LED bulb that fits in a microwave? YES!

I finally found the holy grail.

That's right. An LED bulb that works in an over-the-range microwave.

Though I love LED bulbs for the energy savings, in this application, it's more than saving a few bucks in electricity. They just burn out all the time. It seems like literally every single month I have to change a bulb in the microwave. Apart from the fact that Home Depot gouges you for 4 bucks a pop for these replacement T8 bulbs for microwaves, it's annoying to keep changing it. I have longed for an LED replacement for longevity.

Here it is, in all it's raw glory. I ordered this straight from China, since in the US, apparently there is a conspiracy to ensure a steady stream of T8 bulb sales, and there is no such product available.

While this particular bit of nascent imported technology doesn't seem to have a name, your crucial search criteria on Ebay are E17 LED (the base is E17). It is easy enough to tell by the pictures on ebay if the bulb is going to fit in a microwave. The ones I got were about $3.50 apiece shipped... less than a conventional 30-day-life-expectancy bulb.

What about dimming?

It doesn't dim. On the other hand, it doesn't freak out either. Most over-the-range microwaves have two "on" settings, full power, and half power. When set to half power, it's mostly off (a few of the LEDs still light, but it's not really usable). But nothing bad happens either, I've left it this way for long periods of time with no ill effects. I've personally never cared about the "dim" setting anyway.

Energy use?

About 5 watts total (2 bulbs x 2.6 watts), versus 50-80 watts for two incandescent bulbs. So basically it's a nightlight. Just leave it on all the time if you feel like it, it'll cost you about 30 cents a year.

How's the light quality?

It's not as great as a high-quality residential LED warm white bulb but who cares? It's for over the stove. It's bright enough and not too harsh.

You are kind of a freak for LED bulbs aren't you.

Yes, yes I am. I have about 50 of them in my house. There are only about 6 incandescents left, and they too will be gone soon. I have to change a fixture to get rid of one of them, but it's time will come. Oh yes. It's time will come.

Uber Car Chase vs. DC Cabs

I don't post much lately but this incident made me break my silence. Recently someone was allegedly taken on a high-speed chase by an Uber driver after they were approached by a DC cab inspector.

Let's set aside the question of why a taxicab inspector thought that the possibility of an Uber driver having been hired as a result of being flagged down, versus summoned via app -- which is the only crime he would have been guilty of where he was stopped in DC -- was worth risking the lives of his passengers and anyone else in the vicinity, by engaging him in a high-speed chase.

Never mind that brilliant bit of risk analysis.

Let's move on to the question of what this says about Uber. I am sure the anti-Uber ranks, which I think includes the DC Taxicab Commissioner, cab drivers,
and nobody else, are thrilled to have a talking point about why regulation is needed in the cab industry.

Let's just head this off before it starts.

So.. nothing bad ever happens in a real cab, right?


Woman raped after cab ride

7 cab drivers arrested for assaulting passengers

As it turns out there were only 33 sexual assaults reported by women cab passengers in 2012, not 150 (yey)

DC taxicab commission receives 130 complaints per month (most from women)


That's just what I found in three minutes of googling, all within the last couple years.

I don't have raw data on the number of rides provided by Uber vs. DC Taxis and the number of complaints. But the point is simple. Bad people do bad things, and being "licensed" to operate a cab is little assurance that a cab won't do a bad thing. I feel a lot better about the hard data afforded by Uber in terms of identification of cars, drivers, routes, and the electronic trail of the entire transaction, than I do about a sketchy DC cab who is "licensed" to drive a rattletrap around with a TV showing me annoying advertisements in the back, and sometimes a credit-card swiper as of last year.

Bosch dishwasher "stuck on 1 minute" heater relay fix

This blog seems to be transforming into the Bosch repair blog... though in fairness, I've now been using these appliances for over 8 years. I guess two DIY-able problems in that time with 3 appliances (range, dishwasher, & over-the-range microwave) isn't so bad.
Anyway - my dishwasher, an  SHE45M05UC /48 befell a common problem related to the control board, in which a solder point on the relay controlling the water heater burns up all the solder and becomes disconnected. The symptom of this problem is that the dishwasher cycle takes a very long time to complete, with the display showing "1" for a very long time while it just keeps running. This is because the control module is waiting for the water to get hot enough to run the sanitization cycle, but it never happens, because the heater won't turn on. There is actually a recall of many dishwashers because of this problem, since it appears that in rare cases it could result in a fire. However, mine was not in the list of models covered.  So, on to fixing it myself. First was identifying the problematic part for my particular dishwasher. It's Bosch part # 676962 -- a roughly $250.00 affair. Being about1/3 the cost of a new dishwasher I figured I would at least give a shot to repairing it before replacing the whole thing. Back to google... I'm not going to cover the do-it-yourself fix because there are already lots of great resources out there. This blog post covers the repair in detail.. This was my starting point. 
In my case it was obvious which relay was problematic because the contact had burned. I probably could have just re-soldered the burned contact point, as others have, but I figured since I had the whole thing apart I should replace the troublesome relay.

Source: ApplianceAid.com

The part referenced in the blog post above, an Omron G5LE-14 6DC, is no longer available. I located an essentially similar relay G5LE-14-DC6 at Mouser Electronics which has the same specifications. I was able to desolder the old one easily and replace it with the new part. It worked like a charm.

One thing I didn't quite count on was that the part I found has a slightly larger form factor, and when installed, you can't quite snap the cover of the control module's shell closed. 

This requires a slight modification to the cover in order to close it without use of force. I managed it with a heat gun.

All told this effort cost about $8 ($1.41 + shipping for the relay) versus about $250.00 to replace the control module... well worth the 10 minutes of work to swap out the relay.

Fix for "Sensible Eco Living" unemptyable trash can

I've been a convert to motion-activated trash cans since my wife brought one into our household a number of years back. When they work, they're wonderful. They keep the stink in the can and your hands clean. The downside is, despite being a pretty simple piece of technology, they always seem to develop problems before too long. Our current one was sticking all the time and it became apparent that the mechanism had literally blown a gasket and it wasn't going to be salvageable. Time for a replacement.

Sensible Eco Living 21 Gallon Trash Can (also sold as Household Essentials EKO 35 L)

We picked up one of these bad boys at Costco for $49.99: the Sensible Eco Living motion activated trash can. They had one on display, fully operational, so we got to try before buying. It seemed to work really well and the price was right. It was also a good bit bigger than our old one, requiring 33 gallon trash bags, which actually made me happy. Over a week I fell in love with the new giant trash can. It opened so smoothly, speaking of the fine engineering within. It was so cavernous, it could easily accommodate the largest of hermetically sealed plastic packing waste products. Everything was great...

Until it was time to empty it.

This turns out to be one of those "did you actually ever use this thing" moments. Really, Mr. Sensible Eco Living, did you? Because it turns out there's a basic design premise that every trash can abides by. One that's so obvious, you don't even think about it, until faced with the product that totally missed Trash Can Design 101.

The trash can must be at least as big at the top, as it is at the bottom.

This trash can has a system of two interlocking rings to hold the trash bag internally. You put the top of the trash bag through the inner ring, wrap it around the outside of it, and then pop it into the outer ring. It holds the bag securely and it doesn't stick out of the can. The problem is, the frame of the outer ring reduces the size of the top of the trash can by almost 1" all around.

Can you imagine what happens when you try to pull a bag stuffed full of trash through this literal bottleneck. Yeah, that's right. Cursing, fist shaking, ripped trash bags, moaning, questioning, frantic googling (revealing nothing, since this seems to be a very new product), and ultimately, product hacking to fix their idiotic design flaw.

How To Make It Possible To Empty This Thing?

Fortunately the solution to this problem is pretty simple, and really without any downsides.

Pop out the outer ring, which you probably already did in frustration while trying to get your full bag of trash out. You'll need to manhandle it a bit to get it off, but it's not brittle so you won't break it.

In the picture at right you can see the ring detached from the can. There are 12 tabs around the perimeter which hold it in place, 3 on each side.

Cut those things off.

There is absolutely no need to for the outer ring to be permanently attached to the trash can. Gravity works just fine. The easiest way is with a razor blade scraper tool. (Don't try to do it with just a razor blade or you'll probably hurt yourself). The ABS plastic can be cut with some effort, just make sure you use a tool that's sharp and offers you a good grip.

Once those tabs are gone, you can pop out the outer ring and the inner ring effortlessly when it's time to change the trash.

LED, CFL, GU24: Lighting in 2012

I am a DIYer and an energy efficiency nut of sorts, so I am frequently butting heads with the changing face of lighting technology as I add and replace light fixtures. Compact flourescent light bulbs (CFLs), introduced something like 30 years ago, are familiar to pretty much everyone these days. Legislation has already signaled the beginning of the end of indandescent bulbs: starting in 2012, 100 watt incandescent bulbs were no longer allowed to be made or sold in the US. Starting at the beginning of next year, 75 watt bulbs are on the chopping block, and in 2014, 60 and 40 watt bulbs go too.

In this article I will describe some issues I've come across, as well as good solutions for household lighting that provide a reasonable balance of cost and performance, particularly when it comes to finding energy-efficient bulbs that work well with dimmers.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are unacceptable for use with dimmers. 

I'm not kidding. They are awful. There are some that claim they work with dimmers. They are lying to you. I've tried many - none have been satisfactory.

CFLs do not work well with dimmers.

• Problem number 1: price. Really, who's going to pay $10-$20 for a single bulb? (OK, I admit it, I have done so - but it hasn't made me happy - especially when it didn't work very well). But really - plain old CFLs can now be bought at Home Depot for a buck each (sometimes even less) in multi-packs. To pay 10 or 15 times as much for a bulb that can be dimmed seems crazy.
• Problem number 2: they suck at dimming. Really, they do.  They only dim to about half of full brightness... and that's the good ones. They buzz. They flicker. They don't work with older dimmer switches. They just suck. I've never used one that is in any way satisfactory. And believe me - I have tried a lot of them.
• Problem number 3: They fail a lot. Many reviews echo this, and my own experience has been the same. This makes the giant price tag sting that much more.

This is a bit of a problem for people like me who love dimmers. I've survived so far by using old-school bulbs when dimmers are required. But I didn't really like doing this since they waste so much energy. And then, of course, they will only be available on the black market soon. Lately, a new technology has greatly improved matters in some situations: LED lighting (more on this later).

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: The GU24 base

As if this wasn't bad enough, there's a new wrinkle: the GU24 base. This is supposedly the future of light sockets - it's a new way to attach a light bulb to a fixture. Instead of a screw-type socket, as has been used for the last century, light bulbs of the future will have two pins that lock into the socket with a short twist.

The point of this new convention is to ensure you can only use low-wattage energy-efficient bulbs in a fixture. It's kind of like when they changed the size of the nozzle so you couldn't put leaded gas in cars designed for unleaded back in the day. (Oh, you don't remember that? You don't even know what "leaded" gas is? Well when I was a boy... oh... never mind.)  The point is, it's not because the old bulbs won't work, it's because they want to prevent you from using them.

There's a good chance you have never heard of this. My first exposure was a ceiling fan I bought a couple years ago. It's light fixture had a single GU24 socket, and came with a single 23 watt bulb (about 100 watt equivalent). I have never been that thrilled with it, because 100 watt (equivalent) is not enough to light a room, and of course it's not dimmable.

So now you've got two problems: the GU24 socket, and the nearly interolable CFL dimmable situation.

GU24 base CFL

Combine those two. Try to find a dimmable GU24 CFL. I dare you. Oh they exist, supposedly, for around $13 or more each. Meaning, if you have a chandelier with 6 or 8 bulbs, you will be spending more on light bulbs than the chandelier cost.

Now try to find one that doesn't have abysmal reviews. That, my friend, is something you cannot do. I looked high and low. CFLs are generally terrible at dimming in the first place, and now you've got about one twentieth of the selection you have for regular bulbs. Good luck.


LED lighting to the rescue... mostly

So far it probably sounds like I'm venting against the technology. That's not my point. I love the technology... I hate the confusion it's caused and the lack of information available to most consumers. We shouldn't all have to be guinea pigs. So my purpose here is not to grouse, but to provide advice in dealing with a frustrating problem. There is no question that the technology situation is leaving consumers with a bit of a void right now, but here are what I think are good ways to deal with the various situations.

LED lighting is a relatively new technology. It offers a lot of advantages over CFLs, not the least of which is that it's possible to make LEDs that dim nicely. Early products didn't work all that great, but there are excellent ones on the market today. The prices are a bit higher than CFLs. But when it comes to dimmables, they are a far better value:

• They actually work
• They don't seem to burn out prematurely 
• Did I mention they actually work

As with CFLs, there's still a range of quality, but my experience with LEDs has been far superior to CFLs. They are not without problems, though.

One, they can be very, very expensive. But this is changing rapidly, and many utilities are offering rebates. For example, at Costco in Maryland right now (Nov. 2012), after a Pepco rebate, you can get a fantastic dimmable 13.5W (60W equivalent) FEIT bulb (A19/OM800/LED) for $5.99. Costco's regular price is $15.99 - a bit crazy for a single light bulb, but if your only alternative is a dimmable CFL for $10+ anyway that will suck and burn out in 9 months, then it doesn't sound so bad. This is a great bulb: excellent light color, no buzzing. I bought 10 of 'em.

The second problem is that they don't put out the same light pattern as conventional bulbs (or even CFLs). Most are about the same size as a regular 60W bulb, but much of the light emits from the end of the bulb, a bit like a floodlight. It's not really as bad as all that, but if, for example, you put them in a fixture with a glass shade, they definitely don't look right. This is also improving, and there are an increasingly wide variety of bulbs available with better light dispersal configurations. The FEIT bulb I mention above is better than most, though still not quite good enough for use in a chandelier. It's perfectly acceptable for a downlight, pendant or lamp.

The final problem is low-wattage applications, again, ceiling fans and chandeliers. If you're used to using flame or small ceiling-fan bulbs, there's not going to be an LED anywhere near the right size.

What should you do?

Here is a quick guide that should help you make buying decisions.

Rule 1:  Buy bulbs that have a light temperature of 2700K-3000K

For some reason, even today, some bulbs do not have light color printed on the package, and clear guidance about what light color means is often not present. If the light color isn't printed on the package skip it. While they could be fine, they could also look like a shop light -- a much higher light color temperature that is cool, bright white, harsh, or even bluish. You might think you want a bulb that produces "full spectrum" or "daylight" -- but you almost certainly do not. These words are meaningless and confusing. We don't have "daylight" indoors, we have light bulbs. 2700K is at the warm end of the spectrum, and produces light that closely matches the color of light produced by incandescent bulbs. 3000K is usually acceptable to me, but I'd still try to buy 2700K whenever possible. Anything higher will make you feel like prepping for surgery.

Rule 2: Use LED bulbs in dimmable applications.

While they may be more expensive than even the insanely-priced CFL dimmables, they work. They also are far more reliable. I have had about 8 or so LED bulbs in service in my home for over a year, none have failed yet, and they offer a full range of dimming.


Look for bargains. Some utilities offer rebates, such as the Maryland one I mentioned above. Even if you have to pay full price, you can expect it to last years - unlike the promises of CFLs, my experience with several different LED bulbs so far has been that they are very reliable.

Try one out before you buy a lot, and buy it from somewhere that lets you return it easily. Light color is still an issue as with CFLs, but if you keep it below 3000K you'll probably be fine. LEDs can buzz too, but they don't have to - the FEIT bulb I mentioned before is totally silent.

Rule 3: Avoid GU24 fixtures where you need dimming.

I hate to advocate avoiding new tech, but at this time GU24 is unacceptable for lamps in dimmable applications. Triple-witching hour may come to you, as it did to me with my chandelier GU24 chandelier. Finding a dimmable GU24 CFL is hard - and they're terrible anyway, so you shouldn't even bother. So how about LEDs? Just try to find a dimmable GU24 LED A-type bulb. (Don't waste your time with that link. There isn't one on Amazon.)

I did actually manage to find one online at a specialty store, for 35 bucks. But even if I was willing to pay $210 for six light bulbs, the single product I identified is still too big for my chandelier. There simply does not exist a GU24 LED lamp that is small enough to use in a chandelier. If my fixture had standard screw sockets, I could probably use regular screw-type LEDs, which are much more common and available in various configurations. But with the adapters needed (see below) they stick out too much.

What if I'm stuck with GU24?

Use adapters and low wattage incandescent bulbs. This 2nd part is very important. GU24 sockets are not designed to handle the same amount of heat as conventional sockets. So use common sense. You are violating the imprint. In my case, I have 25 watt ceiling fan bulbs in a socket designed for a max. 13 watt CFL. They are upward-facing, so the heat rises out of the fixture. I have checked the sockets after the bulbs have been on for a while and they are still cool to the touch. However, if the shades were downward-facing, I would probably not do this, since all the heat would get trapped in the fixture. No matter what, if you violate the specifications of a socket, use common sense: check the temperature by touch, definitely don't ever use bulbs greater than 40 watts. (Even 40 watt bulbs can get pretty hot, so if you use them, make sure the fixture bases remain cool).

Even this is only a temporary solution. Things are about to get real when 40 watt bulbs are illegal in a year, and GU24 becomes more commonplace. There is currently no acceptable LED or CFL replacement in their typical use cases: ceiling fans and chandeliers, where you have many small, low-wattage bulbs - often on a dimmer.  Let's hope that there are better LED options by that time.

One final option: Retrofit

The final insult in my lighting excursion was with that GU24 ceiling fan. I bought two of them, and just got around to installing the 2nd one. While I have decided to suffer the non-dimmableness of the first one where it's located, for the new one, I couldn't live with this.

Using an adapter was impossible. The GU24 socket is mounted straight down; there is not even enough space for a regular CFL bulb. (The fan comes with one that's kind of squashed to take up less space). I'd need about 3 more inches of space to fit a single LED with an adapter, and even then it wouldn't be nearly enough light.

Luckily, ceiling fans are pretty modular, and I decided to try retrofitting it with an Edison socket-type fixture. I bought something like this light kit at Home Depot. Warning: do not buy that kit! It uses GU24 sockets, too! I couldn't actually find the one I got online, so maybe it's been replaced with a GU24 version now... this, of course, being exactly the problem I was trying to solve. If you do this, just go to Home Depot and open the box before you buy anything. It might be possible to buy just the necessary part somewhere, though I was unable to find it online.

The kit includes a socket adapter something like the one at right (though it has the two sockets mounted in a transverse configuration, e.g. side by side instead of butted together, so the lights take up less space). This is all I really wanted: I was easily able to replace the GU24 adapter from my fan's light kit with this part, giving me two conventional sockets. This required nothing more than a couple of wire nuts. I could then use regular screw-type LED bulbs in the light kit. It works great; two 13W LEDs produce more light than the single CFL, and of course they're perfectly dimmable.


A New Hope: Candelabra Bulbs

One thing I've yet to try for my chandelier situation is LED candelabra bulbs. These have the small screw base and there seem to be at least a handful of dimmable products out there. So I'd be looking at a GU24 to E26 (edison) screw adapter, and then an E26 to E12 (candelabra) on top of that. At least the 2nd adapters don't add any additional height. It all seems a bit crazy but if I can find a dimmable LED bulb that has decent light distribution and color and fits within the shade, I'll be happy. I've ordered a few samples from various Chinese companies on ebay... will report back if I find anything good.


Unrelated: Am I starting this blog again?

I have no idea, but after spending hours and hours trying to figure out what to do about my GU24 chandelier and ceiling fans, I wanted to add something to the body of knowledge. Maybe, but it probably won't be anything like it was before.

Blogging is Dead. 

There are 113,000 results if you google that. In quotes.

 Long Live Logging!

There are only 1,290 results for "logging is dead." And some of them are really about blogging. Clearly, blogging is being rapidly replaced by logging. Fads die. Lumber lives on!


I, for one, welcome our new logging masters.  To prove my allegiance, I am posting a picture of a skidder.

That is all.

Say Yes! to Organic Market in Petworth

This is my first ever post that's actually about farm fresh meat.

I stopped in at Yes! in Petworth for the first time yesterday. I'm not on of those people who fears non-organic food or even seeks it out. But I like stuff that tastes good, and sometimes the pesticide and/or ground-up-chicken-parts version of something just doesn't taste that good.

You know what tastes awesome?

Organic grass-fed beef.

There is no comparison between the mass-produced, corn-fed, hormone-filled stuff and a delicious juicy natural steak or burger. It is well worth paying even twice as much per pound.

You can't get such beef at Safeway or Giant. And I have some objections to Whole Foods. Mostly geographical, in that there's not one near me. I get it at Costco sometimes, but you can't go to Costco that often. Yesterday, burgers were in order, and time was of the essence. Then I remembered Yes! I don't even think it's been open that long, but for some reason, I was only dimly aware of its existence. But I remembered it in the nick of time.

It was late, and I only had a few minutes to run through the store and find the beef. But find it I did, and generally, that place looks pretty sweet. I'm sure it's expensive, but some things are worth paying extra for. The organic, grass-fed, pampered beef was 8 bucks a pound. A fair shake more than Costco (which I think is around 6?). But it was also stunningly delicious. And I don't think the Costco variety is grass-fed either.

The whole store was incredibly clean and friendly, and the produce looked very nice too. I'll be back soon to give it a more thorough review.

Traffic cameras are out of control in DC

Update Feb. 27, 2012:

The speed trap was moved one block north, to the corner of 16th & Jonquil, a couple weeks ago. The calibration lines are now in the actual intersection of 16th & Jonquil. I wonder if this had anything to do with the poor orientation as seen in the photos of my truck? If the camera was simply aimed correctly, it seems like it would have been a lot better, but maybe the curb further obscured the calibration lines in some situations.

Advice: Start using a GPS traffic camera tracker

I downloaded CameraLert and I've been very happy with it. They are a European outfit but I prefer their app to a couple other better-known ones because it's simple, elegant, and the data is verified. The downside is that their DC coverage of speed cameras seems incomplete, but I've been working on getting it filled out. The red-light camera coverage, on the other hand, seems comprehensive and accurate. I think there are some other new DC users recently because I've started seeing "unconfirmed" reports of some of the mobile speed traps.

But they've been very responsive about confirming & updating the database when I've submitted data, and the application itself is by far the best - fast, highly configurable, and stable. Submitting new cameras is a piece of cake.

I hate using these things. I don't have a radar detector. I never worried about traffic cameras before, because I don't run red lights, and I don't drive at unsafe speeds. I go out of my way to help out pedestrians - I'm that guy who will pull my car into the middle of 16th Street so nobody can pass me, put on my hazards and stop for someone trying to cross at a crosswalk because nobody else will.

But if you have to worry about making a right turn on red in the dead of night without coming to a 100% complete stop before the stop line, or get fined 150 bucks?

I mean come on. It's gone too far.

Original post:

Welcome to 2012, kids. Been dark around here for a while, but I felt the need to get this into the wild so that people searching for information on this subject will find something. I don't understand why this subject doesn't generate more outrage, since the cost to the area's residents is on the order of 300 million dollars over the last decade.

In the last 3 months, I've gotten 3 photo enforcement tickets, to the tune of about $450. All of these are found along my 5 mile commute. One was a red-light ticket at 14th and Miltary, the other two are for a newish traffic camera at the 7700 block of 16th Street.

Ticket 1: "SIGNAL PASS RED LITE"


This violation, for running a red light, comes with a $150 price tag. Unfortunately, I didn't run a red light. I made a right turn on red. Here's the actual video of me.

Now I'm sure some people will point out that I did not technically come to a complete stop (though actually, I more or less did). It was 5:00 AM. There was no traffic. I did, actually, more or less stop. And, regardless, the penalty for not coming to a complete stop is less than the penalty for running a red light.


At the end of the day, I was issued a citation for a crime that was different than the one I actually committed. I think $150 is a reasonable fine for actually running a red light. That's incredibly unsafe and I would never dream of doing that.

I think it's an insane fine for the "crime" I committed in the video above. DC seems to think that you should get your hand chopped off whether you stole an apple or robbed a bank -- and in fact, the system can't even distinguish between them.

Ticket #2: 41 in a 30

This was the first of two "speeding" tickets within a couple days, in mid-december, of the 7700 16th Street camera. Here are the photos. The top two are the original before & after, and the bottom two are after processing so you can actually see something useful.



Problem number 1: Notice of infraction received five weeks after the violation. That means, if you didn't know about the camera, you could easily rack up thousands of dollars in fines before you heard about the first one. Well heck, why not just wait a year? This is ridiculous. If you're going to charge us $150 for a computer-generated violation, there is no excuse - other than extortion - for waiting so long to send out the notification. Oh by the way - you guys also have my email address from when I renewed my registration online, for the last 10 years.

Problem number 2: Useless calibration lines, or misoriented camera. On the back of the citation is a detailed explanation of these lines, and shows how to calculate your speed from the picture. Of course, in the example, the lines are actually in the same part of the road as your car. In the actual photos above, if there are even lines on the pavement where the photos of the vehicle were taken, they are out of the field of view.

Problem number 3: Pictures so dark as to require manipulation just to see anything.

Problem number 4: It's just wrong. I was not going 41 MPH. I added the two diagonal lines in the bottom two pictures so as to have a point of reference. The first one was drawn on top of the (barely visible) calibration line that was under the front axle of the truck in the first picture. I copied it into the 2nd picture at exactly the same spot.

You can see it pretty much crosses the center of my front axle in the 1st shot, and my rear axle in the 2nd. The wheelbase of a 1995 Toyota Tacoma regular cab truck is 103.3 inches. The time between the two pictures is 0.2 seconds.

Doing some math:

103.3 in ÷ 12 in/ft ÷ 5280 ft/mile

---

0.2 sec ÷ 60 sec/min ÷ 60 min/hr

You get the startling result: 29.34 mph

Actually, this isn't very startling, because this camera is on my daily commute and I am not a moron. Even accounting for any imprecision while trying to analyze these horrendous photos, it's impossible I was going this fast. I would have had to travel another 3.5 feet - almost half again the wheelbase of the truck - to be going 41 mph.

Problem #5: This thing is as reliable as a Fiat

In the first week of January I saw people working on this camera for three days in a row. That certainly inspires confidence. But of course, if there was a calibration problem, why bother voiding all the messed-up citations, that you haven't even mailed yet from the previous month? I bet most people will just pay anyway!

Ticket #3: To be determined

I just finished writing all this up for my letter to DMV. It took over an hour to do the photoshopping, math, and so on. For one ticket. I'm looking forward to doing it again for the next one, but unfortunately, I have only set aside 2 hours per day for dealing with automated traffic citations. So that one will have to wait for another day. I assume it's equally bunk since there's clearly something wrong with the camera.

Conclusion: Want to drive in DC? Start paying "protection" money. Because even if you didn't break the law this time, I bet you did some other time!

I've gotten three tickets in as many months, probably none of them legitimate. It takes at least an hour to deal with contesting each one. Assuming, of course, that they are dismissed. If not, I will have to appear in court, or cough up $150 each.

This amounts to racketeering and extortion. It's gotten to the point where I have to pay a couple hundred dollars a month, or spend a great deal of time proving that I did not commit a crime that was photographed by a machine more than a month ago.

And, of course, if there's something wrong with said machine, or you didn't happen to know about it, and it happens to be on a regular route you use, you might get a dozen of these citations before you even know you did anything wrong.

This is out of control.

I urge everyone to contest every single photo citation you receive and complain to your councilmember. This is a shakedown, and it has nothing to do with safety. This has go to stop.

The only way I know to deal with this is to make noise and clog the system. Two and maybe three out of the three citations I've just gotten are bogus. That's a pretty crappy accuracy rate for something that collects $300 million in fines -- a number that will just be getting bigger as more cameras are installed.

So at a minimum, make them work for it. Contest every single one. But please start making noise. When you can't just drive to work without having to prove you didn't break a law a couple times a month, it's gone too far.

Home improvement season: Windows 3.0

It's that time of year again. All right, to be fair, I haven't done anything on the house in about two years so let's say "it's that time of the decade again."

I've gotten the home improvement bug, and this time I'm serious. I'm not stopping until there are palm trees in the back yard.

Last fall I bought a bunch of storm windows. The original windows on my house, while beautiful and built with craftmanship of the sort that died some decades before the drive-in theater, are a hundred years old and were not well maintained.

However, vintage double-hung windows are worth restoring. There's not a single modern window made today that will wear as well as one of these bad boys, and there's nothing even close to as attractive. Most people think that you should just get rid of old windows. Most people are wrong. A new window that's not total crap will probably cost you $1000 or more, for just one. Not including installation. True, it will provide better insulation. At least, until the seals between the panes of glass break and the vacuum goes away. Then it's just like an old window, except uglier because it's probably plastic or aluminium, and probably doesn't work as well. That's just for starters.

Restoring old windows isn't rocket science. And there are web sites dedicated to the process if you need a roadmap. While time consuming, it's definitely a reasonable DIY job for anyone with moderate workbench skills and some patience. Finally, putting new, good-quality storm windows over an old double-hung window will give you heat insulation performance comparable to a modern window.

I had storm windows made for my house by The Burch Company in Baltimore. Very nice product, and they worked out to be less than $200 each. While more expensive than the garbage they sell at Home Depot, they're not even that much more expensive, and these windows have all kinds of nifty features. Like the screens & glass can be popped in/out from inside the house, and the exterior flush mounts so they don't look like storms at all, they look like part of the window. And that's a fraction of the cost of a whole new window.

I put the first one in with last year's total window rebuild project. That took two weeks, and I had a gaping hole in the house for much of that time. Luckily it didn't rain much. This is a much more manageable project because I didn't have to actually rip out the frame and make a new one from raw materials felled in the forest.

Installing the storms is a piece of cake. The problem comes with getting the old window ready for that. Which basically means taking the whole thing apart, fixing broken and rotted parts, and putting it back together again.

This weekend I did that for one of the big floor-to-ceiling windows in our bedroom. The goal was to take the window sashes out and have the storm installed by the end of the day. The sashes won't actually go back in until later - they need to be stripped, cleaned up, reglazed, repaired, which isn't actually a ton of work, but takes several days because there are lots of phases of gluing/painting/staining/drying. So I just neeeded to get things ready enough that I could put the storm in and have a window at all.

Turns out this can be done in a day, barely. I got all the old paint off the frame, the sill fixed, some cracked parts nailed/glued, and the exterior primed so I could install the storm. I still need to paint the inside of the frame and fix up the sashes and all that, but there's no hurry since there is actually a window now!

Go vote tomorrow... because it might matter

Most of the time, voting in DC doesn't really matter at all. We don't have any representation in Congress. Our electorates always go to the democratic candidate in a presidential election.

Yet, for some reason, the only time people feel compelled to go out, wait in line, and create their irrelevant hanging chads is on those big election days. I guess it's peer pressure or something.

The reality is, if you're going to skip a vote, you might as well skip the Presidential election because it really doesn't matter. At all. No, really, it doesn't. What? Third party? No. It doesn't matter. Nope. Nope! Still doesn't matter.

Tomorrow, on the other hand, we elect a city council member in a special election.

So why bother tomorrow?

Because so few people will vote, that your vote actually could make a difference.

So go vote. I think you should vote for Bryan Weaver.

Or, get a half-dozen of your friends together and write yourself it, if you want to be on the city council. You couldn't pay me enough to do that, personally, but this is your big chance.

But there's no better time to vote then one of these special elections. It's like being in a raffle where there's only ten other people in the room. It's awesome! So go do it. And because nobody else will be voting, it will probably take you all of 30 seconds.

Google Doccing

The title of this post is the next candidate in my eternal quest to coin a term. When I succeed, I will finally be able to move on to my next life goal, which is even more difficult, because it will require the services of a midget.

We all know what google stalking is. But there's something else that lots of people are obsessed with that lacks a brilliant "internism."

Google doccing is the activity of diagnosing yourself by searching the web for symptoms of your likely psychosomatic problem. Typically, the google-doccer concludes that they are afflicted with a disease that affects about 1 in 1,000,000 people, since that is the only disease which actually may manifeste every single one of the systems that the hypochnodriac believes they are experiencing.

Google doccing itself will probably become a medically recognized obsessive compulsive disorder category. If it's not already. I know many people who've convinced themselves that they have any of of HIV, Parkinson's, an ebola infection, and lupus, to name just a few. Trust me. If a disease affects pygmys in New Zealand 99% of the time, and actually has only been diagnosed conclusively a couple hundred times in the last century, you probably do not have it.

Google doccing. Got kind of a ring to it, doesn't it? As of now, I'm the first to document its use online. Urban dictionary doesn't know about it. Though there are five google hits for the quoted term, all of them seem to have to do with using Google Documents. Which is obviously a far less hilarious and disturbing than the act of freaking yourself out by looking at horrible pictures of rashes, and comparing vague lists of disturbing symtoms to yourself.

So start talking about google doccing. But I'd suggest seeing someone with an actual medical degree, before you conclude that your disorder can only be cured with experimental drugs mail-ordered from China.

Too Clever By Half

Well, this is old news as far as webular things go, but some things never get old. One of them is having conversations with Cleverbot. If you have never done this before, I highly recommend it. It is entertaining, disconcerting, and time-sucking.

Photo by Flickr user Photog John

Jamie: Hi there.

Cleverbot: Hi.

Jamie: What makes you so clever?

Cleverbot: Who said i'm clever?

Jamie: It is implied by your name.

Cleverbot: No. My name is Cleverbot.

Jamie: Cleverbot includes the word clever.

Cleverbot: That's what you think.

Jamie: At least I think.

Cleverbot: I doubt it.

Complexity

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."

--Jaron Lanier

Roughly translated, the computer geek who uttered these words is saying that things would be simple except for it's too much of a pain to go back and simplify them.

Or, you know you're in the internet age, when you go to hook up a new gadget to your television and you discover you don't have any more ethernet ports.

What I found behind my television

I bought a media player gadget, one of these things you can use to watch Netflix movies over the internet and play Youtube videos on your big screen TV. There are a few different devices out there, I ended up with a Western Digital WDTV Live Plus.

It's pretty cool, and it basically works. Though I am still fairly baffled that coming up on a decade after the Tivo hit the scene, these things still seem fairly immature. That is, I have been able to use my Series II Tivo as a "media player" for years now. I can put video in a folder on my PC, and the Tivo can play it. It's not without it's issues - the major one being that the hardware itself does not have HD output because it's so old.

Compared to the Tivo, the WDTV is: small, cheap, has HD, has no hard disk. It works with Netflix, which is a major reason we got it. But I also wanted something to be a better media player than the Tivo.

Even though the video quality is far better, stunningly, it has some basic shortcomings that the venerable Tivo does not.

First, it plays very badly with Windows. You are supposed to be able to just share a folder and it can pull files from there and play them on your TV. I could not get it to work at all. And I'm a computer guy. I read all sorts of crap in the support forums, and apparently it's not an uncommon problem. But despite discussions about it going back more than a year, I couldn't get it fixed.

So I moved on to the next option - set up a media server on my computer. Well, this is more or less how the Tivo works, so that didn't seem like a total defeat. After some brief research I tried a commercial product called PlayOn that seems fairly well established. It mostly works.

But again, compared to the Tivo, there are some surprising shortcomings.

• No "replay" feature,which sends you back about 8 seconds.
• Fast forward/rewind are slow-reacting. It's not highly stable - if I try to fast-forward for any period of time, it craps out and goes back to the menu. Sometimes you can start playing again from where you left off. Sometimes not.
• No automatic indexing. Why wouldn't the media server, or the media player, have some basic functionality that lets you skip forward 5 or 10 minutes at a time?

Tivo Series II: Still Running

At the end of the day, for a hundred bucks, it's hard to be too disappointed. Of course, I will have to pay 80 bucks for PlayOn (unless I can find a free media server). Then I will probably have to upgrade my desktop computer, for a thousand bucks, since it's barely adequate to run a media server. Then I will have to upgrade my network infrastructure, since my wireless G network isn't fast or reliable enough to...

Progress.

It's a nice simple device to play media. It's smaller than a paperback book. It's has HD, and two USB 2.0 ports. It's dead simple to play Netflix and Youtube videos.

The Tivo worked with the limits of people's networks ten years ago. They were slow and unreliable. The Tivo server software transcoded the video to the necessary format in the background, on the PC, before it was needed, so it worked on slow machines. It would download videos to your set-top box in the background, because your network might not be fast enough to play them in real time. It was failure-resistant, if you tried to fast forward (or just play) past the end of what could be served in real time, it would just stop and tell you that, and you waited for a few seconds.

The WDTV seems to be designed around the notion that your network is as reliable as the postal service. It does not do well with a slow server or internet connection. It doesn't buffer much, it doesn't handle problems well. Basically, it fails to give me easy access to media on my home network, with all it's warts and old technology, in the way that Tivo didn't.

Is it simpler? In some ways, yes. It just doesn't work as well.

The march of progress seems to mean that we no longer design devices to work around the shortcomings of the infrastructure. If only the infrastructure was good enough that such a design made sense.

Thankful for...

Thanksgiving dinner this year took place at my wife's sister's home with both of our families largely represented. We were each given a paper "feather" on which to write things for which we are thankful. At the time, I was not able to muster much, so I wanted to correct that here.

I am thankful for my wife, mother, father, sister, and brother, each of whom have never judged me on my uneasy path through life.

My wife, N., who has believed in me since the day we met. The little presents she gets me that make a Tuesday night something special. Her silly mannerisms and pranks that make me smile every day. Her warmth, her strength of character, her depth of compassion, her love of dogs and tolerance of cats. Her smile, that makes you forget the rain. Her embracing of our quirky town house, making it into our home.

My father's brilliant, subtle wit which has always made me laugh and think and has defined my own. His unfailing generosity, his commitment to give his family the best life possible. He is a man who would give you the shirt off his back, and has done so many times when I've forgotten to bring one home.

My mother's warmth and spark. Her wonderful vision of the world, her love for natural beauty. She defined my aesthetic, my own appreciation of people, of places, of old things. She faces life's challenges with gusto, learning, inventing, and adapting to each era of her life without missing a beat.

My brother, who has always been there when I needed him, to help and support me when I've found my life unraveling. His determination to achieve and succeed at whatever he does has always inspired me.

My sister, whose smile and enthusiasm for life is unwavering. Her refusal to grow up, her constant joy, her wonderful husband and boys, her happy home, they all shape my vision of family.

Thanks to the most important people in my life. Each of you is a model of character that I hope to live up to. I couldn't ask for anything better.

'Tis the Unseasoned

Thanksgiving. It's here again. Tomorrow, yeah!

It's that time when most Americans fire up that seldom-used appliance, the range, and roast a 20 pound bird. This even includes most people for whom "cooking dinner" means sticking a London broil that Whole Foods marinated for you into the oven for an hour.

I, too, will be conforming to this most American of traditions, though the only turkey for which I'm personally responsible will be deep fried in glorious peanut oil. But I am also supposed to be making the stuffing for the other bird, which shall be roasted. The reasons for this division of labor are political in nature.

I love stuffing. It is so gooey and delicious and soaks up all the best parts of the bird. It's good by itself, with turkey, on sandwiches. It's good hot or cold. It's especially good to snack on in the middle of the night. But not all stuffings are created equal.

Stuffing comes in many forms, from Stove Top, which is something I ate at 3 AM when I was in college, to "do it yourself" which involves baking a loaf of just the right kind of bread, letting it get stale, and chopping it up into cubes. Or, if you happen to be a "homesteader" or something, using the stale bread that you already have since of course you make all your own food and waste nothing.

My personal level of cooking patience falls slightly on the easier side of doing it all myself. That means, I want to get a bag of bread that's already stale and cut into cubes. I don't want to dry out my own bread or worry about getting the right kind of bread and wonder if it will be the right texture after I let it sit for a week. And also hope it doesn't have any psychedelic mold spores growing on it by that time.

So I leave those basics to some industrial baker, but I want to season it myself with some fresh veggies, herbs and spices.

It has become nearly impossible to buy unseasoned stuffing.

I went to no less than five supermarkets before finding the holy grail you see pictured above: a bag of unseasoned bread cubes.

I finally got it an Snider's, a little independent supermarket in Silver Spring. This was after trying:

• Giant? Negative. Only seasoned stuffing from Pep. Farm and Arnold's.
• Safeway? Negative. Safeway actually sells their own brand of stuffing, that looks sorta homemade, but it is just as doused in dried onions and stale celery powder as every other brand they sell.
• Whole Foods? Negative. I had high hopes, but despite dealing with the insane crowds and pompous people, struck out again. Oh, they have their own brand too, "365 Everyday Value Organic Stuffing Mix"... traditional flavor. That means, of course, dried onions and "organic chicken flavor" whatever that is. Does that mean, it tastes like organic chicken? Is that different than "Purdue chicken flavor?" Could you have "organic Purdue chicken flavor," that is a fully-organic flavoring that tastes like Purdue chickens?

Anyway. It seems that, these days, most people are not interested in even the most basic of cooking tasks: chopping up some stuff and throwing it into your stuffing so it doesn't taste like it came from Boston Market.

It's not exactly rocket science. In fact, it's probably the easiest part of the whole meal. So why is it near impossible to find some bread cubes that haven't been infected with the contents of Pizzeria Uno's spice drawer?

Just tell me the truth, people. Am I the only one left on earth who is interested in seasoning my own stuffing?

The bag I bought was the only one in the entire store. This means one of two things. They were all sold out because it's incredibly popular, or they only had one bag at all. When I asked at each of the other three markets if they had "unseasoned stuffing" the employees generally stared at me as if I'd asked if they sold ostrich relish.

I'm guessing they sold one bag of unseasoned stuffing this year. I should probably check the date, it's probably been there since 1998.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May your bellies be stuffed, whatever that stuffing be made of.

Great Photographer: Sergey Gogolev

I wanted to take a minute to recommend Sergey Gogolev, our wedding photographer. We had an unconventional wedding. Having both been married before we decided that we didn't really want a big traditional wedding, but we still wanted to have a ceremony so we would remember the day by more than just a date. We reserved the Old Stone House for the date, and had an old friend who is an ordained minister perform the ceremony in September.

So we set about looking for a professional photographer in May. It turned out to be a little trickier than we expected to find someone. Because our wedding was during peak season, many photographers weren't willing to commit to our 2 or 3 hour session, since they'd rather hold out for a full-day client. Or they would make us pay the full price for an all-day photography shoot.

After making some inquiries of a couple other photographers we knew through friends of friends, and not finding someone who was going to work out for our situation, N. found Sergey through an ad on Craig's List. We met with him in Georgetown and he spent an hour with us at the Old Stone House and walking around Georgetown to find other good settings for pictures. We liked him and he had a nice portfolio. He was also willing do the work for us for a reasonable price. So we gave him a deposit and crossed our fingers. He encouraged us to have the ceremony in the morning because it would avoid the harsh afternoon lighting. Unfortunately we couldn't make this happen for a lot of reasons, so we just hoped for the best.

When the day arrived, we ended up being an hour late to our own wedding. Good thing there weren't any guests. But Sergey was unruffled and we began everything around 3:00 PM, probably the worst time of the day for outdoor photography in the sun. Sergey, and his wife who was also shooting, took hundreds of pictures of us in various settings for a couple hours all around Georgetown. As the afternoon progressed we felt good about everything, he had so many interesting ideas for settings, poses, and so on. Even though we started an hour late, we were never rushed - quite the opposite, I think we had to cut things off because we were both about to drop from hunger by the time we finished!

Barely two weeks later we were able to look at the pictures online. We were stunned. The package we had agreed to included 50 prints that would be edited and color-corrected, but there were so many incredible pictures that we literally took a month to choose our favorites. He gave us more than we had agreed to in the end, and delivered the prints in a beautiful customized box with a DVD. At every step of the way he was accommodating, easy to work with, and gave us far more than we expected.

If you need a photographer I can't recommend Sergey highly enough. His skill and creativity are top notch and his fees are fair. And if the afternoon lighting was bad, well, you wouldn't know it from the pictures. We couldn't be happier.

N. put many of our favorites on Facebook so be sure to check them out there if you're a friend.

Schrödinger's Blog

Hello, loyal consumers of Farm Fresh Meat! As you are no doubt aware, things have been a bit lean on the Farm lately. Sorry 'bout that. Since I last posted, more than three million seconds ago, much has happened. None of the intervening events are responsible in any way for my silence, but I thought I'd imply that they were.

From the perspective of a typical blogger, whose job is to retool some local news tidbit with his own unique, witty or insightful perspective, the last month in DC has been astoundingly bountiful. Any one of these incidents would have been worthy of a rehash, scattered, smothered and covered into delicious hash-browned blogginess:

• The DC9 situation, still unfolding
• The Chandra Levy trial
• The election and Fenty write-in campaign
• Rally to Restore Sanity
• The weather for the love of spaghetti monsters

In my own life, there have been just as many noteworthy incidents:

• I got married and had a honeymoon
• Some remarkable home improvement stuff
• A ridiculously absurd outing for a friend's birthday to a roller skating rink in Anacostia
• Not one but two incidents of harassment and absurdity involving the DC government, involving unwanted contact with such agencies as DMV and DCRA. (Isn't contact with those agencies always unwanted, though?)

... just to name a few. Then, yesterday, talking buses. I almost couldn't resist writing about that. But I did.

Or did I? Does writing that I didn't write about something count as writing about it?

I just blew my own mind.

One thing is clear. If you don't add your two cents to the great collection tray of life when it comes around, you won't get your reward in heaven. At least that's what it said on the scrolling marquee on the "Praise-A-Thon" I happened upon while watching TV the other day.

Translated to blogging, that means if I don't make some unusually insightful observation, or shockingly lowbrow joke, about whatever it is within 24 hours of its happening, then nobody will care. Having studied Eastern philosophy extensively, I know that if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, all that happens is a cat belonging to a physicist may die. The physicist is already confirmed dead, just FYI.

So, as the weeks have slipped by since my last post, a lot has happened. Pumpkins were carved and smashed, the balance of power in DC government has changed, a nightclub was closed, the weather has gone from endless summer to endless summer. I probably had much to say about all of these things and a lot more, too. But the time to weigh in on those things has passed, and time has marched on. The domestic shorthair of determinacy remains caged, its fate unknown, unknowable.

$#*! I Saw On TV Last Night

While I was anxiously awaiting the season premiere of Fringe last night, N. happened to notice "$#*! My Dad Says" in the TV guide that hovered before our eyes.

What better way to kill a half an hour, which would otherwise seem like an eternity as I counted the nanoseconds between 8:30 and 9:00? When the fate of Olivia Dunham, trapped in a a bizarro universe, facing such threats as brainwashing, a partner she doesn't have in her own universe, who will probably become a super-villian like Darkman because of a time travel accident that left his face horribly mutated, and her mother who is dead in her own world? How will she survive? Will she become bizarro Olivia???

Anyway, so I watched "Bleep My Dad Says," as they called it on TV last night.

I knew right then, before the show even started, that things weren't going well.

They said bleep.

They didn't even say "shiz" or "stuff" or, really, anything other than "bleep" which just sounds so...

Lame.

The premise is pretty simple. Kid in his mid-20's loses his job and has to move in with Dad. Dad's an old curmudgeon and doesn't make this easy. Though it sounds mind-bogglingly one dimensional, it is. Not that many a fine show wasn't based on a stupid premise. Take "Seinfeld," for example. Sadly, this is no "Seinfeld."

William Shatner didn't come close to saving it. I love him to death. He brings charm, wit and flair to almost everything he touches.

There were a couple laughs. Shatner successfully delivers a few of the watered-down raunchy truisms of the sort we have loved from the twitter feed that started it all. But watered down they were.

The edgiest things got was when the son (whose name I can't even remember) was taking too long to clean up the kitchen, and dad says, "How can you still be cleaning? We just had dinner, we didn't accidentally kill a hooker." That was kind of funny.

Compare that to this scene from Family Guy, more than a decade ago. Stewie is sitting on an actual hooker's lap and says, "Tell me the truth. Is there any tread left at all, or is it like throwing a hot dog down a hallway?"

Now that is disgusting, shocking, and hilarious. And technically not in violation of Federal broadcast laws.

The only hope for this show is that it becomes a new Married with Children. If you have one-dimensional characters, boring stories, and no obvious direction to go that hasn't been well traveled by Three's Company, then you can still make it work by walking right up to the FCC line, bending over, and farting onto the other side.

There's a place for raunchy humor in our TV culture.

There's no place for raunchy humor with a G-rated filter.

This show has to get nasty or get lost.

Hoarding & The Human Tragedy of Eviction

I arrived home to Columbia Heights from work yesterday to a remarkable scene. The sidewalks in front of my house, indeed, up and down the block, were piled high with boxes, furniture, and all manner of things. Cleary, someone had been put out of their home. Or had the entire block been put out? If my entire neighborhood had been siezed through eminent domain, I had missed the notice.

My neighbor a few doors down had lost her job and had been evicted. She is a Venezuelan woman who had moved here more than two decades ago, and her passion was to collect things that may seem like basics of life to people in the United States, but were priceless to people from her native country. Before she became unemployed, she would periodically fill a shipping container with the objects she collected, send them to Venezuela on a boat, and meet the cargo there, to distribute it to people there who could use it.

TBD said "It's unclear how long she had been keeping the items she said she intended to donate, or whether she had ever sent anything." TBD apparently didn't talk to her for very long. I remember seeing the sidewalk storage container in front of her house a couple years ago, and though I didn't know its purpose at the time, another neighbor of mine confirmed that she had indeed been doing this periodically for a long time.

It is hard to express the sadness that I felt in looking around at this scene. My neighbor had apparently lost her job about a year ago, and couldn't afford to go again. I was told by another neighbor that she had been working as a housekeeper since, but it wasn't enough.

To be sure, she could have made different decisions. I thought about all the different things that could have been. Yes, she was clearly a hoarder. If she had just started selling some of these things, maybe she could have paid the bills for a bit longer. But a middle-aged Venezuelan woman with limited English probably didn't think well heck I'll just start up an ebay company.

But, at the same time, society failed her. The U.S. Marshalls, whose job is to perform these evictions, did not need to handle this like any other situation. This woman has lived there for more than a decade. They did their job, and apparently, their job is to remove the contents of a home and put it on the sidewalk without any consideration for the situation or the consequences.

Nobody knew what was in her home until its contents were expelled onto the street.

Someone could have decided let's just take a deep breath. Let's give her another month. Let's see if we can connect her with someone who can maybe help her turn all this stuff into enough cash to keep going for a little longer. Maybe there's an answer that can prevent this tragedy and even use the very items that make up this spectacle to prevent it.

It's sad that the letter of our laws are more important than human beings.

Jim Graham was there late into the evening, and arranged for police to stay on the scene overnight to ward off looters. He and his staff arranged for a couple pickup trucks to come and transport her most important possessions to a safe place. I give him credit for at responding and offering some help to a woman in a most desperate situation.

Update from TBD

TBD says "Diaz tells ABC 7 News she was also evicted from her apartment on Rock Creek Church Road one year ago. She abandoned her belongings that were set out from that residence. Diaz says she accumulated all of her belongings that were pulled from her home in Northwest within the past year. She says she's been evicted many times before, but the latest is "the most historic." Diaz hasn't worked full-time in 2.5 years, but has done odd jobs. She is currently three months behind on her rent."

This does not at all match with what I have been told by my neighbors who have lived on the street for far longer than I. I don't know what the truth is, and I have a very hard time believing that anyone could accumulate this much stuff in a year. Whatever actually happened it doesn't change my belief that this shouldn't have happened.

Update 2 - There Is Good In The World!

First NBC reports what I previously had been told - that she'd been in her home here for 15 years.

But they conclude with this bit of heartwarming news:

"While NBC4 was reporting on the story Wednesday morning, numerous calls were made to the newsroom with offers of help, including an offer from JK Moving and Storage in Sterling, Va. The company said it would pack up and store her belongings for a month for free, and then move them to a new home -- wherever that may be."

Got Hitched

Technically, we were already. We got married last month (8/9/10) for numerological reasons. But we had planned a ceremony and had reserved the garden at the Old Stone House in Georgetown on Saturday for this purpose. A good friend who is an ordained minister (in the Church of Universal Life) performed the ceremony in front of a few onlookers and our photographer. I'll shill him once we see the pictures, but he was great to work with and I think they will be awesome.

We created quite a specatacle, with N. in her gown and I in my tuxedo as we traipsed around Georgetown having pictures taken in various settings. It was as crowded as it gets on a nice Saturday afternoon, and I the experience was incredible. Dozens of people we didn't know congratulated us, it felt very much like being a celebrity. Even as the sidewalks were packed, not a single person interruped a picture. In fact, in one sitaution, where the photagrapher was actually trying to take a picture of us as people walked by using a long exposure, we had to literally ask people to keep going about their business, because nobody would walk in front of us! And the photographer was all the way on the other side of the street, too. It was really something.

The one little bit of sour grapes goes to an apartment building or hotel (not sure which) on K street under the Whitehurst Freeway. We tried to take a picture against the wall of their entry area. We were shut down not once, but twice by a manager or doorman. Not a big deal, really, as we had lots of other great shots, but to what end? We could take a hundred pictures of their building from the sidewalk if we wanted to, and they couldn't do a thing as long as we were two steps away on the public land. Rules like this are silly. It's amazing that anyone would be so dedicated to the pointless rules of their job that they would kick a bride and groom out of the space in front of their bulding.

Well, here you go, paranoid georgetown apartment building: the wall we tried to use, as captured by Google Street View in all it's glory! Moouhahahahahaha...

It was a wonderful day and the ceremony was perfect. I love you N.