Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Rules and Regs, Section 8: Noise

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My apartment building just transferred to a new management company, and along with the letter alerting all the tenants to the transfer, they also gave us a copy of the new rules and regulations for the building (which, as far as I can tell, is the same as the old rules and regulations). For those of us that weren’t home when they distributed these, they left them taped to our doors.

So, since my next door neighbor hadn’t emerged from his apartment to grab his copy yet, I grabbed a big red permanent marker and circled section eight on his copy:

NOISE: All Residents and their guests shall have due regard for the peace, comfort and quiet enjoyment of other Residents at all times. Musical instruments, radios, television sets, laundry facilities, etc. must be kept quiet from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. All noise shall be confined within the walls of Resident’s own apartment.

I doubt it’ll make much of a difference — he hasn’t shown any indication of caring one whit about those of us on either side of him — but it made me feel a little bit better.

iTunes “Misery Machine” by Marilyn Manson from the album Portrait of an American Family (1994, 13:09).

Pledge of Allegiance

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A young kid was suspended from school for one day when, while everyone else in the classroom was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, he recited his own pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.

Good for him, I say — and good for his mom for laughing in the principal’s face when she was told what her boy had done.

(via Boing Boing)

Fame

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Last night when I went down to check my snail mail, another of the residents in my apartment building was checking his. I was heading back to the elevator when he spoke up. “Hey — aren’t you Eclecticism?”

Turns out he’d stumbled across my site a while ago looking for pictures of the Jensonia Hotel fire, and has stopped by from time to time (recently enough to have seen some of the Fremont Parade pictures), and recognized me from my photos and my kilt.

Pretty fun, actually. So far, that makes the second time someone in the “real world” has recognized me from my site (the first being one of the regulars at the Vogue). I’m famous! ;)

More old Gig’s photos

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I’ve updated my photoset of old photos from Gig’s Music Theatre with shots of a lot of my friends from that time period. I’d held off on uploading those, as I don’t have a way to contact most of those people to be sure they won’t mind, but tonight I figured that as most of the shots have been on my archived Gig’s Music Theatre site for years now — and had been donated to me for public use — that it would be okay.

Of course, if anyone finds them and says “Hey! Get me offa there!” I’ll oblige. Hopefully that won’t be the case, though.

www.flickr.com

iTunes “I Showed A Caveman How to Rock” by US3 feat. Def Jef from the album Flintstones, The (1994, 5:19).

Downtown Excitement

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I wondered why there was a helicopter hovering over downtown as I came back to work after picking up a job outside of the building. Now I know why…

  • Seattle Times: Man shot at federal courthouse in Seattle

    A man who walked into the federal courthouse in downtown Seattle today carrying what appeared to be a hand grenade was shot, police said.

    Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said the man walked into the building armed with a hand grenade that appeared to be real. After a 20-minute standoff, Seattle police officers fired several rounds. The man, still clutching the grenade, collapsed.

    Kerlikowske said the man appear to be dead, but was being attended to by medics.

  • Seattle PI: Shooting at federal courthouse

    It was not known whether the man had made any threats or said anything to the officers or courthouse personnel. Kerlikowske said the man may have been known in the neighborhood but offered no suspects.

  • King5: BREAKING NEWS: Police shoot grenade carrying man in Federal Courthouse

    The suspect was seen entering the courthouse shortly before noon, carrying a yellow backpack strapped to his chest, raising suspicions by police and courthouse guards.

    Around 11:30 a.m. a woman cleaning windows in the lobby saw a middle-aged man enter the building. He was acting oddly, she said. “Usually you don’t wear a backpack in front of you.” He drew the attention of security officials when he tried to sneak around the security gate.

    She described what happened next when they told him to stop. He responded, “don’t come near me don’t come near me, I’ll blow it up!”

Wow.

More Solstice Parade pictures

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Other sets of parade pictures I’ve run across…I’ll add more as I find them:

There’s now a list of galleries on the Fremont Arts Council blog (who very kindly have linked to both my photoset and this very post) — I’ll let them take over from here.

(Sorry to hit your RSS feeds one more time, but as this is currently my most popular post, I figured it’d be a good idea to add in a link to my photos as well. Regular readers will be bored of this by now, but it should be good for the visitors.)

www.flickr.com

Fremont Favorites

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My top three favorite photos from yesterday, in reverse order:

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

“Butterfly Girl,” as we ended up nicknaming her. She rode with the naked bikers, though she chose to stay dressed. Quite pretty, and I love her mask.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

One of the floats had a group of people dressed in bride and groom costumes, running around and “marrying” anyone who asked. This green-haired bride ended up as my second favorite shot.

My favorite shot, as often happens, was pure luck. I was trying to get a picture of one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as they walked by. My camera was being a little slow, probably having a tough time auto-focusing on moving people and trying to adjust exposure all at the same time. I wasn’t sure quite when it was actually going to take the shot, so I just stayed crouched down to the ground, aiming the camera as the Sister as she walked past me, hoping that something useable would come out.

What I ended up getting floored me.

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

So much better than what I was expecting to end up with, or even hoping for. Hooray for luck!

As before, the rest of my shots are in the Flickr photoset.

www.flickr.com

iTunes “Peace, Love and Grease (Hot Tracks)” by BT from the album Roadkill 2.19 (1997, 6:48).

Free Wi-Fi for my apartment?

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Last month, the City of Seattle launched a program to bring free Wi-Fi access to several prominent areas around Seattle. The initial launch was in Columbia City and the University District, but other parks planned to go online include downtown’s Westlake, Victor Steinbrueck, Occidental, and Freeway parks.

Progress is obviously being made, as today on my way home for lunch I saw a work crew installing one of the Wi-Fi antennas on a lamppost on the 8th Avenue bridge over Freeway Park. Now I’m starting to wonder if my building just might end up with free Wi-Fi access provided by the City of Seattle. Here’s a look at the local layout:

Freeway Park Wi-Fi

Freeway Park is (roughly) outlined in red. The antenna I saw being installed is marked in yellow (I’m sure there must be more scattered around the park), and my apartment building is outlined in green. Now, I don’t know quite how much coverage beyond the borders of Freeway Park the antennas will provide, but just eyeballing it, I’d say that there’s at least a chance that my building might be covered.

Of course, the downside is that none of my computers are Wi-Fi enabled, so it wouldn’t do me any good. Still, I have a few friends with iBooks that occasionally stop by, so this might be a good thing for them.

iTunes “Now That I Have You” by Information Society from the album Hack (1990, 5:03).