So the apartment is clean from top to bottom…
5 minute read
December 28, 2008, 2:09 AM
I just finished giving my apartment a thorough cleaning ahead of my trip to Stuarts Draft for a week. I did the rugs, I did the floors, I dusted, I completely cleaned the kitchen, and I completely cleaned the bathroom. It was a long ordeal, but the place looks great now!
Most bothersome, though, was cleaning the carpets. I had Mom’s shampooer, and I went the whole nine yards. I picked everything up, moved furniture around, and everything. I had my coffee table up-ended and in the kitchen, if that tells you anything. Bedroom, hallway, and then living room. The living room was perhaps the most challenging. First I had to make sure not to shampoo myself into a corner, but also what to do once the carpets were done.
\Determining what to do once the carpets were finished was actually pretty exciting. I grabbed my coat, my hat, my iPod, and my phone, and took to the Sable for a few hours late at night. Makes me glad that gas is cheaper again, because I finally got to explore a bit. It’s time to see what’s beyond Silver Spring. So I took a small late-night road trip. Previously, I’d only been on Georgia Avenue as far as Norbeck Road, which is not all that much further north than my street. Now, I followed Georgia Avenue a long way. I went through Olney, seeing roughly where Montgomery General Hospital is (the Y bus’s northern terminus), and continued, finding out that Georgia Avenue narrows down to two lanes once you clear Olney. Olney also appeared to be a lot smaller than I expected. I expected a larger town, but there you go. And then beyond Olney, Georgia Avenue reminded me a lot of various back roads in Augusta County, Virginia, where I used to live. Lots of curves, and two lanes. For the first time in a long time, I broke out the high beams.
Continue reading…Metro is planning to eliminate paper transfers in favor of SmarTrip. Okay, but…
4 minute read
December 2, 2008, 6:51 PM
As of January 4, 2009, Metro will no longer distribute or accept paper transfers of any kind. Take a look at this video from Metro:
Categories: WMATA
So I got to do my commute in the dark this evening…
2 minute read
November 20, 2008, 7:47 PM
Yes, I got to do my commute in the dark this evening. And I don’t just mean dark outside, which it usually always is at this time of year for commute time. I mean it was dark inside the train. Yeah, I got Rohr 1178 at Dupont Circle, and all of the lights were out inside the car, except for over three doors. Then the lights came on while we were going to Farragut North. Then by Metro Center, they were off again. And on and off and on and off and so on all the way to Glenmont. There, they put the train out of service, presumably for repairs.
So here’s what it looked like:
Categories: WMATA
My comment made the newspaper!
< 1 minute read
October 29, 2008, 8:18 PM
I can’t believe it… my comment on Express‘s poll question got published! The poll question was, “Would you object to having your bag searched by transit police before riding Metro?” 54% said that yes, they would object, and 46% said that no, they would not object.
If you read the Express today and saw the three comments that they published on page 40, you may recall that “Ellen” indicated that Transit could go ahead and search them because they have nothing to hide, “CMJR” suspected that profiling of riders will occur, and a third by “BFS” sounded very similar in tone and idea to a Journal entry that I wrote yesterday, talking about throwing money down a rathole.
“BFS”, as you might have guessed, is me, as I posted semi-anonymously, using my initials. Here’s the page, with the comment circled:
Categories: DC area local news, WMATA
So Metro throws money down a rathole once again…
3 minute read
October 28, 2008, 8:23 PM
According to an article in today’s issue of The Washington Post, Metro has announced that they will be doing random bag searches in response to security concerns regarding the upcoming election and presidential inauguration.
Based on what I’ve read about it, including the Post article and WMATA’s press release, what they’re going to do is set up shop in a station mezzanine or bus stop, and count off a certain number of people such as 15 (I selected this number and will use it throughout this entry), and then stop the person who happens to be that unlucky fifteenth person to search their bags. It’s kind of like an adult version of duck duck goose, except the one who is “it” has a gun. The idea is that these random searches are being conducted to search for explosives, and will take 15 seconds to complete – about as long as a train station stop lasts.
So let’s poke a few holes in this idea, shall we?
First of all, searching every fifteenth rider or whatever does NOT provide any real security. You see, for every one you inspect, you’ve let another fourteen go by. Thus you’re only inspecting roughly 7% of riders. And so when you’re letting 93% of your riders go through uninspected, all you’re doing is wasting the time of the other 7% who you are stopping.
Additionally, the 15 seconds to conduct the inspection is about as long as a train takes to make a station stop. Therefore, being pulled over for the inspection could make the difference between making your train or missing it. During the evenings when train headways start to run around 15 minutes, that makes a significant difference between making it home at a reasonable hour or not. Just thinking about my commute, if I leave outside of rush hour, I have to take the Y bus home. I’ve had to wait more than 30 minutes for Y buses at Glenmont at times, due to the poor service that Metro provides on that route. Thus for a commute that normally takes an hour, it can get stretched out another 45 minutes just having to stand around waiting for the train or bus because you missed your intended train due to their “security” inspections.
Categories: DC area local news, Security, WMATA
I’ve seen buses in odd conditions before, but this is ridiculous!
2 minute read
October 17, 2008, 10:50 PM
I wonder what happened with Ride-On’s bus #5718. It’s a 1999 Orion V, and it sported a few unusual features for my commute this morning. For one thing, it sported no stop annunciator – the device that announces the stops. “Georgia Avenue and Glenallan Avenue. Georgia Avenue and Epping Road.” And “Stop requested!” Ride-On put stop annunciators on just about all of their buses last November and December. How did this one get missed? Of course, not that I mind not having to hear that voice sometimes. It’s too loud on Ride-On buses. Then this bus also had no advertising along the ceiling, unlike most Ride-On buses.
And to top it all off, what is wrong with this picture?
My costume is starting to take form…
< 1 minute read
October 17, 2008, 12:48 AM
One has to wonder what’s going on with this…
2 minute read
October 15, 2008, 7:15 PM
Categories: WMATA
Not bad for an hour’s work…
< 1 minute read
October 15, 2008, 12:09 AM
Take a look:
(Apologies for the poor image quality – I hiked the contrast way up to make the lines easier to see)
As you can see, the drawing is basically finished. It looks like a Metro train all right, and it appears that the decision has been made: I’m going to be going as a Breda of some kind. Right now, the windows are square like the 2000 and 3000 series, but that wouldn’t stop me from rounding off those windows and being a 4000-series. Or I could round off one side and not the other and be 4018-4019. After the Woodley Park-Zoo accident, 4018 got squared-off windows during the repairs, while 4019 kept its original rounded windows.
So the drawing phase didn’t take very long at all. Now I get to start painting, turning this thing the proper shade of brown and aluminum to make it properly Metro.
And we’re back!
4 minute read
August 29, 2008, 10:00 PM
And we’re back in Silver Spring once again, after a fun vacation. Now we’re refreshed and ready to take on the real world once again.
It’s interesting, though – the way my travels usually go, usually one leg of the trip goes flawlessly, and one has issues. The outbound leg went flawlessly. Perfect driving conditions, and traffic was fairly light. The return trip, however, was not so flawless. Traffic was heavy the entire way, and I had to detour around a bit within Hampton Roads.
First of all, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Hampton Roads area, let me explain for a moment. Hampton Roads is encircled by the Hampton Road Beltway, which is formed from the final 36 miles of I-64, and roughly 20 additional miles of I-664. Inside that, going roughly east-west through the middle, is I-264, which runs from I-64’s terminus to the Virginia Beach oceanfront. Then there’s also I-464, which runs from the Downtown Tunnel in Norfolk (part of I-264) to State Route 168 on a roughly north-south track, intersecting I-64 along the way. Confused yet?
My detour started because I saw a sign on one of those highway message signs: “HRBT 4.5 MILE BACKUP, MMMBT CLEAR”. This told me that the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) had a massive backup nearly five miles long on westbound, while the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel (MMMBT) was going smoothly. My understanding is that these HRBT backups are common, and that they’re looking into a permanent solution to the problem.
Watch as the highway narrows…
4 minute read
August 24, 2008, 10:39 PM
So I made the trip to the beach today, and I am now writing from the Travelodge Suites on the Virginia Beach oceanfront.
And the best way to describe the trip down is watching the highway as it gets narrower and narrow. I started in Silver Spring, where I caught the beltway – each side four lanes wide. Then after I cleared the DC area, I-95 dropped a lane and was down to three lanes. This was the configuration all the way to Richmond and onto I-64. Then once I cleared Richmond, I-64 dropped down to two lanes, and stayed this way into Newport News, when it fluctuated between two and three lanes as we went through Newport News, Hampton, and Norfolk, and finally three lanes to the oceanfront.
On the way in, I swung by the site of the former Coliseum Mall in Hampton, which I visited back in 2005. Recall that they had Edwards horn/strobes, and that I visited in 2005 to positively identify the mystery mall that I had briefly visited back in 2003. Now, though, Coliseum Mall is very different. The mall was demolished in early 2007, and construction of a new open-air “town center” style shopping center called Peninsula Town Center is well underway. Currently, the only stores open are JCPenney in a new building, and Macy’s in its original building. I never thought I’d see an anchor store with one of those “STILL OPEN” signs on the side in person like I’ve seen in various retail blogs, but there it was. These signs are generally used to indicate that the anchor store is still open despite that the rest of the mall is being torn down. In this case, the regular Macy’s logo is on the side, and a sign saying “IS OPEN” was right beneath it. This was the case on all of the Macy’s building’s logos. The new town center is certainly cute-looking, but the 1970s-era Macy’s building will look really strange next to the rest of the buildings. Of course, they may renovate the exterior of Macy’s and make it match, but we’ll see.
Categories: Driving, Travel, Virginia Beach
These glass guys aren’t exactly bright people, but they do good work.
3 minute read
August 4, 2008, 8:13 PM
First of all, let me preface this Journal entry by saying that the Sable is going through some rough times right now. Not long after I had to drop a new compressor into the car to get it moving again, I have something else go wrong. Let me explain. I’m driving in the car, going to Reston where my friend Matthew Tilley lives, in order to pay him a visit. I’ve gotten off of I-66, and I’m going up Fairfax County Parkway. There’s a car in front of me. And a rock comes right out from under that car, and *smack* hits my windshield, leaving a nice chip in it. So okay. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a chip, but I’m still a little bit pissed about this, even though it’s something that’s totally covered under my insurance.
So after I finished over at Matthew’s house, I headed back to Silver Spring to my house and filed the claim with Progressive. You go on their Web site, and you have to tell Progressive where you got nicked, and how you got nicked. Okay. Next day, bright and early, I got a call from Progressive. Okay. We went over everything, but first they needed proof that the windshield work was done back in 2006. So they had to call Whitesell’s, who, like the truly awesome folks that they are, came through with an invoice. So once Progressive had that in hand, we were going well. I agreed to use their roving glass service to fix the car, since I’m not taking the Sable anywhere to get it fixed if they can come to me.
So then later, the glass guys call me to schedule an appointment. We go over all the information that they got from Progressive, including make, model, body style, color, state of registration, tag number, plus we went over the damage again. In other words, there is only one car that fits that description – mine. And then I confirmed with them – I don’t need to be there for this job, right? Correct. I don’t need to be there. We also confirmed that it doesn’t matter which way I’ve got the car pointed, because they can get at it whether I’m parked forwards or backwards.
Categories: Mercury Sable
Nylon straps? Ummmmmm…
< 1 minute read
July 29, 2008, 8:03 AM
Categories: WMATA
Metro on speed?
< 1 minute read
July 20, 2008, 11:53 AM
This is perhaps the weirdest thing I’ve heard come out of Metro’s door speakers ever:
Categories: WMATA
A prostitution ring in Dupont Circle station?
2 minute read
July 11, 2008, 12:13 AM
That just blows my mind. Two Metro employees are accused of running a prostitution ring out of the Dupont Circle Metro station. According to the July 10, 2008 Examiner article called “Metro manager accused of prostitution agrees to life skills, education program”, station manager Sharon Waters, dubbed the “Metro Madam”, and custodian Pam Goins were accused of “arranging sexual trysts for money”, even going so far as to use the station’s PA system to “facilitate an arrangement”.
You may recall that Dupont Circle is my work station. I go through Dupont Circle station twice a day every day, and have seen both female station managers and female custodians at the station. So now I wonder if it was anyone I know, since I occasionally talk to personnel in the station, especially if I worked late and I know there won’t be a Glenmont train for a number of minutes.
Of course, the PA system part really gets me. Have you ever heard Metro station PA announcements? They’re not exactly the gold standard for clarity. In fact, most of them are downright unintelligible, particularly the ones piped in from Central Control. The announcements that originate from the station manager’s kiosk are a bit better than the ones that come from Central, but still not exactly crystal clear, especially since the primary construction material in most stations is concrete. Too many announcements sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher, i.e. completely unintelligible. Maybe those hooker announcements sounded a little better, but who knows.
Categories: Amusing, DC area local news, WMATA