Does This Mean My Photography is Legit?

So the other day, one of my friends IM'd me and said, "hey check out this link, you should enter that Metro Center picture you took into this contest". So I checked it out and it was a transportation themed photo contest for The Washingtonian magazine's website. So I entered and guess what? I actually got one of 10 runner up spots! So counting the 5 finalists I think that's pretty good out of the 150+ total entries. Anyway, currently the photo contest is featured on the front page of www.washingtonian.com, but more specifically my photo is at: http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/9416.html

This totally makes me want to go out on another photo adventure downtown.

How-To #2: How To Lose Your Car or $125 in 3 Easy Steps or Less

In the city, one of the biggest problems is the traffic. Traffic is caused by a crapload of cars, trucks, busses and bycicles doing stupid things on the road. However, another big problem in the city that is also caused by all these vehicles is parking; and when there are too many people around the same parking area, it awakens an ancient monster from the deep: Frank, The Tow Truck of Doom.

So, Watson (my Honda Element), is a pretty outgoing car. He's really into the ladies, especially those bright red import sportscars. So one day I thought that I would do two things to help out some of these problem situtations that we typically run into in the city. I decided to carpool with a couple of my friends to work one day and let Watson hang out with some of the ladies at the local Safeway (a grocery story) parking lot. Don't worry, another one of my friends left their car there as a wingman for Watson.

Later that evening as arrive back at the rendezvous point, I notice that Watson seemingly has run off.

"Dude, where's my car?", I asked.

"Dude, where's my car?", my other carpooling friend asked.

"Sucks for you guys! HAHAHA", my driving friend answered.

"Sigh..."

I later learn that my poor, poor friend Watson was manhandled earlier that evening by burly man in a tow truck and taken off to the yard.

Thirty minutes and $125 later, I am reunited with my scrap metal friend and we drive off into the sunset together...late for class.

So, if you want to lose your car, or $125, carpool to work and leave your car in a random parking lot...making sure the manager sees you and your friends leaving in a different car. Mission Accomplished.

How To #1: Torch Your Apartment in 3 Easy Steps

The weather has been amazing this week, it's really been starting to feel like summer here in the 'burbs of DC. I went out yesterday with shorts on. Awesome. So, on to the story...

Yesterday afternoon I was talking to one of my friends on the phone before I left the apartment when I said, "Mmmm, I think someone's grilling outside because I can smell the hickory smoke coming through the window!" Well, I was partially right. The smell wasn't coming from the window, but it was coming from something that was grilling, which I didn't find out what it was until oh, about 15 minutes ago. Now let me continue in my first ever How To blog post about how to torch your apart in 3 easy steps:

Step 1)

Cook a delicious and nutritious meal including, but not limited to, instant Idahoan Mashed Potatoes using a wooden spoon.

Step 2)

Now that you have consumed your meal, it is time to tidy up! We will need to first hand wash most dishware and then place them into the nearest dishwasher, typically located directly below the sink somewhere. Ensure that the wooden spoon is placed in the upright position in the utensil rack. If you aren't sure if the spoon is in the correct position, look under the top rack and make sure the top point on the spoon is positioned above the lower point of the spinning water squirter thing, so that they will likely make contact during any of the dishwasher's cycles. This will allow for proper catapulting action of the spoon during the wash cycle.

Step 3) Turn the dishwasher to the ON position and wait.

It was at the point that I open the dishwasher today that I suddenly came to the realization that my neighbers were not, in fact, BBQing yesterday. Oh no no no, it was actually this wooden spoon that had been flipped from its upright position down onto the heating wire below, where it began its hickory-smoked meltdown. As you can see from the pictures, it definitely got a good cooking, but I suppose there was enough water to keep it from setting fire completely. So boys and girls, what have we learned here? Either don't put wooden things in the dishwasher, wash them by hand, or eat like a dirty hobo. Otherwise, you'll be torching your apartment in 3 easy steps.

Metro Parking = Crapshoot

So ever since my client has been in Chinatown, I've been riding the Metro on Fridays. Generally, parking on Fridays isn't bad at all, so I was completely oblivious to how hard it blows on every other workday. I don't know if it's just that people telecommute on Fridays or what, but from Monday to Thursday there is absolutely no parking, ever, at the Vienna and Dunn Loring stations. What's even more ridiculous than there not being any parking spots? It's that there are a bazillion people still driving around at 40mph in the parking garage thinking they're going to find one! These people are crazy! Especially the older folks and the business people. The old people take up two lanes and drive just as crazy as they do on the highways. Sometimes it seems like they just can't find their way out, like they keep going around and around on the third floor and can't get out. Even worse though, are the suits. They're in such a hurry that I've almost got hit more times than I can count while they're taking NASCAR turns around blind corners.

Buuuut, that's not even the worst part. Let's consider, hypothetically of course, that maybe....just maybe...you find a spot. When you want to leave that place, it's freaking $4.50 to get your car back out (which you can only use SmartTrip cards you get from those money sucking demon farecard machines)! Combine that with the $7 or $8 you have to spend to actually ride on the train, it's almost the same as just driving and parking somewhere downtown. Ok, so maybe it's better than driving during rush hour...and you don't have to worry about gas and things like that...but still. Maybe I'm just ranting because I'm from a town where you can get anywhere you would ever need to go within 20 minutes, and parking is never, ever a problem since there is always someone's cow pasture nearby that they are willing to open up for spill over parking for something big like a football game.

Ok, I'm done now. If you don't count all the things that suck about it, I love the Metro! Now all I need is to move closer to one of the stops so I don't have to worry about parking anymore.

So evidently I have a few readers...

...according to the only fan that I currently know of, so I'm actually going to try and make a post to this every once in a while. I think the main reason that I never actually wrote anything is that with grad school and work, I never really had time to do much else, and nobody wants to hear me write about how much homework I have, bleh.

So, once again I'm going to bring you up to speed on the past several months. First off, the lease on my apartment is about to be up. Which I'm pretty excited about, because one of my friends and I are getting a place in Ballston, VA. Now, I hope having a roommate isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I've only heard bad things from the guys at work who have evidently had bad run-ins with roomies. I don't think this'll be the case since both of us like pretty much the same things, and we'll probably just end up playing Xbox all day. Either way, It's right across from the Ballston Metro, so I won't have to worry about DC's absolutely ridiculous parking.

A New Meaning For Patriotism

So it's official. I've been accepted to George Mason University's Software Engineering program for this fall. Who knew that onc sentence could change my life so much. For at least (the very least) next 2 years I'll be living in and around Fairfax, VA. For those of you who don't know, that's right near Washington D.C.. Which is a very VERY big place. I've only been there twice in my entire life so the big thing I'm going to have to get used to is living without that SWVA friendliness and with that NOVA every-man-for-himself-ness.

Luckily I won't be completely alone there as I know several people from up that way. It seems like the more people I tell, the more say "Oh I used to live near D.C.", which makes me feel a little better.

The awesome thing is that I'll have my own apartment, which will be a first. I've never been by myself away from home before, so it will definitely be a HUGE adventure.

Element(ary) My Dear Watson.

And so another 5 months have passed with absolutely no blog post. Let me update you. First off, I'm about to graduate with my B.S. in Computer Science from UVA-Wise. This is both exciting and scary at the same time since I'll be officially in the "Real World" after May 19th. I've got a few options right now, and all seem to be leading in the direction of the Reston/Fairfax/Washington D.C. area. I'm not really worried about moving since I've got some friends up that way. It's really just the fact that I'll be away from the other 99% of my friends and family that I'll be leaving behind. I won't be able to just call everyone up and go play games or music or run to Wal-Mart like I always have.

In other news, I got a new vehicular! That's right, the parents helped me get a new 2007 Honda Element. It's absolutely the perfect car for me: enough space for all my guitar gear, hidey holes everywhere, everything is water resistant so I can throw my snowboard in there, and enough gadgetry to get my tech fix.

So, graduation soon and then probably a one-way road trip. Hope they have some good snowboarding up that way because I wanna get some use out of my new toaster on wheels.

-Ryan

New Year. Old Hat.

So we herded in the new year of 2007 with festivities at my house this year. On the list of those attending were my immediate family, Sabrina, Coby, Brett, Sarah, Ryan (J), and April. For a lot of the time we played a bunch of random games from Bubble Brain to DVD Scene It. However, we probably spent the most time playing the Nintendo Wii that I waited in line for back in November. If any of you out there haven't played it yet you really should because you can use it as an invaluable tool to persuade parents and "old folks" that video games aren't so bad after all...in fact, they may actually have some fun with it. For example, you would imagine that me, being the big video game fanatic in the household (and the fact that I own the system), that I would be playing it more than I do. Actually, Dad plays it almost as much as I do. Every game of bowling that you play, you can add a few points (usually around 20~30 points) to your overall rating. It takes 1000 points to reach "Pro" status and Dad has been Pro for at least a month and his rating has constantly gone up every time I turn on the Wii.

Anyway, back to New Years. We all played board games, the Wii and from 2:00AM to 5:30AM we played the infamous Gears of War. Brett seems to be wanting to get a 360, and so I let him play on Xbox Live for the first time during the XBLive Gears for New Years event. During one of his last matches he came back as the last person in the squad and chainsawed the last 2 members of the other team.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of all the festivities right now, but Sabrina took a ton with her new Canon SLR 30D (I think that's the name of it) camera. She takes great pictures so I'll see if I can get a bunch of those and post a link to them.