This Is What I Look Like Now: 10 Years in Driver's Licenses

My birthday is tomorrow, and thanks to coronavirus, it's going to be damn uneventful. I doubt I'll even do birthday trivia responses on Facebook; maybe in a few months.

I will take the opportunity, though, to compare and contrast my new (redacted), REAL ID-compliant driver's license:


I went to the Sterling DMV on a Thursday morning a few weeks ago, just before the 8am opening, waiting an hour and a half before getting my shot. 15 minutes later, I walked out with a voided driver's license. I didn't realize they mail the new one to you, and I just started a new client gig in a federal building, so I had to carry my passport around until I finally got the new ID the following Wednesday.

Getting the license took 3 attempts -- the first was because the mobile DMV2Go was a no-show at the Reston Town Center (I was trying to be clever and avoid lines; instead, I ended up sideswiping a parking garage pillar going against morning traffic); the second was at a DMV Connect at the Herndon Library (got there waaaaaay too late), before I finally gave in and went to a normal brick and mortar location. At least I had all my papers.

Reston Quasi-Quarantine Walkabout, 3/22/20

This is mostly just a reminder to my future self that in the Spring of 2020 we were in the middle of dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, with mandatory telework, social distancing, and shutdowns of schools, mass gatherings, and nonessential businesses.

I've been teleworking for two-and-a-half weeks now. I've made just 2 trips to the grocery store, one trip to Carpool to get takeout, and a brief stop at Jackson's in Reston Town Center before things really started shutting down.

Sunday, it was clear but cool for the peak of the cherry blossoms (a no-go due to crowding); I figured I'd take a walk around town, maybe get a photo of the local blooms and pass them off as from the Tidal Basin.

Here's an upskirt shot of 1900 Reston Metro Plaza (I refrained from using that phrase in the Flickr description... didn't want to attract any more Flickr pervs than I already have. It's 2020 and people are still using Flickr to feed their fetishes. I don't even check my notifications any more; it's just Flickr pervs favoriting photos of feet and belly buttons from 12 years ago.)



Anyway, I went through Wiehle Metro station, which was deserted, as was Plaza America. Also took a few photos of blooms and bushes with my Pixel 3A in Portrait mode to get some depth of field, but apparently when I deleted the unused photos in the burst, I somehow deleted the photos from my camera roll. Annoying.


After going down Sunset Hills to Reston Parkway, I stopped by Halley Rise, home of the future Wegman's.


Then, I picked up some chicken pad thai at the new Thai place in Reston Heights, My Home Thai Bistro. Bad time to open a restaurant. The noodles were vermicelli-style, not flat, which was unexpected but okay, and they did cut steam vent holes in the box.


For the last image, I saw a baggie of weed in the street by the curb (not saying where) and actually did a double take when I saw it. Assuming it wasn't a hidden camera YouTube prank, it probably fell out of a pocket when getting out of a car.

Having just taken a piss test (first one that wasn't for a physical) for a new client gig, I maintained social distance while taking the photo.

Rocking to OK GO With the Drone Lobby

I get the feeling that the off-duty National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency employee who drunkenly crashed a drone onto the White House lawn didn't know or sign on to the drone lobby's voluntary "Know Before You Fly" guidelines.

You know, the guidelines they were pushing just last week -- topped off by a free (well, mostly free) OK GO concert at the 9:30 Club?

The one that says "Do not fly under the influence of alcohol or drugs"?

And has a bit about not flying near or over sensitive infrastructure or property?

Not to mention prompts drone pilots to follow all local laws and ordinances? (Which, in this case includes the Flight Restricted Zone that covers most of DC. There's a prescient bit in that Time article from May 2014 on the likelihood of getting caught: "Doubtful, unless you upload the video to the Internet, crash spectacularly, or get way too close to a really sensitive area like the White House.")

Now, while it may not be great news for the drone lobby, I would guess that it's going to be great advertising for the DJI Phantom line.

And on that whole "drone" thing -- sorry, guys: You've lost the "drone" war. Despite the connotations of the word drone that you don't like (Hellfire missiles raining death upon insurgents and wedding parties with equal impunity) and the fact that drone is, admittedly, a term that lacks nuance, the terms you're trying to push -- UAS (unmanned aircraft system), sUAS (the same, prefixed by "small"), RPA (remotely piloted aircraft) -- they've all got too many syllables.

Get it down to cute nickname that's two-syllables (tops), then we'll talk about not calling them drones.

Anyway, here are my photos from the concert. Doors were at 7pm, I got there around 8, so I can't attest to the existence of a pre-show drone advocacy timeshare-like presentation; all I know is that there were more jackets and ties than I'd ever seen before in the 9:30 Club, they showed OK GO's I Won't Let You Down, and some guy who I'd been standing next to at the front left of the stage (presumably, a bigwig from the Small UAV Coalition) got onstage and gave a short introduction.

OK GO frontman Damian Kulash in front of adoring drone and/or OK GO fans.

Damian Kulash with a quadcopter drone that someone was trying to exchange for backstage passes for their upcoming New York show.

"Know Before You Fly" banner.

I took many pictures of the guy working the confetti cannon. This is the only one that I liked.

There was a lot of confetti.

Two Jurisdictions Find My Car Photogenic

Why Is That SUV Sitting by the Side of the Interstate With Its Lights On?
Digital Photograph
2012, Prince George's County, Maryland
Courtesy of the State of Maryland
I was jarred from my post-Christmas reverie by two quick flashes by a work zone speed camera off I-95, serving as a not-so-subtle reminder of the return to non-holiday life.

Two Hours Should Be Plenty
Digital Screenshot
2013, Washington, DC
Courtesy of the District of Columbia
A statement on the "Penny-wise, pound-foolish" nature of local government spending. In this case, saving a dollar resulted in the loss of twenty-five.

For My Birthday, I Got Lactose Intolerance

My birthday was last month. 41, for those keeping score at home.

It was right about then that I discovered I had become lactose intolerant. Adult onset is apparently not uncommon, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

Naturally, I've had to adapt my grocery shopping:

For straight up milk drinking, there are plenty of substitutes (lactose-free, almond, soy, etc., though I'd probably take it easy on the soy), but I still have a bunch of whey protein powder I need to get through.

Also, this puts a crimp in my plan of storing condensed milk in my emergency food supplies. (Condensed milk is super high-calorie and was used as a compact field ration for Civil War soldiers.)

Other than that, I've never been a huge cheese person -- I can take it or leave it (outside of pizza, I guess). It's just irritating.

Other Things That Happened in Year 40
Outside of my immediately previous post about a particularly intense period of deja vu (it reads like a fever dream; I wasn't on anything, honest), it's been silent running here on the blog. Not too much on the Facebook or Twitter, either.

I usually say bloggers should ignore unannounced, extended interruptions in posting -- just pick up where you left off like nothing happened. (This only applies to personal blogging, not corporate or professional.) In my case, though, it was part of a bigger hunkering down.

I left my job last March. Since then, I've been mostly half-assing it around -- small projects, bits and pieces. I haven't been hustling around town as much in this go-round as I did after I left (er, was asked told to leave) AOL in 2007, when I was going to every tech meetup, lecture, and unconference they would let me in to, for fun.

Just as then, I haven't been doing any major travel or huge projects or lifestyle changes. If two data points is enough to draw a pattern, when I'm not working, I tend to turn into something of a hermit, so I have to fight that impulse.

Now, I haven't been doing nothing nothing. Witness:

* I saw the Discovery fly-in to Dulles:

* Grew facial hair:

 

* Researched some documents about my Dad at the National Archives:

 

* Volunteered as a victim in a Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Hazmat drill:

  

And did a bunch of other stuff -- Wikimania, San Francisco trip, visited Mom & Dad for Dad's radiation therapy, etc.

Now, though, it's been over a year, so it's time to get back into the game. More on that, later.

For now, though, I'm going to get back to writing, both here on the blog, and hopefully elsewhere too.

Pictures of People Pulling a Plane

I went to the 2011 Dulles Day Plane Pull on Saturday. It didn't rain. I took a bunch of photos. Most of them involve people pulling a plane (Krystle, a FedEx Airbus A310-221) that weighs 160,000 pounds empty.

If you like looking at the fronts of planes and the backs of t-shirts, there are shots like this:

Team FGM.

Though I preferred trying to see people's faces. This one was from the side:

Note the specific lack of "plane" in this shot.

Team Codgers.

The photos I liked best, I shot from the tail of the plane, looking forward, using the 10x zoom on the Nikon. There still wasn't a lot of plane, but you can see the nose gear:

The best expressions of the day.

There's a few more of this team, some showing less effort, some more.

I like the UPS plane tail in the background.

The Shooting Divas of DMV, an all-woman team.

They seem awful happy.

Effort.

Team TSA. There were several jokes made about Team TSA being allowed to keep their shoes on.

Every bit helps.

Non-Pully Things

There were also a lot of non-pully things, including an Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger airliner:

The Airbus A380 is quite large.

Danger -> | <- Danger

Strong robot presence (thanks to the Alexandria Police Department.)

There are also a bunch of photos of A-10s, a C-17, B-25 and more hardware from the Alexandria PD.

Finally, I bought a large pizza for $5 as I was leaving.

Pints of Guinness and Fountains of Wayne

Sunday was interesting. As threatened, went to O'Sullivan's for brunch, where I started with Guinness and Eggs Benedict, and ended with a Black and Blue:

Guinness layered over Blue Moon.

There may have also been a Baby Guinness in the mix, which would explain why I missed the opening act of the Fountains of Wayne show at the Birchmere.

One good thing about going solo to shows at Birchmere, though, is that you can get there an hour after the doors and still get a seat right up front:

Fountains of Wayne frontman Chris Collingwood.

Of course, that doesn't help when your new (refurbished) camera dies after two shots because you forgot to check the battery.

I ended up using the new smartphone; this is the least unusable shot, when the band pulled up a few ladies from the audience to shake their maracas during a song:

Was it Mexican Wine? I forget.

Brightest Young Things has a writeup, which mentions the cover medley in the middle of Radiation Vibe, featuring Peter Frampton's Do You Feel Like I Do; Mad World; and Blue Oyster Cult's Burning for You... though it notably missed the starter, Wings' Jet.

Another notable moment was when bassist Adam Schlesinger called out a guy recording video with a Flip mounted on a table, noting that he'd be getting great shots of the back of head of the guy in front of him.

Later, after noting the fellow had apparently gotten kicked out for violating Birchmere's "no video" rule, Schlesinger apologized, saying that in this age of YouTube, he wasn't trying to get the guy ejected, and invited him to come as their guest for Monday's acoustic show.

Speaking of acoustic, the band played an acoustic-ish take on Stacey's Mom to start out their encore.

It was a good show -- I picked up their new album to give a deeper listen (I hadn't realized they'd switched labels to Yep Roc), as well as a few t-shirts.

On the way home, I stopped by Galaxy Hut to catch a bit of the karaoke. It was not that crowded towards midnight, though I wasn't tempted to try singing any FOW songs (they're out of my very limited range, anyways.)

I'm not usually a Sunday drinker; between brunch, the show, and the post-show, it was not a very restful and recuperative way to end the weekend.

Joelogon Photo Hunt

I got a Google alert a few days ago that one of my Creative Commons-licensed Flickr photos was being used in a Forbes blog entry, "Moody’s Threatens America’s AAA Credit Rating, Blames Debt Deadlock." Here it is:

Now, as I am not White House photographer Pete Souza, it's pretty clear that I didn't take this photo. However, the photo on the White House Flickr stream carries the "U.S. Government Work" license (that is to say, it's public domain), though the photo description has an additional disclaimer that says as an official White House photo, it should not be used in a way that "suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House." In either case, we're cool.

(As a reminder, I saw the photo in a GovExec story, and submitted it to Fark with a headline, "Photo surfaces of President Obama refusing to shake the hand of a disabled janitor," which still makes me giggle.)

Looking around regular Google and Google Image search, I did find a few other recent photos being used (and properly attributed, thanks). Here are some (not including a bunch that show up in spam blogs):

[Update: Although I mentioned proper attribution, I forgot to explicitly mention that nearly all of my Flickr photos are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0), which means that as long as people attribute the photo and flow the license down to any derivative works, they can use it, even for commercial purposes. However, other things, like model rights, still apply.]

The Washington City Paper used one of my falafel photos for story about Amsterdam Falafelshop and its franchising strategy.



Here's a photo of Swami Yohmami from the 2007 DC Fringe Festival, used by the Washington Post's Apartment Showcase blog entry about the 2011 Festival.




Here's my friend Dave, illustrating grill mastery in a blog entry, The Man’s Guide to Grilling (that Every Woman Should Know)



On a prosaic note, here's some of my (long-gone) soda cans in a blog entry about soda consumption.



LAist used my photo of a stingy tip on a New Year's bar receipt for an article about tipping.



And last for now, a blog highlighting feel-good stories from DC used a Metro station photo to illustrate Home of the Fare Deal.

Hollywood Guns Exhibit at the NRA's National Firearms Museum

Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, I was coming back from Fairfax and stopped off at the NRA's National Firearms Museum, which I hadn't been to since just over four years ago.

(It being Rolling Thunder weekend, there were a bunch of folks in town to ride. Clearly.)

The core exhibits were about the same, though they upgraded both the info kiosks and the website -- the kiosks are now touchscreen and a lot easier to use, and a good portion of the collection is online and searchable, so you can theoretically use your mobile browser to get information on any given firearm, without having to run back and forth to the info kiosks.

You can see full set, National Firearms Museum, Fairfax, VA, 5/28/11, where I mostly tried to take photos of items I hadn't seen before.

Below, though, are photos from the special exhibit on Hollywood Guns, featuring real guns, rubber guns, and other props from famous movies.

By far, this is the best presentation of movie gun and poster:

It's the Reservoir Dogs poster, featuring Harvey Keitel's Mr. White's 9mm Smith & Wesson 639 and Steve Buscemi's Mr. Pink's 9mm Smith & Wesson 659, with the actual guns placed in the spots where they appear as held by the characters on the movie poster. Tres cool.

Next, Keyser Soze's Smith & Wesson 6906 from The Usual Suspects -- note, in the scene where it's used (and not by Kevin Spacey, as the card notes), it's held gangsta-style (sideways).

Tom Cruise's .45 Heckler & Koch USP from Michael Mann's Collateral. I still think the ending is bogus -- there's no way Jamie Foxx's taxi driver Max would have outshot Tom Cruise's hitman Vincent.

Sir Alec Guinness's Obi Wan Kenobi's lightsaber from Star Wars. This is the second lightsaber in the museum, with the first being Luke's lightsaber in the main collection (which I believe is misidentified on the site).

Javier Bardem/Anton Chigurh's suppressed 12 gauge Remington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun from No Country for Old Men.

Johnny Depp's Thompson .45 submachine gun from Public Enemies.

Also, Christian Bale's Mauser Sporting Rifle and a Winchester Model 1907.

Die Hard guns, including Bruce Willis's MP-5 (converted from a HK-94) and Beretta 92 (also used by Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon and Alan Rickman's HK P7. Also seen: John Wayne's suppressed Mac-10 from McQ (which I haven't seen) and Denzel Washington's 9mm Browning Hi-Power from American Gangster (which I've only seen on basic cable).

Clint Eastwood's Remington 1858 New Army .44 revolver from Pale Rider, with cylinder-swapping goodness. (By the way, what happened to Sydney Penny?)

Andrew Dice Clay's .38 Smith & Wesson Model 38 from The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, which, thankfully, they are not rebooting (as far as I know).

Rubber Beretta 92FS from Lethal Weapon.

Clint Eastwood's .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29 from Dirty Harry.

Guns from The Departed, including Mark Wahlberg's Beretta 92FS, Jack Nicholson's 9mm Beretta 84, Matt Damon's .45 Sig Sauer P228, and Leonardo DiCaprio's .32 Walther PPK.

Also seen: Anton Chighur's suppressed 12 gauge shotgun from No Country for Old Men.

The Wild Bunch guns, including a A1 Browning belt-fed machine gun and a rubber model of William Holden's 9mm Star B.

Also seen: Baby Nambu from Letters From Iwo Jima.

Heath Ledger's sawed-off, cut-down Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun from The Dark Knight.

HK UMP .45 submachine gun from Terminator 3. (The NRA museum listing photo shows an MP5, though.)

And last, but not least, Nathan Filion's Malcolm Reynold's pistol from Serenity, a modified .38 Taurus revolver inside a brass shell.

There are a bunch of other movies that I didn't take, mostly Westerns. See the full set from the museum here: National Firearms Museum, Fairfax, VA, 5/28/11