Fun with bubble wrap…
2 minute read
May 27, 2010, 9:25 PM
So I was shipping a computer monitor today, and after locating a box and breaking out the bubble wrap, I decided to show the intended recipient (a coworker in another office) that I was getting it ready, since I needed to locate a box before I could ship it. And so here’s the proof:
Continue reading…Categories: Work
It was always a little kludgy, but it worked…
3 minute read
May 25, 2010, 9:26 PM
Yeah, I’m almost to the point in my redesign where it’s time to design the Journal section. Right now, before even one line of code has been written for it, it makes me nervous. See, I am worried about how many Journal entries will break. After all, I code Journal entries on the fly, and do whatever comes naturally to me. And full CSS layouts are not something I’m accustomed to. So it makes me a little nervous.
But I’m almost there. I’ve done the redesign in this order: the basic page templates, Major Areas, Archives, Odds and Ends, Photography, and most of Life and Times (still working on that last one). That leaves the Journal and then the unnamed “center section” still to do. It’s okay, though. It’s coming along quite well, and with the photo sets mostly done, that’s one less thing I have to worry about.
However, it’s going to be really weird to have done the Journal correctly for a change. Right now, it’s a bit kludgy in places. I cut a lot of corners on the current design, which dates from 2007, to make it look right regardless of whether it was also done correctly. If you look at my code for the Journal, there are a bunch of little invisible graphics that are there just to get the spacing correct. After all, I kind of did the 2007 redesign under a bit of duress. The site had gone down, and I was determined to convert it from ASP to PHP and get it back up as quickly as possible, and the hell with doing it the right way. According to my update log, the Journal was the first item to be restored. Thus not only was I racing to get it back up and running, but I was also perhaps doing most of the learning on a new HTML editor and a new platform on that section. So a few kludges were inevitable, I suppose.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
You know, that’s a really personal matter, and I didn’t want to join you for it…
2 minute read
May 17, 2010, 11:45 PM
Tonight, while I was on the phone with a friend who shall remain nameless, I was traumatized. I’m going grocery shopping at Giant, and I’m talking about whatever on the phone with this friend, and then I heard this sound in the background:
*flush*
I asked her, “Are you in the bathroom?” Turned out that we’d been talking in the bathroom for the entire time up to that point. That was a lot more than I wanted to know, unfortunately. The term “oversharing” came to mind. Now mind you, this friend and I are pretty close, and I admit that this friend has seen me in a speedo before (yes, I own one, get over it). But nonetheless, taking the phone into the bathroom is a little bit beyond my comfort zone.
I don’t know about you, but I consider it a shade impolite to take calls in the bathroom. I’ll be in a public restroom and hear someone chatting away while they’re in a stall with their pants around their ankles. What I’ve always wanted to do is to go around the restroom and flush every toilet in there, just to underline the fact to whoever’s on the other end of that call that they’re having that call in the bathroom. You know, President Lyndon Johnson used to take meetings into the bathroom. I’d rather think that this kind of practice stayed in the 1960s, but apparently it’s alive and well with cell phones, where people will take a call just about anywhere. I would have been more than understanding if my friend had not taken my call and then called me back once they were off the commode.
Categories: Friends, Some people
So let’s review: Solicited attention, good. Unsolicited attention, bad.
2 minute read
May 13, 2010, 2:19 PM
With my birthday coming up at the end of this month, the love-hate relationship I’ve had with my birthday has come up, and we’ve again discovered that the emphasis is more on “hate” in that love-hate birthday relationship. Really, I don’t look forward to it anymore, since I get a bunch of well-intended but unwanted attention. To me, it’s like, okay, it’s a number change, big deal, and so okay and let’s move on.
Really, it’s all a matter of attention. If I am seeking it, I will gladly accept it. However, if I don’t want it, even if it is positive, I will try to escape it, or deliberately ruin it. I escaped my college graduation, where, if I didn’t get my way, I would have gotten undesired attention while at the same time not enjoyed myself. And the hell with what family members want when it comes to me celebrating milestones in my life. If I want to celebrate a milestone with everyone, then great. Let’s all be happy together. If I want to celebrate in my own way, or choose not to celebrate at all, that’s my prerogative. Nothing wrong with that. And if celebration in my honor is forced on me against my will, I will make sure to spoil it. I remember in 2005, my mother was all gung-ho about my birthday, and wanted to go all out for it, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. If I recall, I turned the phone off and just left for a while. Then when I got back home, I threw my unwanted birthday cake in the trash right along with the unwanted birthday card. I don’t understand what makes people want to spend money to celebrate something where the person whose thing it is being celebrated doesn’t want it to be celebrated in the first place. I tell people not to buy me a card, and they don’t listen. I tell them not to buy me a cake and they don’t listen…
Categories: Birthdays
We may have only had three people, but those three were something…
5 minute read
May 11, 2010, 2:34 PM
Yes, on Saturday, May 8, Anonymous DC held its monthly raid from 3-8 PM, protesting the abusive practices of the Church of Scientology. This was also our smallest monthly raid yet, with all of three people in attendance. Those three people were MaidofWin, Sparrow, and myself. Sparrow wore a Guy Fawkes mask. MaidofWin had a stars-and-stripes bandanna and big movie-star sunglasses. I wore my zentai for the first time this season.
It’s funny about the zentai, though. I was actually late to the raid on account of not being sure what I wanted to wear with it. As you know, when I raid, I’ve always used the zentai as a base layer under other clothes. Remember that in 2008, the zentai look was tie dye and funny hat. Then in 2009, I went with black-on-black-on-black as the zentai look. This time, I wanted to do something different, but at the same time, make it fun. I tried a number of different combinations, and nothing seemed to work. I eventually resigned myself to the fact that I was unable to properly accessorize things, and ended up packing the 2008 “look” to change into once I got down there.
However, once I got down there and started putting on the zentai, I got the suit on, and then decided to go out with only the suit. I’d always been a little concerned about doing that in the past, specifically about whether I’d look too “lumpy” under there (“lumpy” in this case referring to the love handles and what have you that I sport). As it turned out, though, I looked fine, as the zentai smoothed out all the lines. After getting up the nerve to actually go out wearing the zentai by itself (never did that in public before), it seemed to work. And then when I got to the raid site, I put the hood up and the “windshield goggles” on (they fit over my glasses), which completed my anonymity, and I got out a stack of You Found The Card cards. I’d say I was ready to raid.
Categories: Project Chanology
Crunch…
3 minute read
May 7, 2010, 8:24 PM
So I was going to lunch at Lawson’s with a bunch of my coworkers today, and we saw this when we got to Dupont Circle:
Categories: WMATA
So should I buy another Web cam?
2 minute read
May 6, 2010, 11:25 PM
I’ve been tossing around the idea for a while of buying another Web cam. One may recall that from 2000 to 2003, I had a feature on this site where I had a Web cam that transmitted a still picture to the site every two minutes. So Web cams and Schumin Web are definitely not unfamiliar concepts.
However, before you start thinking I’m going to resurrect the old Web cam feature, forget it. I am so over that. That feature is dead, and is staying dead.
Actually, I’m thinking about the possibility of doing some Journal entries in video format. I think it would be fun, and I could convey some things that I can’t do in written form, like tone of voice, and hand movements and such.
Of course, that requires actually having a Web cam of some sort. The Web cams that I had in the days of the old Web cam feature are long gone. I either threw them away, gave them away, or they’re buried somewhere in my parents’ house. However, you slice it, I don’t have them. Besides, those old cameras were a pain to deal with anyway, and modern cameras are far superior to and cheaper than the old ones, which by now would be eight and ten years old. Right now, the only access I have to a Web cam is the iSight camera on my office Mac, and there are a whole host of reasons why I will never “video blog” for Schumin Web from the office.
Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta
The FCDC furniture sale was quite revealing in more ways than one…
10 minute read
May 4, 2010, 8:30 PM
While Anonymous raided a yellow tent on the Mall, I took part in a different operation. I went to the Founding Church of Scientology (FCDC) furniture sale at their old Org, the Fraser Mansion, where we had raided many times in the past. I brought my checkbook along, just in case there really was furniture that I was interested in, though I considered that to be highly unlikely.
So I drove down, and parked in the parking lot behind the building:
I considered that a bit ballsy on my part, but then again, this wasn’t a raid, and additionally, if I really did buy furniture, I would have had to bring the car back around regardless. So whatever. If they didn’t like it, whatever.
Categories: Project Chanology
Orange Line to New Carrollton…
8 minute read
May 2, 2010, 11:06 PM
That about sums things up for Saturday, along with “Orange Line to Vienna”. See, I went railfanning with Matthew Tilley on Saturday, and our goal was to railfan the heck out of the Orange Line, with the goal of getting good photos of a lot of the stations for Transit Center and Wikipedia.
In doing this, we planned to cross the Orange Line twice. Once out to New Carrollton, and once back in to Vienna. On the run out to New Carrollton, we concentrated on the outdoor stations. The idea was that since we needed daylight to get good shots of the outdoor stations, we would do those first. Then we would do the underground stations after that, since they would look the same regardless of what time of day it was.
So starting with Vienna (I drove out to Vienna to start), we did Dunn Loring, West Falls Church, and East Falls Church, and then jumped over to Minnesota Avenue, Deanwood, Cheverly, Landover, and finally New Carrollton. We took a break at New Carrollton, and then turned around and did Potomac Avenue, Eastern Market, Capitol South, and Federal Center SW. Then we skipped over to Court House, Clarendon, and Virginia Sq-GMU. Then we went over to Ballston for dinner, and then back to Vienna.