After dropping Sis off in Blacksburg…
April 23, 2007, 9:36 AM
After dropping Sis off in Blacksburg after a weekend at home with everyone, I took a side trip into Roanoke on the way back home. I considered it to be somewhat important to swing into Roanoke. You see, Roanoke is currently about 85 miles away from me, and a straight shot down I-81. Once I move to Washington, it will be 240 miles – a little bit out of my travel range. So this will likely be my last trip to Roanoke for quite some time.
So I went up to the Roanoke Star to get some photos. I was quite surprised to find that they had changed the lighting pattern from the red-white-blue combination that it had been showing for five or so years. Now it was lit in all-white, which as I understand it, is the “traditional” color for the star. So here’s what it looks like:
Continue reading…Categories: Roanoke
So for today, it’s like I’m five again…
April 21, 2007, 8:22 PM
First of all, don’t get me wrong – I love seeing relatives. Uncle Johnny (Mom’s brother) and Aunt Beth came down from Connecticut to visit for the weekend, and I love seeing them, talking to them, etc. They’re a lot of fun.
However, I do take offense to the way my parents get when relatives come over. All of a sudden, it’s like I’m five years old again. They’ve treated me like a child in almost every way today except cut my food for me. My father actually said “good night” like he was trying to order me to bed last night, for one thing. Then today, they really have gotten on my nerves. We went to Charlottesville today and took the Sienna, since it was the only one that would comfortably seat six people. Since I was the only one who knew exactly how to get where we were going, I figured I’d be navigating from the passenger seat. I was surprised to hear Dad tell me I was driving. I’m like, okay. I prefer to drive anyway. I’d rather just do it than tell someone how to do it. It’s about the only adult thing I got to do all day. And even then, my parents won’t trust my driving, as both parents decided to be back-seat drivers. Mom justified her back-seat driving by saying she wanted to “get there in one piece.”
Now mind you, I’m driving a car that I don’t drive regularly, it doesn’t fit me well (pedals are too far back), and that rides a lot higher than what I’m used to. And a number of controls are in different places, too. After all, I’m now used to driving a Mercury (basically a Ford) station wagon. And here I am driving a Toyota minivan. And I think I did a great job driving it, despite having less-than-awesome equipment. Something’s wrong with the brakes on there, because every time I’d hit the brake pedal, the pedal would shake, and so would the rest of the car. Sable doesn’t do that. Plus the van’s a lot heavier than the Sable. Still, they nagged me about my speed. They nagged me about what lane I was in. Everything.
Categories: Family
Attention, YouTubers: May I suggest…?
April 21, 2007, 1:29 AM
For all of you who post videos on YouTube, may I make a suggestion? If you’re going to be posting videos of yourself demonstrating something, please do one of two things. Please either get someone to do the filming for you, or alternately, please use a tripod or something else to put the camera on.
Why? Because people who are demonstrating something with one hand while filming with the other so often produce videos that will make a person seasick. The videos are so often also out of focus because they’re too close or moving too fast. Such videos make it hard to follow what’s going on, and it takes some of the human element out of a video, since all we see is this disembodied hand.
If I had prepared more thoroughly for this entry, I would have made multiple videos for you of the same basic thing ahead of time to show you what I mean. One where I filmed myself doing something, and the other while having another person film me doing the same task. Then I could have you compare the quality of the two videos.
But you won’t get to see this, because I came to this entry utterly unprepared. So let me pick a few videos out of YouTube to demonstrate what I mean in lieu of filming my own demonstration. My apologies up front if any of these videos that I am about to use were made by someone who is familiar with my work and may eventually read this.
Categories: Copyright infringement, YouTube
It’s a very satisfying feeling…
April 20, 2007, 2:11 PM
It is a very satisfying feeling to shred a pile of junk mail. All I do is sit down at my desk, open each piece, confirm that it’s junk mail, and then, in a stunning finale…
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
And it’s shredded into confetti. Yes, I shelled out the extra few bucks for the cross-cut model back when I bought the shredder.
Meanwhile, I’m going up to the DC area on Tuesday to scope out a potential apartment in Wheaton. If I get that apartment, it would put me on the same line as my job, which is near Dupont Circle. That means I wouldn’t have to transfer, though it would be something of a long Metro ride, going from Wheaton to Dupont Circle. But we can handle that if need be.
Additionally, if I end up leasing that particular apartment, I will have wasted $35 in Virginia state registration fees, since the apartment is in Maryland, and so I’d have to get Maryland plates, etc. Since the Sable’s registration is up in April, I had to re-up my registration, and I did that yesterday at the DMV in Waynesboro with Katie. Believe it or not, I was in and out at DMV pretty quickly. I always say that Virginia DMV offices remind me somewhat of a game show. You get your number, and then you wait. Then a chime sounds, and the voice says, “Now serving B213 at window number eight.” Two signs flash. The sign over your designated window flashes, and the main sign in the middle of the room flashes, “B213 please go to Window 8,” with a little arrow pointing left or right. When that goes off, I’ve wanted to shout, “I won! I won!” What they really ought to do is get Rich Fields from The Price is Right to record the announcements. Imagine if you will: “B213! Come on down! You’re the next contestant on The DMV is Right!” And add a little music, and you’ve got it. Of course, in the end, you don’t win anything – and you probably will have to pay them money. But it would add some spice to the otherwise boring DMV office.
Categories: Move to DC area
I am moving to Washington DC!
April 18, 2007, 6:30 PM
I am happy to announce that my days at Wal-Mart are over, as I have finally found a job in Washington DC! I will be working for Food & Water Watch in Northwest DC. Needless to say, I am excited.
I would like to thank the following people for their roles in helping me get there… first of all, thank you to my family for putting me through college, and to the student advising people at JMU for getting me out of the College of Business and into the Public Administration program. Thank you to all of my friends in Augusta County, etc. for their encouragement and support whenever I started feeling discouraged. Thank you to all of my friends in the DC area who also lent me encouragement and support in my quest to find gainful employment up in DC.
And in an odd twist of things, I’d like to thank Dorinda Wilson-Bowers and Lee Pinheiro at Wal-Mart… for firing me. Yes, I got fired from Wal-Mart on March 31 for what I consider specious reasons, which we won’t go into here. However, since Wal-Mart had become a very hostile and unpleasant place to be in my last month or so there, after the initial shock of getting fired (I’d never been fired before!), it was a great relief to be fired, because it meant that I no longer had to deal with this situation that was making my life a living hell, and where I used to dread coming into work every day. However, from the moment that they said to me, “You’re fired,” I made it my job to find a new job. And as you can see, I found one, and as it turns out, getting fired was the best thing to ever happen to me.
And throughout the time I was looking for a new job, I’d especially like to thank my friend Katie Shapiro, who really helped me through the day I got fired, and constantly kept me going like a true friend.
And to all of you that I’m leaving behind in Stuarts Draft, Staunton, Waynesboro, Harrisonburg, etc., thanks for the memories.
Categories: Katie, Move to DC area, Myself, Walmart
This is what the after-effect of a derailment can look like…
April 18, 2007, 12:08 PM
A friend sent me a photo that he got of CAF 5152 at the yard after it derailed on January 7 of this year. Take a look…
Categories: WMATA
I made my own podcast!
April 14, 2007, 11:53 PM
I made my own podcast, and it wasn’t that hard to do, either. I must say this, though – it’s not for consumption by the general public. It’s just for me, since I’m really finicky about how I like my talk shows on my iPod. There are a couple of DC area radio talk shows that I listen to that don’t make their archives available in podcast format so that I can manage them like podcasts in my iPod, marking when I’ve listened to them, etc.
So I downloaded a podcast file from another radio show and went to work dissecting it. And it worked! Yippee! So now I can manage them in my iPod just like all the other people that I listen to on there.
And now that I know how to do it, who knows… maybe there’s a Schumin Web podcast in my future. It might be interesting.
Categories: Radio
Four years already?
April 13, 2007, 7:36 PM
Would you believe it? It’s been four years since my very first protest, which I documented from the sidelines as A Protest Against the War in Photography. Four years yesterday. Where has the time gone? It still seems fresh, though. Perhaps because I’ve been to a lot of other anti-war events since then. Who knows.
Still, it’s been four years since this:
Categories: Activism
Alstom 6017 was the fire car…
April 10, 2007, 11:30 PM
Once again, my travels around DC Metro take me on rail cars that later make the news. Many of you may have heard the news about a fire on a rail car on Sunday, April 8 at the Waterfront-SEU station. According to Metro in a press release, the car whose motor caught fire was Alstom 6017. I’ve ridden that car before. I rode it on January 4, 2007 on the Green Line from Fort Totten to Shaw-Howard U. I was on my way to the Infoshop, after failing to find any Yellow Line trains above Mt. Vernon Square. It turned out that my timing was a bit off. Yellow Line trains had just changed to peak service, terminating at Mt. Vernon Square instead of Fort Totten.
I just hope that they find the cause of the fire. I just took Mom on an Alstom on Monday while we were up in Washington (we got 6040), and I don’t want to have to deal with an Alstom exploding with Mom on board. She was, however, impressed by the new floor plan on the Alstoms. There’s a lot more room for standees, and a lot of new places to grab to hang on.
Meanwhile, finding out that it was an Alstom throws my guess as to the identity of the fire car right out the window. When I heard about the fire on WMAL, I’d hazarded a guess that the fire car was a CAF – the same car class that had the recent derailment at Mt. Vernon Square. Yeah, CAF came out clean this time.
Categories: WMATA
One more snow picture…
April 8, 2007, 8:52 AM
After I posted the previous shots, I was made aware of one more shot of the snow:
Mom took that one a little earlier than I did for mine, and from the street. As you can see, it really did snow, all right. And, as we expected, it was all gone by 5:00 yesterday evening.
Categories: Winter weather
It’s what month now?
April 7, 2007, 10:47 AM
I’m starting to have my doubts on the springiness of the spring here. Check these out, taken a few minutes ago from my bedroom window:
Categories: Winter weather
What a neat use for a hood ornament!
April 6, 2007, 12:47 PM
While Katie and I were at the mall yesterday, we saw one other thing that caught my eye. One patron of the mall had a Mercedes, and they modified the hood ornament on their car:
It almost makes me wish I had a Mercedes so I could adapt the hood ornament into a peace sign for my own use. What a great use, going from a corporate advertisement to a very relevant sentiment in this day and age.
“Staunton” and “Augusta County” are mutually exclusive…
April 6, 2007, 10:47 AM
Katie and I went to Staunton Mall yesterday evening, and had a great time. Then we went to Applebee’s for dinner, which was fun (though we ended up having to sweeten the sweet tea!).
One thing that led to an interesting discussion was when we saw a Sheriff’s deputy’s car parked outside the mall. I made the comment about the fact that seeing that is a reminder that technically, Staunton Mall is in Augusta County, to which Katie replied, “Well, yeah, Staunton’s in Augusta County.”
My little ears kind of perked up on that one, and my mind with its background in public administration kicked right into gear. I was like, “Noooooooo… Staunton is an independent city, therefore by definition it is not part of Augusta County.” And being in the car and being on the Belk side of the mall made it much easier to describe, because the boundary roughly runs along the edge of the mall’s property on that side. What better place to have this discussion than right at the city limits, no? I was like, “We’re in the county right now, but that CVS over there is in Staunton. Therefore, if you call Staunton Police for an incident at the mall, they’re out of their jurisdiction, since that’s Augusta County. They’ll refer you to the Augusta County Sheriff’s office.
Categories: Katie, State and local politics, Staunton
The challenges of trying to convert things…
April 5, 2007, 11:04 AM
My life is never dull. I am slowly but surely working to convert my site from one that operates on a Windows-based server to one that runs on a Unix/Linux/whatever-based server. I’m doing this because I seem to have hit a wall in my design. Everywhere I want to go requires a non-Windows server. So we’re converting. I’m going to eventually learn PHP and MySQL, and do it.
Some of you have already seen the forum, running on phpBB. The next thing I’m working on is the Journal, where it will be powered by WordPress. It’s going to look and feel mostly the same as before, though it will have this nifty RSS feed when it’s all said and done. I can phase in other features later.
Otherwise, I’ve been listening to my fair share of conservative radio talk show hosts. I still like Chris Lysy’s way of putting it: “Daily dose of outrage”. Lately, I’ve been listening to Mark Levin on podcast. I think I’ve been listening to too much Levin when I read the newspaper and they mention Nancy Pelosi and the term “stretch” comes to mind. Likewise all of Mark Levin’s other derogatory names for all the Democrats in Congress. And of course, I enjoyed hearing the talk shows’ reaction to M17 on the following Monday. I was at M17, don’t forget. I think the best comment was the accusation someone made of the anti-war demonstrators on Mark Levin’s show. They said that people were taking the Metro back into DC and marching around again to make the numbers look bigger. I find that kind of odd, especially since the Pentagon Metro station is on the south side of the Pentagon, and we were north of the Pentagon. I consider Pentagon station as kind of being required to pull such a stunt off, since Arlington Cemetery would have skipped half the march route. Also consider the fact that police were physically blocking the way to Pentagon station. Plus in DC, the Lincoln Memorial (the start of the march route) is not exactly near any Metro stations. Bottom line is, it’s impractical, and wouldn’t work even if someone wanted to do it.
Sometimes it’s just amusing what the other side comes up with…
Categories: Greta, Radio, Schumin Web meta
“Stop the funding, stop the war, what the hell is Congress for?”
April 2, 2007, 9:59 AM
I was out and about on Thursday, and heard on the news about two similar spending bills passing the House and the Senate that included the withdrawal deadline. Now it must go to conference committee to get all the differences ironed out between the House and Senate version. I was quite pleased, though I highly doubt it will make it to law, because President Bush has promised a veto on the bill should it make it to his desk with a deadline in it.
I’ll be the first to tell you that we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place. Saddam didn’t have anything to do with the price of tea in China when it came to the “war on terror”, and we’ve facilitated the country’s fall into a civil war, which is something that the Iraqi people are going to have to figure out for themselves if it’s ever going to get settled.
Still, I’m pleased to see that the new Democratic Congress is taking steps to end this war. We got the message out loud and clear at J27 and M17, and it seems that it’s taken hold. Good…
Categories: National politics