PM
On Thursday, July 28, Elyse and I took a trip up to New Jersey. The main purpose of the trip was to visit the Scrub Daddy headquarters in Pennsauken, where the company has a retail store. Then we built a day around this in order to justify the trip. We were no stranger to Scrub Daddy by any means, as we had previously stopped by their facility on the last day of our Atlantic City trip back in January, just to see where it was. I remember how excited Elyse was during that visit to Scrub Daddy’s headquarters, and on that occasion, we just photographed the outside of the building, since the retail store wasn’t ready yet. I could only imagine how excited Elyse would be going in and actually seeing the place.
We left the house around 10:00 AM, and got as far as Delaware House by noon. This was to be our potty stop on the way up. Elyse noticed an Edwards Integrity on the outside of the facility, and got some photos of it:
Categories: Companies, Elyse, New Jersey, PATCO, Philadelphia, Products, Roads, Ships, Travel, Woomy
An unexpected Staunton Mall update…
August 13, 2022, 10:00 AM
On Thursday, August 11, 2022, I made what you might call an unexpected trip down to Augusta County. Since the previous Sunday, Elyse had been down in Roanoke attending to some business related to a nonprofit that she is involved with, and was supposed to come back on Wednesday evening via Amtrak. However, due to some heavy thunderstorms across Virginia that day, her Amtrak train was significantly delayed due to flooding and fallen trees, which meant that she only got as far as Charlottesville before delays on top of more delays meant that she would not arrive in Washington for many hours. She ended up getting off the train in Charlottesville, and stayed overnight at my parents’ house. That was a strange thing, with Elyse sending me photos from my old bedroom and all, while I was at home in Maryland. Then since I was off on Thursday, I ended up coming down there to scoop her up and bring her home. I figured that this was a good excuse for a road trip, so I gathered up my DSLR and my drone and hit the road. We did a lot of stuff on this one-day trip, including spending quality time with the parents, but photographically, my main push was to get another update for Staunton Mall, after I had previously given an update in June.
Since my last visit, the mall has continued to be hollowed out. When I visited in June, the interior walls were mostly demolished, with only the exterior walls remaining, from JCPenney to just past the Peebles. From the end of Peebles to Montgomery Ward was where most of the demolition was occurring, as the roof was off of the mall corridor, while the stores were mostly still there. The Wards building and the Belk wing were still mostly intact. Now, the Wards building has been hollowed out to the exterior walls, as has the Belk wing up to the mall entrance next to Family Barber & Beauty. I imagine that there is a reason behind the way that they’re doing this, demolishing the interior while leaving the exterior mostly intact until the end, but I don’t know what the reason is.
I followed the same process that I did before when it came to documenting the demolition of Staunton Mall. I first drove around the property in order to figure out what was worth checking out, and then took the drone up for some flights near the areas that I wanted to photograph. After all, why send my soft, vulnerable little body in there where things are unstable and could fall on me, when I can send a robot in my place and live vicariously through its eyes, while remaining in a place of safety at all times. In this case, I parked in front of Boston Beanery to check out the south end of the mall, and then repositioned in front of Family Barber & Beauty to do the north end of the mall.
Categories: Augusta County, Staunton, Staunton Mall
Still clueless, and not getting any better…
August 5, 2022, 10:37 AM
Do you remember that Journal entry that I did a few months ago about David Pinson, the guy who had no clue about why I was filing a copyright claim against his video that used my photo of the old Giant Food store on O Street NW? As it turned out, he didn’t learn a thing. Recently, while I was nailing another YouTube user for a copyright infringement issue, I ran into Pinson’s channel, Earl of Baltimore, in my list of past copyright infringement claims. So while I was in there, considering our history, I gave it a quick look over to make sure that my image was still gone. I went in expecting to find nothing, so I was surprised that I actually had a hit. I found this:
Categories: Copyright infringement
Yes, I really did meet Andre the Giant back in 1991…
July 26, 2022, 7:42 PM
Back in the summer of 1991, my life was quite different than it is now. We lived in Rogers, Arkansas back then, and I had just completed fourth grade. My father worked as a quality manager for Scott Nonwovens (now part of Berry Global following a series of acquisitions over the years). My mother worked as a fitness instructor at the Walton Life Fitness Center (WLFC) in Bentonville, i.e. Walmart’s corporate fitness center. That job of Mom’s provided a lot of benefits for the entire family, as we all got access to the fitness center facility, of which we made good use. We were there so much that the fitness center almost felt like a second home at times, what with my taking swimming and Taekwondo classes there, as well as a little fitness camp called “Kids Kamp” during the summers.
One of the benefits that came with the fitness center as far as Mom was concerned was the Walmart employee stock purchase program. I participated in it when I worked for Walmart in the mid 2000s, and as far as I know, the company still has this program. Basically, you elected to set aside a certain amount of money per paycheck, which was then used to purchase shares of Walmart stock in your name. As such, you were afforded all of the rights and privileges that came with being a shareholder, such as voting on issues presented to the shareholders, as well as attending the annual shareholders’ meeting. Back then, Walmart was a much smaller company than it is now, so much of the annual shareholders’ meeting occurred at their corporate headquarters in Bentonville.
One part of the Walmart shareholders’ meeting, at least at that time, was a trade show. A bunch of companies that you’ve probably heard of if you’ve ever shopped at Walmart had booths set up and they were showing off all of their new offerings. In 1991, this was held at the Walmart corporate office (in 1992, it was held in a former Walmart store nearby that they had recently vacated following a relocation). Among various things that we saw there, I got to take a Super Nintendo for a spin and play Super Mario World for the first time at the Nintendo booth, about two and a half months before it was released to the public. I remember being surprised to see so many different buttons on the controller (six compared to two on the original Nintendo), and seeing Mario do two different kinds of jumps, i.e. the spin jump and the regular jump.
A day up in Pennsylvania…
July 22, 2022, 8:30 AM
On July 15, Elyse and I went up to Pennsylvania to photograph a very specific target: the western portal of the Kittatinny Mountain Tunnel, which is one of four tunnels on the mainline Pennsylvania Turnpike. I’ve been wanting to photograph a Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnel for a while, but distance plus operational challenges caused this to be back-burnered for a long time.
My first thought was to photograph the tunnels the old fashioned way: on the turnpike itself, from a vehicle. I did this on my shoot from 16 years ago where I photographed Breezewood and then did the turnpike to Carlisle. I do not recommend that anyone do this, at least not the way that I did, because I was driving with one hand and photographing with the other. At the relatively young age of 24, though, I thought that I was good enough to handle it, but looking back, I’m fortunate that nothing went wrong. If I had someone else with me doing the driving, this would have been a better option, but I didn’t have one. Of course, even then, you really only have one shot at it. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a toll road, and a relatively expensive one at that, plus the exits are spaced fairly far apart. Thus, in the case of Kittatinny Mountain (and the adjacent tunnel through Blue Mountain), having to go back to take another crack at it would require about 25 miles of extra driving, considering that the exits on either side are spaced about 12 miles apart, plus the distance to actually turn around at both ends. Plus extra tolls and the fuel to do that round trip. Pulling over and shooting some photos from the roadside is also not a viable option, because as I understand it, the PTC does not look favorably on that. General rule of thumb is that outside of the service plazas, the PTC does not want you outside of your vehicle on their property at any time except if you absolutely have to, and will come check on you if you are outside somewhere that you’re not supposed to be. So that led me to do some research on Google Maps in order see if there were off-turnpike places to photograph any of the tunnels. Allegheny Mountain is too far west, being more than halfway to Pittsburgh, plus there’s no off-turnpike access. Tuscarora also had no access. No access at Blue Mountain, either. But at Kittatinny Mountain, Route 641 goes over the turnpike just west of the tunnel portals. Therefore, we have a winner.
Finding that, I then turned to Elyse and basically said, “Help me justify this outing by building a day,” and sent along a map of my target and the intended route there. That’s how so many of our adventures happen: there’s something that one of us wants to do, but we can’t justify the time commitment or expense of a trip for it it all by itself. So we add more stuff and make it into a full-on adventure that typically gets us home around midnight. Elyse wanted to see a siren and some other stuff in Shippensburg and Chambersburg, so there was the rest of our adventure.
Categories: Pennsylvania, Photography, Roads, Security, Travel
Saying goodbye to the Orion V…
July 5, 2022, 11:15 AM
On Friday, July 1, Elyse and I went on a transit adventure, going down to Alexandria to attend the ceremonial final trip of the DASH Orion buses. For those not familiar, DASH is one of the local transit agencies in the DC region, serving Alexandria, Virginia alongside Metrobus. The Orion V is a model of high-floor transit bus manufactured by Orion Bus Industries from 1989 to 2009. Orion itself went out of business in 2013 when parent company Daimler mostly exited the bus market in North America (save for selling Setra motorcoaches), and New Flyer, another bus manufacturer, bought Orion’s aftermarket parts business. Long story short, Orion has been gone for a while, and even the newest high-floor buses are now reaching retirement age. DASH, meanwhile, had been operating Orion buses since its founding in 1984, initially operating the Orion I model, and later the Orion V. So this event marked the close of an era in DASH’s history, as these were their last Orion buses in service. DASH’s fleet now consists mostly of Gillig and New Flyer vehicles. DASH was also the last agency in the region that still operated the Orion V in service, which closes a chapter in the DC region in general as well. Metro and Fairfax Connector still operate the later Orion VII model in revenue service, but that is a low-floor bus, and is a very different design than the Orion V.
As far as the Orion V itself goes, that is a pretty solid bus. Most agencies in the area operated them at some point or other. I’ve photographed Orion Vs operated by Metro, Ride On, DASH, and Fairfax Connector. I’ve operated Orion Vs plenty of times, and they’re a lot of fun once you get the hang of them. I found them to be very difficult to handle as a new operator in a training environment because they were a bit bouncier than the low-floor buses, as well as more sensitive in the steering, but once I was out of training and operating on my own, I was able to get the hang of driving them, and had tons of fun with them, to the point where I looked forward to being assigned one. If the number started with a “21”, I was a happy guy. I especially liked to take them on runs that had big deadheading (running without passengers) segments – especially on the freeway. I remember doing a run a few times where the last revenue trip ended up at Prince George’s Plaza station, and I had to deadhead from there all the way back to Rockville, where the bus division was located. I would take East-West Highway (MD 410) over to Baltimore Avenue (US 1), and then take that up to the Beltway. Taking an Orion V on the Beltway late at night was a lot of fun. I just had to remember to limit my enjoyment to about 60 mph in order to keep myself out of trouble. After all, our buses had DriveCams on them, and those puppies were sensitive. I was delighted when I got to take an Orion V out for a spin again in 2018 when a friend who helped run a bus museum was visiting. I got settled in that seat, and it felt like old times again, after I had not operated an Orion V in a little more than two years at that point – ever since I left the bus in order to do trains. I took my friend, along with Elyse, on a proper adventure in that bus, going over a few routes from my time as a bus operator, and showing it off a little bit. A good time was definitely had by all.
Categories: Alexandria, DASH
A look at Lakeside dining past…
June 23, 2022, 12:56 PM
While I was rounding up all of the material for the photo set about Zane Showker Hall, I dug through a lot of old photos of JMU in order to make sure that I had captured all of the relevant material. Generally speaking, whenever I’m doing a photo set for Life and Times that requires rounding up historical photos or otherwise tells a story that is not in chronological, such as Staunton Mall, which included photos taken over multiple days and also a hefty dose of new material, presented in a very different order than it was originally shot, after I gather it all into a work folder, I sort it all out by subject and place the subjects in the order that I intend to present them. In the case of a smaller, non-chronological set like Showker or Staunton Mall, I will usually write and place photos at the same time. Compare to a travelogue photo set like Toronto or North Carolina, where I will do all of the writing first, and then add photos only after the entire narrative has been written. Regardless of how it’s assembled, though, after I complete the first draft, I will typically start cutting things out, as I tend to load things on pretty heavily in my first draft. Sometimes, I’m cutting things out that are extraneous to the story. Other times, I’m trimming the number of photos down to a more manageable amount.
When I was doing the Showker photo set, I originally planned to include photos of some of the dining attractions that were around the building, and actually did a decent amount of writing related to them. One thing that I planned to include was a little bit about Mrs. Green’s, which was a dining operation in nearby Chandler Hall. I also planned to include some discussion of a small food truck that JMU operated in the mornings in front of Showker that I called the Chuckwagon. I ended up cutting both of those, but for different reasons. As far as Mrs. Green’s went, I originally opted to include it because it was in Chandler Hall, which was demolished to make way for Hartman Hall – thus it was something of a “before” for Hartman Hall. However, considering that I only spent about fifteen minutes in Hartman Hall, tops, it came off as extraneous. So I cut it, which created a tighter photo set. For the bit about the Chuckwagon, I realized that I was devoting a large chunk of space to what was essentially a failed test concept, and it had very little to do with the subject other than its being parked in front of Showker. Ultimately, it took the discussion off on a pretty long tangent, and so in order to keep it on subject, it was removed. And for a photo set that was primarily about architecture, anything not about architecture just didn’t fit.
Categories: JMU, Schumin Web meta
I may be off my hinges, but something seems odd about this…
June 18, 2022, 2:25 PM
A very close friend of mine is currently looking for a new job in order to further their career, and a recent experience of theirs while job hunting struck me as odd. It bothered me because, in the end, all that this company really did was waste my friend’s time. And when someone that I am very close to gets treated poorly, whether through actual malice or simply through indifference, I get upset, because I don’t want to see them be hurt.
For some background information, my friend is currently employed, and as far as I am aware, their current employment relationship is stable. Their situation is not like when I was at Food & Water Watch, where they were actively trying to push me out, and thus a sense of urgency with the job search in order to get out before the hammer ultimately fell. There is no time crunch with my friend. They can afford to be choosy about who they want to work for, and choose the right job rather than a “right now” job. That is a very enviable situation to be in, and it gives them more power than they might otherwise have, because they can choose to wait for better offers.
As part of their job searching strategy, my friend listed their resume on Indeed.com, which is a site where companies recruit candidates via job postings and resume searches. I have mixed feelings about making one’s resume public. When I made my resume public when I was looking for a new job in 2013, I got lots of contacts based on it, mostly by phone, but from all of the wrong kinds of people. I was not interested in working for some shady insurance company or whatever else tried to reach out to me. I quickly got the impression that only shysters used the public resume search functions and that reputable companies don’t because they have plenty of applicants who are seeking them out and thus don’t need to recruit like that, and as such, I pulled my resume. That stopped those sorts of contacts immediately. However, considering the number of sites today that tell people that they should make their resume public, I suspect one of two things about my experience: either my experience was atypical, or a lot has improved in the last nine years to prevent the shysters from locking onto people’s resumes so easily. Either way, it’s left me a bit wary about public resume postings, and as such, I am more guarded about who gets to see my resume, i.e. only people that I want to have it ever get it.