For my generation, NASA spaceflight is the Space Shuttle…
3 minute read
September 24, 2006, 12:33 AM
I’ve been following the articles on the Space Shuttle on Wikipedia, and all the articles indicate that the Space Shuttle fleet will be retired by 2010, with Atlantis retiring in 2008, Discovery in 2009, and Endeavour in 2010.
Exploring into the various articles about human spaceflight, reading about the old Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo programs, as well as Skylab, plus various Russian space programs like the various Soyuz craft, and the Buran program (the Russian space shuttle), and then looking at the articles about the US Space Shuttle, it got me thinking. I also looked at the articles about the Orion spacecraft program, which is NASA’s intended replacement for the Shuttle, which is based on Apollo spacecraft designs, with a “shuttle derived” launch vehicle. That also got me thinking, as the new launchers as I understand it have the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank from the Space Shuttle, but with the stack having a much different look than the Space Shuttle.
The Shuttle-derived launch vehicles are really what got me thinking, and I had a realization. And that was that for my generation, NASA human spaceflight is the Space Shuttle. The first Shuttle, Enterprise, was used for handling tests four years before I was born. Then Columbia flew STS-1 in April 1981, while Mom was a little more than a month away from having me. Then I was four years old when Challenger blew up at the beginning of STS-51-L. I distinctly remember seeing news footage on TV of the incident, though I don’t remember if it was the live broadcast that I saw, or a replay. I just remember seeing the Shuttle stack disintegrate on TV. Then I remember hearing about when STS-26 took off and landed, as NASA’s post-Challenger return-to-flight mission.
Continue reading…Categories: Space
And the change is made!
< 1 minute read
September 23, 2006, 5:45 AM
It’s September 23, the first official day of fall. And that means only one thing: Long sleeves and the Chuck Taylors come back out for their own season. And I’m so glad about it, too.
It seems to be a little known fact that I actually dislike short sleeves. I don’t know why, but I just do. I’d wear long sleeves all year (regardless of whether I wear shorts or not), but the weather just won’t permit it during some of the warmer months. But now, with temperatures dipping to fall-like levels, I welcome the change back.
And my preference for long sleeves shows in how I schedule the change, too. Last time, I changed over to long on September 24 (coinciding with a very large protest that day), and changed over to short on April 24 – that’s seven months long, and five months short. Then this year, it was slightly less than five months on short sleeves. So there you go.
Weirder is to decommission the Crocs and other summer footwear that I’ve been wearing for the last several months. I’ll probably replace the sandals (being pretty cheap as it is), and the Crocs will probably return next year.
The time I got backhanded…
< 1 minute read
September 18, 2006, 11:11 PM
I still remember the time I got backhanded in high school, and I was thinking about that recently. It was in Mrs. Dixon’s English class way back in 1998, and I got decked by a girl, whom we’ll call “Wilma Eyeball” (this person gave herself this nickname in sixth grade back in 1992, so they know who they are), who sat in the seat in front of me. I had presumably managed to tick off this particular girl, and while I was discussing something with another classmate, she just up and backhanded me. She just swung her arm back and kapow. I was kind of stunned. I got decked by Wilma Eyeball. I must have really gotten on her nerves. And it marked the only time I ever got decked in school. And thankfully, no injuries came about – not even a bruise.
After I got decked, Mrs. Dixon took us both out in the hall to discuss this between the two of us. This ultimately led to a seating change, where Wilma Eyeball was moved to a seat across the room. It ended up working out for the better.
Meanwhile, now I find out that Wilma Eyeball lives near Los Angeles and seems to be having a great time…
Categories: High school
One windshield, added to the list of things to do.
< 1 minute read
September 18, 2006, 8:45 PM
So let’s officially add a windshield to the list of things to work on while I’m in the shop. I also finally got the insurance check from the deer accident resolved, and it’s now in the bank and waiting to be paid to Whitesell’s when the work’s all done. The Sable’s going to be out of service for a week. It’s going in next Monday night, and returning on Thursday or Friday.
And meanwhile, I’m going to DC this Wednesday instead of next Wednesday. It’s confirmed: Dad won’t let me take Sis’s car to Washington in the week that the work is going on, and so I’ll be taking the DC trip a week early, and doing it in the Sable. This means that DC will see my car with its dents and missing grille one more time, as well as that brand new crack in the windshield that happened yesterday. Of course, this means that there will be a longer gap between DC trips than I’d prefer. One week between this and the last one, and then three weeks until the next one.
Needless to say, I’m going to be climbing the walls by the time October 11 (estimated date of next scheduled DC trip) rolls around unless I double-dip (meaning that I take an extra non-scheduled trip), which is possible.
Categories: Mercury Sable
Add “windshield” to the list of things to fix next week…
3 minute read
September 17, 2006, 11:17 PM
It seems that when it rains, it pours, as I had another incident in the Sable on my way up to Harrisonburg today. This time, I got a nasty crack in my windshield. I was driving up I-81, and a rock flew up and hit my windshield in the extreme upper left corner from my perspective. Since it was so extreme of a corner that it was actually on the black, I thought at the time that I’d gotten away unscathed, since I didn’t see any damage from my vantage point in the driver’s seat.
The purpose of my trip to Harrisonburg was to visit the Rocktown Infoshop, which is a left-wing bookstore on Elizabeth Street in downtown Harrisonburg similar to the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop in DC. I parked along Court Square in Harrisonburg, and walked the block or so to Rocktown Infoshop.
Rocktown Infoshop is a neat place. Besides a small selection of books (they aspire to have as much as DC’s Infoshop), they also have locally-made crafts, a free store where you can donate items and also take what you wish at no cost, and a place to sit and relax. The space is larger than DC’s Infoshop, and unlike the Infoshop in DC, Rocktown Infoshop is at street level, and therefore has a good storefront. Recall that in DC, the Infoshop is in the basement of the Flemming Center, and as such has a narrow set of stairs to access its outside entrance, and has no street-level storefront to speak of.
Categories: Driving, Mercury Sable
And another piece of computer equipment bites the dust…
2 minute read
September 16, 2006, 10:47 PM
Yep… sad to say, after I spent a whole lot of time working with my Hewlett Packard 930C printer, I’ve come to a conclusion: It’s broken.
So last night I bought a new printer. I didn’t truly realize it until last night, but the straight inkjet printer seems to be going extinct. Everything is either specialized for photos, or is an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier. Since I generally don’t print photos, I don’t particularly need something specialized for photos. For the amount of times I print photos, it’s not worth it. I also already have a scanner that works just fine, so I didn’t particularly need a new one. However, due to the lack of choices in straight inkjets, I bought one of those printer/scanner/fax/copier ones.
I ended up getting an HP PhotoSmart C3140, mainly because the scanner surface is about the same size as my present scanner, which is an HP ScanJet something or other. I’m going to be sad to retire my scanner, which is in perfectly good condition, but there is a perk to this: I can consolidate my setup. I no longer have to have the printer off the desk and on a side shelf. I can put it front-and-center on my desk, where my scanner currently resides. So that’s a plus.
Ben Schumin, your “man on the street” out gathering people’s thoughts…
4 minute read
September 14, 2006, 1:50 AM
As date-stamped on my previous entry, my most recent trip to Washington DC was on September 12. That date coincided with the primary elections in Washington, where, among other things, people were making their choices for the Democratic Party candidate for mayor. In Washington, with the city itself being heavily Democratic, the Democratic primary is considered the actual deciding contest in the mayor’s race. And with Mayor Tony Williams not seeking another term, the field was wide open.
In fact, there were seven candidates on the ballot: Adrian Fenty, Linda Cropp, Marie Johns, Vincent Orange, Michael Brown (name remained on ballot despite exiting the race), Artee Milligan, and Nestor Djonkam. Fenty ultimately won the race (see here), and therefore, Fenty will likely be the winner in the general election in November.
Now let me remind you that I presently do not live in Washington DC, nor do I live in the Washington DC metropolitan area (though I’m working hard to change that part, but no success yet). I’ve followed the race to an extent, as I spend the equivalent of a month in Washington each year (a day in Washington every two weeks plus a few double-dips). I also really hate it when our national leaders step on the local leaders’ toes or leave them out of critical incidents, such as on May 11, 2005 (one of my DC trip days, by the way) when the White House and Capitol were evacuated due to an idiot who got lost in restricted airspace over Washington. There, the DC government wasn’t informed that something was up until it was all over. Mayor Williams was not happy, needless to say.
Categories: DC trips, State and local politics
New compy or second rehab?
2 minute read
September 12, 2006, 7:14 PM
First of all, hello from Pentagon City Mall in Arlington.
With my computer at eight years old now and with its last rehabilitation more than five years behind us, I’ve started toying with the idea of going for MORE POWER once again. Thus the question becomes whether I want to just get an entirely new computer or do another rehabilitation on the one I’ve got. A second rehab on it would likely see a new motherboard and CPU, plus more memory, if nothing else. In the last rehab, I left the original motherboard and processor in place.
The reason I’m even contemplating a rehab vs. just replacing the whole thing is because I really do like my current box. It’s a full tower, has loads of expansion slots, and has three drive bays on it. I’ve not found a new PC to match it. That and I’ve grown rather attached to my present system, and I’d hate to part with it.
Categories: Computer
Oh, how I love some of the quirky messages I receive sometimes…
2 minute read
September 8, 2006, 1:40 AM
On my Wikipedia talk page, I really received a good message this time, from a user named “Joeferret”, entitled “On our relationship”. Here it is:
So Mr. Schumen. You rally for the deletion of my article. You spit on all of modern society’s conventions regarding peace and civility. And on top of all that, you sell thong underwear online. Hence, I have come to an important conclusion: you are my Newman. And thusly, I say this to you sir: Hello… Schumen… Joeferret 05:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Where do I start… first of all, the title, “About our relationship”. He makes it sound like we’re dating or something. I’ve never met this fellow, and I don’t think I particularly want to. Then he misspells “Schumin”. It’s not like he’s never seen my last name before. He mentions this Web site, so it’s not like he didn’t see it splattered all over that. My logo has that little orange dot up there, which indicates for all that it’s an “i” there, and not another vowel.
Then there’s the actual content of his article, which was titled “Anarcho-homosexualism”. Sounds like an interesting topic, but I couldn’t find anyone who could actually verify any of it, and a Google search of the term turned up zero results. Thus someone sent it to Articles for Deletion as original research (Wikipedia has a policy against original research), and I was one of the supporters in deleting it, where, interestingly enough, I was impersonated by someone in the process (see here), as well as having some of my comments modified by other users. Needless to say, this was not a “nice” AfD, since the article’s original creator acted like a lunatic throughout the whole process.
Of course, now the question then becomes why they chose to message me, over all the others participating in that discussion. And a full month after the debate ended, no less. I wasn’t nearly as hard on him as others were in that space. I was nice about things.
So all in all, go figure. Somehow I seem to attract some real fruit bars, both on Wikipedia, and at work as well (though on the latter, not so much lately).
Categories: Wikipedia
If anyone knows the high value I place on personal hygiene, it’s got to be…
2 minute read
September 6, 2006, 1:11 PM
If anyone really knew what a high value I place on personal hygiene, I’d have to say it would have to be the people at the Wal-Mart in Woodstock. I go there on my way home from Washington, and that’s usually when I stock up on all of such personal-hygiene type items.
Seriously, I actually go out of my way to avoid having to shop at the store I actually work at. Trust me, 40 hours inside that place in a week is plenty.
Still, ask the overnight staff at Woodstock. I come in there on my way home from a DC trip, and get eight or nine bottles of shampoo, 30 bars of soap, or a few bottles of body wash when I determine I’m starting to run low. Likewise, I’ve been known to get a few boxes of toothpaste refills (I like Mentadent), a few bars of deodorant, and flosser refills. I like to really stock up when I go shopping. It’s a habit I got when I was in college, and I haven’t outgrown it.
Reason I mention all this is because I’m starting to get to the end of my last bar of deodorant, and am trying to figure out if it will make it all the way to next Tuesday, when I make my next DC trip. So it’s currently an issue that’s really on my mind.
You’ll notice one thing that’s not on my list, though: cologne or after shave. I have no use for scented water. That and one of my many pet peeves is people who use too much cologne. If I can smell you coming a mile away by your cologne, you’re wearing too much. There’s one particular coworker of mine that does this, and you can catch the scent and realize, oh, that’s (name) coming while he’s still a long way off.
So all in all, three cheers for personal hygiene, because the alternative is to smell bad. And it’s never pleasant to have to deal with stinky people.
I have officially discovered YouTube, and this is kinda fun…
< 1 minute read
September 5, 2006, 11:39 AM
I have discovered YouTube, and it’s kind of fun. I consider it better than television because it’s real people doing real stuff. Compare to television where, while the video and sound are more professional-looking, it’s kind of a lot of the same rehashed over and over and over again.
And after some time trying to figure out how I could use YouTube effectively, I’ve decided that YouTube is that place where I can upload stuff that’s worth a look, but that I wouldn’t carry on the regular Web site.
For instance, I have some really long videos that I did when I was testing out Big Mavica on the first day I got it. I was wandering around Potomac Hall and being all silly and such. My residents were probably like, what’s he got now? as I went wandering around, filming everything. No one was used to Big Mavica, and neither was I, as we all soon found out. Of course, you’ve got to start somewhere. And with these videos sitting in storage for so long, we might as well show them off on YouTube.
So yeah, fun stuff. I take a lot of videos, so this should be interesting.
Categories: YouTube
“George… George… dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dubya Bush! Da shrub!”
2 minute read
September 3, 2006, 12:51 AM
Did I tell you what I was dressing up as for Halloween this year? As it’s never too early to start planning, I’ve already decided, and started shopping. So I decided to go as a radical cheerleader. It’s partly a an opportunity to showcase an interest of mine (left-wing activism) in a different setting, and partly to one-up a coworker from last year who dressed as a radical cheerleader, whose costume I described as “not improvised enough”.
The coworker’s costume looked like this:
Categories: Halloween
Don’t die… just don’t die…
< 1 minute read
September 1, 2006, 2:31 AM
My printer went on the blink this evening. I’m sad. I was in the process printing off a resume and cover letter for a job I’m applying to in DC when all of a sudden the thing ate several sheets of paper and made some loud grinding noises. I just beamed the documents, however, to the Internet and downloaded them on my father’s computer, and printed it on his computer. So all is well there. All I have left to do there is to go fax them tomorrow afternoon.
Now I’m just worried about my printer. I’ve had it for about six years, and that includes time in college. It’s endured five moves in and out of the dorm, and its primary duty lately has been to print off my work schedule for the parents and for my own pocket copy. Very glamorous, I know. But with everything being on the Internet anymore…
But here’s the thing: I do NOT want to have to spend money to replace my printer. I have an HP Deskjet 930C, by the way. Nice printer, and the front folds up when it’s not in use. I bought it on Amazon.com back in 2000. I got a nice deal on it, too. However, that “nice deal” was wasted when I decided to get overnight shipping for it. That cost a pretty penny.
Of course, if I do have to replace the printer, I’ll just go to Wal-Mart and get one. But that is the option of last resort. Maybe one day – soon – when I have more time and don’t have important documents I’m trying to print, I’ll fiddle with it and try to get it to work.
But right now, I need sleep.
Categories: Computer
The Sable reports for repairs on September 25…
3 minute read
August 28, 2006, 9:27 PM
Yes, on September 25, I will finally get a grille again. For that matter, starting that day, I will no longer have a sizable dent on my right fender. And while I’m out a car, I will be driving Sis’s car, which is a gray 1997 Mitsubishi Galant.
I’m going to miss my Sable dearly during that time, but I know that it’s going to be made good as new during that time period. No longer will I be driving around looking like I had a head-on collision with a deer, despite how fortunate I was that the car was still drivable after that deer incident. So I’m going to be pleased with that.
And it’s given me a whole new respect for the wildlife that lives along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and to take it even more slowly up there than I was going when the accident happened. When the accident happened, I was only going 40, five below the posted speed limit of 45 mph.
So with my driving Sis’s car while the Sable’s in the shop, I’m going to have to make a few adjustments to that car before the time of need arrives. Specifically, Sis left that car in a mess when she went to Virginia Tech. There’s all sorts of trash and other debris in the floor, in the front seats, and in the back seats. As a point of comparison, the Sable’s relatively clean, with only a little bit of tracked-in debris in the driver’s side floor area. So I’m going to be doing Sis a big favor and taking some time to completely clean her car out. Since I’m not driving in that kind of mess. No way.
Categories: Mercury Sable
Photos of mine, printed ABOVE the fold…
2 minute read
August 28, 2006, 7:51 AM
How often can you say that your photos end up on the front page of the local newspaper? And above the fold, no less. If you look at the August 28, 2006 edition of The News Virginian, you will see two photos anchoring an article about the Skyline Parkway Motel, which, you may recall, had been abandoned for some time, and then was torched in 2004. Both of them are tagged with “Photo courtesy of BEN SCHUMIN”. Here are the photos that the newspaper ran:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Skyline Parkway Motel, Virginia local news, Wikipedia