Late Friday night it was raining and I got the urge to go take a photo. I’m a night person as it is, so heading out at 11pm to go take photo isn’t completely out of the ordinary. I remembered seeing a photo on flickr a while ago of an intersection with a stop light – it was a long exposure and all three lights (red, yellow, green) were visibly lit in the photo. I can’t find a link to the photo, but I decided with the wet roads, I wanted to try something similar and headed out.

I was hunched over the camera with an umbrella for a while trying to protect it from the drizzle (which I did for the most part). Then the cops showed up!

Now, I don’t fault the guy for doing his job. I was hunched over my tripod at midnight taking photos in the rain. There is nothing remotely illegal about what I was doing, but I know it’s not something that most people do He asked what I was doing (taking photos) and if I had any ID – which I gladly gave him. He went back to his car with my drivers license while giving my license number to whoever was on the other end of the radio.

The officer came back and then started with the 20 questions – I was entirely respectful but declined to answer many of his questions. He kept asking and saying he was required to ask and I was required to answer (not true). It’s none of his business where I work or if I go to school for photography… He even made multiple references to terrorism! Give me a break man, you said hi and checked me out, move along. Finally, he went back to his car but sat there for about 10 minutes until I left. My only regret of the night of the night was not taking a photo of him or his car…oh well, that will have to wait until the next time I am harassed.

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Tomorrow starts my 366 Day Challenge. I’ve already been thinking of revising my guidelines. Specifically, on certain days there may be something I want to use as my daily photo that does not belong to the current theme. There could be a concert I go to, or I may be traveling, or attending some other event. These would then be called “event days” or something similar. I have not completely decided yet…and I bet by the end of the year, if I have kept up with the challenge, that the guidelines will have changed a bit…we’ll see. For anyone who hangs out with me, be prepared for me to be toting around my camera much more often starting tomorrow. (To vote for or suggest a theme go to the btjones FeVote page – I’m also thinking of making a mini-app for btjones.com instead of using FeVote but don’t hold your breath)

One last thing – I posted two more photos for consideration in issue 15 of JPG magazine. To vote for me, go to my user page and click on each of the photos that say “Vote Now”.

It smells like dog food outside and I’m heading to Dave’s Taverna Express. Where am I?

I was watching game 2 of the World Series and Fox talked about Taco Bell for about 10 minutes straight. This included an interview with the Taco Bell COO, giving away free tacos to America because a base was stolen, and listening in on a player in the dugout that was talking about the free tacos. During the interview the COO talked nothing of baseball but said how fresh their tacos were about 3 times. Then the interviewer actually said of Boston fans, “we think outside the bun.” Fox you are a tool. Damn it…now I’m hungry for a taco. I’ll just have to wait for a free one (I hear they’re fresh!) on October 30 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Google Maps has implemented a great new feature to customize your driving route after they give you directions. I’ve used this a couple times since it was rolled out with great luck. Basically, after you put in your start and end points they give you a route as a blue line on the map. Then you can click and drag any point on that route and move it to the route you really want to go. It is useful if you are picking something up along the way or just want to use a different road than they suggest (the “scenic” route for example).

It seemed to work great until tonight. I wanted to give someone not too familiar with the area easy directions into DC via Interstate 66. Google Maps refuses to give directions using I-66 inside of the Capital Beltway going eastbound. I even tried having my starting address as “I-66, Arlington” and the end address being Constitution Ave (which 66 runs directly into). The first thing Google does is exit 66 and take a much more confusing route. No matter how many stops I added, it refuses to use 66 eastbound inside the beltway. It had me literally driving in circles going in and out of DC because it would only drive West across the Roosevelt Bridge.

Anyone else run into this?

I have a Hotmail account which I use almost entirely for signing up for random crap online: message boards, giveaways, shady services….it is my spam repository for the most part. I don’t check it as regulary as I do my GMail account because usually, I am just mass deleting spam. I also use Firefox (2.0.0.4 at the moment). Recent reports say Firefox has a 25% market share which is pretty significant…I have been very frustrated lately just to open and read emails in Hotmail because everything has been painfully slow. It doesn’t matter what my connection speed is when I check it, the interface is always painfully slow to respond to the simplest requests.

I decided to test Hotmail in IE7 … works like a charm. WTF? Is this a Firefox issue or a hotmail issue. Given the fact that many other sites with similar AJAX-like functionality work great in Firefox, I’m going to guess it is a Hotmail issue. I have a couple options (unless someone has a tip on how to speed up Hotmail in Firefox):

• Stop using hotmail (I have too many accounts tied to this address to give it up and am too paranoid that someone from my past won’t have my new email)
• Use Hotmail in IE (never!)
• Revert to “Classic” Hotmail (very tempting and may happen…but why must I revert to an old version simply because Microsoft doesn’t optimize their software for multiple browsers?)
• Deal with and hope they fix the issue (not holding my breath)

This got me thinking, how long have I had my hotmail email address (which was also the first email address I ever had). http://account.live.com tells me I signed up October 14, 1996 (apparently Hotmail went live July 4, 1996). Anyone else remember when Microsoft didn’t own “HoTMaiL”?

This past December, I received Christmas cards from most of my family as is the tradition. Unfortunately a few of the cards never made the trip to my box. They were sent back with a yellow sticker saying address correction was needed. Originally when Katie and I moved in, we were given a Lansdowne address, but were told that the address used to be Leesburg. I thought maybe, the US Postal Service did not recognize the town I lived in as valid…however I was getting most of my expected mail so I did not think much of it.

Last night I got an email from Geico saying they sent me my policy renewal papers via snail mail, but that they were returned to them. This could be bad as tax season is upon us and I should be getting some important documents in the mail soon! I went to the post office this morning, then after that I went to the correct post office, to figure out what the problem was.

Armed in my hands were two pieces of mail, the welcome letter I got form the USPS after I mailed in my change of address form (which was sent to my new address successfully) and a bill from my apartment complex that showed my address and the apartment complex’s addresses in Lansdowne, VA. After explaining my situation I even got to talk to the guy who delivers my mail (well, some of it). He told me there was some list with everyone who had lived at that address over the years, and since it was an apartment, the list was long. At the top of that list was Katie, followed by me….he said Katie has been getting all of her mail but he wasn’t sure that I lived there. Because of this sometimes he returned my mail to its origin. He told me that he would try to pay more attention in the future but that he isn’t always the one who delivers the mail.

What kind of answer is this? He doesn’t pay enough attention? What good is a change of address form if the delivery person is just going to decide who lives there? I would have rather he told me there was a glitch in the system, and that he corrected it and it won’t happen again…even if it was a lie it would have made me feel better. Instead he’ll just “try to remember” to deliver my mail.

Lesson learned: Always put your name on your mailbox, especially in an apartment complex.

Because of this, I’m adding the USPS to my shit list – remarkably no one has received this honor since July 8th 2004 when Wal-Mart was added to the list of elite. Unfortunately unlike the other businesses on the list, you cannot simply stop using the postal system all together.

• United States Postal Service
• Wal-Mart
• SunCom
• Shenandoah Automotive
• NTC
• The Commons Apartments

Kevin and I stopped by Heavenly Ham yesterday for lunch since we were both in the mood for sandwiches. I had never had the god-like meat from this fine establishment…should I get the namesake ham? Maybe turkey? Maybe go all out and get turkey AND ham?!? Well we were promptly informed that they were out of both turkey AND ham. So much for that idea…we ended up getting lame subway instead – oh well.

If you didn’t hear, today President-Non-Elect Bush signed the Port Security Act (HR49543 – Safe Port Act) . There’s this nifty thing Congress can do – sometime’s it’s called piggybacking…. the basic premise is to add a few small bills which are less likely to pass on their own to a big bill that is sure to pass. In this case an online gambling bill was added to the port security bill – what Senator in their right mind is going to vote against a port security bill? Certainly not one that wants to get re-elected. So the bill passed by a landslide – it doesn’t make online poker illegal (well no more than before). What it does make illegal is the transferring of funds from financial institutions to companies that accept wagers online. There are a lot of questions yet to be answered – some companies have already ended business in the US, others say they are staying. I’ll wait to see how this plays out, but right now it doesn’t look good. Stupid congress….if only there was some way we could all get together and decide which ones we want to keep and which ones we want to replace… I for one think decisions of morality should be left up to the individual and not decided for me.

Oh – and Guitar Hero II comes out November 7th. With songs from Nirvana, The Police, The Allman Bros, Spinal Tap, and (Stanus boner inducing) Guns N Roses, number 2 is going to rule.

Haven’t gotten my fire remote yet…. or my toyota keychain…

Has anyone noticed a small change in Gmail? It looks like they have decided to get rid of the standard cursor that everyone knows and loves, “|” and replace it with some kind of telephone pole, tree, broken cross thing. I realize it’s only two extra pixels…but it’s kind of odd. If they had switched to an “I” character that would have made a little more sense since some text editors use this as either the cursor itself, or the mouse cursor to indicate your mouse is hovering over a text area. I know I’ll get used to the two extra pixels and who really cares anyway….but do you think someone spent their 20% free time at google figuring out what the best cursor would be? I’m just not a fan.

Edit: I just noticed the weird cursor in the search box on wikipedia, and it doesn’t appear in gmail if I use Interweb Explorer- it must be a Firefox thing….just ignore this post up to this point.

Also I just got a call that my car failed inspection…and could costs upwards of $1,300 to fix it if what is wrong is actually wrong. (power steering fluid leak originating from the rack and pinion). I don’t think I should pay 1/3 of the car’s value to get something fixed on a friggin 97 Camry- maybe time to investigate some new car possibilities. For now I leave you with some eye candy via Tucker’s new macbook pro built in camera.

Stinking hotmail is down – it’s not like I would use a crappy free hotmail account for anything important, say – filing my taxes online. Stupid interwebs. Since I’m lazy and didn’t post this for a day – it’s back up now. But I already made the graphic with the bee so I’m posting it anyway.

Canadian born Neil Young has finished a new album titled “Living with War”. I have yet to hear any tracks from the album but have read that it is mostly a 3-piece (drums, bass, guitar) electric album, all of which was recorded in a 3 day period. The title track “Living with War” reportedly includes samples of George W. Bush’s voice over of a choir chanting “flip/flop” and even a rap. I’m, not sure how the rap is integrated into the music… I never thought I would be commenting on a “rap” or a “sample” in reference to Neil Young…unless it was “P Diddy sampled a Neil Young song for his new rap single ‘Keep on Rocking in the Diddy World’”. I really hope Young isn’t the one rapping – not sure how that would sound, but I’m guessing not good. Hopefully the album will be a hit and everyone will want to impeach that war profiteer in the white house after listening to “Let’s Impeach the President”.

The Orioles are 9 and 7 to start the season after winning 18 to 9 last night against the Indians. All 9 Orioles starters scored at least once and each had at least two hits. The teams combined for 35 hits and 6 home runs. wowsers. Only 146 games left to catch the Red Sox who are in first with the best record in the majors at the moment (11 and 4).

I am an Orioles fan and enjoy watching the Orioles play on TV whenever I can. Last year I had COX cable and could watch every televised game. Well now I live in Arlington, VA and have Comcast cable.

I don’t get games aired on WB54/WNUV (40 games), WJZ13(25 games), or obviously the unaired games(8) which combine for a total of 73 unaired games. I guess I live too far away from Baltimore to get these stations (Even though other cable networks in the area i.e. COX do have these channels). Apparently Comcast SportsNet (Owned obviously by Comcast Cable) has filed a lawsuit against the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network(MASN) because they thought they had a right to Orioles games. The case got thrown out and now Comcast is bitter and is not airing any MASN games that they can get out of (I believe this also includes Nationals games).

The only other options for seeing these games as an Arlington comcast resident is to get the MLB Extra Innings package or online at MLB.TV which I would have seriously considered. The only problem is all Orioles games are blacked out in my area because I live too close to Baltimore and am supposed to watch them on the local channels! So I live both too far and too close to Baltimore to watch 65 of the Orioles games (possibly 150 or more next season!). Pretty lame. The last and most desperate option would be to get an antenna and try to pick up the Baltimore stations over the air….I bet that will work out awesome.

From what I understand, after the 2006 season Comcast SportsNet will have no rights to any Orioles games. Since 85 O’s games appear on CSN this year that won’t air next year, there may only be a handful of games aired to DC area comcast residents which will be on major networks like FOX or ESPN. Something has got to change between this season and next, cause that will pretty much suck ass. Who suffers in all of this TV rights nonsense? The fans. Watching little dots run around the bases on orioles.com just isn’t the same as watching actual people on tv play live.

Also Comcast likes to have our interweb connection go out randomly. It’s happened probably half a dozen nights now over the past 2 months, each time it goes in and out and finally shuts off for 45 minute to an hours. I always seem to be in the middle of a poker tournament when it happens. When I contacted customer support about it, they of course could ping my cable modem with no problem They didn’t understand the fact that it was an intermittent problem that happened the day before. I told them it was out the night before but was back on now. They told me there was no way they could know that, so there was nothing they could do (I specifically asked that we be credited some cold hard cash on our next bill for shotty service). Then they sent me “directions” to restart my cable modem (i.e. unplug it for 60 seconds and plug it back in). Comcast, why must you suck?

Why must you taunt me?! I always miss the Bag O’ Crap….but I thought I had the mystery box sealed up – I was filling out my credit card info and clicked to complete everything…SOLD OUT! geeze. Maybe it’s for the best after the last mysterbox debacle. Anyone want to buy a sweet his and her watch set? Only $10!