3G is screwed

The iPhone is totally confused in Washington DC. Again, all cell bars are there and it states it has 3G connection to the network but the networking is spotty. Sometimes it works. I’ve rebooted the iPhone a couple times but it just comes up with full reception and then fails to connect. Mail servers don’t work and the internet does not work. How sad. My guess is that Verizon is playing a dirty joke.

The upshot is that if 3g is turned off, the edge network still works. It’s slow but much better than no network and has the added benefit of longer battery life.

Clothing experiment

My clothing experiment is going much better than anticipated.  I forgot about the air conditioning in the room.  I don’t have air conditioning at home so I think the room is pretty humid compared to what I have in the hotel room.  My clothes dry at an incredible rate.  For instance, I washed the clothes you see hanging in the closet at 6PM.  It’ now 10:50PM and I could basically wear them.  The socks don’t dry as quickly because they are pretty thick but I figure if I place them at the intake of the air conditioning system, it will dry faster.  All-in-all, I’m happy that things have worked so well.

Starbucks

After dinner, I made my way to a Starbucks for a small black coffee.  I don’t usually go to Starbucks.  In fact, the last time I went to one, I’m pretty sure it was in Japan.  I went to Starbucks there because people don’t smoke while they are enjoying their drinks. Starbucks coffee is pretty weak which isn’t necessarily a bad thing especially at night. I enjoyed it.

Earlier, I was feeling like I was about to get sick but now I’m feeling much better.  I think getting some food helped.

Dinner

Having dinner tonight at Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I haven’t had a good burger in a long time. This place is like In and Out Burgers back home except the fries are better. It has the same red and white color scheme going. I got a cheeseburger, fries and a root beer. I’m not going to finish the fries or the drink though. Just not that hungry.

Donovan is going to be upset about this meal choice.  My body is going to be upset about it too but it was quite tasty.  As long as I don’t eat at too many grease pits it should be okay.

Nap and underwear

Just woke up from a 2 hour nap. Feeling a little bit ill. I’m tired and my throat feels like it’s about to hurt. It’s not quite there yet. Hopefully taking the nap is going to help out.

As you can see, today was about lifting heavy things.  It was hot and we were exerting energy so we sweat.  The key to lifting heavy things is to keep your back straight so this usually means bending your knees.  When you bend your knees and you are sweating, your clothes tend to stick.  When you bend and your clothes stick to your legs, then you put added stress to your clothing.  In this case, the stress is tension.  Tension pulls on the seems of your clothing.  Pulling on the seems of clothes can cause tears.  I wound up tearing my underwear.    I didn’t plan on any clothing malfunctions when I packed so light.  I hope this is the last of it.

Here, you see Mark and Tracy sleeping. It’s hot and very noisy where they are sleeping so they must be really tired.  Everybody was tired.  Look how dirty Mark’s pants are.  They weren’t that dirty when we started the day. The place was filthy.

Lunch

Had 2 large root beers in addition to the Italiano wrap and chips. You can imagine what was in the sandwich.  The food wasn’t great but it was better than Subway Sandwiches.

It’s hot and humid. Sweating a lot. Not much evaporative cooling.   Need fluids.  Need sugar to keep the energy up.

Test rig

This is a test rig just outside of where we had all our equipment delivered.  It’s designed so that they can do emergency evacuation maneuvers when a train car gets flipped on its side or upside down for that matter. I’ve never seen it roll but it looks like it’d be a fun ride.  Reminder, there are no seat belts in train cars so passengers are going to get thrown around.

Drink

It’s pretty hot over but not as bad as I thought. Moving around equipment is a lot of physical work and the only source of liquids to drink was a vending machine. They charged $0.60 per 12 oz can of Coca Cola products.

Below are pictures of all our junk.  This stuff was shipped here and then we had to load it up into the U-Haul truck and take it to our home base.  I wonder how much all this stuff weighs?  It’s probably a ton aka 2000 pounds.

Breakfast

Had breakfast at the Waffle Shop. I ate here many times the last time I was here. I ate it all and had 2 cups of black coffee.  I had some of the water too but not too much.  Had breakfast with Woody.

I don’t plan on eating too well while I’m out here.  Throughout the day, I’m pretty busy moving around and carrying equipment.  It’s a lot more work than sitting around at the lab and it’s hot too. We don’t get that much time for food especially during the day (and the morning too when we have to meet at 5AM) so it’s got to be fast which means close-by and typically fast-food. Oh well.

3G failure

I’m having problems with the network connection here. I have a full set of bars on the cell side and I should be running in 3G but I can’t connect to the Internet. What’s up with that?