When you realize that you got dumped for being autistic…
6 minute read
December 16, 2024, 8:47 AM
It’s funny what kinds of things cross your mind sometimes. I was preparing some material for my photo site, which is work of a more “mechanical” nature, i.e. it doesn’t require much in the way of thinking. When I’m doing this kind of work, my mind has space to wander. And for some reason, in this instance, my mind went to the relationship that I had with a girl named Sarah Chegash back in 1998. We were both 17, and we both worked at CFW Information Services doing directory assistance. We went to different schools, so we only ever saw each other at work. She started there in the summer of 1998, after I had been working there about a year, and we really hit it off. We chatted a lot, and we would give each other smiles from across the room. It was really cute. We started dating in November of that year, but it only lasted a few weeks before she dumped me, and then she quit her job at CFW not long after our relationship ended.
When we were dating, it was not exactly the easiest thing ever. I suppose that I got too caught up in my own head about it, putting too much emphasis on the idea that it was a “date” and how to behave on account of that, and not about just enjoying the time with this person who had clearly shown an interest in me. “Highly nervous” would be putting it lightly. And she was trying to put the moves on me from time to time, but I was too uptight to actually respond or otherwise participate. I was like, I know that she is doing something that indicates interest, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to this. That said, because I had no idea how to respond, I did not reciprocate. All I knew is that was a very awkward situation, and I felt very uncomfortable, not so much because of what she was doing, but because I was totally clueless on what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to respond.
Meanwhile, what we did on our first date was so stereotypically me. We went up to the DC area and took the Metro from Vienna to Pentagon City, where we fully explored Pentagon City Mall. My first time transferring between the Orange Line and the Blue Line at Rosslyn was on that date. We had a good time, and I got to hit a few nerd goals, even if the time was a bit awkward overall. But getting on the train and being able to be a little nerdy about it at least made me feel slightly more comfortable.
Continue reading…Categories: Autism, Schumin Web meta, WMATA, Work
Yes, that is a photo of me in a red speedo…
9 minute read
December 1, 2024, 12:00 AM
Some of you may have been surprised to open the website today and find this photo staring back at you:
Categories: Artificial intelligence, Schumin Web meta, Social media
Looking back at my travel year…
14 minute read
November 28, 2024, 9:54 PM
As 2024 starts to come to a close, and plans for December have largely solidified, I thought it might be fun to revisit a Journal entry from January where I discussed travel for this year. At the time, I had some big plans, and in looking back, it shook out a little bit differently than I had anticipated. But I enjoyed it all the same.
Right off the bat, a January trip to New York was already booked when the entry was written, and so that went off as scheduled. That ended up being one of my more memorable trips to New York for a few reasons. First, the route that Aaron and I took going up to New York was different than usual, due to the roadgeek-like desire to complete I-78 in its entirety. I had been on most of it already, but was missing a segment in New Jersey. Aaron had never been on any of it, so this was entirely new territory for me. It was enjoyable, and we got to visit Allentown, Pennsylvania, which was new for both of us. However, due to time concerns, we spent very little time in Allentown other than to fly the drone around and check out the fire alarms and elevators at a random office building. However, the most memorable thing that came out of that trip was that I developed a nasty case of COVID-19 while in New York. I suspect that it was the let-down effect in play, where I had likely caught it somewhere a while before, but my body held off on getting sick until the stress was off and I was ready to go have fun. That led to a first day where I had some very mild symptoms that I was able to ignore and keep hidden, but then by the middle of the second day, I wasn’t able to hide it anymore, as it was clear that I wasn’t feeling well, and that running on all eight cylinders was doing me no favors. I also got a different perspective on COVID masks on this trip, since I was sick with COVID for part of it. I tried to do the right thing and cover my infection (because trust me, you did not want to get what I had), however, I soon ran into a significant problem: that mask was like a little greenhouse, and my nose was running like a faucet with thin mucus. Plus with my breath coming out into that mask, it created a very warm, moist environment in there. That was the most disgusting thing that I dealt with the entire trip, as the snot from my nose was running down my upper lip, into my mouth, past my mouth, around my mouth, and down my chin. Let’s also not forget that the mask blocked my ability to mop it up as I needed, plus became something of a snot bucket in and of itself, as it was quickly covered in snot from top to bottom. I think that I made it about 30 minutes in the mask before I said the hell with it because it was just too gross and caused more inconvenience than it was worth. I preferred to leave it open in order to be better able to blow and wipe, plus with exposure to cooler, drier air, it had a better chance of thickening and/or drying up some rather than just sitting in that warm, moist environment that kept it thin and runny. I really don’t understand these people that can mask all the time, especially when sick, because when I was sick with the Ronies, I couldn’t stand masking because it was just so nasty inside there. My getting COVID on the first trip of the year also made me start to wonder if this was going to be a thing for travel this year, i.e. I was going to get sick whenever it was time to go somewhere.
Categories: Harrisburg, New Flyer D35HF, New Jersey, Personal health, Schumin Web meta, South Carolina, Travel
Now that we know how the story ends, let’s discuss…
12 minute read
November 10, 2024, 10:15 AM
That was certainly an interesting election night. First of all, I couldn’t help but think that the news coverage reminded me of an episode of Deal Or No Deal, in that there was a lot of yakking amongst the talking heads, then it’s suddenly time to make a call, which felt like opening a case. And then depending on what was in the case, we all went “yay” or “awwww”, and then finally at the end of the night, we open up our own case and find out who the next president will be. The only thing missing was the banker.
That observation aside, the night felt a lot like election night in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump. There, Elyse and I were at home, watching the election results roll in, and we saw a lot more states get called for Trump than we expected to see. I remember when they called Ohio, Elyse said to me, “Trump is going to win, isn’t he?” I was doing the math there, and I didn’t want to agree with her, but it was looking like that was going to be the case. Then the next morning, we found out that it was.
This time around, I was at work, and checked in on the election on my breaks. I couldn’t help but notice that with every check of my phone, Trump remained ahead of vice president Kamala Harris. I expected a Trump lead early on due to the red mirage/blue shift phenomenon, where precincts with lower populations, which typically tend to vote Republican, get counted quickly because they’re small, giving an early bump to the GOP candidate – thus the red mirage, because the Republicans get that early boost. Then as larger population centers, which typically tend to vote for Democratic candidates, get counted, the Democrats catch back up – thus the blue shift. So when I saw all of the early returns come in and saw that Trump was leading, I was like, okay, red mirage, nothing to worry about here, because it will correct itself later on. Then after another trip across the line, I checked my phone and was surprised to see that Trump was still leading. I was starting to think, okay, when is the blue shift going to happen? As it would turn out, it never came, as Trump ultimately pulled out a victory over Harris. I would check my phone after each trip across the line, and watched as Harris’ path to victory got narrower and narrower. Then I watched it some more when I got home. Once Pennsylvania had been called for Trump, I realized that it was over. At that point, in order for Harris to make it to 270, she would have had to win in every single state that remained in play, but one of those states was Alaska, which is a very reliable red state. In fact, Alaska has only cast its electoral votes for a Democratic candidate once in its entire history as a state, in 1964 for LBJ. Every other time, it’s voted for the Republican, and there was no reason to think that this election would buck that trend. It was a certain sinking feeling to know that the path to a Democratic victory had fully closed, and a Harris presidency just wasn’t going to happen.
Categories: National politics
Revisiting ChatGPT…
22 minute read
November 1, 2024, 11:55 PM
Recently, a former colleague of mine shared a post on LinkedIn by Benjamin Stein (no, not that guy) that read, “Go ask ChatGPT: ‘Based on our previous interactions, what do you know about me that I may not know about myself?'” My colleague said in her post that she was using ChatGPT to help with a job search, and shared some of the things that the bot said about her. Not bad.
I responded to her post about my own experience with ChatGPT, saying, “All I know is that ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, probably because of my large online presence, and it told quite a few whoppers about me,” and then cited the Journal entry that I wrote about it last spring. My colleague responded that she loved the entry, but considering that the original entry is now more than 18 months old, as well as the rapid pace of advancement in this kind of technology, I should run it again to see what it comes up with. I liked the idea.
So I ran the entire process over again, asking the exact same questions, i.e. “What do you know about Ben Schumin?” and “Tell me about The Schumin Web,” and running each inquiry five times, using the default model, GPT-4o. My methodology for scoring each of the responses was exactly the same as before, counting the number of factual claims, and then determining the accuracy of each one. Accurate claims scored a point, inaccurate claims scored no points, and a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information scored half a point. Then take that number and divide it by the total number of factual claims made, and that’s the final score in the form of a percentage. As was the case before, I still don’t know what an expert in this sort of thing might do to rate the accuracy of these responses, but this is the best that I could come up with, plus this is the same method that I used before, giving us apples-to-apples results.
Categories: Artificial intelligence, Schumin Web meta, Social media
Getting fixed…
7 minute read
October 22, 2024, 1:30 PM
On Thursday, October 17, I did something that I had wanted to do for quite some time: I got a vasectomy, i.e. I got “fixed”. That affirms my commitment to a childfree life, as this stops the little swimmers right in their tracks, more or less cutting off their path to the outside world.
It’s funny how these things happen. The first time that I had ever heard of a vasectomy was out on the road. I was out with Mom, and I spotted a car with a bumper sticker that said something to the effect of, “Against abortion? Get a vasectomy.” I didn’t know what a vasectomy was, and so the message didn’t make any sense to me. Both parents always followed a policy of answering questions from my sister and me truthfully and thoroughly, and so this was no exception. So Mom explained what it was, i.e. it was a procedure that, at the end of it, makes it where a man is unable to produce children. I already had a decent handle on female sterilization procedures, because my mother had a tubal ligation done while she was already in the operating room for my sister’s birth (we were both caesarean babies). So I already knew that such a thing could be done on women, but until that moment, I didn’t know that there was an equivalent procedure that could be done on men. Good to know. Then later on, there was an episode of Home Improvement that aired when I was in the ninth grade, where Tim Allen‘s character gets a vasectomy. It really did a good job explaining how a vasectomy works, and addressed a lot of the myths surrounding it, and it really made it feel like a normal thing that men do, and it doesn’t make them any less manly for doing it.
That said, I recognized from a fairly young age that I didn’t want to have children of my own (I really could never imagine myself as being a father), and so it made sense to get a vasectomy. I had felt this way at least as far back as my early twenties, and it’s never changed. However, I also had no relationship prospects or anything like that at that time which would make a vasectomy necessary, plus Walmart insurance was laughably bad in those pre-Obamacare days (hello, $1,000 deductible at a job that only paid $7.00 an hour). But I knew that I eventually wanted to do it in order to permanently put any possibility of future children to rest.
Categories: Personal health
I have photographed the northern lights…
5 minute read
October 14, 2024, 6:47 PM
On Thursday, October 10, Elyse and I went up to Washington County in order to photograph the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, which were visible at our latitude due to a geomagnetic storm. We had a good time, photographing from High Rock, as well as the intersection of Route 64 and 418 in Ringgold. None of this was new territory to us, as we had been to these locations plenty of times, and if you’ve followed the website over the years, you will be quite familiar with these locations, as I photographed High Rock in 2015, and photographed at that intersection in 2020. Elyse brought her phone, and I brought the works, taking not only my phone, but also my tripod, my DSLR, and even a drone.
Driving up from our house in Montgomery Village, it was a very dark ride through Frederick and out to High Rock. We questioned whether or not we would see anything, because we certainly didn’t see anything all the way up. Everything looked perfectly normal. Arriving at High Rock, I still couldn’t see anything, but we saw a small crowd gathered up on the rock to see the lights. So I went up there, I set up my tripod, and I started photographing with my DSLR. This is what I got:
Categories: Maryland, Nature, Photography, Waynesboro (PA)
The Power Rangers sandbox…
10 minute read
October 11, 2024, 1:56 PM
For those of you who are fans of old-school Power Rangers like myself, one story arc tends to stand out: the Alien Rangers story arc. For those not familiar, the Alien Rangers story arc was the story that served as the bridge between Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Power Rangers Zeo. In the first episode, “Rangers in Reverse”, one of the villains, Master Vile, planted a device called the Orb of Doom, which reversed the Earth’s rotation, which, through the magic of fantasy, also reverted the Power Rangers (and everyone else) in age. The Rangers also lose their powers in the process, as they are unable to morph in their much younger form (they looked like they were about middle school-aged). With the now-kid team out of commission, they get other rangers from the planet Aquitar to help defend the earth, and they keep Lord Zedd and crew at bay until the main team is able to restore time and replace their powers by retrieving and reassembling the Zeo Crystal, which they had broken up and put into a time hole a few episodes prior. While the team from Aquitar was the active Power Ranger team, the show took the title Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, and used a modified theme song. As far as the story went, it was masterfully done, destroying the Rangers’ old powers and then sending them on a quest to retrieve the Zeo Crystal, which would reverse the time regression caused by the Orb of Doom, and also give the regular team a new set of powers. And then at the end of it all, the Command Center gets blown up, providing a nice little cliffhanger ending to lead into the next season.
However, if you look at Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, you find something else going on inside. In-universe explanations aside, the entire Alien Rangers story arc was a giant experiment with different situations than we were used to on the hero side of things, and the temporary nature of the story meant that they weren’t committed to anything that they did during the test, because the regular heroes would eventually be restored to their original ages and get new powers, the Alien Rangers would go back to Aquitar, and the show could continue on in a similar format as we had been used to – which is exactly what happened. And the transition to Zeo was a perfect opportunity to do it, since that was the first of the show’s many annual suit changes, and it made for a nice buildup towards what would be the new status quo. Most people don’t give this story arc all of the credit that it deserves for advancing the franchise, thinking only about the way that it advanced the story, and not the many concepts that it piloted over its course, many of which would be implemented in later seasons.
I also get why they did it as a test, because heroes have far more staying power than villains. Think about it: villains, despite generally getting better lines than the heroes, are more easily replaced, and often do get replaced. Think about it: by the time that we had gotten to the third season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the villains had changed fairly significantly in how they operated, while the heroes largely operated the same way as they always did. In the first season, the main villain was Rita Repulsa, who was a direct dub of Bandora from Zyuranger, i.e. the Japanese source show. Then in the second season, Rita got tossed into a dumpster (literally) and launched into space after Lord Zedd took over as the new villain. Rita Repulsa was brought back later on in the season, and in the third season, they added additional villains using costumes from Kakuranger, which formed the source material for the third season. And then when they did the first movie, they had a one-off villain in the form of Ivan Ooze, with the regular villains’ being present, but otherwise playing a minor role. Then going beyond that, Zeo threw out all of the villains that we had previously known, and brought in the Machine Empire (who were direct dubs of the Ohranger villains). Then Turbo replaced them with Divatox and her minions. And to round out the “Zordon era” of the program, in Space, Divatox took a back seat to Dark Specter and Astronema, and another set of minions. All the while, the hero characters evolved more organically, save for one instance where four out of the five Turbo Rangers were abruptly replaced (everyone except the one that we really wanted gone, of course), but other than the transition episode, the show acted as though they had always been there.
Categories: Power Rangers
I wasn’t expecting that so soon…
5 minute read
September 22, 2024, 1:05 PM
It figures. Not even twelve hours after I posted the Journal entry about my trip to New Jersey and Long Island, which included coverage of the Kmart store in Bridgehampton, New York, I saw a post on Reddit that indicated that said Kmart store was closing, and shared the following image of the store:
Photo: Reddit user LordRavioli29
Categories: New York, Reddit, Retail, Schumin Web meta
A visit to New Jersey and Long Island…
32 minute read
September 21, 2024, 3:34 PM
From September 12-14, Elyse and I, along with our friend Kyle, took a weekend trip up to North Jersey and Long Island. This trip was designed as a bunch of different things that we wanted to do in the same general area, mashed together into one trip. Elyse wanted to see the American Dream shopping mall, and I wanted to see it again when I didn’t have COVID. So that was our first day. I wanted to see what Long Island was about, plus see one of the last remaining Kmart stores in the country, which is out in Bridgehampton, New York, so we went out to the end of Long Island on the middle day. Then the third day was a bus show in Howell Township, which we all wanted to see, and then we went through Philadelphia on the way home to photograph the SS United States for what might be the last time. Our hotel was a Hampton Inn in Staten Island, intended to be kind of midway between these three very diverse locations. This trip, in the form that it took, was relatively quickly planned. The only constant here was the bus show, as that was the primary driver of our making the trip in the first place, and then we just added on the rest to make a weekend out of it. The original plan, had the oil pump not quit on us, was to take 3426 on this trip and display it at the bus show. With the bus, we would have still done American Dream and the bus show, but we would have stayed closer to Howell, and Long Island would have been replaced with the Jersey shore (since I didn’t want to drive a bus all the way out to the end of Long Island). I’ll say this: as much fun as it would have been for this to be a bus trip, I’m glad that we ended up doing it in the HR-V. There will be other bus events, but this just worked out well as a car trip.
Going up, I certainly demonstrated my New Jersey cred in the car. In other words, pay no attention to that Maryland license plate. I am originally from New Jersey, and I know how to drive like I’m from New Jersey, a place where signs and pavement markings are just suggestions, and you have to keep up with the big dogs in order to get where you’re going. If it tells you anything, prior to leaving the house, I posted on Facebook, “Going up to New Jersey today for the weekend, and thinking about how people up there drive like they’re from New Jersey. Then I was like, ‘Wait a minute… *I’m* from New Jersey!’ So I’ll be driving amongst my peers, despite my Maryland license plate.” We took the Turnpike from the bottom all the way to exit 16W, and I handled it like a champ.
Categories: DASH, New Jersey, New York, New York City, New York Subway, NJ Transit, Philadelphia, Retail, Ships, Transit, Travel
A bus adventure in Charleston…
18 minute read
September 10, 2024, 3:36 PM
Recently, Elyse and I, along with our friend Kyle, made a trip to Charleston, South Carolina on something of a bus adventure.
However, before I get into the actual story, I have some updates for you, since it’s been a while since anything was discussed about the bus situation. Remember back in October, when Elyse, Montigue, and I went down to Charleston in the HR-V in order to pick up former CARTA bus 3426, a 1996 New Flyer D35HF, which we were then going to swap with Trevor Logan for an Orion V? Since then, things have changed quite a bit. First, the New Flyer needed a lot of work in order to be healthy, including a new transmission, which was more than Trevor was willing to commit to, and so he ultimately discontinued his efforts in restoring the bus. That made all of us sad, because we all wanted to see that bus restored and preserved, and didn’t want to see such a unique model go to scrap. Additionally, at the same time, I was having problems getting insurance for the Orion V, which was former Westchester County Bee-Line bus 700. That was a 2006 model, which was too recent to qualify for historic vehicle insurance (i.e. Hagerty), plus most of the other insurance companies balked at giving me insurance because of the two recent accidents that I was involved in with the old HR-V and with the new HR-V. I really resented that, because in both of those cases, I was ruled to not be at fault, i.e. I am a very safe driver, but they were holding it against me anyway, like it’s my fault that some idiot in a Nissan Pathfinder ran a red light at high speed and plowed into me. In any event, that problem with insurance caused delays in my taking possession of the bus, since I really couldn’t do anything with it until I was able to get it insured. So that’s where things stood for a while.
Then in April, when Elyse and I made our pleasure trip to Charleston, recall that the first thing that we did upon arrival in the Charleston area was to check up on 3426 at General Diesel‘s facility. We were pleased to see that it was still there, and at that time, I remarked, “The estimates have come back in, and while everything wrong with it can be fixed, it’s going to cost a big chunk of change to do. Whether that happens, however, is not up to me. But we at least wanted to say hello.” That was the end of our bus involvement for that trip, because other than Elyse’s riding around on various CARTA routes, there were no bus activities planned. But that visit set off a light bulb in my head. I knew roughly how much it would cost to repair 3426. I also knew that I could afford to have those repairs made. Because of all of the hassle with insurance and whatnot regarding the Orion V, I had also soured a bit on that bus, since I was facing roadblocks to even get into the game. By comparison, insurance for an historic vehicle would have been a snap. To qualify as historic requires that the vehicle be 25 or more model years old, and a 2006 Orion V wouldn’t hit that threshold until 2031, which, for our planning purposes, might as well be forever. So the idea was, why don’t we undo our trade, and let Trevor keep the Orion V, which was former Bee-Line 700, and I would take over former CARTA 3426?
Categories: CFW, New Flyer D35HF, North Carolina, South Carolina, Travel
An overnight trip to Pennsylvania…
14 minute read
August 21, 2024, 10:21 AM
On August 15 and 16, I made an overnight trip to Pennsylvania. The main purpose of the trip was to photograph some things in the Harrisburg area, and also make some stops in Gettysburg, York, and Hanover. Nowhere that I went was new territory for me, and I got everything that I wanted. This was one of those trips where I started out with one idea, and then built a trip around it to justify it. That idea was to fly my drone around a replica of the Statue of Liberty that someone erected in the middle of the Susquehanna River just north of Harrisburg. I had previously flown a drone around this same subject on the afternoon of January 5, and quickly realized something: the lighting was wrong for what I wanted. The statue faced approximately east, and coming in late afternoon, the sun was behind me, which didn’t lend itself to good photography. My photography technique was fine, but the lighting was wrong. See for yourself:
Categories: Fire alarms, Gettysburg, Hanover, Harrisburg, Photography, Travel, York
That post certainly aged like milk…
4 minute read
August 16, 2024, 8:12 AM
It’s funny… I know when I write some Journal entries that they will not necessarily age well, but some become dated a lot faster than others. Usually, when it comes to entries about politics and current events, I know that they will become dated more quickly than something else that isn’t related to politics or current events. Multiply that by a zillion when it comes to posts about elections and political candidates that aren’t primarily civics lessons. Those posts tend to become dated fairly quickly, often once the election is over.
However, I don’t think anything has aged worse than a Journal entry that I wrote a few weeks ago called “The Democrats are playing with fire…” talking about the Democratic Party’s circular firing squad, where they have this tendency to devour their own people at the slightest hint of anything, and that they had, at that time, turned their sights on President Biden. In that entry, I suggested that the Democrats not devour the president, with the idea that they needed him in order to win in November, and I made a whole bunch of arguments in favor of sticking with Biden. As it would turn out, the party devoured him, as Biden dropped out of the race a little more than a week after my entry published, which rendered my entire Journal entry moot.
So on one hand, I’m kind of salty about the loss of my entry’s relevance. It now goes down in history as the entry that became irrelevant and/or moot the fastest. This one became moot even more quickly than my “I believe that we have finally reached the other side of this thing…” entry from May 2021 where I was declaring all of the pandemic nonsense over, and then officials reneged on their all-clear and reinstated a lot of the nonsense all over again. At least we got to have the summer on that one before everyone started screaming “delta, delta, delta” and made my entry moot. Even more so than regular datedness that comes with Journal entries about elections, such as “Petty tribalism has no place in the 2020 cycle…” that became dated as soon as the primaries ended. But it at least was relevant for a little while.
Categories: National politics, Schumin Web meta
That was darker than I realized…
4 minute read
August 6, 2024, 8:07 PM
Recently, while operating the train, I was singing the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” opera from Today’s Special to myself in the cab. For those of you who are not familiar, in the episode “Opera“, the main cast put on a short opera telling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, singing the entire story as befits an opera. The whole thing is really cute, and if you’ve seen it, you probably remember that it finished like this:
Categories: Today's Special
Say hello to Piwigo…
16 minute read
July 27, 2024, 3:45 PM
Beginning on Friday, July 26, you might have noticed that the website looks ever so slightly different. There is a new camera icon in the header, and a new link at the bottom of the pages called “Photography Portfolio“. This is for a new photography site that I recently launched:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Photography, Schumin Web meta