In 24 hours, I still won’t (quite) be in Chicago…
2 minute read
August 3, 2011, 7:59 AM
…but I will be much closer than I am right now and closing. Yes, 24 hours from now, Mom and I will probably be crossing through northern Indiana on the Capitol Limited in preparation for an 8:45 AM arrival at Chicago Union Station.
This trip is going to be fun. It will be a cool 83 degrees in Chicago while we’re there (it’s been a bit warmer than that in DC lately, trust me), and we’re going to have a lot of fun. Among other things, we’re going to see the new Marilyn Monroe statue, and see a play that Chris (my brother-in-law) is acting in. That I’m particularly excited about, because in all the years I’ve known Chris, I’ve never seen him act, save for a short demo reel on his site. I’m told this will be a children’s version of The Wizard of Oz, which should be fun.
Meanwhile, victory – I was able to explain to Mom in a way that she understood about why the monumental task of converting the site to WordPress is better than what I do now. I showed her the back end of the site and how I can update everything via a Web interface (once I finish building the skin), and how easy this is going to be. I think that Mom was able to wrap her mind around it, at least well enough to get the general concept, and understanding that this WordPress site I showed her really will be Schumin Web when it’s all said and done.
Then I was amazed to find what difference a little water makes. I didn’t have anything to drink all day yesterday on account of being so busy at the office, and I really started to drag in the evening. Turned out that I was just a wee bit dehydrated. All my energy came back once Mom and I got home and I drained one of my steel water bottles.
Continue reading…Metro has officially let the cat out of the bag…
5 minute read
July 25, 2011, 9:43 PM
It’s true. The cat is out of the bag. Last week, because of the extreme heat, Metro relaxed its longstanding prohibition on consuming beverages in the system, allowing riders “to carry and consume bottles of water on the system.” Take a look:
(Click it to see the full view of it, screen-capped from Metro’s site)
This is why the next-to-last station will show no trains on the inbound display screen, and why no trains on screen is often acceptable…
5 minute read
May 31, 2011, 9:45 PM
So I was perusing the Twitter this morning, and came upon this tweet by FixWMATA:
Inbound PID at Eisenhower during “Peak of the Peak” morning rush. #wmata http://twitpic.com/5500rj
May 31 7:34 AM
Photo: FixWMATA
What you are looking at is purported to be the PIDS screen on the inbound side of Eisenhower Avenue station. Other details in the photo seem to confirm this. The concern being raised here is that the PIDS screen is blank.
Categories: Social media, Some people, WMATA
Third time’s the charm when it comes to Metro, apparently…
5 minute read
March 29, 2011, 10:00 PM
I certainly had an exciting commute home this evening, that’s for sure. My commute took 35 minutes longer than usual, and involved three Metro trains and one Ride On bus. Of those, one train and the bus are considered normal for my commute. I have a one-seat train ride, you see, going from Dupont Circle to Glenmont in the evening (and vice versa in the morning).
So on this evening’s commute, I went down into Dupont Circle station at exactly 5:44 PM according to the clock on the SunTrust building in Dupont Circle, as per usual. I got down into the station, and missed catching Breda 4018 (best known for being the struck train in the Woodley Park-Zoo accident) by seconds. Seriously, if the mezzanine-to-platform escalator had been running, I would have made that train, and ridden Breda 4018 home. But since I missed it, I had to wait on the platform for the next Glenmont train, sitting out one Silver Spring train in the process.
When my Glenmont train came, it was headed by Breda 3021 (I ride in the lead car coming home). This was pretty normal so far. I got in, got a seat right away, and got comfortable for my ride home. We made it from Dupont Circle all the way to Takoma station without incident. Then at Takoma, we started having a door problem. The train operator started going around and around and around with the doors, opening, closing, opening, closing, etc. trying to get the doors to do what they were supposed to do. Once I saw the train operator get on the radio, though, I knew what was likely coming next.
Metro cars with black floors, wool seats, and overly “busy” patterns…
4 minute read
March 2, 2011, 10:57 PM
One of the people I work with, when taking the Orange Line, happened to get Alstom 6027 for their ride into Washington today, and was surprised about the seat patterns being employed there. For those who don’t know, Alstom 6027 is one of two Metro cars (the other being its mate, Alstom 6026) that have been outfitted with some new materials that Metro is testing for future use on rail cars. Specifically, Metro is testing out certain types of resilient flooring and different patterns for wool seat pad covers on this car, having first outfitted the cars like this in late 2008.
On the resilient flooring, Metro seems to be primarily testing colors across the 6026-6027 pair. 6026 has a black floor:
Categories: WMATA
So why don’t you just tell us what you really think?
2 minute read
January 11, 2011, 10:02 PM
So I drove to work today, and then going home, I put the phone in my GPS mount and did a Video Journal entry from the driver’s seat. And here it is:
Categories: Driving, Middle school, Video Journal, Wikipedia, Winter weather, WMATA
No better day for a Metro ride… without pants.
4 minute read
January 10, 2011, 11:30 PM
Yes, you heard that correctly. Without pants. See, Sunday was the day that Capitol Improv did its annual “No Pants Metro Ride”. It’s the exact same idea as Improv Everywhere‘s No Pants Subway Ride in New York City, but this was in DC, on our subway.
The group met up at Hancock Park in DC, which is on the next block from the north entrance to L’Enfant Plaza station. As demonstrated in this photo, we had a good amount of people participating:
Obviously, the date and time would be too useful to display…
6 minute read
December 19, 2010, 1:59 AM
Coming back from a Christmas shindig in Northern Virginia this evening, I encountered this sign on the Beltway:
Basically, the sign encourages people to report “terror tips” to the authorities at the aforementioned number. A little research indicates that the number goes to the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a state counter-terrorism agency.
Categories: Driving, Photography, Security, WMATA
If this is how Metro is going to spend our money, then I want my fare increase back.
4 minute read
December 16, 2010, 7:31 PM
So Metro posted this little gem on YouTube today:
So Metro really thinks that security theater will make us safer? Really? Didn’t we like just discuss this a couple of years ago? I still firmly stand by what I said two years ago, and that is that it’s a waste of time and money.
You know it’s something seriously Metro-geeky when I pull out the safety vest…
5 minute read
December 4, 2010, 12:23 AM
And it is. Take a look:
See, we did our annual office trivia contest on Friday, in the usual format. The way that works is that I ask a question, and the first person to get it right wins a prize, which comes from whatever freebie stuff we get over the course of the year. The topics are something I pick. In 2008, it was United States Presidents. In 2009, it was United States geography. In 2010, after complaints that I made the geography questions too easy, I went for something a little harder, yet something that people around here should know more about than they do: the Metro. Thus why I pulled out the safety vest. After all, if one is going to do a trivia contest about Metro, one should at least look the part. Thus I wore my WMATA safety vest at work when I hosted trivia.
Greetings from CAF 5109…
3 minute read
November 17, 2010, 7:29 PM
First of all, hello from CAF 5109. I am riding the Red Line home from the Tenleytown area, having just had a wonderful time enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend. Always good to see friends, and nothing beats a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall evening.
Meanwhile, this is my first time actually writing a Journal entry on my netbook while on the Metro. The train is not crowded by any means, so I’m sitting sideways in a row and typing with the computer on one leg. And it seems to work. I’m listening to Randi Rhodes on podcast, and just tapping away on the keyboard. For those wondering, I don’t have Internet on here right now, but instead, I will post this when I get home. I’m too late for the 51, so I figure, I’m either going to take the Y9 bus or walk. Follow me on the Twitter and find out, I suppose. Meanwhile, this train did not service Farragut North, strangely enough. When we went through (without stopping), there was caution tape on the platform and a bunch of people in safety vests at the outbound end, but a lot of regular people on the inbound end. Go fig. I know that the L Street entrance was closed, but who knows if that’s related.
Then this weekend is raid weekend. It’s always fun to troll Scientology, and this ought to be good, though I’m concerned that our numbers will be down due to its being so close to Thanksgiving. This is, after all, the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I’m sure that many people will be taking off early for the holiday. However, Scientology is not above scamming people out of large sums of their money on the weekend before Thanksgiving, and thus we will be outside to troll. It’s this Saturday from 1-5 PM. Hope to see you there. Should be fun. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong on the numbers, and we’ll have a good number of (masked) faces out there trolling Scientology.
Categories: Computer, Project Chanology, Schumin Web meta, Thanksgiving, WMATA
Power-walker extraordinaire…
3 minute read
November 10, 2010, 12:16 AM
Well, what a crappy day today was. It just seems like a lot of stuff went wrong today. It started out with a call from the mechanic, where the Sable is currently undergoing yet another expensive repair. This time it’s the fuel pump and related equipment that decided to conk out on me. Basically, it’s a rehash of the problem from last Christmas, when Mom and I almost got stranded in Roanoke, except this time the car didn’t get back up again, and was down for the count, and so I had to fix it. After all, I live in the suburbs, and where I live, you need wheels. The reason that was no good is because I got the final number. The shop called me while I was at the bus stop, telling me that they wanted $2,200 for the work. I told them I’d need to get back with them on that. They called me back again while I was on the Metro, talking it down to $1,900. No go again. Have to get back with them. I managed to somehow get them down to $1,295, and that’s what it’s going to take to get my car going again. I get my car back soon, though I’m thinking that the Sable’s days might soon be numbered, because the old adages of “Fix Or Repair Daily” and “Found On Road Dead” are ringing very true for me, and that starts to add up to real money.
What would be really cute, though, is if the Sable started honking on its own every time I mention the words “new car”, a la Gertrude from Today’s Special.
Then at work, I had to attend to an emergency that would of course rear its ugly little head at 4:59 PM. I didn’t get out of the office until way later than I would have liked. Taking the 51 home was out of the question, since even with the new and later last 51 of the night, I hadn’t even left the office when that pulled up to the bus stop at Glenmont. So I ended up taking Metro home at night, and got to Glenmont around 10:45. According to NextBus, there wouldn’t be another Y9 going north for an hour.
Categories: Mercury Sable, Recreation/Exercise, Ride On, WMATA, Work
So I did one of the things I bought this netbook for…
2 minute read
November 5, 2010, 11:33 PM
Well, I did my first Video-Journal-on-the-go entries today. I did two videos, both on the Metro. I first did one in the morning:
Categories: Schumin Web meta, Video Journal, WMATA
Yellow Line to Fort Totten…
6 minute read
October 21, 2010, 9:49 PM
On Tuesday, when I was perusing the Twitter while riding the Red Line home from work, I noticed a tweet that read, “Can’t for life of me figure out why @WMATA stops Yellow trains at Mt Vernon Sq during rush hr. I hear Ft Totten is lovely this time of year.” I gave as good of an explanation as 140 characters would allow, and got a thank you for my efforts along with expression of hope for the addition of a pocket track at Fort Totten. I then explained that it would be far more economical just to send trains to Greenbelt than to reconstruct things north of Fort Totten.
I felt my explanation was a little weak, mainly due to the 140 character limit that the Twitter imposes. So to @jeremycluchey, here’s a better explanation of the Fort Totten situation.
The short of it is that Fort Totten was never designed for turning trains in regular service with the full Green Line. While there is a switch at Fort Totten allowing trains to change tracks, its main purpose for existence there was to allow trains to cross over while the Green Line did not exist south of Fort Totten – thus Fort Totten’s lower level was being used as a stub-end terminal. From 1993 to 1999, one may recall, there was a gap in the Green Line. The segment of the line north of Gallery Place to U Street opened in 1991, and then the segment from Fort Totten to Greenbelt opened in 1993. The mid-city segment linking the two sections (including Columbia Heights and Georgia Ave-Petworth) didn’t open until 1999. That’s why the Green Line Commuter Shortcut existed in the 1990s.
Categories: WMATA
So the question remains… could William Shatner run Metro better than the current Metro management?
2 minute read
September 22, 2010, 8:56 PM
Right around 5:00, I got an Email titled, “Dude! You made Slate!!!!” I followed the link in the message, and found an article on the online magazine Slate by Justin Peters called “$#*! @SenJeffMerkley Says“.
The gist of the article was to take tweets that people posted on the Twitter and use them as the basis for primetime television show concepts. Creative writing at its finest. The second one used my Twitter feed, of all things, and here’s what they said:
The @SchuminWeb Files
Office manager. Transit enthusiast. World-class detective. Ben Schumin is the man to call when something’s amiss with your D.C.-area morning commute. In this fall’s hottest new suspense drama, the plodding, methodical Schumin will tackle unsolved mysteries (“No underground cell service from Glenmont station to halfway to Wheaton. What’s wrong? #wmata”), investigate horrible crimes (“@FixWMATA Who do you think the thieves are? #wmata”), maintain the peace (“A kid is screaming on the train. Get this little noisemaker OFF MY TRAIN! #wmata”), and generally remain alert (“Note to self: Get off at Metro Center this morning. #wmata”). Co-starring William Shatner as X, the villainous head of the mysterious “#wmata” organization.
Categories: Netculture, Social media, WMATA