Alstom 6017 was the fire car…
< 1 minute read
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…
< 1 minute read
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?
2 minute read
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:
Continue reading…Categories: Winter weather
What a neat use for a hood ornament!
< 1 minute read
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…
2 minute read
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…
2 minute read
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?”
< 1 minute read
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
A new tagger has arrived on the Red Line scene…
2 minute read
March 28, 2007, 6:32 PM
As many who ride the Metro can attest, the eastern part of the Red Line has a lot of graffiti visible from the train. Besides the large “Bush Hates Borf” message near the Takoma station, there’s also a whole bunch of graffiti nearer to the ground. A lot of it is on walls in CSX’s right of way, and then there’s some on nearby buildings, and so on.
But I noticed a whole bunch of new tags when I rode up to Fort Totten yesterday on the Red Line. They are anti-war graffiti tags. Here’s an example of one near Brookland-CUA station:
I actually saw a bunch of these along the Red Line with similar messages. I don’t necessarily agree with the method used to get the message out – that being tagging – but the sentiment is definitely a good one.
Categories: Anti-war, Street art, WMATA
Lost two farecards in one day!
3 minute read
March 28, 2007, 11:22 AM
And when it was all said and done, my performance when it came to Metro on this last DC trip was horrible. Never before have I lost two all-day passes in the same day.
Now, I’ve had farecard problems before. On two DC trips some years ago (April 12, 2003 and January 3, 2004), and one recently (September 20, 2006), my day pass got demagnetized. In those cases, I got date coded, showed the pass to the station manager at every station, and went through the employee gate. In the two cases from a few years ago, it was caused by the farecard’s living alone in an otherwise empty pocket. Therefore, it saw a bit more abuse than it should have. I switched pockets after that, and put the farecard against other things, which worked well for the most part. The other occasion, who knows what happened. It shouldn’t have demagnetized.
Then on my November 21, 2006 DC trip, I lost my day pass at Pentagon City. I think it just fell out of my pocket when I pulled something else out. I ended up having to use my SmarTrip to get back to Vienna. I think I probably lost it at Champps in that instance.
This time, I lost my day pass twice! I lost it the first time at New Carrollton. I used the pass to leave New Carrollton, and that was the last I saw of it. I went to reenter the Metro at New Carrollton, and the pass was nowhere to be found. I even went back over to where I was earlier to look around a bit, since passes don’t just disappear into thin air, after all. But it was gone. So I ultimately just got a new day pass and was done with it. So the first day pass saw two official “rides”: Vienna to Rosslyn, and Rosslyn to New Carrollton. I rode four different trains during that time, but Metro only logs your entry and exit points, therefore the fact that I took a Blue Line train from Rosslyn to Stadium-Armory and then an Orange Line train from there to Cheverly (where we were offloaded), and another Orange to New Carrollton, doesn’t play into the equation.
“Booger” is a word, but “burqa” isn’t?
< 1 minute read
March 27, 2007, 7:13 PM
First off, hello from Pentagon City. I’ve had a fun day today. I rode out to New Carrollton on the Metro and then around to Fort Totten and then to the Infoshop. And at times, I’ve been playing Scrabble Blast on my cell phone, like while I’m waiting on the train. I’m working my wordiness, keeping my mind in tip-top shape.
However, it’s kind of strange about what words are valid words. I had tried “burqa” – the Muslim women’s veil – and it rejected it! I would have scored 212 points on it, which would be a personal record, beating “mixed” for 170 points. This is the same game that accepts “booger” and “titties” as valid words (wipe that grin off your face!), while something far less juvenile gets rejected. It gets frustrating when it rejects perfectly valid words. Of course, it also rejects a number of “colorful” words that I’ve had the opportunity to give it.
But all in all, it’s a really fun game. That and Tetris Mania.
Otherwise, I’m revamping my discussion forums, changing from YaBB to phpBB. The official cutover takes place Saturday night. I’m excited.
Categories: Cell phone, DC trips, Language
Would you believe my site is entering its twelfth year?
4 minute read
March 22, 2007, 1:52 AM
Believe it or not, it’s true. Schumin Web completes its eleventh year of existence tomorrow, and so then the site will be eleven going on twelve.
As I say every year, I’m amazed to think about it. I look back at where we’ve been as a collective group (you, me, and the Web site), and I also try to look forward to where we’re heading.
I also find it somewhat funny to think about how my life was way back in 1996 when I started this site. I was a freshman at Stuarts Draft High School. I wore no glasses, but I did wear a retainer. I had great hair that I didn’t have to photoshop (remind me to elaborate on that later). I wore Airwalk sneakers. The Previa was running in tip-top condition as Mom’s car, and I rode in it regularly – as a passenger. Greta was only two years old. Washington DC was a city that was far away, and I could count on my hands how many times I’d visited it. My computer was a 90 MHz Pentium with 16 MB of RAM and a 1 GB hard drive running Windows 95. Bill Clinton was in his first term as president. I had a mild crush on my first-year Spanish teacher. I was too uptight to discuss fire alarms with anyone, but instead held a silent interest. My Internet service provider was America Online. My bedroom had white walls. My watch was synchronized with the master clock in the school office so I would know exactly when the bell would ring. Netscape was considered the hip Web browser.
I also look at how the focus of this site has shifted over the years. Originally, it was strictly whatever. I would make a page for something, and I would write about it. No sections, no sorting. Just add it to the menu and go. I would regularly update a page called “News of the Week”, which was basically about whatever was going on in my life. I would often grouse about school on there. The page was expendable, though – I kept no archive of what I wrote from week to week. Then later, we went to frames, which allowed me to keep the menu on screen all the time. I now consider frames to be a hideous concept, but back in the mid-1990s, they were the latest fad. They remained until September 1999.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Back from DC, back at work…
< 1 minute read
March 20, 2007, 11:11 AM
The first day back at work after a big protest is always a bit of a letdown. All that positive energy and excitement generated during the protest just kind of dissipates at work. I tell a few of my coworkers the story, and defend myself from the inevitable “so what did you really accomplish” questions.
And now I’m focusing on the follow-up work, where I consider my real activism to come out. The photo set. I’m not that great with public speaking or otherwise being put on the spot, though I do have my moments, like in a conversation about the Nationals and Metro service at A16, and my attempted discussion about the flag and the conservatives at J27. But then back here at my studio (read: my desk), that’s where I like to think I shine. There, I discuss the issue and other things in the context of the march. I have a great time, too.
So, yeah, I’m working on my M17 photo set, which has the working title of “March on the Pentagon”. I’m still in the very early stages of it, though, since I’ve not had much writing time on it at this point. I’m going to have to be clever with how I do mix photos and text this time, because I didn’t get the maneuvering room I usually have at these things. I was essentially locked in a tight formation facing forward, and it affected how the photos came out.
Still, returning to work after a big, successful protest is always a bit of a letdown for me. It doesn’t do that to me for smaller protests, but for the big ones, yes.
Categories: Anti-war, Schumin Web meta
You were just on TV – Fox News
3 minute read
March 17, 2007, 5:01 PM
First of all, hello from the Infoshop, where I just now met David Rovics.
The protest went swimmingly. I got off the Metro at Foggy Bottom, headed down to the main rally site, and eventually found the SDS contingent. After we determined what we wanted to do, we were off! This time, the black bloc stayed with the mainstream march (sponsored by ANSWER) for the most part. We formed a very tight affinity group, with arms locked the entire way. My right shoulder is now a bit sore due to that. We marched past the counter-protesters “guarding” the Lincoln Memorial (*eyes rolling*), and then marched over Memorial Bridge and on into Arlington. We eventually made a left turn, and headed towards the Pentagon. Our black bloc, after initially having to wedge itself into the mainstream march to get moving, mostly marched as its own unit to the side of the mainstream march, arms locked all the way. Did I say very tight affinity group?
At the Pentagon, we split from the mainstream march. The mainstream march went left, and down into the Pentagon’s north parking lot (ho-hum). There, they had their rally, complete with speeches. Meanwhile, we continued on Route 27 for a little bit more, before we were physically stopped by Pentagon Police and the Virginia State Police. After briefly pushing against the line of police, a pyrotechnic device went off right in front of us (I was near the front of the march at this point), and we backed off. The police then started putting on gas masks, and a standoff began. The police were warning us to disperse, and many participants in the black bloc sat down in the street in front of them. The police gave warnings to disperse, they sat down. I backed off, and went to the back of it all, since I wasn’t in the mood to get sprayed and/or arrested. Thus I ended up standing in the back, ready to run if it became necessary. A number of people from the SDS contingent determined that they were going to go back to the recruiting center in DC where the window had previously been broken, while others (including myself) decided to call it a day. Meanwhile, a very dedicated group of black bloc-ers remained at the Pentagon, continuing the standoff. I’m told that no pepper spray or tear gas was ever used (though they were prepared to use it), and that the group finally dispersed on its own when the State Police brought a large number of paddy wagons into position, prepared to make mass arrests (unlike DC, they can do that in Arlington).
Categories: Anti-war, Black bloc, DC trips
At this early hour, we’re up, and you know what that means…
< 1 minute read
March 17, 2007, 2:09 AM
It is 3:30 AM on Saturday, March 17, 2007 as I am writing this. And you know what that means, right? Yes, that’s right – I’m going to Washington DC, and it must be something important if I’m going on a weekend and getting up so bloody early that the road’s not even awake yet.
As you probably guessed, and as I hinted to in my previous Journal entry about the Malkinites, I’m going to the M17 demonstration today. Yep! Despite the snow that hit the area yesterday, I’m still going. Nature’s going to have to do better than that to keep me away.
And I’m ready, too. The protest pack is already in the car, and Big Mavica’s batteries are fully charged, plus I topped them off last night. All I have to do is get my two big bottles of water, and I’ll do that on my Mt. Jackson stop.
If this is the best that the right wing has to offer, I am not impressed.
2 minute read
March 14, 2007, 6:35 PM
I seem to have been made the poster child of the anti-war movement on the blog of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. And if what I’ve seen is the best that the right wing has to offer, I am not impressed.
And now we understand why the Republicans lost in November if this is how these people handle themselves. Here are a few gems for you…
From “jim”: When Islam over runs this country it will be because of wussy boys like you.
From “Kelly Aasen”: Go to the gym, read some real books (not the liberal trash you appear to be reading) and get the [expletive deleted] out of your parents house and on your own.
From “A Vet”: Kindly don’t come looking to desecrate the VN memorial. We had experience dealing with people in black previously and we won’t take kindly to any attempts to leave any paint/marks on it. Otherwise have a nice day Sunday. PS: kindly don’t date my daughter.
Categories: Anti-war, National politics, Netculture