Sometimes you have to vote with your feet…
5 minute read
June 15, 2017, 9:18 PM
Sometimes, the fact that the telecommunications market is extremely cutthroat has its advantages from a customer standpoint. It means that there is no room for loyalty, and also that the big players are more than happy to poach customers from each other. It also means that if I’m no longer happy with my service, I can bounce at a moment’s notice to someone else who will make me satisfied with their service.
I’ve done that twice in the last five years. Back in late 2013, I finally took Candice Bergen’s advice and switched to Sprint, replacing Verizon as my cell phone carrier. The reason for switching at that time was related to my unlimited data plan. I had an unlimited data plan with Verizon when I got my first smartphone back in early 2010, and kept it with my second smartphone in late 2011. However, about a year after I got my second smartphone, Verizon announced that they were doing away with unlimited data plans, and that while people on existing unlimited plans were grandfathered in, they could not upgrade to a new phone at the subsidized rate and still keep their unlimited data plans. In other words, if you wanted to keep your unlimited plan, you had to pay full retail for your device. I considered that to be unacceptable, so I did my research, and settled on Sprint. They offered unlimited data plans, and had all of the other features that I was looking for. So I switched. Other than a very slight loss of voice quality (Verizon had clearer sound by a hair), I continued to be pleased with Sprint two years later when I upgraded to a new phone, and also when I adjusted my plan a few months ago to a cheaper one that had everything that I already had, plus 10 GB of hotspot service.
Now fast forward to about a week or so ago. The USB charging port on my Galaxy Note 5 stopped working. Not good. That meant that the only way that I could charge my phone was via the wireless charger. Clearly, this was not a sustainable proposition, since I couldn’t use a wireless charger in a lot of places that I typically charged my phone, like in the car or in a bag. Plus if I took any photos with my phone, I had to transfer them via the cloud. I couldn’t just plug in and transfer stuff directly.
Continue reading…Categories: Cell phone, Companies
Taste testing some novelty sodas…
4 minute read
June 4, 2017, 2:30 PM
This past Thursday, Elyse and I finished up a round of taste tests on a bunch of novelty sodas that we bought at Rocket Fizz in Richmond back in March. Recall from the second Journal entry about our Richmond trip:
Categories: Food and drink, Richmond
A trip to the pinball museum…
7 minute read
May 29, 2017, 10:08 AM
On Tuesday, May 23, Elyse and I, along with mutual friend Brian, went up to Asbury Park, New Jersey for the day. Our goal was to go to the Silverball Museum, which is a vintage arcade on the Asbury Park boardwalk.
We left in the 10:00 hour, and headed up via the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I-295, and I-195, with a stop for lunch at Maryland House. On the way up I-295, imagine Elyse and Brian’s surprise when I said, “I think I left my hat at Maryland House,” in that oh, crap sort of way. Elyse suggested turning around to get it, but we were too far afield to do that. To turn around would be tantamount to cancelling our trip to return to Harford County, Maryland, just north of Baltimore. So we continued on, hatless. After all, we would pass Maryland House coming home, so we could see if it was still there at that time. I know what I did – I set my hat down on the table next to me when we were having lunch, and I walked off without it.
Arriving in Asbury Park, we located the pinball museum, but first, I wanted to check out a place from my childhood that I had missed during my 2013 trip: Asbury Youth Center, which was a children’s clothing store run by my Uncle Skippy. I remember Uncle Skippy, and remember his being pretty awesome. Many of the outfits that you saw me in on the Childhood Days page, such as this one came from Uncle Skippy’s store. The store closed in the late 1980s when Uncle Skippy retired, and I hadn’t been back there since. So a quick Google search revealed the address to be 660 Cookman Avenue, and it was off to the races. This is what the building that housed Uncle Skippy’s store looks like today:
Categories: Asbury Park, Companies, Elyse, Friends, Video games
Red Line to Grosvenor…
4 minute read
May 17, 2017, 11:52 PM
You may be aware that in February, Metro began retiring the Breda 4000-Series railcars, starting with 4054 and 4055. While most of the retired cars will likely be sold for scrap, not all of them will. When 4089 was retired, it was cut up and converted into vendor kiosks, intended for use at Grosvenor-Strathmore station. Today was the first day of this pop-up market, which will run at least through the end of June, and eventually be incorporated into a new development at Grosvenor station.
So Elyse, Elyse’s father Joe, and I gave it a look. The car is cut up into different sections, with the various sections arranged around the station entrance. Here’s an overview of one side of the setup:
Categories: Elyse, Montgomery County, WMATA
So, about that whole “thou shalt not steal” thing…
6 minute read
May 7, 2017, 11:50 AM
Sometimes the level of hypocrisy shown by those in organized religion just makes me stand back in awe. They preach Christian values, and then don’t follow them in real life. In this instance, it involves the church that I used to attend from 1992 until 2003, and where I am still technically a member, albeit inactive. Through a recent interaction, I learned quite a bit more than I expected as far as where things stand with them.
For those who aren’t familiar, I work with a company called Pixsy to recover royalties for cases where my photographs are used without permission. I routinely search for and submit cases where my photos are used without permission in hopes of recovering license fees for that usage. Basically, I have no problem with downstream usages of my photos. But I am a professional who deserves to be paid for those usages in a professional setting. Basically, if you expect to take in revenue based on materials that contain my work, then you need to pay me for the usage. My take on it is that if you were going to hire a photographer to do a shoot for you, there’s no question that you would pay them. But by using photos of mine that I have already created, you’ve essentially hired me as your photographer, and as such, I should be paid. Using my work for commercial purposes without even so much as asking me is a major no-no as far as I’m concerned.
In this case, I was skimming through the Internet looking for potential infringement cases, I found this:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Religion
“If what doesn’t kill us is making us stronger…”
7 minute read
April 30, 2017, 10:00 AM
So according to Deadline, there will be an eight-episode revival of the 1990s sitcom Roseanne. From what I’ve read, most of the actors from the original series will reprise their roles.
Roseanne is probably the last sitcom that I would have imagined would do a revival. Reason is that over the course of the final season, they more or less trashed the entire premise of the show as things went completely off the rails, as the Conners won $108 million in the lottery, turning them from working-class to fabulously wealthy overnight. Then there was the ending of the final episode, which retconned much of the series with the revelation that Dan had died from his heart attack, Jackie was gay (and not Bev), Darlene married Mark and Becky married David, that the events of the final season were a fantasy, and that everything that we saw over the past nine seasons was actually a book written by a heretofore unknown person named Roseanne Conner. So where do you go from there?
First of all, however, in exploring where this show might start, I’m inclined to dismiss speculation by Roseanne Barr from 2009 about what the characters might be up to. From the article cited above:
On her website in 2009, Barr gave her detailed take on where each of the main characters from the show would be in a possible Roseanne revival: Roseanne and Jackie opening the first medical marijuana dispensary in Lanford; Dan reappearing alive after faking his death; DJ being published; Mark dying in Iraq; David leaving Darlene for a woman half his age; Darlene coming out, meeting a woman and having a baby with her; Becky working at Walmart; Arnie befriending the governor of Illinois and remarrying Nancy; Bev selling a painting for $10,000; Jerry and the grandsons forming a boy band; and Bonnie being arrested for selling crack.
Categories: Television
Seeing where Schumin Web lives…
3 minute read
April 27, 2017, 10:24 AM
On Tuesday, Elyse and I took a big loop trip through Virginia and Maryland. We started at my house, went up through Frederick (where we had a late lunch at Sheetz), then took US 15 over the Point of Rocks Bridge into Virginia, where we went through Ashburn, and then down into Manassas, and from there, back home via the Beltway. The plan was to see Manassas Mall, which we both realized that we had never actually been to.
As it turned out, Manassas Mall wasn’t that exciting. It was a fairly generic one-story suburban shopping mall that contained fairly typical mall stores and a Walmart store, plus it contained an indoor go-kart track, as well as a place called Uptown Alley, which contained an arcade, bowling alley, and laser tag, as well as a restaurant. Other than the entertainment venues, it was more or less as expected.
However, more interesting than Manassas Mall was a side trip that we made on the way down. You may recall that, since 2007, Schumin Web has been hosted with DreamHost. In 2012, DreamHost began operating in a data center in Ashburn, Virginia, and my site was one of many to get moved there. It makes enough sense, since Schumin Web is based in the eastern US, and the largest segment of my viewership is also in the eastern US. I remember getting a big boost in speed when the site started serving from Ashburn rather than Los Angeles, which made site maintenance that much easier. With the site hosted in Northern Virginia, it wasn’t a large leap to imagine a trip to go see where the building that it was housed in was.
Categories: Loudoun County, Schumin Web meta
Just when you thought that the mountain couldn’t look any worse than it already did…
7 minute read
April 16, 2017, 5:37 PM
On Tuesday, April 11, I got together with Elyse and Melissa, and we headed down to Virginia for the day. The plan was to get together with my parents, plus visit Afton Mountain and downtown Staunton.
We left the house at 9:30, and took US 29 down to Charlottesville. First stop was Moe’s Original Bar B Que, where we had lunch with my father. Fun time, and my father seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to finding good barbecue. Every barbecue place that Dad has taken me to has been wonderful, and this was no exception.
From here, we took US 250 across to Afton Mountain. There, we went to the second overlook, i.e. the Rockfish Valley Parking Overlook, to get some views. I tend to avoid Afton Overlook, the first overlook, after being propositioned for sex there one night back in 2005. The second overlook, which is a mile and some change further down the road, tends to attract fewer undesirables. I suppose it’s because it’s further away from civilization than the first one, which is a minute’s drive from the freeway. In any case, the view is awesome:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Elyse, Family, Melissa, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Waynesboro
Soda, toys, and a Kroger like no other…
5 minute read
April 6, 2017, 2:07 PM
So, as promised, here’s the rest of the trip to Richmond that Elyse and I made.
After leaving the Science Museum, we headed over to Carytown. Elyse wanted me to see Rocket Fizz, which is where she got some bottles of “Stalinade”, a strawberry-flavored soda that, as I said on Instagram at the time, was “Communism in a glass. Definitely tastes the way that I would expect communism to taste: red.” They have a very large selection of unique sodas, and some with novelty flavors, and some with novelty names. I ended up buying a six-pack of novelty flavors. Here was the take:
Categories: Companies, Elyse, Food and drink, Richmond
I’m doing science…
5 minute read
March 30, 2017, 8:35 PM
This past Tuesday, March 29, Elyse and I headed down to Richmond for the day. The idea was that we wanted to go somewhere, but it was going to rain, and so we needed a good indoor venue. So we decided to go to the Science Museum of Virginia. I had not been in a very long time (15 years!), it was indoors, and Elyse liked it a lot when she went a few months ago.
I was surprised to find out that all of the exhibits were different compared to previous visits. The exhibits had changed gradually over several visits in the nineties, but this change was a bit more dramatic, with all new exhibits, as well as the removal of a mezzanine level that previously existed in the main hall. The new exhibits seemed more child-focused, which is something that I don’t remember from my last visit in 2002. They had a hurricane simulator, where you could experience gale-force winds, tropical storm-force winds, and hurricane-force winds. They also had a track that challenged you to outrun different kinds of animals (turns out that I can run faster than a rat, or at least keep up).
There was also a demonstration of robotics that used an air hockey table. There, you had to beat the robot at air hockey. All went well at first, but this was more exciting than most.
Yes, the puck got stuck. There was a spot on the robot’s side of the table where the puck was prone to getting stuck, and since it was on the robot’s side (and thus protected by plexiglass), we couldn’t get it loose. The robot was set up to shoot a puff of air when the puck got stuck, but it couldn’t make it move.
A few career anniversaries in the next month…
7 minute read
March 23, 2017, 2:04 AM
The next month contains no less than three career anniversaries of mine. March 31 marks ten years since I was fired from Walmart, April 15 marks the 15th anniversary of when CFW Information Services (then Telegate USA) closed and I was laid off, and then April 18 marks ten years from the day that I was hired at Food & Water Watch. Rememberances of jobs past, I suppose.
The anniversary that still gets me is the CFW one. I can’t believe that it’s been fifteen years. That was my first job, which I started at age 16, in June 1997. It was a call center job, processing inbound calls for customers seeking directory assistance services in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, DC, Delaware, and New Jersey. Then Pennsylvania got added to the mix. Then we started doing two national services – one used by bill collectors doing skiptracing, and a wholesale service for the public through a variety of different providers. When the national services came online, I mostly did the bill collector service. That was a good job. The dress code was casual (after all, who saw you?) and you worked at a computer all day.
That job did, however, have a turning point. In June 2000, parent company CFW Communications made a major change to its corporate structure, merging with another regional telecommunications company in Virginia to form nTelos. As part of that same deal, Information Services was out. Our division would not become part of the new nTelos, as we were sold to Telegate, a company based in Munich, Germany. I remember watching this company, which had thrived under CFW ownership, be slowly destroyed under Telegate ownership. If I recall, Telegate acquired our company with the intention of gaining a foothold in the US marketplace, with the desire to eventually launch a “11880” style service in the US like they did in Germany. The “11880” style service never happened, and things basically stayed the same. Meanwhile, for a company with three Virginia call centers (Clifton Forge, Waynesboro, and Winchester), their choice of a headquarters location was surprising: Plano, Texas. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The management in Texas also seemed to come and go on a fairly regular basis, as one after the other either abruptly quit or was dismissed. It was no surprise when Telegate started closing call centers as the business started to drop off (probably due to the hideous management of the company), as Clifton Forge, Waynesboro, and Winchester all closed within about 6-7 months of each other. I was away at college at the time that my center closed, and never received any official notification from Telegate of the center’s closing, but rather, was notified by some of my soon-to-be-former coworkers. It just so happened that I would be in town the weekend before the closing, and so I stopped by to pick up my belongings and turn in my equipment. And that was the end of my first job.
“Hello! Welcome!”
3 minute read
March 9, 2017, 12:03 PM
You may recall from the Pittsburgh photo set that Elyse has an interest in elevators. I find them interesting as well, though to a lesser extent than Elyse and others. However, I always enjoy seeing an unusual specimen, like the pop-out buttons on the elevators at the Investment Building in Pittsburgh.
This elevator, at the United Office Building in Oxon Hill, takes the cake for interesting features. Check it out:
Categories: Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC, WMATA
I think that we need to have a discussion about news sources…
4 minute read
February 27, 2017, 9:14 AM
Over the course of the last several days, whenever I’ve gone on Facebook, I feel as though I’ve had to play fact-checker a lot more than usual. Most of the stories that I’ve had to verify and debunk are about Donald Trump, but there have also been a few ones about the toxin-du-jour and other miscellaneous topics. And having to constantly stay on my game and do the same sort of research over and over again gets tiring. I started out making this post about the problem:
This post got eight likes and one comment, so it didn’t do as well as I would have hoped. Maybe it’s because I posted it in the middle of the day on a Friday. But in any case, the bottom line is to think before you share.
Categories: News, Social media
Saying goodbye to Landmark Mall…
5 minute read
February 23, 2017, 9:21 AM
About a month ago, Elyse, Brian, Aaron, and I took a field trip to Landmark Mall in Alexandria, visiting it for the last time. Landmark was slated to close permanently on January 31, and so we came by to get photos before it all shut down. This trip took a similar form to when Elyse and I visited Owings Mills Mall in September 2015, though in the case of Owings Mills, we didn’t know that in less than two weeks from our visit, the mall would close permanently. With Landmark, the mall was closing at the end of January in preparation for a redevelopment that would replace the mall with a mixed-use “town center” style development. The Macy’s and Sears stores would remain through the redevelopment, however, I suspect that may change. The Landmark Macy’s was included in the round of store closings that Macy’s was doing in early 2017, and I’d suggest that the long-term prospects for Sears’ survival are looking pretty grim, so the plan to include those two buildings in the new development might change, as one of those stores is vacating, and the second may not be far behind.
And then here are photos:
Escalators in the mall’s northeast corner, viewed from the lower level.
Categories: Alexandria, Elyse, Friends, Retail
I feel like I’m irrationally angry about this…
3 minute read
February 10, 2017, 4:00 PM
I am currently am experiencing a bout of tendonitis in my left wrist and hand. For someone that blogs as much as I do, it happens, and so you deal with it. It started on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, it was bad enough that I decided to go to an urgent care facility to get it looked at. I went to Patient First in Rockville. There, after they took all of my vitals, the doctor came in and looked at my hand. Turned out that it was tendonitis, and the doctor recommended that I take Advil for it, and gave me this wrist brace:
Categories: Personal health