I think they just took the “uh-huh” out of Diet Pepsi…
5 minute read
August 20, 2015, 6:25 PM
You may recall that I made a Journal entry back in April regarding some blown blood vessels in my eyes. Turns out that my body will no longer allow me to have coffee, after I discovered that no matter whether it was commercially brewed, brewed at home, cheap coffee, or expensive coffee, I would be awake with an upset stomach. And it was very sudden, too. One day, I could drink as much coffee as I wanted, and then the next, it was verboten. Ultimately, I had to give up coffee completely, which some of my former coworkers might be quite surprised to hear. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the caffeine that was causing the problems, but something else in the coffee that was causing me problems. Therefore, I ended up replacing coffee with diet soda in order to get my caffeine. After initially bouncing between different diet sodas for a while, I eventually became a regular Diet Pepsi drinker. It seemed to work for me, and it tasted pretty good.
Then they started fooling around with the sweetener.
You may have heard the news a few months ago that Pepsi was planning to discontinue the use of aspartame in Diet Pepsi, and replace it with sucralose. For those not familiar with the generic names, aspartame has been marketed under the names NutraSweet and Equal, and sucralose has been marketed as Splenda. Then this past Tuesday, I was at the grocery store, and spotted this:
Continue reading…Categories: Food and drink
The speed van…
6 minute read
July 29, 2015, 9:04 PM
While I was out yesterday, I spotted this van parked on the side of Bonifant Road in Greater Silver Spring (Colesville) near the Trolley Museum and the Intercounty Connector bridge:
This is a white Ford Transit Connect van, with the “Montgomery County Safe Speed” logo on the driver’s side door. This struck me as something that merited further investigation, because the county has been using Bonifant Road to raise revenue through speed enforcement for years. I’ve seen police sitting on the road, and there have been fixed speed camera boxes in various places along this road over the years.
Categories: Driving, Silver Spring
Preserve community heritage, and keep names local…
5 minute read
July 23, 2015, 3:23 PM
In the wake of the June 17 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, a movement has come up to remove things related to the Confederacy from places of honor, and relegate them to history.
That said, if things go that way, a lot of things named for people who fought for the Confederacy will be up for renaming soon. Among other things, there is discussion about renaming Jefferson Davis Highway in Virginia. In addition, there has been longstanding discussion in Staunton, Virginia about renaming the city’s public high school, currently named for Robert E. Lee, if it moves from its current, dated building to a new building on a different site.
Now as far as I’m concerned, history is where the Confederacy belongs. I mean, the south lost the Civil War 150 years ago. It’s time that people stopped fighting it, already. However, when it comes to naming places for people, there are different ways to go about it. One way is to name things for a prominent national figure, either current or historical, and the other is to search for someone with a direct connection to the area. If the title of the post didn’t give it away, I support the latter more than the former.
Categories: JMU, State and local politics
Finally, a road photo that I didn’t have to research…
2 minute read
July 11, 2015, 10:12 PM
Whenever I find a photo online showing something amusing on the road, I always like to find out the location. I’ve become rather skilled at looking at background details in photos to sleuth out locations after posting and geotagging countless photos on Panoramio, as well as researching filming locations for Project TXL (a planned overhaul of the Today’s Special site). So imagine my delight to see this funny road photo, showing Thomas the Tank Engine being transported on the back of a truck:
Photo: Imgur
Categories: Harrisonburg, Popular culture, Roads, Today's Special
Yes, I made it to New York City…
2 minute read
June 13, 2015, 3:55 AM
Just in case the current photo feature’s being of One World Trade Center didn’t tip you off, I’m happy to say that yes, I did recently make it to New York City for that day trip that I had wanted to do on my birthday but quickly realized that I couldn’t do. So I regrouped, and did it the way that works best for me: planned in advance. I got together with my friend Doreen, and we went up on June 9. And here’s proof:
Doreen got this photo of me at the 81st Street subway station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line.
Categories: Friends, New York City, New York Subway
“No, really, folks: enough with the ‘happy birthday’ messages. Just stop.”
6 minute read
May 30, 2015, 11:50 PM
Well, there you go: my 34th birthday officially sucked. I think a few things led to it being a pretty crummy day. I knew a few weeks ago that I would have the day off on my birthday and wanted to do something for it. I didn’t tell anyone about the day off because I just wanted to do something for myself, by myself, and didn’t want anyone trying to make any requests for my time. I was tossing around the idea of going to either Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach today, but really wasn’t all that excited about either one. Then I woke up today, and went online to do a little more research and some more figuring out of what I wanted to do, and I had a different idea that sounded a lot more appealing than going to the beach: New York City.
That was something that I was excited about. I have never really been to New York City. I’ve only passed through New York City on the way to and from other places. I went through by car in 2010 when I went to Boston, and I went through by train in 2011 when I went to New Hampshire. But since I never exited a vehicle on those occasions, those don’t count as visiting New York. The way I figured, it would take about four hours to drive up. I would park at a PATH station (probably Journal Square), take PATH to World Trade Center, and then explore for a few hours before heading back home. I actually left to go on this trip, and then by the time I got to the end of the street, I realized that it was probably a bad idea. After all, this was a single day off. I had to go to work the next day, and didn’t want to be all groggy from a big trip, or worse, oversleep and be late for work. I quickly came to the realization that I couldn’t go anywhere today, and that just shot my day. I ended up going to the shopping center up the road from me, bought a new pair of shoes for work, and then went back home. Total distance traveled: 1.5 miles.
Sometimes I hate being an adult with adult responsibilities. I wanted to go out and have fun.
Categories: Birthdays
“I feel important, just like a king…”
4 minute read
May 30, 2015, 12:49 PM
So today is my birthday. I am officially 34 years old. I rang my birthday in doing one of the things that I always enjoy doing, i.e. driving the bus, and watching out for Virginia drivers (yes, Virginia drivers are, by far, the worst drivers in this area as far as I’m concerned). Then I took my birthday as a floating holiday, so I don’t have to work my birthday (yaaaaaay!).
But at the beginning of my workday on Friday, my friend Elyse met me at the location on the street where I pick up my first bus, and gave me a birthday card. Check it out:
And of course, I immediately made sport of the grammatical error in the handwritten message. But no worries – I did it with a smile, so it’s all in good fun. Then down at the bottom is an Edwards Integrity fire alarm horn/strobe, like they have at work.
Categories: Birthdays, Elyse, Schumin Web meta, Work
Augusta County puts enforcement cameras on its school buses…
10 minute read
May 20, 2015, 12:09 PM
I recently read in an article in The News Leader that Augusta County Public Schools, where I went to middle and high school, is partnering up with the local sheriff’s office to outfit two of its school buses with cameras. These particular cameras are mounted on the exterior of the bus, on the left side, and are designed to catch people who pass a stopped school bus while their red warning lights are flashing. Normally, drivers in all directions are supposed to come to a complete stop when the bus’s red warning lights are flashing and the stop arm is out.
Now we all know better than to think that this always happens. I’ve written about school bus stops before, in regards to whether a right turn that begins just beyond a stopped school bus and moves away from it is a legal movement, or if it’s not. I casually asked a Montgomery County police officer about this one time while I was out and about, and he said that it wasn’t a legal move, describing the area where drivers are required to come to a full stop for a school bus as being like a bubble, rather than as a line of demarcation. I would have loved for the move that I described to have been legal, because then I could just zip past and be on my way. But apparently, it’s not.
Also, for those of you who have never driven a large vehicle before, let me let you in on something: if you think that the people around you drive like wackos when you’re in your car, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve watched drivers around a large vehicle. The “wacko” factor gets turned up to eleven when you’re driving a large vehicle. After all, large vehicles are very different than your car. They’re big, they’re heavy, and they’re slow. And in the case of school and transit buses, they make frequent stops. Drivers in cars know that, and as such, will do anything, even some very unsafe/illegal moves, to get past or otherwise not have to wait for a bus. I have been cut off in just about every way imaginable when I’m driving the bus, and I don’t get special privileges like school buses get, i.e. I don’t get to stop all traffic when I’m boarding and alighting passengers. And even if I could, fellow road users are still very poorly behaved and would stop at nothing to get past or around me while I was stopped, threat of ticket or not.
Categories: Driving, School buses, Transit, Virginia local news
This is a message that I can get behind…
< 1 minute read
May 6, 2015, 4:58 PM
This message recently went up on the sign for the church up the street from me:
Couldn’t have said it any better than that. No religious overtones, and nothing cheesy. Just a nice message to help put things in perspective. Be someone that makes you happy. After all, we only have one life to live, and it’s far too short to spend it being miserable about yourself. Be the person that you want to be.
That is all.
Categories: Religion, Silver Spring
Fun in Philadelphia…
7 minute read
April 28, 2015, 11:29 PM
Back at the end of March, I went up to Philadelphia with my friends Melissa and Elyse. We had a list of things that we wanted to do, and we did as many of them as we could. We had a blast, plus we got to meet up with my cousins Mike and Tara for dinner. This trip was also a proof of concept for how my various little outings might go now that I routinely work late nights, since my typical workday runs from approximately 4:00 PM until just before 2:00 AM.
Logistically, it worked out this way: Melissa met me at Glenmont station around 11:00, and then we traveled up to Howard County to get Elyse. Then from there, up to Philadelphia via I-95. Then in Philadelphia, everything that we were planning was transit-accessible, save for one thing, but we worked it all out pretty well.
Our first point of interest was the non-transit-accessible one: the SS United States. This would be a quick look-see for some photos, and then move along to other targets. We parked at the IKEA store across the street, and then Elyse and I walked over for a look (Melissa stayed in the car). Here are pix:
I have ridden the 7000-Series…
4 minute read
April 15, 2015, 8:30 AM
Back in late March, Metro announced that the new 7000-Series railcars, which I toured in January of last year, would enter revenue service on Tuesday, April 14, on the Blue Line. So on that day, I got together with Elyse, and we sought out and rode Metro’s new 7000-Series railcars on their first day of revenue service. We met up in late afternoon, and we took the Red Line down to Metro Center from Glenmont. At Metro Center, we waited for the train. Elyse and I had been in communication with Metro’s social media team as we were making our way in, and they helped us with our planning, as they indicated when the train was entering service in the evening, how long it would be out, and where it was located, and in which direction it was heading.
And we watched the PIDS screens. We knew that the train would be eight cars, because the 7000-Series is designed to run in quad sets rather than married pairs. So when we saw something like this come up on the board, our ears definitely perked up:
Categories: Elyse, Washington DC, WMATA
I never thought that could happen…
4 minute read
April 5, 2015, 3:20 AM
Among things that I never thought could happen, I never thought that throwing up could cause blood vessels in your eyes to break. But take a look at this.
This is what my eyes looked like on Friday night:
Categories: Food and drink, Personal health
How stupid do they think that I am?
2 minute read
March 31, 2015, 1:08 AM
I recently received an envelope in the mail that looked like this:
I saw this envelope, with just an address and what appeared to be a handwritten address, and thought “bill”, since this is how I’ve seen some smaller doctors’ offices do billing.
Categories: Companies, Kia Soul, Some people
Okay, folks, story time…
8 minute read
March 25, 2015, 2:03 PM
After hearing far too many people on Reddit spew out the “fact” that you can’t get unemployment insurance if you quit your job, I think it’s time to share a story about one instance why that “fact” is not the case. It is not, in fact, a hard and fast rule that, if you leave your job on your own, you don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, and it doesn’t make a difference if you head it off by quitting or let your boss fire you. I should know, because it happened to me.
You may recall that in July 2013, I posted a Journal entry about my last day at Food & Water Watch. For those of you solely know me through the website, that post probably came as a surprise to you. Save for a note on a photo feature, I didn’t give any hints prior to that entry that I was leaving Food & Water Watch, and I also never gave a reason in the entry about why I left. All you knew is that I had left, with no reason given regarding why. And that made enough sense, because I didn’t want to go into detail while I had an ongoing job search underway in the same field. Now I feel as though I’m in a place to share, especially now that I’ve changed fields, going from nonprofit operations management to public transportation.
In 2011, I had started to change a bit as a person. I grew up. My interests began to shift. I had also noticed that my own interests and those of the organization had started to diverge. The organization had also begun to change, with the introduction of anti-fracking work into its fold, beginning its morph from a consumer group into an environmental group.
Growing out the beard…
6 minute read
February 25, 2015, 2:44 AM
This past Sunday, I really came to realize that I have, as TV Tropes would say, started “growing the beard” when it comes to driving a bus. It’s about getting past all of the newness and figuring out how it all really works, and starting to, you know, become proficient at what you’re doing. When it comes to jobs, if a person is a good fit with the organization, they grow out their beard within the first few months after whatever training period ends. If the beard doesn’t grow, then it’s possible that they’re not a good fit, and that often ends with a parting of ways.
Me, I’ve grown my (figurative) beard out quite nicely. I have a run of my own, meaning that my assignment does not change much from week to week. I do the same thing every weekday, and I do the same Saturday and Sunday schedules every week. When the transit agency that I work for cut me loose to work my own assignment for the first time, I was a bit overwhelmed. I was at a different bus garage than the one that I had trained at after having been unexpectedly reassigned at the end of training (about half the class was also moved from where they had trained), and I had never done a street relief in the middle of a route before.
For those not familiar, a street relief is how some bus routes work. The buses are out on the street all day, and the operators just cycle on and off of them. One guy takes a bus out of the garage, and then at a designated location, he hands the bus off to another operator. That next guy takes the bus for however long, and then gives the bus to someone else. That keeps going until the last guy gets the bus, and he brings it back to the garage.