Mobile may not be so extensive now that I’ve done some experimenting
August 11, 2006, 1:05 AM
My original plan was to offer the entire Web site in “Mobile Web” format suitable for viewing on a cell phone. I am officially scaling that back.
Why, you may ask?
Because the average mobile phone can’t seem to handle the pictures. And by “average mobile phone”, I mean my personal cell phone, which I will have until it’s time to upgrade again.
It seems that my site is strong on mobile phones in its text-based areas. In other words, the Journal, and some parts of the Archives. The photo sets seem to be too “heavy” for the phone to handle. I get “insufficient memory” messages and the photos stop loading. So pooh on that. Of course, that happens on three (that I know of) Journal entries as well. Those would be the three that are the basis for the narratives for the Million Worker March, J20, and A16, since they rely a lot on photos.
So at least I learned something from my experimentation on College Life this evening. I learned that photo sets do not work well in the mobile format. Now I just need to figure out what I want to port over to mobile next…
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Six months of Sable…
August 9, 2006, 12:37 PM
Today is August 9, which means that today marks exactly six months since I bought the Sable and retired the Previa. I didn’t realize that it had been that long. Six months ago today, I drove the Previa on its last trip – a trip from which it would not return. That was after a trip to Roanoke the day before where I met up with a friend and had a great time with that friend on what could best be described as the Previa’s ceremonial “farewell” trip. And then on the way home from that trip, the air vents stopped working. But with only about 45 miles to go, I didn’t really care.
But yeah, six months with the Sable. What a wonderful car, too. And that means it’s only four and a half more years until it’s paid for.
Categories: Mercury Sable
The first fires took two buildings…
August 6, 2006, 1:22 AM
The fires set at the Outlet Village by the local fire departments for training purposes actually brought two buildings to the ground. They burned the barn, which formerly housed Gitano, the Artisans Center, and OCAT, but also tiny Building 18, which housed the mailboxes for the complex, and which also at one point housed a tourist information center. As you can see, #18 is completely gone, and then all that’s left of the barn is the silo, which now has dark markings on it from the fire. Additionally, the shingles are missing on the edge of the roof closest to the barn on Building 5, and the siding is noticeably melted on the front of Building 2.
So there you go. And with the conventional demolition of Building 16 well underway, that makes three down, and 15 to go (I mistakenly said there were 17 buildings in the complex earlier – there are actually 18).
Categories: Waynesboro Outlet Village
And when the smoke clears…
August 4, 2006, 9:39 AM
According to The News Virginian, the barn-like building, that housed a Gitano outlet, and later the Artisans Center of Virginia and OCAT, was torched for firefighter training. So say goodbye:
And according to the same article, a neighboring building was to be burned to the ground as well for outdoor training. And this is the first of a series, too, as fire officials have received permission to torch almost the entire complex before it’s all said and done. Maybe I’ll get to go to one of these to watch – from a safe distance, of course.
And I’m going to quick swing by there on my way to work today and get a couple of photos with my phone.
Categories: Waynesboro Outlet Village
The last photo of the Outlet Village (mostly) whole?
August 3, 2006, 6:22 PM
This is perhaps the last photo that will be taken of the Waynesboro Outlet Village mostly intact. I heard on WSVA on the way home from work that tonight at 7:00 (about at the time I’m writing this), area fire departments will be using the former Outlet Village as a training exercise. Thus instead of just straight demolishing the complex, they will be burning it down first. It will certainly serve our local fire departments well, as they will have the opportunity to train in how to fight a fire in a commercial building. And with the Outlet Village consisting of many buildings (17 according to the map, though #15 is already partly demolished), there will be no shortage of buildings to torch for training purposes. I’ll try to get pictures of the Outlet Village from the same vantage point tomorrow, after they’ve torched it.
Continue reading…
Categories: Waynesboro Outlet Village
I took a crew with me to DC this time…
August 3, 2006, 12:36 AM
First of all, welcome to August, boys and girls. July is just so last month.
And August 1 saw me taking the Sable on its sixteenth DC trip, and this time with people in tow. Mom and Sis went with me on this particular trip. Mom came along because she was seeing a friend from high school, and then Sis came along as a what-the-heck kind of thing.
And amazingly, I did my whole routine. I made both my up-stops, though we got to Vienna really early compared to my usual arrival time. But not to worry – we made up that “early” time with what I’d call a “drop job”. Usually when I take these trips, my first stop is Rosslyn, without exception. I can’t think of a DC trip that I’ve taken since I started doing this regularly in 2004 where I did NOT stop at Rosslyn first thing. This trip would be that exception. Since Mom was meeting her friend at Union Station at 10:30, we did that first. So thus instead of Rosslyn, we went straight to Metro Center, and then took Red to Union Station. And once we got Mom to her friend, Sis and I got to have some quality time together.
So what did we do? Back to Rosslyn, duh… I had errands to run, and it was also right about my Rosslyn time, too, so it worked out. Sis also had a snack at Tummy Station in Rosslyn Center, so it worked out.
I now know what cranberries really taste like…
July 31, 2006, 7:02 PM
First of all, considering my recent illness, I’m pretty much convinced that it was food poisoning, considering that I got really sick all of a sudden, with the fever and all the other symptoms of being sick, and then with it going away so fast like it did.
But now I feel fine, and so life is good. And today, I got something new with my lunch and discovered something. I discovered what cranberries taste like. Previously, whenever I’d have something with cranberries in it, it would usually be something like cranberry sauce, or the food would have cranberries in it. Or if drinking it, it wouldn’t be straight cranberry juice. Cranberry-apple, cranberry-grape, etc. Or even if it was just cranberries, it would have been sweetened.
Today, I bought a 32-ounce container of Ocean Spray 100% all-natural unsweetened cranberry juice (from concentrate) to have some of with my lunch. No one commented on the faces I made, but I certainly made some faces when I was drinking some of that. This was certainly something. I had about half of the container on my lunch, and the other half on my last break. And I did have it all myself. However, I did have to make a minor “adjustment” to it in order to finish the container. “Unsweetened” lost its “un” when I added some sugar to the juice to make it more palatable. I couldn’t handle it straight. Consider this “wimping out”. But I did get my money’s worth out of it, even if I did have to sweeten it slightly.
Categories: Food and drink
Being sick is no fun…
July 30, 2006, 12:58 AM
Let me tell you, being sick straight-up sucks. I don’t know how I got it, but I was out of commission on Saturday. This marks the first time I have called out sick to work since 1999 when I dislocated a shoulder, and the first time ever with Wal-Mart.
This that I had would be your typical “sick”, too. I had a fever, I had a headache, I was wobbly, and I felt like I had weights on both feet. I spent much of the day in bed.
Now, though, I think we’re on the road to recovery. I’ve been sweating, which means that the fever’s going away, and I’m just feeling better overall. I don’t like missing work, and so I’m glad to be feeling better again.
Categories: Personal health
Firefighter Schumin is on his way!
July 26, 2006, 9:09 PM
Wasn’t today an exciting day at work!
Not long after my first break, one of our cart pushers reported that there was a mulch fire in the parking lot. One of our CSMs, knowing I’m on the safety team, came up to the service desk and got me, and handed me a fire extinguisher. I quickly found out what was going on as we were walking out to the parking lot to the fire. I ended up ripping off the tag and pulling out the pin on the way out the door.
We got to the mulch that was on fire in the parking lot. It was on a traffic island about a third of the way down the lot. After chasing off some very stupid teenagers who were trying to put it out by stomping it out in their flip flops (very dumb teenagers), I went to work. Since I had already pulled the pin, I went about it as I’d seen in the past, staying low, aiming for the base of the fire, and sweeping side to side. And I got the fire out, too. It seems that what I’d learned had sunken in fairly well, as I’d performed flawlessly despite having never actually used a fire extinguisher before.
I used up the entire extinguisher on it, just to be on the safe side. It’s just as well, too, since you can’t reuse a fire extinguisher that’s been discharged until it’s professionally recharged. But like I said, I got the fire out.
Categories: Today's Special, Walmart
This Thursday, the kitchen counters go in…
July 26, 2006, 1:18 AM
Mom found out today that our new kitchen counters are going in this Thursday. These new countertops are STONE. Mom actually went to Roanoke to pick out a slab of granite a few weeks ago that would become our new counters.
I am impressed. So on Thursday, they go in. And we had nearly fourteen years with the old counters. The old ones were cheap counters with some sort of laminate on top of them. These new ones are nice. I’m told that if you put something really hot on them, that the worst that will happen is that the surface will get hot for a while.
So that ought to be nice. And so preparing food will be a touch tricky for the next few days while they put it in.
Otherwise, today I ran the first vertical photo feature since the main page was redesigned. And it’s from my very first protest back on April 12, 2003 of a black bloc demonstrator. Boy, oh boy, oh boy… that was an interesting protest. The word “greenhorn” comes to mind to describe how I handled that event. I had never heard of a black bloc back then, and I had certainly never seen masked demonstrators before in real life. But this was real life, and there they were. And I never thought that three years out from that first demonstration, that I would have participated in a black bloc six times.
But seriously, though, if you look at the April 12, 2003 protest and compare it with something more recent, like Night March, you’ll see a big difference. The first one is very much an account of a first protest, while the other one comes from a more seasoned participant.
Categories: House, Schumin Web meta
College shirt weekend at work led to an amusing photo in the end…
July 23, 2006, 1:47 AM
Yes, it was college shirt weekend at our store this weekend, and so I made sure to represent JMU.
But what’s funny is the shirt that I chose. I went hunting through my closet to find a JMU shirt. I was really looking for a “JMU Alumni” shirt that Mom got me, since that’s what I really wanted to wear. I ended up not finding that, and the only thing I found that was suitable for late July ended up being my old Office of Residence Life “purple shirt”. That would be this shirt, seen here back in the day. So I wore that under my vest. And purple and maroon certainly do look good together. Judge for yourself:
“This is the best elevator music I’ve ever heard!”
July 22, 2006, 1:56 AM
First time I’d ever heard the term “elevator music” was actually on The Cosby Show, at the end of the sixth-season opening, when Bill Cosby says, “This is the best elevator music I’ve ever heard!”
I, being eight years old at the time, thought that “elevator music” was a genre, akin to rock and roll or classical, rather than something more practical: Music that gets played in an elevator. Though note that I’ve never actually been in an elevator with music being piped in.
Nowadays, though, I genuinely enjoy so-called “elevator music” when I just want something – nothing in particular – to drown out the silence. Music from The Weather Channel does really well for that. This would be why I hate the voice during the local forecast saying, “Currently in your area…” Then I also have a clip called “elevator music” and a bit of something else that allegedly was played on The Weather Channel.
So yeah, I’m a nerd.
And speaking of the title of this entry, it’s funny… the clip I have on my iPod of the sixth-season Cosby Show theme was from an Italian translation of the show. Thus instead of “This is the best elevator music I’ve ever heard!” it’s something else in a different voice in Italian. I was playing that for Mom on the way home from Harrisonburg once. She was surprised to hear that.
Categories: Music, Television
I bought a confetti maker…
July 21, 2006, 8:50 PM
Yes, I bought a confetti maker – in other words, paper shredder – after work yesterday. I figure it’s a good thing to have, so that one can shred all of one’s confidential but no longer needed documents. And I made sure to get the cross cut shredder, thus the “confetti maker” term. I like the cross cut shredder over the strip cut shredder.
I bought it at Staples. Since they had display models set up in the store, I shredded some things with the floor model before I bought one of my own. I think I destroyed about half of their brochures on shredding before I decided to get one. After all, though, one has to make sure that everything gets shredded into confetti to one’s satisfaction before going off and purchasing one.
Now I just need to play with this thing. Just don’t do like Fred Pfisterer wrote about in his “Follow the Leader” column, where he wrote that he shredded, among other things, the instructions to his shredder. I just need to make sure that anything important is locked away and out of sight before I have a shredding party. Don’t want to destroy anything important by accident now…
Categories: Products
Meanwhile, at the Infoshop…
July 18, 2006, 4:32 PM
While on the same DC trip, I made a visit to the Infoshop. The last time that I’d been there was on June 6, and since that visit, DC had a so-called “100-year” flood. And during that flood, the Infoshop, being a basement location, took on some water. This caused the Infoshop to close for a few days. There wasn’t too much damage, but they did lose the carpet. Sis can be seen sitting on said carpet in this photo from the A16 photo set:
Categories: DC trips
Fire alarm at Hecht’s!
July 18, 2006, 4:20 PM
So I was in DC today, and was on the fourth floor of the large Hecht’s department store at Metro Center, which I visited to get out of the heat and make a visit to a men’s room. So while I was washing my hands…
WHOOOOOOOOOOP! WHOOOOOOOOOOP! WHOOOOOOOOOOP!
I initially figured that someone had accidentally tripped the alarm for a fire exit door that was nearby. Coming out of the restroom, I noticed a very old-looking red light on the wall was flashing. The light said “FIRE” on it in white letters. Hmmm, I thought. It seems that the fire alarm is going off. I asked a store employee what was going on, and they had no idea. I was getting ready to leave anyway, and so I took the escalator back down. But not first before reaching into my camera bag and turning on Big Mavica. This was the first time that I’d been somewhere with a fire alarm going off in a LOOOOOOONG time, and so I set it to movie mode and started filming.
Categories: DC trips, Fire alarms