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#Droneitude

The Washington Nationals have a drone flying over their spring training facility, which they claim is being used to capture photos and video.

Well, technically it is. The images the Nats have shared so far are pretty cool:

Here’s the video:

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But no matter what the Nats say, I know why they have a quadcopter patrolling the sky. In response to an incident last year, management has employed this piece of technology to protect center fielder Denard Span.

As told in this video from the Washington Post, the team was taking batting practice when an osprey dropped a fish next to Span, who says he is afraid of both birds and fish:

After a disappointing 2013 season, the front office clearly is doing everything it can to make sure 2014 is more successful. That starts with players being able to focus on baseball, and not threats from the sky.

The drone may have a GoPro on board, but don’t for a second think it isn’t ready to fire warning shots at any wayward birds that threaten the skies above Space Coast Stadium.

February 19, 2014 baseball Uncategorized
Operation Get Breakfast Get Home

With a large amount of snow predicted to hit the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, I made the decision to take the bus to the Metro for my last night of work for the week. The idea was that in the morning I would have an easier time getting home on snowy roads if I could let someone else drive.

Unfortunately, something went wrong with the plan. It snowed A LOT. Like, a lot. Before dawn, the bus system announced it was suspending service until some unknown time.

No problem, I had a plan. I started a few blocks from the Capitol with a need to eat breakfast and kill a little time in hopes the buses would start running again and I could easily get home:

I hope people had fun following this saga as it progressed on Twitter and Instagram. I certainly endured some chilly fingers trying to post things and walk in the gloveless cold at the same time. See, it was cold:

I had a clear target in mind for the breakfast portion of my day. There was no guarantee it would be open, but I had to try, and with time to kill it really didn’t matter. After making my way north to Constitution Avenue, I got a little more efficient and utilized the wonderful diagonal street that is Pennsylvania Avenue:

For most of my journey, the sidewalks were in immeasurably better shape than the roads in D.C. Massive shout-out to all the people out there with shovels, snowblowers and small pieces of construction equipment that I could not accurately name.

I turned north again on 7th Street, pausing to take in this nice scene in Penn Quarter and ponder making a snowman. Unfortunately, the snow was on the dry side, so I skipped constructing Frosty:

The cool folks at the Washington Post TV unit put together a montage of shots people took around the city and posted on Instagram. They included the photo above. Check out the whole thing here.

As soon as I got going again, I tried to do my part in letting people know which places in the city were willing and able to take their money:

Starbucks at 7th & Indiana is open. I have a more delicious spot in mind. #dc #operationgetbreakfastgethome
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) February 13, 2014

Finally, I made it up the immaculate sidewalks on 7th Street to the Chinatown area that houses both the Verizon Center and a number of restaurants, including Dunkin Donuts:

On my way into the store, I walked by what the workers said was a CNN photog. I was too cold to wave. With one of my two main goals complete, I moved onto the “get home” portion of the operation. Again, I went up 7th Street, turning left on H Street to head west across the city.

Remember how I said I was posting things while walking? Yeah, that’s a bad idea, even if there are practically no cars on the road and nobody on the sidewalks:

Careful walking next to tall buildings. Almost got clobbered by a huge mess of falling wet snow on H St #dc #operationgetbreakfastgethome
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) February 13, 2014

It was while on H Street that I really appreciated my decision to not try to drive at all. All but the biggest roads were awful:

Even more snow-covered were pedestrian plazas that only I was interested in walking this morning. Oh, and the statues:

Of course, I couldn’t walk through all that white stuff and not make a stop at the White House:

A few seconds after I snapped this picture, a tourist came over and asked me to take one of him with the Washington Monument and White House behind him. Then he asked for directions to a particular Metro station, and it just so happened that I had just been there a little while earlier (see Penn Quarter picture above).

Finally, it was time to get myself to the Metro. I went to the nearby Farragut West station to grab the orange line to West Falls Church. I may have ended up on the oldest car in the entire Metro fleet:

Ignoring the crap on the windows, I felt very good about my chances of an easy ride home once we popped out above ground:

I kept checking the bus service’s Twitter page to see if they would change their mind about reassessing at 2 p.m. and just open up since the highway looked so good. At the very least, I assumed I would be able to get a cab from the Metro station. There’s a highway that runs pretty much directly from there to my house.

No bus or cab to be found after I got off the Metro…proceeding to another location. Hoping good karma from directing another guy to Metro
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) February 13, 2014

Hahaha, no. I admit, there was a 10-minute period here where I basically just started walking down the snow-covered street not sure of what I was doing. During this time I directed two more people toward the Metro. Then I realized I had technology available to me, namely a little service called Uber. I tried several times to get a driver to accept me, but finally, Souhail said he would be there in 13 minutes to pick me up and end this ordeal.

I was one of about seven people at the station who were stranded without the buses. Everyone else was calling cab companies, and the response they all got was, “We’re not sending anyone out there until the roads are better.” Seven minutes into my 13-minute wait, I got a text saying Souhail had canceled. My cell battery was at 32 percent.

I tried again, and again it took several battery-sucking tries to get a driver to commit to me. Brian and his Honda Civic were coming in 10 minutes. He called right away, we set a pickup spot and everything was gravy. Until he called again not even two minutes later saying his car was stuck and he wasn’t coming. Cell battery 24 percent.

This time, it took many battery-sucking tries and re-loadings of the app to get a driver. This one was named Mohammed. He would be there in 24 minutes. I barely had time to read that before another text came in saying Mohammed had canceled. Cell battery 22 percent.

I told myself I would try one more time, then make a new plan. Uber hooked me up with Peter and his vehicle large enough that I had no doubt he would arrive. He was there in less than 10 minutes:

As we got close to my neighborhood, I told him he would probably have to drop me at the front since historically plowing is a pretty low priority. Even the large vehicle of salvation got only a few feet into the neighborhood before he stopped and I got out, dropping my cell phone and its 19 percent battery on the ground in the process. For everything that had happened on the way home, I was immediately validated in knowing that driving myself absolutely was not an option:

I could have taken a shower and gone to sleep happy at that point, but there was still the matter of the giant pile of snow on the front porch, sidewalk and all around my car. My roommate happened to be one his way out to start dealing with said snow, so we put in an epic tag-team effort to clear everything out. We also got a visit from a friendly plow truck:

After all of that extra effort, we decided we had earned a trip to Taco Bell. We piled into his larger car and made the quick journey down the street in search of magic to refuel us. Alas, we were met with only utter, heartbreaking sadness. A sign on the door said they were closed due to the weather. We settled for a nearby Chipotle and the hope that maybe, somehow, Taco Bell will be open for dinner.

And with that, 23 hours after I got up yesterday, I bid you good night. And by that I mean a three-hour power nap before dinner and flipping my schedule back to being a regular person for the weekend.

Happy snowy weekend.

February 13, 2014 DC snow Uncategorized
Hercules! Hercules!

It’s been a while since I deployed the “not smart” label on a post. My apologies. Your long wait is over.

Let’s start off by playing a game. Can you guess what this is?

Plastic tongue depressor? Toothpick for a giant? Diorama shark’s tooth? No, no and no.

It’s the result of ridiculously cold weather, good intentions and terrible execution.

A few weeks ago, snow and freezing rain combined to make my car into a giant icicle. I had somewhere to go in the evening, and with temperatures not slated to go above 15 degrees, I figured I would go out in the morning and clear off my car as best I could so I wouldn’t have to do it later.

The snow came off easily, but a thick layer of ice coated all of the windows. No problem. I have a trusty ice scraper that sits in a pouch behind my passenger’s seat. I unlocked the doors using my handy keyfob, and went to open the door. It didn’t budge. I pulled hard and heard the creaking that comes with ice that is giving way. I pulled a little harder, and the creaking got louder. I was almost there. I could feel it about to open. And then it happened.

What used to look like this:

All of a sudden looked like this:

In that moment a few thoughts went through my mind. The first? “That was really stupid.” The second? “Why didn’t I just reach through from the driver’s side door THAT I ALREADY HAD OPEN?”

Fortunately the third was appropriate. “I probably open this door three times a year, sooo this is more funny than a real problem.”

Besides, if you look closely at the picture, you will see that this door is already the neglected child of the four. A few years ago, someone kindly slammed their door into it in a parking lot and left me a dent and some free white paint that I declined to hang onto.

Sorry, door.

February 3, 2014 car not smart Uncategorized
Lush Life

On January 1, 2012, my friend Felecia sent me a text message.

It wasn’t “Happy New Year!!!” like several others that day, but rather a very specific instruction: “Read ‘Lush Life’ by Richard Price!”

I keep a .txt file on my computer with the names of books I want to check out, either because they were recommended by friends or just something I happened to come across that looked interesting. When I don’t have a specific next read in mind, I go to the list and pick one.

Two years after Felecia’s message, I can delete “Lush Life” from the list.

At first much of the dialogue made me feel very un-cool, whether it was the plethora of copspeak or teenage kids from the projects in New York. After a while though, I really appreciated how immersive and distinctive it made the story, which follows the run-up to a random murder and what happens to all of the parties involved afterward.

Example:

“What the fuck is a dolgier?”
“A dolgier? A do-anything soldier.”

I’m going to start dropping “dolgier” into conversations now. Get ready.

Price does an amazing job of taking the reader through the experiences of the shooter, a key witness, and especially the detectives trying to solve the case. It’s not a murder mystery since you know up front who did it, but rather an exploration of how people handle stress, the pressure/fallout of making a name for themselves, and how “doing the right thing” can mean different things to different people involved and at different times.

It’s impressive how he jumps from one person to the next as the story unfolds, almost as if he’s listening when you’re thinking, “I wonder how the investigation is going,” and then flips a switch to take you there. He also brings up a lot of social issues, especially those of class/racial disparities and how those affect the investigation and how each of the major players interacts not only with each other, but with the city. Highly recommend this one.

February 1, 2014 books Uncategorized
Death Of A Snowman

On January 3, a magnificent creature rose from the fluffy, white, majestic surface of our back deck. His name was Lumpy The Snowman.

Using the materials we had on hand, Lumpy featured a tennis ball for a nose, sticks for his eyes, mouth and arms, and a plastic flower pot for his hat/helmet. We finished him while the snow was still falling, and in the morning, we awoke to this perfect extra layer on top of our work that made him seem so content with temperatures that would spend much of the day in the teens with wind chills sometimes below zero.

It was that cold, and another blast of cruel, arctic frigidness that helped Lumpy live for 12 days.

His nose fell off first, four days into his doomed life. I will admit that the one bit of photo staging I did with Lumpy was to roll the ball back over near his feet so that it could be featured in subsequent pictures. This is also when I started thinking about his eventual demise, and began taking regular shots in order to assemble a crude time-lapse.

You’re welcome:

Oh wait, the Internet is all about doing things in GIF form now? Fine:

So long, buddy.

[Note: The person who took the time to write an entire blog post about a snowman also made up a list of the time and temperature for each of these 20 pictures, but he is tired so they are not included in any way. Autographed copy available upon request.]

January 16, 2014 snow Uncategorized video
Box 27

I am a huge fan of the redesigned New York Times website, but they failed to address one major issue that has lingered since they last revamped their home page.

For months before the new site launched on Wednesday I got to see the “prototype” version of the article pages. They are less cluttered, and every story is on a single page (are you listening, Washington Post?), making for a much more immersive reading experience. I could not ask for more here.

There was no early look at the home page, but the mostly cosmetic changes they made there are just fine with me. It’s the layout of the bottom half of the page that gets me. This section has a grid of 27 boxes with categories like World, U.S., Technology and Arts:

For the first 26 boxes, everything is fine. There’s a category and a few stories to go with each one. It’s easy to browse through and see if something catches your eye. But then there’s box 27:

It’s completely empty. A box of white space. Blankness in a sea of stuff. Box 27 wants some content, and despite the Times having a few years to come up with something to put in there, it remains desolate.

I have tried to think of an explanation for this. One theory is that they are purposely leaving it open in case an absolute no-brainer category comes up and they need to quickly slot it in there without having to bump another one. And that’s it. I can’t come up with any other remotely logical reason for not having something, anything, in there.

I sent a few emails to the Times asking them about box 27, but so far haven’t heard back from them. Obviously I will update if they respond.

All I ask is that box 27 get some love. I don’t care if it’s a category full of bad stories about me or Eli Manning, just put something in there.

January 9, 2014 Uncategorized
Extra Medium Pasta

I thoroughly enjoy when companies give serious replies to my ridiculous questions.

In this case, the problem is with pasta, which happens to be a big part of my life. I tend to buy different brands from time to time, though my favorite is San Giorgio. At some point I ended up with both a box of their shells and a box of Harris Teeter brand shells.

Notice the problem? Same pasta, allegedly different sizes. I know that most people would just eat the pasta and go on with their lives. A few would shrug their shoulders at the difference, eat the pasta and then go on with their lives. Obviously my brain is not wired like those people.

I emailed the customer service people at each company, getting a prompt reply from Harris Teeter, and hearing back from San Giorgio a few weeks later. Both of their explanations were illuminating, but in different ways.

Harris Teeter said there is no standard on shape or size among the manufacturers, and that pasta that looks the same can be given different names.

“These particular pasta shells, shape #011, are referred to as ‘Shells,’ ‘Medium Shells,’ ‘Large Shells,’ ‘Sea Shells’ depending on what branded or private-label it is being packaged into,” they said.

With San Giorgio, it was more like the situation you might see at a movie theater when you order popcorn or soda. You know, the way you order a large and then find yourself aghast and asking, “THAT’S a large?! What’s that bigger one then?” The kid behind the counter points to a truly epic cup and tells you it’s a “jumbo.”

That’s how San Giorgio sells shells (not sure if any seashores are involved).

“San Giorgio shells come in 3 different sizes,” they said. “Small, Large and Jumbo. In a case like this the large and medium would be the same.”

Now you know the pasta aisle is the Wild West of the grocery store, where large is medium and everyone is trying to claim territory (in your pantry).

January 9, 2014 food Uncategorized
15 in ’13

My year of reading began with returning to a book I first read in 1999, and ended with a book I first read in 2012.

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December 29, 2013 book recap books
Counting Down 2013

My yearly “best of” lists have been growing, from nine posts in 2009 to 10 in 2010, 11 in 2011 and yes, 12 in 2012. Obviously that pace is unsustainable without creating a ridiculously big list, especially in years like this one in which I somehow am now posting for only the 56th time. I promise to write more next year. For now, let’s just make the recap thing a 10-best post ranked from one I liked to the one liked the most. Enjoy!

10. Blue Horse Dragon In The Night
My friend commented that a picture and description I posted of a carousel seemed like the start of a short story. Challenge accepted.

9. Throwback Jersey
In a video from 1996, 12-year-old me faces tough questions about our baseball team. In a picture from 2013, much older me puts on my jersey from that summer.

8. Mady Is Not Impressed
As an uncle, I have been tasked with teaching my niece a few things, chiefly about baseball. I took it upon myself to add another item: McKayla Maroney’s “not impressed” face.

7. Just Say No
I noticed the Topps baseball card company was warning its product is not safe for kids under the age of 6. Their answer as to why surprised me.

6. Will The Last N64 Baseball Player Turn The Lights Out?
Sometimes I ask questions that require far too much time to answer. This time it was which player from Major League Baseball with Ken Griffey Jr. would be the last remaining player in the league in real life. We’re down to just a few left.

5. Always Walk-Offs In The Banana Stand
Using a scoreboard message at Nats Park to land an Arrested Development joke. Thanks to the Internet, we know at least a couple of people noticed. Success!

4. Happy Place
Also thanks to the Internet, I make a comment about Happy Gilmore, one of my favorite movies of all time, and the lead actress responds to me.

3. Signs Of Natitude
I tap into my extensive shoe-selling experience to answer a question for a couple of Nationals pitchers. One of them does the utterly unnecessary and sends me cool stuff in return.

2. Harper Goes DEEP To Right
Bryce Harper stars in a commercial slugging baseballs that land at different spots around the city. I break down the awesome nature of those hits.

1. Chasing Olga
Probably my favorite post on the entire blog. The month I spent getting intentionally catfished by “Olga.”

December 26, 2013 best of Uncategorized
The Russian Machine Almost Broke Me

Today I almost died in a way that would have been kind of an okay way to go.

I needed to finish up some Christmas shopping, and it just so happens that there’s a mall conveniently located on my Metro route home that doubles as the practice site for the Washington Capitals.

After picking up my last item, and stopping in the team store, I settled into the bleachers to watch practice:

I hung out for a little bit as they ran through a few sets of drills. But then I felt the urge to get a little closer to the action, so I walked down to a spot behind the nearest goal:

From here I had a much better view of the guys and got a greater appreciation for their skating. I also got to hear just how LOUD the pucks can be when they slam off the glass three inches away from your face. As they transitioned between two drills, Alex Ovechkin took a sharp-angle shot from the left of the net that skipped off the crossbar and up out of the rink.

The puck flew all the way to the wall behind the bleachers and slammed off one of the “Kettler” signs.

Where did it come down? How about the exact spot where I had been sitting five minutes earlier.

It wasn’t in the vicinity, the general zip code or kinda near where I was. That puck would have hit me in the back of the head (or the nose if I had turned around). Since I got my hair cut yesterday, it’s doubtful I had enough protection left to shield my skull.

Bullet, or should I say puck, dodged.

December 19, 2013 hockey Uncategorized