That rare case when a company gets a reformulation right…
3 minute read
August 13, 2017, 1:55 PM
Some of you may have heard about how Coca-Cola Zero (aka “Coke Zero”) is being replaced by Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. I heard it and I was a bit concerned about this. After all, we saw how bad Diet Pepsi with sucralose was. I was especially concerned with this after Pepsi, in response to their own reformulation, then rereleased the old version in parallel to the new one, and it’s very hard to find. I liked Coke Zero, and I hoped that Coke Zero Sugar would not be the same disaster that the new version of Diet Pepsi was two years ago.
First of all, for those of you who are not familiar: Coke Zero is (was?) a diet version of regular Coke. Diet Coke is a completely different flavor, and has little relation to the original Coke, other than the name. I was pleased when Coke Zero was released in 2005, and discovered that it was a diet version of regular Coke. I just plain don’t like Diet Coke, but Coke Zero was good. I could drink that.
I was tipped off to Coke Zero Sugar’s arrival by a friend who found it at a local Safeway, so I swung by:
Side-by-side comparison of old vs. new. Note the additional red on the new version.
Continue reading…Categories: Food and drink
Going to show that you never know what you’ll find at the thrift store…
4 minute read
July 30, 2017, 2:39 AM
It’s amazing what you find sometimes when you hit the thrift store. Case in point, at Unique Thrift Store/Value Village in Hillandale Shopping Center, Elyse and I found this:
Categories: Cameras, Elyse, Retail, Silver Spring, Today's Special
A lovely little road trip to West Virginia and back…
6 minute read
July 23, 2017, 3:53 AM
This past Wednesday, Elyse, Aaron Stone, and I took a little road trip to Jefferson County, West Virginia. There was some stuff for all of us, as Aaron wanted to see some stuff that Elyse and I had seen before, I wanted to see some stuff that I had spotted in some Instagram pix, plus wanted to get newer photos of some areas where I had been before.
But first, food. We designed our trip to take us to Sunshine General Store, which is this little hole in the wall restaurant north of Brookeville, at the intersection of Georgia and New Hampshire Avenues. Their hamburgers are to die for – thick and juicy. However, you really have to know that they’re there, because at first glance, the place looks abandoned.
After we had our hamburgers, we headed over to Brighton Dam. The intent was to get some new photos of the dam, but much to my surprise, a dam rehabilitation project was underway, and the park where you got the best views of the dam was closed in order to accommodate the construction work. The level of Triadelphia Reservoir was much lower as well, presumably because of the dam project, and from the looks of the now-exposed land, it had been lower for quite a while:
Triadelphia Reservoir, with the lower water level. Compare to the water level in April 2014.
Categories: Elyse, Frederick, Friends, Montgomery County, West Virginia
Yes, about that historic French cemetery…
7 minute read
July 9, 2017, 11:55 PM
Sometimes, you really have to give someone the proverbial “smackdown”. Such was the case of a recent copyright infringement issue that I had with a death metal band called Barbiturate. As you may know, I periodically skim the Internet looking for unauthorized usages of my photography, which I then submit to Pixsy, a company that goes after these copyright infringers for royalties, therefore making the illegal usages legal. I really don’t care when people use my work elsewhere. I actually find it somewhat flattering. However, if you are making money (and by that, I mean taking in revenue, regardless of whether you turn a profit) with my photo, you can afford to pay me for that usage (i.e. “F— You, Pay Me“), either by licensing it up front, or by having me chase you down via Pixsy. Or at the very least, you can ask me for permission, because I do occasionally authorize use of my work for free. But generally speaking, I don’t work for free, or for some vague notion of “exposure”. I have a Flickr account and other outlets that give me plenty of exposure, thank you very much. I don’t need anyone’s help getting exposure for my work.
In the Barbiturate case, I found this photo in Pixsy’s image search:
Categories: Copyright infringement
Yesterday’s future is tomorrow’s memories…
3 minute read
June 29, 2017, 8:00 AM
This month, the thing that we all knew was coming finally came: Metro retired the final 1000 and 4000-Series railcars. That means no more of these:
Categories: WMATA
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.
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.