Nightmares on New York Avenue

As you know, Halloween is just around the corner. Last year those antic wits in IT turned the server room into a bloodbath, so I was rather wondering what would happen this time round.

Looks like we’re on our way.

I caught some of them putting up this wallscape yesterday afternoon:

It was a team effort, being that big. As I wandered off to pick up my print job, I heard the mastermind say that they now had to put up all the bats. “There’s a shedload of bats,” were her actual words.

Well, later on I came by with my mobile to take pix, and there was only one, lone, lorn bat on the wall:

Turns out there were indeed a flock of bats, but they have yet to take flight:

I asked one of the scape hangers about that. He said, with some bitterness, “A lot of people aren’t doing their job.”

In other news, following the contretemps in the ladies loo, didn’t seem like there’d be much more that could cause intake of breath. However, I opened the outer door yesterday morning and was reasonably startled to find this on the inner one:

(BTW: the men's loo is not similarly decorated. See above about some people not doing their jobs.)

Finally, my own contribution to seasonal decorating is this piece of my California heritage:

Boo!

Country roads

In other commuting news, I have what some regional transportation authority is pleased to refer to as an “E-ZPass”; a transponder on my car’s windscreen that allows the Virginia Department of Transportation (and other jurisdictions, were I to choose to travel outside the general confines of NoVa) to suck out enormous sums of money in exchange for the privilege of sitting in traffic on the Dulles Toll Road.

(And let me just say that it burns my bacon the way VDOT has raised the tolls on this road—without any discernable improvement to same—by an order of magnitude in the less-than-ten-years since I left. Used to cost $0.75 to go from Reston to the plaza by Leesburg Pike; now it’s $3.50.)

Anyhow, for some reason the Toll Road Authority decided to give users the illusion that they give a rat’s posterior about our opinions, so they sent out a survey last week. At one point, I think they must have been trying to get a handle on how much more they can raise tolls without risking armed insurrection, and had a series of screens where they presumably intended to give users different combinations of values (money versus time) for us to choose.

Then, of course, they’ll turn around and do whatever the hell it is they intended all along.

However—whoever designed the survey screwed up somehow, since all five of the five permutation screens were identical. I did not twig to this until I fetched up at screen four, and I couldn’t use the back button, so I’ve only got the final two screens:

This only reinforces my sense that they really have no interest at all in our responses; they’re going to raise the tolls yet again.

It also tells me that they’re all pretty much idiots.

Just a girl on the WMATA

The new(ish) series 7000 cars Metro is adding to its antiquated fleet of trains aren’t unalloyed joy. They apparently are heavier than the earlier series 4000 cars, thus causing damage to the tracks, and they’re configured so that seats are two and two, instead of the three and three of the earlier model. (This leaves more room for standing passengers, but given recent ridership stats, this may not be useful.)

However, as evidenced by what I found yesterday morning at 0536, at least we know they can be cleaned:

This is genuinely a major step forward from the older models. Trust me—looking at the stains on those decades-old carpets made me glad for modern antibiotics.

It's beginning to look a lot...

Seeing as to how we’re creeping up on Samhain, Halloween, el Día de los Muertos and like that, it shouldn’t be surprising that we start to notice, well, creepy things around us.

Outside of Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, of course. Those bloodsuckers are a year-round presence.

I’ve written in the past how the Valley They Call Silicon takes this particular holiday to heart; so far I’ve not seen a lot of that sort of thing outside of the big box DIY stores. (Although I noticed that one of the houses in my cluster has about as much Halloween décor as you can get in a townhouse front yard the size of a child’s sandbox, so there may be some interesting stuff out there.)

However—this mobile instance is something that seems the perfect symbol for the District They Call Columbia, being Pentagon-adjacent.

Gratitude Monday: Role models

You know—there are just some times when ya need yer spirit animals and yer totems, and this week is one of them.

So today I’m grateful for these reminders to me that I am more than I often feel I am, sent to me at various times by friends who believe in me.