House Update: Door Prize

Time for a brief house update. While I feel like i've been working on the house all the time, despite a couple weeks off because of the broken foot, progress is slow. Partly because I'm actually doing some finishing work, and partly because life keeps preventing me from working on the house as much as I'd like.

Finish work is rewarding, because things go from being just functional to being nice. But the detail work -- cleaning up messy paint splashes from over the decades, wall/casing boundaries, patching holes, painting, and so on-- is really just as much the devil as they say it is. You think you're just about done with something, but you can spend hours, even days, on one little thing.

A couple months ago I mentioned that the bathroom was nearly finished. That's still the case. Is anything ever really done? In order for it to actually be finished (at which point, I'm sure I'll have bashed or broken something that will need fixing), there are a few details left to take care of.

You may be able to see some off-colored splotches. These
are wood filler repairs that still need to be sanded.
The burn marks near the bottom (really the top... it's
upside down) may have come from my heat gun... doh.

One of these was the door. I was very fortunate in that this old wreck of a house I bought, for all its problems, had some very thoughtful previous owners in that the radiators, woodwork and doors had never been painted -- only stained. For the most part, anyway - the inside of the bathroom door had the standard 27 layers of paint on it. Stain is relatively easy to remove or clean up, if needed, whereas paint removal is a tremendously laborious ordeal.

I love original details in old houses, and the largely pristine condition of the finishing elements in this house was one of the major attractions it had for me. Removing paint from woodwork is terrible work no matter how you slice it, and I finally got around to tackling the one door that needed it last weekend.

I had hoped to finish it this weekend, and almost did. The picture here is the result of about 8 hours of paint stripping: Major toxic chemical bath last weekend, followed by several hours of heat-gun paint removal, followed by another chemical bath to clean up the residue. Lots and lots of work with rubber gloves, a wire brush, and a toothbrush to get all the details clean. It came out really nicely, and the door was generally in very good shape under all that paint. Though I have probably suffered irreperable brain damage from all the paint and stripper fumes I've inhaled, I think the result will be worth my reduced IQ.

All that's left to do is some finish sanding and then staining, and I can put it back together and re-hang it. At that point there are just a couple more things to do and I can really close the door on the bathroom (pun intended). The sink support structure needs to be rejiggered a little bit before I can permanently install and seal around the sink, and the floor needs to be cleaned up and sealed.

Oh - and we need the perfect shower curtain, which remains elusive. At that point, it will really be done, and I'll take pictures.

One more project (almost) down, 874 to go.

Child Safe, Amber Alert System Dangerous

A commenter on yesterday's posted noted that the full story was available from, of all places, Fox News.

As it turns out, this was an Amber Alert. The person who was actually missing was a six year old boy named Rashaun Robinson. He was apparently picked up by the "ex-girlfriend of the boy's mother," a phrase which only now raised my eyebrows, even though I've read it about five times. I guess since gay marrige is now legal in DC that should hardly come as a shock, and it didn't. It's not that the boy was picked up by his mother's ex-girlfriend that surprises me. It's just that girls with girlfriends is a lot more DC than Suitland.

But moving on. I was thrilled to discover that I had kept the recording of last night's prime time comedy extravaganza. Or rather, Tivo had kept it in it's "recently deleted" folder. I pulled out every bit of video-hacking geekery that I could muster and figured out how to get that video from my Tivo to YouTube. Now, I'm sure to all you people who watch TV online and download new Hollywood movies before they've even left the "cutting room" (if that's what they still call a digital editing studio), this is no great feat. But to me, this required at least 20 minutes of googling, and downloading two piece of free software. As it turns out, I already had said software installed on my computer from years ago, but had forgotten all about it. Apparently, I have done this before and entirely erased it from my memory, much the same way I would erase a bad Saturday Night Live rerun from the Tivo.

Behold, the Emergency Broadcast System message, above. Though in many ways you heard all this yesterday, having the actual broadcast in front of us presents me with a new opportunity to point out all the ways in which it fails.

Top Five Ways DC's Amber Alert System Stinks

At least Battlezone, circa 1980, had color.

5. 1960's technology used to produce message will convince most people their TV set has switched into "service mode."

Seriously. Is this the best you can do? A black screen with white text that will make most people think of "Pong" on their Atari 2600? I'm more likely to believe that Comcast has been hijacked by rebels, than there's a serious message I should be paying attention to.

4. The useful information is only in the audio track.

I made fun of this alert yesterday because I thought it had no information at all. I could not be more wrong. Actually, it included a name and description of the abudcted child. But only in the audio. Which, of course, I had muted, since the the message began with a seizure-inducing noise that had led me to a single, inescapable conclusion. A pteradactly must have thawed from the glacier in which it had been frozen for 100,000 years, woken up, realized that it was the only pteradactly on Earth, let out a heart-rending scream that was heard for 500 miles, and then laid back down and died.

3. What does "effective until 21:40 mean?"

The only actual information offered by the video feed is that the child abduction emergency ends at a certain time. In this case, 9:40 PM. I am dying to know how they could have predicted that the child would be found, and within two hours!

Also of note: this is not an Amber Alert, it's a Child Abduction Emergency. I guess they haven't updated this text since about 1996, when that term came into common use.

2. The MPD release gave totally different information.

From yesterday's post you can see the email I got at almost exactly the same time I saw this on TV. It said nothing about a missing child. Actually, it said the the abductor was the missing person and made absolutely no mention that, in fact, we were really concerned about the child she had kidnaped. Awesome.

1. No pictures.

Apparently, the only outlet that was capable of providing the correct information about who was missing, and also providing a photograph of that person, was Fox News.

I am not a religious man. But seriously, if Fox News is now more reliable than MPD and the Amber Alert system, GOD HELP US ALL.

Google Maps as accurate as year-long NTSB investigation

If I was that worker, I'd get the hell out of there
before someone starts moving the train without warning.

NTSB has released some very exciting documents related to the ongoing investigation into the June 22, 2009 Metro crash that killed 9 people. One of those is a line-of-sight analysis which concludes that the operator would not have had a full view of the rear of the stopped train until they were approximately 470 feet away. The investigation is not expected to be completed for several more months. The picture here is from the report and shows the line of sight from the train.

My analysis included
this awesome photoshopped
aerial view. Where's
yours, NTSB? Huh?

Apparently, it takes the NTSB about a year and god knows how much money to do what I was able to accomplish in about 30 minutes using Google Maps. On June 24, two days after the crash, I posted this analysis of the accident site using only google maps and concluded that "...the operator couldn't even have seen the train until she was within about 500 feet of it!

Yes, I am indeed quoting myself. Thank you, thank you. So with Photoshop and the Internet, I came up with the exact same conclusion as NTSB, almost down to the foot.


I also managed to duplicate those scientific-looking pictures, such as the one you see above, using my cell phone on my way home from work one day, here. Now admittedly, their picture is slightly better because the train it's taken from is not moving, which is evident by the Metro safety worker on the tracks in the picture. I give them points for having Metro workers present, it definitely adds a little "je ne sais quois" to the photo.


However, I would like to submit the following picture from the Silver Spring metro station, which does involve Metro workers walking in the tracks. I realize this has nothing to do with the crash, but I think you will agree the composition is much better than NTSB's pictures.

Dog Park Disillusionment

I'm a relatively new dog owner. The deceptively cute fellow you see at right is Jumby, who is a four-and-a-half month old terror. I mean terrier. N. thinks he is the ugliest dog in the world. That guy, ugly? Okay - he's not going to win any dog shows. He looks more like a hyena than a dog, but just look at that face!

His habits include charging full speed into Sully, the other dog, not eating his food until Sully tries to eat it, and destroying everything. Favorite thing to destroy this week: bed sheets. We now have to lock the dogs out of the bedroom, as he has eaten a hole in three sheets in the last two weeks.

Jumby's First Dog Park Excursion

N. took Jumby to the Metro Dog Park at 11th and Park, across from Red Rocks, for the first time on Saturday. The three of us went again on Sunday. I had never been inside this particular dog park before. It's really nice in many ways - plastic dog poop bags are provided, it's well fenced in, and there's plenty of space as well as some chairs and tables.

What was disappointing was the amount of trash and dog crap in the park. While I would like to blame the recent snow for some of the trash buildup, it seemed pretty clear that much of what I was looking at had been there for a long time.

The thing is, dog owners get special dispensations. We need to go out of our way to be good citizens. Anyone who doesn't own a dog probably has little good to say about dog owners. Though most are responsible, from the other perspective, what do dogs add to your life? Dogs left outside at all hours, barking endlessly. Dog crap on the sidewalk to step in. People who let their dogs run off-leash in public parks and even on the sidewalks. Aggressive dogs that can be scary to walk by, even on leash. It really doesn't take many bad eggs to spoil it for everyone. At the end of the day - there are many negatives to dogs from the perspective of people who don't own or like them. So dog owners, as a group, should bend over backwards to be responsible.

So, the Metro Dog Park was a true victory for dog owners. Technically, there is no such thing as a "legal dog park" at all in this city - the law says dogs must be on leash at all times. So when this place was actually handed over to the dog owners as a rare place that was truly set aside only for the dogs, many rejoiced. It was really perfect, since it didn't actually take a usable space away from anyone else. The land is owned by Metro, so was not technically public land, but WMATA agreed to this use.

And this is what we've done with it. Let piles of disgusting dog crap pile up all around the edges. Let trash collect everywhere. While I'm sure the users of the park aren't generally responsible for much of the trash there, how hard would it be for them to pick it up once in a while? Would you let your own yard look like this if someone else's trash blew into it? It's not going to go away by itself.

When someone goes out of their way to make a special dispensation for you, you go out of your way to show that you appreciate it. If anyone reading this also appreciates this park, why don't you show it by picking up some dog poop or some trash. Forget your self-righteous indignation because it's not your trash or your dog's poop and just pick it up. If everyone who uses this park spent even five minutes a week keeping it clean, it would actually be clean.

... and so how was Jumby's first day at the park?

Now that I've gotten my obligitory trash rant out of the way, let me just say that Jumby finally met his match at the dog park. At home he is fearless. From the day he moved into our house, nothing fased him. He has willfully attacked and goaded the much larger Sullivan from when he was 7 pounds. (He probably weighs close to 20 now). He is always anxious to meet people and dogs on the street when we walk him.

But the half-dozen dogs, all larger than him, was too much. He spent most of his time trying to jump up into someone's (anyone's!) arms. Apparently, people are far less threatening than other dogs. He hid between N's legs. It was pretty cute actually. I'm sure it must be tough to be the only small terrier in a field of retrievers and other much bigger dogs. But it was pretty funny to see him actually not be an alpha for the first time.

We're determined to socialize him, though. Sullivan has never been very good with other dogs, and we don't want Jumby to learn the same behavior, so we'll keep coming back.