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< 1 minute read

September 22, 2003, 11:29 PM

Yeah, this is a weird one that I had last night.

Picture it, if you will. I’m in Harrisonburg, in Potomac Hall, in the pavilion room, with the 2002-2003 hall staff (which I was a part of), plus Mandee, the new hall director. In this little meeting, we’re telling Mandee all of the evils of working with Mecca, the hall director that we had to deal with (more like suffer through). Well, later in the dream, I get a phone call on my cell phone, which is rather strange, because (A) I don’t keep it on, and (B) I don’t give out the number for my cell phone. So who was the person on the other end? It was Mecca! How interesting. Mecca says, “Benjamin, why am I calling you? Why were you in there talking about me?” I got to finally put Mecca in her place over the cell. It felt good. The basic gist of it was well, what are you going to do about it? I don’t work for Residence Life anymore! I’d like to see you try! Boy, that felt good. That felt VERY good.

And just a clear reminder to the thought police (pardon, Office of Residence Life), this was indeed a dream. And a darn amusing one at that, too.

Categories: Dreams, JMU

< 1 minute read

September 20, 2003, 3:47 PM

Don’t you just hate it when things don’t work out? I’ve been having such difficulty with the photo for my upcoming “cell phone rant” quote, and as such, I’m forced to reschedule it from going up tomorrow to going up in another week. Thankfully, I have another quote ready to go, so it’s just a matter of swapping dates, but still… this was a quote I’d really “talked up” in the last week. But this is what happens when reality rears its ugly head sometimes…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

September 19, 2003, 6:13 PM

My father did keep his hands out of my camera. However, we found out that it does have to go back to the manufacturer to get fixed. Well, Big Mavica still works just fine, and that’s going to be a bit pricey to fix. But we’re going to do it, because it is a darn handy camera to have, and Dad uses it a lot for Autocross and such.

Categories: Cameras, Family

< 1 minute read

September 19, 2003, 12:33 PM

My father has asked for the manual for my small Mavica, in attempts to figure out what’s wrong with it. He says he might take the back off the camera.

Uh-oh.

Now I told him that since it’s my camera and he doesn’t know much about how digital cameras work inside, that he was prohibited from taking the back off of the thing, since I’d rather take it somewhere to get fixed by someone who knows what they are doing. But my father is my father. I think he’ll do what he wants.

So, that said, how long do you wager it will take before he opens it up?

Note: Bets will not be honored.

Categories: Cameras, Family

< 1 minute read

September 19, 2003, 11:42 AM

Everything’s still standing, and the only thing that got damaged was a screen on an upstairs window. It was blown off, and was damaged when it hit the ground. We’ll get that fixed, no problem. So all in all, we weathered it quite well! I hope other places in the area also did as well.

Categories: Weather

< 1 minute read

September 17, 2003, 2:58 PM

Yeah… I’d say we’re going to get hit by Isabel, all right.

Categories: Tropical systems

< 1 minute read

September 17, 2003, 11:41 AM

The interesting part about living in Virginia is that from time to time, you do end up getting a hurricane coming through. According to all the weather people, we’re supposed to see it here. I remember Hurricane Fran in 1996… that caused a lot of wind, and a lot of rain. I also remember Hurricane Opal from 1995, which came through our area along Hurricane Camille’s old path, and rumbled on through here as a tropical depression. We actually had school during Opal, and I recall strong winds, and I also remember exactly how dark the clouds were compared to normal rain clouds. But Opal didn’t rain, interestingly enough.

Now unless Isabel does what Hurricane Felix did in 1995, where it stalled offshore and then went out to sea, we’re going to see some fancy weather around here. It should be interesting…

Categories: Tropical systems

< 1 minute read

September 16, 2003, 12:31 AM

My little Mavica is messed up! The display has gone from perfect to quite over-lit to pure-white, and the flash button is causing errors. But amazingly it still shoots photos (or at least goes through the motions – we haven’t looked at any test images).

Big Mavica, which I’ve been using since last November, is working just fine. This is my old floppy-disk Mavica that’s messed up. Now is the fun of seeing if we can get the blasted thing fixed. I figure it should be repairable, and if nothing else, we can figure out how to run it blind.

So… say a prayer for my old Mavica, and hope that we get it working again, because it’s quite handy to have, since it functions as a backup camera, it’s good for little quick photos like with the “DNL” upside-down 7-Up quote from last fall, plus Dad uses it for car photos.

Categories: Cameras

< 1 minute read

September 13, 2003, 12:33 AM

My sister came up from Virginia Tech for the weekend, and so we all went out for Chinese food at this place in Staunton. This restaurant is like the fourth place to be in that particular building – maybe this one will last.

Anyways, though, the restaurant was so-so, but the fortune cookies were fun. Usually when we have Chinese food, the joke always comes from Mom: “Drop the guy you’re with and meet me by the wonton.” This time, though, I started something different at the table that I learned at LPCM a few years ago.

My fortune was, “You will win success in whatever calling you adopt.”

The way I read it was, “You will win success in whatever calling you adopt in bed.”

Everyone else – Mom, Dad, and Sis, all read their fortunes that way. Made for some very amusing fortunes, needless to say. I’m amazed that the rest of the family went along with it, but it was fun.

Categories: Family

< 1 minute read

September 9, 2003, 1:06 PM

Okay… I’m a klutz. I stop, say hello to one person, and smash into another person. Really great coordination. Thankfully, I’m skilled in the fine art of “excuse me”, “oh, I’m sorry”, and “pardon me”. Still, even better would be to simply not run into them in the first place…

Categories: JMU

< 1 minute read

September 8, 2003, 7:54 PM

I’m finished! No more internship work! I’m packing it all up tomorrow and turning it in! You don’t know how happy this makes me, considering I’ve been writing for several days about this whole thing. Oh, but I’ll be so glad when it’s turned in…

Categories: JMU

< 1 minute read

September 6, 2003, 2:34 PM

It’s 3:17 PM on Saturday, September 6 (my server’s on central time, and I’m on Eastern, thus the timestamp disparity), and JMU is playing Virginia Tech, and Virginia Tech is winning, with the score at 36 to zip. And as everyone at JMU and Virginia Tech expected, JMU’s getting their clocks cleaned by the Hokies.

This is also interesting for our family because my parents have a child on both sides of the fence. I’m a JMU Duke, and my sister’s a Hokie. However, there were no hostilities between schools in our family. Mom has booty shorts for both schools (and let’s never speak of those booty shorts again), and we all agree that Tech is going to mop the floor with purple and gold.

I also found it amusing what JMU’s football coach Mickey Matthews said in the September 4 issue of The Breeze. He said that we have to play “smart”. I just wonder whether playing smart is football-speak for “we don’t have a prayer”…

Categories: JMU

< 1 minute read

September 4, 2003, 11:27 AM

What a way to start the day… I’m sitting at a light on Route 608 on my way up to JMU, when all of a sudden, I’m hit! Nothing major – just a minor fender-bender, and no one was hurt, and it wasn’t my fault. But my rear bumper now sags a little on the passenger side due to being knocked loose by the collision. That will probably end up having to be reattached or replaced. And that was the only damage, too. And I still made it to Harrisonburg, though I ended up getting there considerably late.

I also think it’s somewhat ironic… I have that “I need a car” quote up on the site beyond when I intended to change it, and I end up having an accident. Even more ironic is the fact that in 1997 I did my site up with a whole “Great American Road” theme, and the week of its debut, I got into a real doozie of an accident. No injuries, but the car was out of service for a month. I don’t know… maybe automotive features on my site are bad luck.

Categories: Toyota Previa

< 1 minute read

September 4, 2003, 1:51 AM

Whee, today was a trip down memory lane. I was in Harrisonburg today, and re-connected with all the buddies. First I went to Canterbury for LPCM, where we did the usual Wednesday thing. Good to be back! Then I visited Jackson, Chris, Patrick, Will, Adam, etc., along with Callie, and connected with them for a while.

AND THEN…

I called up my friend Aaron, who’s a current RA in Potomac, and so I got to spend about half an hour visiting Potomac again! Boy, how I miss that place. Potomac has a special place in my heart. So many fond memories.

So many memories, and so many good friends…

Categories: JMU, LPCM

< 1 minute read

September 3, 2003, 1:45 PM

After we leave the Office on Youth, we have to finish the job with some paperwork. I’ve been researching the ups and downs of personality assessments, and such. An interesting history they have, too, but since I’m specifically focusing on one particular assessment (DiSC), it’s fun to find actual academic stuff about it, vs. pages upon pages of marketing crap. Still, I think this is going to be a good research paper.

Categories: JMU