Oh look, fire trucks

I was driving on Old Georgetown Road on Tuesday and noticed that Del Ray Avenue was closed and there were lots of fire trucks. I took a look around and it seemed like the activity was around 4930 Del Ray Ave. home of the American Gastroenterological Association. (If we were playing scrabble, that would be worth a lot of points). It didn't look like there was a fire, no smoke or hoses, but I counted 9 fire trucks, two rescue squads, one ambulance, a couple of police cars and a couple of other fire-related equipment.

A bit of digging on the BCCRS web site suggests it was a Box alarm for a building of higher than 7 stories. This should bring out five engines, three trucks, one rescue squad, one ambulance, two duty officers. That is pretty close to what I saw. I had to look around the Bethesda Fire Dept website for the definition of a box alarm. As best I can tell, it just means they got an alarm call and this is the pre-planned set of equipment they send to the scene before they know if it is really a fire or not.

There is actually a difference between fire engines and fire trucks, fire engines have hoses and pumps, fire trucks just carry equipment. I am not entirely sure, but I think there were 5 engines and 4 trucks there.

If you know anything more, post it in the comments.



[where: 4930 Del Ray Ave, Bethesda, MD]

Dow 10,000 Party!

The dow first broke the 10,000 point barrier in March of 1999. There was much celebrating. On October 6, 2008 the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 10,000 point mark again, but this time on the way down. In honor of it closing below 10,000 for the first time in years, the next day we had another DOW 10k party. It wasn't quite as festive. Hopefully we won't have to have a dow 5,000 party.

This is reminiscent of when the dow hit 1,000. I looked it up since I don't personally remember it. The dow first closed above 1000 in November of 1972. The last time it closed below 1,000 was in late 1982, a full 10 years later. We are about 9.5 years after the first close above 10000 and it seems likely that we have at least another half year, so we will probably beat the 1,000 record. So far, it hasn't been as bad though, after hitting 1,000 there was a horrible bear market and the dow bottomed at 577.

Looking back at the parks half marathon

It has been a few weeks since the Parks Half marathon in Montgomery County, and, as I posted earlier, I took a bunch of pictures. I figure now is a good time to reflect on the experience.

It was actually more fun than I expected. My expectations were fairly low, I mean, standing in one spot for a couple of hours hitting the shutter button over and over and over isn't high on my list of things to do before I die. Maybe I picked an unusually good spot (right after the tunnel under MD-355) because I saw several runners who were being encouraged by friends and/or family, even a family running together. I also enjoyed the person who started juggling when he saw the camera. I got a good percentage of the people who ran by, but there were many groups of people (more than I expected) and there were sometimes people who's number was obscured the whole time. On the flip side, there were also a couple of people who straightened out their number when they saw me. I was surprised at how good people looked. After 13 miles of running on a very humid day I expected to see more people barely hanging in there, but most people looked like they could keep going a few more miles.

After posting the pictures I went hunting for blog posts about the race. I found a few posts. It was interesting to read about the race from people I saw (and in most cases had photographed). One particularly interesting one was by a woman who found out she was pregnant after finishing the half marathon.

On the photography side, it wasn't hugely challenging, the hardest parts were trying to make sure that I got a photo of each person in a group, where that person was in focus. Framing wise, I wasn't sure if it would be better to zoom in on a runner, or show a bit more of the surroundings, and if I should take it as a portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal). Overall, I think the portrait close-ups came out best, however, if I had a more interesting background they might have come out better (your suggestions are welcome). Swapping memory cards was also a challenge, both getting a new one out while still taking pictures and making sure I didn't run out of space right as a big group went by. Once I got home going through the pictures and adding the bib numbers was a time consuming chore, it took much longer than I thought it would.

I'm not sure if I will do it again, in many ways I would like to, but the bib-numbering was a huge time sink. I could easily get to the start of the race, take pictures, then drive to the end of the race and take more. If I do it next year I will probably set up before the tunnel so there will be more trees and trail in the background instead of bare concrete.

Taste of Bethesda is coming up on Oct 4

It's that time of year again, Taste of Bethesda is on Saturday, October 4, 2008. If you've never been, you should go. It is a chance to sample food from a bunch of the restaurants in downtown bethesda. They close off some of the streets in the Woodmont Triangle area and you can buy tickets for samples of the food. They also have free live music and stuff.

[where: Bethesda, MD]

Testing out MoneyAisle.com

Money Aisle is a web site that tries to match you to a good rate on certificates of deposit at participating banks. The concept is great, you tell them the amount of money and the term of the CD and 70 or 80 banks bid for the rate. The upside is you don't have to accept the winning bid, so trying it out doesn't cost you anything or commit you to anything. If you accept the bid, you open the account directly with the winning bank (all are FDIC insured)

I actually want to open a CD so I was interested in finding out if I could get a better rate there than anywhere else. I compared the results here with what I found on BankRate.com and eloan.com (a single bank, but one with high rates). I ran several auctions, to find the impact of term and amount invested on the resulting rates.

First, $10,000 for 1 year (all of eloan's cd's have a minimum amount of 10,000). After a minute of bidding, the winner on MoneyAisle was... eloan, the site I had independently identified, and, the rate was exactly the same, so I gained nothing by using moneyaisle for that one.

Second, I ran an auction for a cd of $4,000 for a 3 month term, the winning offer was about 3.26%. I went to the winning bank's website and the rate they offered was 3.25%, so there was a very slight gain by going through moneyaisle. I re-ran the auction for $5,000 to see if more banks participated, but got the same winning bank, this time with a slightly better rate of 3.28% I liked this, I really was getting a higher rate from the bank by running an auction!

I then looked on bankrate.com and it turned out that there are half a dozen banks offering rates higher than that and I don't have to go through an auction.

In the end, the moneyaisle.com auction didn't get me the highest rate available, and didn't even get me a much higher rate from participating banks. The idea has promise, but if you try it, make sure you also look at bankrate.com to verify that you are getting the best rate. Until they can beat the best rate at bankrate, they are not the best choice for finding CDs.

Playing at Bonkersville

The beach is made for warm sunny days, not windy, rainy ones. So, what should you do on a rainy day at the beach? I went to Bonkersville. It is an indoor play place with some large inflatable play stuff. A really big inflatable doulbe slide, a maze with a big slide, another maze inflatable thing, and a moon bounce/slide. Yup, everything there included a slide. All that in a big room with a padded floor and a big open space for running. They also have a wooden train table and some areas set aside for parties.

We were the first ones there, about 15 minutes after the place opened. It wasn't crowded at all, but then, it was a school day. At first I was worried that there wouldn't be enough to do, but my kid had fun running and climbing, getting pretty tired after an hour. It made for an extra long nap that day, which is my criteria for success. Once you pay, your good for the whole day, so we left and came back late in the afternoon to burn off more energy. They also have free wifi, so I was able to surf the internet on my phone, which was a nice bonus.

It is reasonably priced and good for an hour or two of activity. I think it would be best for a small group of kids, like a play date. It also sounds like an excellent party idea. We almost went back the next day too, but the weather cleared so we were back at the beach.

The major downside is that they don't allow outside food and drinks, that kind of bugs me, since it is clearly not for a good reason except to enhance their revenue (You can't bring a bottle of water in, but you can buy one there).

I couldn't help but think of was it could be improved, and came up with a few suggestions, More comfortable chairs for the adults would be one, as would beanbag chairs. Another train table would be good, and if they also had the plastic trikes, they could charge for the under 2 crowd (currently free, but not much for them to do, the inflatable stuff is too big). A ball pit would be good too, but that would take up a lot of space. The air blowers where not obnoxiously loud, but you could always hear them, they never fully faded into the background, so muffling or moving them outside would be good. Don't take the suggestions to mean I didn't like the place, I would go back there again even with no changes.

Bonkersville is located in Lewes, DE, just up the road from Rehoboth Beach.

[where: Lewes, DE]

Crepes at the farmer's market

Today was such a nice day that I decided to walk around until I found a good place for lunch. This turned out to be good, because keep forgetting to go to the farmers market. They have a little stand that makes crepes, but I never walk by there on a Tuesday (until today).

The place that makes them is Crepes at the Market. It is a casual but well run cart. No need for a cashier, there are four wine glasses, for $1, $5, $10 and $20's, you make your own change. They were busy the whole time I was watching, the line was short but there were always at least a couple of people in it.


I had the Asiago, Turkey, Peppers, and Tomato crepe. The peppers were a colorful mix of red, yellow, and green peppers. The crepe was good, I ate it all pretty quickly. The turkey could have been spread out a bit more and I didn't get much from the Asiago cheese, next time I will try a cheese with a stronger flavor. If I remember, and if there is a nice day before the end of October, I will head back there again.


The farmers market is at Veteran's Park on the corner of Woodmont Ave and Norfolk Ave in Bethesda on Tuesdays and Saturdays from May through October. The park is supposed to have free wifi, but I was unable to connect to it, I'm not sure if it was their problem or if my phone was having trouble, I'll have to try again later.

[where: Woodmont Ave, Bethesda, MD]

Parks Half Marathon Pictures

I went to the parks half-marathon this weekend. Not because I enjoy running, I certainly didn't run in it, but because I wanted to take pictures of the runners. I saw it as a kind of a challenge, to see how many of the runners I could take a picture of. I took about 1600 pictures in the hour and a half that I was there.

They were limited to 2,500 entries and from what I could tell, they were all used, or at least close to it. There were only 2037 finishers. The race started at 7:00 am and they claimed you had to be able to finish in 2:45 or less, so everyone should have been done by 9:45, since they didn't start everyone instantaniously, add 15 minutes or so for the start and everyone should have been done by 10:00 am, right when I left. However, they let people finish until 10:25, so I missed about 50 people because of that. I also got there a little late and missed the first 25 finishers.

I took multiple pictures of some people, but then, I also had cases where the same photo had multiple people in it, so I figure about 1,400 people I got a picture of, or almost three quarters of them. For the time I was there, I got a picture of virtually everyone. Sometimes a runner would be on the far side of a group and I wouldn't get a good picture, but if you finished before 10am, I almost certainly have a picture. Is that good or bad? It is pretty decent. The biggest problem I had was with people who had their bib number on their left leg. I had trouble getting the number in the picture which makes it tough to find them later.

They had a bunch of rules, some good, some bad, for instance Runners must have their bib numbers visible at all times. Makes sense, but what is the definition of visible? any part of it? The whole thing? I saw several where I couldn't see the bib at all, a bunch where it mostly covered or crumpled so you couldn't read any of the numbers. To allow safe passage for all half marathoners regardless of their pace, please do not run more than two abreast during the race. Thats a nice sounding rule, but how could you possibly enforce it. And if you did, would it be fair? How would you pass someone if they were already running two abreast? I saw lots of runners in groups four across. Use of headphones...during the race is prohibited and will be cause for disqualification from the race. I saw lots of people listening to music and why shouldn't they? The roads were closed, so they didn't have to deal with cars. This is the dumbest rule they had.

Here's a gem in the Results section "All results will be posted immediately as they are available at the finish line and on this web site." Followed by "Complete results will be posted on www.runwashington.com on Sunday afternoon and on this web site by Monday, September 15, 2008." So they claim that results will be posted on that website immediately, while also claiming that they won't be on the website until the next day. Did they even read this?

The fine print gives

So often you see a great offer, but when you look at the fine print you find lots of restrictions. It happens so often that I was suprised to see the opposite happen. The big print gives you restrictions, the fine print takes some of those restrictions away. I have seen this brand of gas station run this promotion a couple of times.

In big print it says "Free Cinnamon Bun with Purchase of 20oz Coffee" The small print elaborates on that, letting you know that instead of a cinnamon bun you can also have a sour cream donut or glazed donut, and you don't have to buy a coffee, you can get any 20oz hot beverage. Kudos to Exxon for doing this.

Another good lunch at Quiznos

I have been going to Quiznos pretty frequently recently. It's a combination of convenience and the $5 large subs. The one I have been going to, is the one on Montgomery Lane, part of the Bethesda Place plaza complex. Twice now I have had really good customer service there. Today, I wanted lettuce and onions on my sub, but I somehow said tomato and onions. The guy making the sub asked to confirm that I didn't want lettuce (but of course, I did want lettuce, so he added it). A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through the glass to make sure I got what I wanted on my sub and the person at the cash register noticed and before taking my money asked if I had gotten what I wanted. It is fairly rare that people working at fast food restaurants pay much attention to the customer, and having it happen twice at the same place is worth mentioning.