Cyclic

Beautiful weather here, just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival across the river. I've seen them a few other years, and there are a number of trees in my neighborhood that I can see bloom without being troubled with the crowds of tourists. They're "Weeping Higans," I think, but I'm no horticulturist - they could be Yoshino. Regardless, it's all very nice and spring-like.

With spring comes gardening, though. More cleanup starting tomorrow, possibly to include planting some kind of vine to grow along the fences. Hops, perhaps, to make it a little less garish. The thing is, I hate gardening. The line on me giving up and goofing off instead is about 50-50.

Today, I took advantage of Half Day Friday and went for a bike ride down to Mount Vernon. Thanks to my new bike computer, I can tell you it was 29.08 miles, and I averaged 16.9 miles per hour. It would have been faster, but some idiot almost ran me off the trail coming the other way and I had to stop to avoid him. And the trail runs on the streets through Old Town, which was clearly already in the throes of tourist season. The going was slow. But it was an excellent day to be riding - a little breezy, but warm and not too much sun.

And lastly, I've subjected myself to more torture by HTML. I'm trying to get the title background image on this page to rotate, so it's different each time you reload. I can make it work on a blank page, but not in the background slot. Maybe there's a brilliant coder out there who will give me the answer via comments.

Filed in: Cycling

Per Ardua Ad Astra

It's the Earth, Stupid: "NASA's new budget blows it."

I just read this article on Slate regarding the proposed NASA budget. I've always been very interested in manned spaceflight - Jane and I followed the X-Prize competition very closely. I still believe in the ideals of the early days of space exploration, the idea that our next step is out there, and that we should go to Mars for the same reason we climb Everest or descend to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. I also buy into the argument that we should colonize Mars someday (the far future, most likely) because it doesn't seem prudent to have all our eggs in one basket, planetarily speaking.

Having said that, Easterbrook makes some excellent arguments about prioritization. I am especially persuaded by what he has to say about the International Space Station and the Shuttle - at this point there is little use for either of them. I can't help but wonder what could be accomplished with the billions of dollars spent on shuttle launches if it was wedded to innovative design-and-build efforts like SpaceShip One.

Filed in: Science

Identify

Fraud! Recently, I tried to check my credit card account online, to see if certain things had been billed properly and estimate how much my next bill will be. And I was denied access. Then I started getting emails from the company, saying there had been suspicious activity on my account. Again, I tried to access the records online, in order to review these actions for myself. Still no luck. So I called them up last night and after a lengthy verification process, had them tell me about the suspicious activity. They said it was a number of cash advances over the past few days. I've never used the cash advance on my credit card, so that seems a mite off.

So, I'm not responsible for those transactions, and they've deactivated the card. A new one is on the way, so all is well. I just can't figure out how this happened - I don't use my credit card that often, and I try to be careful about where I use it, especially online. Any advice out there on how to avoid this problem in the future?

We finally got a little rain yesterday, but not much. We're experiencing a near-drought here right now. Normal rain for March is 3.56", and we've received something like 0.07". My lawn has a lot of dead grass. This weekend I've scheduled for spring cleaning, so I may go ahead and turn the hose on the lawn for a while. Maybe the previous tenants left a sprinkler lying around somewhere. Hopefully I'll find more interesting things in the shrubbery around the house. So far I've found shattered glass and pottery, puzzle pieces, two action figure torsos, thumbtacks, batteries, nuts & bolts, three balls, a plastic tree stump, three garden gnomes, and a mailbox.

Filed in: House

Visitation

Chris came to visit on Sunday, which was great. He was in West Virginia to celebrate on of his VT classmates passing his architecture licensing exams. And he made the time to stop over on his way home to Vermont.

I had made vague plans to do something with Steph, since she is leaving town for two weeks for some temporarily assigned duty on the West Coast. On Sunday, she called and suggested the bluegrass brunch at Fireflies. I didn't know when Chris would arrive, so I left a note with directions to and headed out. Strange coincidence, Chris pulled up and parked at the restaurant right in front of Steph & Aaron as they were walking over. Imagine my surprise when they all walked up together as I waited for a table.

The meal was great, and I think we all had a good time. Afterwards, I showed Chris my new place and he approved. Then we went for a walk around Del Ray, and I showed off a few of the more interesting buildings. Chris said that he was surprised I didn't take more pictures, since there are so many nice houses here. I said I got bored of trying to capture every outstanding home, and have shifted to photographing the freaky houses, the ones with poorly designed renovations or additions.

We didn't do much after that - the rest of the family called at various times, so we caught up all around. We watched some Simpsons - Season 7 and Arrested Development episodes, talked about work and baseball. It was good, in a very low-key way, befitting Chris's low-key demeanor. I'm really glad he came to visit.

I found some more drawings of the planned Nationals stadium:














The plan views seem to be at ground level, showing everything that will be below grade in the lower seating bowl. Nothing especially unusual or interesting.

The section view, however, is troubling. The upper decks are really far back - the barely overlap the grandstands. And they're awfully high - mostly because of the club seating (green) and the double deck of luxury suites (red). The nosebleed seats seem like they'll be pretty poor. I believe I read in the Post that the top deck is 21 feet higher than at RFK, even though there are 15000 less seats in the new park.

I would contrast this with some of the work that's being done at Fenway. For a long time, Fenway has essentially been a grandstand-only stadium, with a smattering of seats placed on the roof. I think this year, though, about 3000 more seats are being added along the first and third base sides, expanding the upper deck from 4 rows to 8. Plus they are taking down a lot of the huge glass curtain wall behind home plate. The concept drawings look really good, I think.

Filed in: Baseball

Who are the People in Your Neighborhood?

WETA, one of the Washington area PBS stations, has been running a series on various neighborhoods here. They just broadcast one about Del Ray, and you can watch some of the videos here, as well as archived photos, etc.

Filed in: Del_Ray

Indoor Outhouse

I came home yesterday to a bit of a surprise. As I walked in the door, I noticed smell that I couldn't quite place, at first. Sweet and chemical, like model airplane glue. Noxious. What the hell?

I hang up my coat, put away my work gear, and go to change into my play clothes. Then I find the source of the odor. One of my bathroom doors is locked, and the other is closed. And the light is on. And everything has been moved out of the bathroom and dumped on my bed. Neat!

Turns out the bathroom refinishing that was scheduled to begin today started early. The smell was the new coating of the bathtub, courtesy of Bath Masters, whoever the hell they are. Apparently they are coming back today to take down all of the plastic screens they hung and let me have my bathroom back.

Unfortunately, I only have the one bathroom. So now I'm dirty and high on fumes. On the other hand, since I couldn't shower, I got to sleep in a little. A rare opportunity to use the snooze button.

Filed in: House Humor

Barque

I watched two pretty good movies courtesy Netflix this past weekend, M and Metropolis, both directed by Fritz Lang. The first is in German, and the second is silent AND almost 1/4 of the original footage has been lost. So they were both challenging viewings, in their own ways. But they were good, Metropolis especially. Not for everyone, though - they are very much of their time, the incunabula of movies, as it were. Somewhat crude by modern standards, and the acting is much more... theatrical. You might even say hammy.

The two differ remarkably in tone, which highlights their historic context. Metropolis is all about hope (eventually) for the future. It has an upbeat ending, and a positive message about what can be accomplished as long as there is balance between "the head and the hand." M, however, is pretty dark. I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that while both were filmed in Germany, Metropolis was made in 1927, and M was made in 1933. Shortly after M was made, Lang fled the Nazis and the movie was banned.

In baseball news, the Reds have made a number of trades recently that I find a bit questionable. Wily Mo Pena was traded to Boston for Bronson Arroyo. I had looked forward to watching Pena come into his own in Cincinnati, but I guess it does make sense. The Reds had one of the best offenses in the league last year, and the worst pitching by far. Though Arroyo is only a little better than league average, he will probably upgrade the starting staff. The trade raises questions about the plan for position players - will Dunn move back to left, leaving Hatteberg to play first? Or will Womack be sent to left? Or mayble leave Womack on the bench where he belongs, and find another suitable LF? Or, you could follow Chris's suggetions, and start the following:

C LaRue / Valentin
1B Dunn
2B Aurilia
3B Encarnacion
SS Lopez
LF Griffey
CF Freel
RF Kearns

This plan keeps as many heavy hitters in the lineup as possible, moves Griffey to a less demanding fielding position to protect him from injury, and leaves some flexibility to use their bench players (Hatteberg at 1B, Bergolla and Olmedo at 2B and SS, Denorfia and Stratton in the OF). But it won't happen. The Reds also traded a pitching prospect, Bobby Basham, for a third catcher, Dave Ross from San Diego. This move sucks. Potential pitching help for a catcher they have no need for. So now I'm betting on the following:

C LaRue / Ross
1B Hatteberg
2B Aurilia / Womack
3B Encarnacion / Aurilia
SS Lopez
LF Dunn
CF Griffey
RF Kearns

With Freel as a super-sub at 2B, 3B and all the outfield positions. This second lineup is demonstrably worse on offense AND defense. It can be frustrating to be a Reds fan.

Happily, I read yesterday that EAGLE is coming to the area for the Commandant's Change of Command this summer. I look forward to seeing her again - maybe I'll brave the crowds and visit.

Filed in: Baseball Sailing