Best birthday cake ever…
2 minute read
August 28, 2014, 11:46 AM
My friend Elyse recently celebrated a birthday, and, as a fellow fire alarm enthusiast, she got what I consider to be the greatest cake ever. She sent me pictures of it. Take a look:
Continue reading…Categories: Birthdays, Elyse, Fire alarms, Food and drink
Sometimes you have those weekends where you just have to get out of the house…
12 minute read
June 11, 2014, 6:06 PM
Ever get that feeling of “I just have to get out of the house”? I recently had that feeling, where I just needed a change of scenery for a little bit, and so I planned a weekend trip down to Stuarts Draft to visit the parents, going down Friday, and coming back Sunday. They were, as always, delighted to see me, and on the whole, we had a good time. I also made some extra space in my house, as, on Mom’s request, I brought my sister’s old bicycle back to my parents’ house. Gave me some practice in “beheading” a bicycle by removing the front wheel, and then reattaching it at my destination. But it travels much more easily without the front wheel:
The freshly-liberated front wheel.
Categories: Bicycle, Companies, Driving, Family, Fire drills, Harrisonburg, Middle school, Reddit, Stuarts Draft, Walmart, Waynesboro, Weather
“A room that big and not a single fire alarm notification appliance?”
< 1 minute read
June 10, 2014, 1:43 PM
Categories: Fire alarms, Social media
And it goes from an Edwards to a Fire-Lite…
2 minute read
May 12, 2014, 11:12 PM
And there you have it. I figured that, when Herb, three firefighters, and I had trouble resetting the pull station during that accidental fire alarm at the pool last Thursday, the Edwards 270A-SPO that had recently been installed at the pool and was the center of the action in this alarm would not be long for this world. And I was right. This is what greeted me when I arrived for today’s workout:
Categories: Fire alarms, Olney, Swimming
Well, tonight’s workout was fun…
6 minute read
May 8, 2014, 10:19 PM
I think this describes my workout at the pool tonight:
Yes, I got interrupted by a fire alarm. I was simultaneously annoyed and delighted about the situation. On the one hand, Olney Indoor Swim Center has a Notifier voice evacuation system, and I had never heard it go off in the three years that I have been swimming at Olney. So I was delighted that I finally got to see and hear it in action. On the other hand, though, I take my swimming quite seriously. I find interruptions to my workout to be quite a bother, like the time that a storm-related power outage ended my workout early back in August 2012. So a fire alarm during my workout annoyed me, because it knocked me out of my groove.
Categories: Fire alarms, Olney, Swimming
The mildly interesting things that you see in a day…
5 minute read
March 21, 2014, 11:34 PM
So my Friday was fun. I got together with my friend Matthew, we did some cooking, and then after Matthew and I parted company for the day, I headed over to Dulles Town Center for a bit. Over the course of the day, I spotted a few things that I found mildly interesting.
On the way in, I stopped over at Aardvark Swim in Chantilly. I usually go to the Rockville location, but since they were out of goggle straps (the bungee cord kind) in Rockville, and I knew I was going to be out this way sooner than Rockville would get more in stock, I swung by and here to get them. Those of you who follow me on Instagram may remember that I was contemplating whether or not to buy this:
Categories: Clothing, Fire alarms, Food and drink, Matthew, Retail
So there I am, fast asleep, staring down a fire alarm…
4 minute read
November 11, 2013, 12:09 AM
I graduated from high school in 1999. That means that I have been out of high school for fourteen years. The question I have is, why am I still having fire drill dreams? I had one of these on Saturday night, and I don’t get it.
In this dream, I was going to Stuarts Draft High School, which is where I actually went to high school. Back then, the school had a Simplex system, but the school has since been renovated. It now has a Notifier system with System Sensor horn/strobes. The take-home point on this, however, is that the school now contains a horn/strobe in every classroom. And I am acutely aware of this. When I was in school, I only shared a classroom with a fire alarm horn once. That was in kindergarten at Southside Elementary School in Rogers, Arkansas, but the kindergarten room was the size of a basketball court with a really high ceiling. At Grimes Elementary in Rogers, and Stuarts Draft Middle School and Stuarts Draft High School in Virginia, I never shared a classroom with a fire alarm horn except for in shop classes (where I never had a fire drill) and Phys. Ed, where we did have the occasional fire drill. However, in middle school, two Edwards horns in a big gym weren’t very loud, but four Simplex 4040 horns in the gym in high school were extremely loud. But outside from those situations, there were no horns in the rooms where I had class (the horns were out in the hallway).
In this dream, I was sitting in a modern-looking classroom on the first day of school at Stuarts Draft High School. And across the room from me was this:
Categories: Dreams, Elementary school, Fire drills, High school
Okay, explain this dream…
4 minute read
February 28, 2013, 10:33 PM
Okay, this is a weird one. Now you know I’ve discussed some odd dreams in this space in the past, like the surgery dream, the derailment dream, the Power Rangers dream, the countless Walmart dreams, CFW dreams, fire alarm dreams, etc. But this one from a few weeks ago is hard to explain. But here goes.
In this dream, I was at the building where I work in DC, and I was in the office doing work. And outside, at least according to the dream, there was a volcano erupting. Yes, a volcano. In the DC area. I know. That said, this volcano was one of those explosive types of volcanoes, putting out tons of volcanic ash, but no lava, much like the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried Pompeii. In fact, in the dream, I even recalled that this was just like Pompeii. Volcanic ash was falling all over, and the entire city was going to be buried, just like in Pompeii. And we were all apparently doomed due to falling ash and poisonous volcanic gases. It didn’t matter in the dream that Pompeii was only buried under nine feet of ash and my office is on the third floor, at least twenty-some feet above street level. We were all doomed, and our building was going to get buried. Completely.
With me so far? Basically: big volcano erupts in DC area, ash falling all over the place, we’re all going to die.
The thing that got me in this dream was actually my own reaction. Of course, I’ve noticed that in dreams, I seem to often “have a copy of the script” and know many details that are taken as indisputable fact within the dream’s fictional universe as things play out. Thus how I knew volcano, ash, and pending death. The only thing I saw in the dream was the inside of my office building. Which had orange-red walls in my dream. (Go figure. The real office has mostly eggshell walls.) But as my coworkers were panicking due to our impending burial by volcano, my reaction was indifference to our fate, because I had stuff that I had to take care of. Yes, I was doing work as we were about to be buried under ash, decay completely, and then become plaster casts when we were rediscovered a thousand and some years later. And yes, the idea of plaster casts of our final positions like happened in Pompeii came up in the dream. I know.
Categories: Dreams, Fire drills
New fire alarms at work… again…
7 minute read
August 24, 2012, 10:17 PM
So apparently the folks who run the building where I work are looking to improve the fire alarm system. Recall that in 2009, the fire alarm notification appliances were replaced after an incident where someone pulled a fire alarm in our building due to smoke from a car fire in an alley behind the building, and those of us looking out the window at the fire couldn’t hear the alarm going off. For that, we started with Wheelock 34 horns and Space Age AV32 light plates:
Categories: Fire alarms, Work
Didn’t think I would have a “Fox issues the power” moment, but…
4 minute read
June 8, 2012, 10:41 PM
…but it looks like Falcon is going to have one. First of all, though, if you’re wondering what I’m even talking about, it’s a Power Rangers reference. Before Power Rangers Zeo began, they ran “It’s Coming” previews, and then ran the full song before the first episode of the show. One line was difficult to understand. The correct lyrics were, “Unleashing the power”, but Sis and I thought it was “Fox [something] the power” (Power Rangers was airing on Fox at that time). Back in 1996, we wrote to Mark Oxman (aka “Maxmouze”), who ran a Power Rangers newsletter at the time, about the lyrics. He indicated that the words were “Fox issues the power”. Even though Mark Oxman got it wrong, the mondegreen has become how I describe hyped up premieres.
And Falcon’s becoming Schumin Web isn’t that big of a deal visually. The site will look mostly the same. But the Fire Alarm Collection pages are getting a big upgrade. That’s because the restoration of that area is coinciding with some long overdue updates, including added alarms, and all new illustrations. Realize that many of the photos in the alarm collection pages are more than ten years old. That’s back in the era of my original Mavica camera. And I wasn’t nearly as meticulous about how I kept photos early on, and the originals for the old photos had been lost. So there would be no restoration at all if I kept the old photos in place. So over the last week or so, I configured part of my kitchen as something of a photography studio, and took new photos of every alarm in the collection. I’ll leave the final result under wraps for now (mostly because I’m not done with the pages), but I want you to see some of the behind-the-scenes work, as the alarms went in for their closeups…
The tablecloth on my kitchen table does double duty as a backdrop for fire alarms.
Categories: Fire alarms, Schumin Web meta
Yes, I am probably the only one who would make fire alarms out of Legos…
4 minute read
February 19, 2012, 1:27 PM
So I went to Arundel Mills yesterday. Trips to Arundel Mills are always fun because there’s so much going on in that place. My goal was to get shoes, and at that I was unsuccessful. I need to buy new shoes because my existing shoes are, according to my podiatrist, a bit too long for me. When you have feet as wide as mine, you see, shoes that fit are hard to come by. Historically, I had always compensated for the width by buying longer, but I’m told that’s a contributor to the foot problems that I’ve been having lately. In trying shoes out, I think I’ve got the length about right (size 9½ – surprise!), but I’ve got to go far wider than I could get at the places I went. “Extra wide” in most places doesn’t do my feet justice, it seems. I have big feet, it seems.
One place I always have fun at, though, is the Lego store. They have Legos out on a table where you can play with them, and I have gone to town on them. The time before this back in December, I built a house with a small retaining wall around it, and then helped a little girl build the postmodern office building of her dreams. Seriously, it was pretty cool. This is said postmodern building:
Categories: Arundel Mills, Fire alarms
This is the interesting part of all the photo work I’m doing on the site…
2 minute read
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
And fun was had in Chicago, too!
5 minute read
August 11, 2011, 6:10 AM
So before you think that all I did in Chicago was fight with CTA employees, I did a whole slew of other things in Chicago that were fun. First of all, the train trip over was interesting, as Mom and I shared a lower level Superliner I roomette on the Capitol Limited. That was certainly a different experience from before. Each time we’ve traveled before, it’s been on the upper level of the rail cars. The view isn’t that much different, except that you are just about at eye level with people in the stations that you go by, and your window doesn’t necessarily get above the sides of a few bridges. But otherwise, not bad.
And the Superliner I sleeper that I was on had been slightly refurbished. First of all, the three reading lights in the room were all LED (oooooh, ahhhhh), plus the panels above each seat had been refurbished. Take a look:
Categories: Amtrak, Chicago, Family, Fire alarms
So let’s go swimming!
5 minute read
May 16, 2011, 6:09 PM
So… I went swimming today at the Graham S. Little Natatorium, aka Olney Swim Center. I had never been before, so while I had an idea about what to expect from going online, it was still a new experience. For those wondering, the Olney Swim Center is an indoor swimming pool in Olney, Maryland, owned and operated by Montgomery County.
I got there just before 2:30, and, after changing in the locker room, I got in the water right at 2:30, and swam mostly continuously for an hour. I believe that this marks the first time that I’ve done any serious swimming since I quit Rhonda Dossey’s class, and that was twenty years ago! And I certainly got a workout from this, that’s for sure. I started doing the front crawl for a few laps, and then switched to backstroke. I did that for a while, then did the breaststroke for a bit. Then I spent the rest of the time doing the backstroke. I did the backstroke most because when you consider that I’m just getting back into things, I couldn’t quite manage to get the multitasking together to stroke, kick, and breathe doing the front crawl and the breaststroke. So I decided to work on just stroke and kick, and we’ll deal with the breathing in another session. Something tells me I should work on the breathing with a kickboard for a while and then try to put it all together later. It’s okay – don’t want to overdo it, and I don’t have any swim instructor standing on the pool deck yelling at me about my stroke.
There is one other thing that I need to work on, and that’s direction. When I was a kid, I had no problems swimming in a straight line. Tell me where to swim, and I could get there in a straight line. Kind of like this:
Categories: Fire drills, Olney, Swimming
Nice weather, fire drills, FIOS, and stupid Comcast…
< 1 minute read
February 16, 2011, 8:22 PM
So I did a Video Journal tonight. And here it is:
Categories: Companies, Fire drills, School, Video Journal