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3 minute read

May 19, 2007, 11:44 PM

First of all, hello from my parents’ house in Stuarts Draft.

In continuing to outfit my apartment in Silver Spring, I’m bringing my real computer up with me this time, and it will get set up in a little corner of my apartment. And then I’m going to have Internet service on Tuesday, so all in all, life is good. And the first week with my new employer was awesome. Now I’ve kind of caught onto how this whole thing works, and I feel confident. It’s not like the first day anymore, where my level of anxiety was so high that I could barely eat my cereal in the morning, and forgot the lunch that I’d packed.

So what does this have to do with the desk? Well, the original plan would have had me returning to Maryland with the computer in the Sable, and the desk in either the truck or the Sienna, depending on who went with me. Then in looking at the cost of gas to take a second car back and forth to bring this large piece of furniture to Maryland, we realized that it wasn’t exactly a worthwhile proposition. Thus we had a slight change of plans. My parents will put my computer desk of nine years to work for them. Translation: It’s staying. Meanwhile, I went to Staples and ordered a new desk. It’s identical to my original desk in almost every way, except that it’s a lighter shade of brown (I don’t know what you call the original desk’s color, but the new one is “natural oak”). And it’s getting delivered to Silver Spring. That satisfies everyone. No one, including me, really wanted to drag that thing up three flights of stairs. However, I liked the desk. It was sturdy and well-designed. I’ll happily put a new desk together on site after it’s delivered to my door, and I’m sure my parents will like the old desk.

Continue reading…

Categories: Cell phone, Move to DC area, Retail, Schumin Web meta, Work

2 minute read

May 2, 2007, 9:07 AM

In case the May splash page photo shocked you, where I had considerably less hair than usual, I can explain. Like many men, I am slowly but surely losing my hair. I just have to look at my father to see what the future has in store for me.

This photo actually marks the beginning of what I consider to be a major about-face in what I’ve called my “hair policy”. You see, when it was only a little thin spot, I used the airbrush tool to fill it in. The result was hardly noticeable. Then as the hairline continued to recede, it became like what happens when people lie, as you have to tell more lies to cover for the original lie, and eventually it snowballs out of control. Likewise for the photos. I’ve been “fixing” the bald spot as it’s gotten bigger and bigger, and it’s not exactly been easy to do.

Looking back at my splash pages, my first chop job was January 2004. Then February 2004 was genuine, so you can see what I was covering. Then the next time you got to see the hairline untouched was for November 2005, where I accidentally “outed” my receding hairline in the Thnikkaman costume. I also let a genuine one go through in May 2006 with the elevator shot.

But now I’ve decided to go natural on here, since editing the hair has started to get somewhat cumbersome as it’s become harder and harder to hide it. And this is the right thing to do anyway, especially since even I wasn’t convinced that some of the airbrush jobs looked all that authentic. Some yes, others no. Depended on how much hair I had to give myself.

So now I’ve come clean about the hair. I feel better now.

Update: All of the photos where the hairline was manipulated were replaced with the original unmanipulated versions during a site overhaul in mid 2012.

Categories: Myself, Schumin Web meta

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

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.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 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

< 1 minute read

February 24, 2007, 12:20 AM

As I speak, the “master” version of Schumin Web that I have on my computer and do all my editing from is being migrated over to Dad’s computer as part of the move. This requires me to temporarily “freeze” the site, as it’s not wise to make edits to the site while I’m moving things around. Of course, the Journal isn’t affected by this, since it’s done server-side. However, don’t expect to see any edits to the site (and that includes the photo feature) until I’m finished moving the computer.

Hey, it could be worse. I think the snowman is a really cute picture, and at least we still have the Journal during this transition, so I can tell you all about what’s going on. By the way, moving to a new computer is a colossal pain in the behind, and now I understand why I haven’t changed computers in nearly nine years.

Otherwise, tomorrow I’m going to Harrisonburg where my friend Patrick Jarrett from Pittsburgh is coming down for a job fair. Patrick and I met online way back in the day, and then we’ve met in person once before, when I went to Pittsburgh with LPCM in 2003. So this ought to be fun. I’m also going to try to swing by Rocktown Infoshop at some point to get some more photos for their site.

Categories: Computer, Friends, Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

February 13, 2007, 4:24 AM

I am pleased to say that I am home safe and sound once again, back from my 87th DC trip since I started doing these things back in 2004. This trip was moved up two days due to an impending snowstorm, and even then, I was fully prepared to abort the trip and return home should the weather have turned sour while I was up there. But thankfully, the weather held, and I accomplished all of my objectives for this trip. The weather in DC was beautiful, too. It was cold, but it wasn’t windy, and the skies were clear well into the afternoon.

The trip home was not so nice, though. I encountered light snow briefly around Front Royal, and then I encountered the heaviest snow from just north of Woodstock to just south of New Market. From New Market to Harrisonburg, it was wet, and then the roads were perfect from Harrisonburg to Stuarts Draft.

I also made excellent time going home despite 25 miles of snow, through which I was going 45 mph on the interstate. I made such excellent time in part because I really blew right through my two stops. Seriously, I was in and out of Sheetz in Haymarket and Wal-Mart in Woodstock in record time. All part of making hay while the roads are clear. Especially when I don’t have the luxury of two off-days back to back this week.

Continue reading…

Categories: DC trips, Schumin Web meta, Street art

< 1 minute read

February 10, 2007, 11:16 PM

Sad to say, it appears that I will NOT make my stated goal of having the J27 photo set up before my next DC trip on February 14. However, this is because other factors over which I have no control are acting on my plans and throwing a little monkey wrench into it all.

One word: SNOW.

It’s forecast to snow on Tuesday, and also snow through Tuesday night. Therefore, I’m going to project that the roads will not be in sufficient shape on Wednesday morning for me to safely make a trip to Washington DC. So I’m moving it up to Monday the 12th, before the snow comes. Thus I’m losing two days to work on it, and so completion by my next DC trip seems unlikely. However, finishing it by my intended goal date of February 14 still seems likely. After all, I’m going to have all day on the 14th to work on it. The 12th was originally going to be that work day. So there you have it.

And considering the rapid progress on this photo set, I’ve also rediscovered something about how I work: deadlines. If I set deadlines, I get the material out by that deadline. The Outlet Village photo set sat idle for some time, but then once I set a goal of having that set completed by the time the Outlet Village closed for good, I made the goal. So perhaps I need to become more deadline-oriented with this site.

Categories: DC trips, Schumin Web meta, Winter weather

< 1 minute read

February 8, 2007, 3:29 AM

I just finished selecting all the photos for the new J27 set for Life and Times. Now this is still subject to change, but at this juncture, it looks like I’m going to break the size record for photo sets, last set back in 2003 with An Urban Comparison, weighing in at 137 photos. The new J27 photo set weighs in at 140 photos, plus 29 movies, which means 169 things altogether. Wow.

Now of course, all this is subject to change as the photo set nears completion. Right now, while the set has been basically laid out, I still reserve the right to change everything. It’s also still quite incomplete. All 169 things are still on one single page, the photo set still has no title, I have blank blue boxes as placeholders for the video stills and file names where the sizes are supposed to be, and the images themselves simply resized versions of the raw images and have not yet been numbered for the photo set.

The next step involves prepping everything to make it all work. And a few more steps beyond that, and we’ll be finished. I’ll post an update and add it to the menu, and that will be that.

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

November 28, 2006, 7:58 PM

I also had the realization while on Metro that my Transit Center site needs a BIG redesign. Not just a change in color scheme and minor details like in the last update. We realized with that last update that the site was a real pain in the you-know-what to update, and so we’re going to go about changing that with the next crop of photos. Hopefully I’ll find something really workable…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

November 28, 2006, 12:07 AM

Here’s a page that’s a great candidate for a rewrite: the Introduction page. I just checked it out tonight, since someone had mentioned to me recently that there’s presently nothing obvious for first-time viewers of the site on or linked from the main page. This page was linked from the main page prior to the main page’s last redesign this past July. With the elimination of the menu on that page to support wide images on the photo feature, there’s now nothing to show.

I will be the first to admit that the “center section”, which consists of the main page, that intro page, the contact pages, and the privacy statement, needs some serious reworking due to the current main page’s kind of cutting things off in spots. The question turns on what to do. I’ll have to think about that one.

But the very obvious work that must be done is to write a new introduction page, and link it more prominently from the main page. My goodness… the present introduction page is rather dated. Without going into the update records, it looks like the present page was last revised in 2004, but that most of the writing is older than that. First off, the photo of me is around five years old, taken in December 2001. I don’t wear those glasses anymore, I look younger, and the background is obviously Potomac Hall. It seems a new photo is in order. Then I mention the quote changing with regularity – the quote’s been gone for more than a year and a half. I also mention the Online Store, with “all kinds of nifty Schumin Web merchandise”. Several problems there: First, the store has a more adult-oriented selection of merchandise than it used to. And I mean “adult” as in grown-up, not pornographic, before anyone takes that the wrong way. Then I also mention the shirt I’m wearing in the photo – my “Schumin Out” hoodie. It was one of many designs to get the axe during the recent store revamp.

So yeah, that page is no longer a fitting introduction to the site. It makes me glad that, at this juncture, the page has become somewhat marginalized. Give me an hour or so, and I can turn this page into a beautiful, current, gleaming example of what The Schumin Web has to offer.

Categories: Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

November 23, 2006, 2:13 AM

Every so often, as you know, I like to give updates on photo sets, like when things have changed. I think the most notable update has to be in my Afton Mountain photo set, where the Skyline Parkway Motel was torched ten months after I did the set.

This time, though, it’s a DC area update. You remember when I did Urban Demolition? That showed 1117 North 19th Street in the process of being demolished. Then when I did If These Streets Could Talk about a month and a half later, the site was simply a hole in the ground. The most recent update on that site that I provided was in Part 2 of my Year In Review photo set. There, it was still mostly a hole in the ground, but new structural elements were starting to take shape.

Now, check this out:

Continue reading…

Categories: Arlington, Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

October 29, 2006, 12:24 AM

Okay, I’m slightly amused. I’ve launched my new Online Store today, having set all the new mods, and it’s definitely a change. Gone are most of the old designs. Goodbye “Chef Schumin”. Goodbye to the three “Photo” designs. Goodbye to the old “You know you’ve been thinking about fire alarms too much when” design. Goodbye calendars. And most notably, goodbye thongs. The little thong underwear that I’ve offered in the store for four years is officially gone for good.

Only two things were carried over from the old store. The design formerly known as “Traditional” remains as the sole entry in “Logo Apparel” and “Logo ‘Stuff'”. The other is the line of photo mousepads, which are going to get spiffed up a bit when they’re expanded in the future. Then there are some entirely new lines. I’ve started offering my own brand of slogan t-shirts, and new high-quality framed prints of selected photo features.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

August 11, 2006, 1:05 AM

My original plan was to offer the entire Web site in “Mobile Web” format suitable for viewing on a cell phone. I am officially scaling that back.

Why, you may ask?

Because the average mobile phone can’t seem to handle the pictures. And by “average mobile phone”, I mean my personal cell phone, which I will have until it’s time to upgrade again.

It seems that my site is strong on mobile phones in its text-based areas. In other words, the Journal, and some parts of the Archives. The photo sets seem to be too “heavy” for the phone to handle. I get “insufficient memory” messages and the photos stop loading. So pooh on that. Of course, that happens on three (that I know of) Journal entries as well. Those would be the three that are the basis for the narratives for the Million Worker March, J20, and A16, since they rely a lot on photos.

So at least I learned something from my experimentation on College Life this evening. I learned that photo sets do not work well in the mobile format. Now I just need to figure out what I want to port over to mobile next…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

July 26, 2006, 1:18 AM

Mom found out today that our new kitchen counters are going in this Thursday. These new countertops are STONE. Mom actually went to Roanoke to pick out a slab of granite a few weeks ago that would become our new counters.

I am impressed. So on Thursday, they go in. And we had nearly fourteen years with the old counters. The old ones were cheap counters with some sort of laminate on top of them. These new ones are nice. I’m told that if you put something really hot on them, that the worst that will happen is that the surface will get hot for a while.

So that ought to be nice. And so preparing food will be a touch tricky for the next few days while they put it in.

Otherwise, today I ran the first vertical photo feature since the main page was redesigned. And it’s from my very first protest back on April 12, 2003 of a black bloc demonstrator. Boy, oh boy, oh boy… that was an interesting protest. The word “greenhorn” comes to mind to describe how I handled that event. I had never heard of a black bloc back then, and I had certainly never seen masked demonstrators before in real life. But this was real life, and there they were. And I never thought that three years out from that first demonstration, that I would have participated in a black bloc six times.

But seriously, though, if you look at the April 12, 2003 protest and compare it with something more recent, like Night March, you’ll see a big difference. The first one is very much an account of a first protest, while the other one comes from a more seasoned participant.

Categories: House, Schumin Web meta