I mean aside from otherwise reasonable people deciding to push their bodies to the point where they’ll need days to recuperate. No, in this case I’m talking about The Sport and Health Dancers who were on-hand to dance to entertain…. someone. They were fairly talented – check out a short video clip after the jump – but were in the unfortunate location right next to the running lane, making seeing them a bit challenging if you’re a spectator and a 2 second experience if you’re a runner. They probably should have been up on the raised stage off to the left but since they were performing between bands I guess they wanted to take advantage of that time to do teardown & setup for the next act.
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During the perfect weather Saturday afternoon I was walking my dog through Georgetown and met two couples who were in their sixties and had just arrived in town. One of the wives said, “This is all so nice! We’re from Florida and have never been here before. We hope you people appreciate how beautiful it is here!”

The reply that ran through my head was, “Oh don’t worry, I lived two years in your hellhole of a state, so trust me, I definitely appreciate being here. And although I know what you mean, please don’t call me ‘you people’ when I’m the only person you’re talking to. It makes me feel like you view me as a member of a separate species or something.”

But they were awfully nice, so I just said, “Oh, we do!”

She said, “Good, that makes me feel better.”

When I was writing about Markoff’s Haunted Forest I was going to use a photo from DC Photo Pages since they have a whole gallery of Markoff’s photos. In the end, though, I decided that their copyright page was so obnoxious that I didn’t even want to give them a hotlink. Paragraph one says all their content down to HTML code “cannot under any circumstances be cached for optimization, retransmitted, copied or altered without the explicit written permission of the owners” and then paragraph three says that if you submit anything you grant them “right to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, distribute, and promote the content in any form, anywhere within” their site.

Sorry guys, I don’t want to play with folks who write the rules that one-sided.

Hmmm, I bet that quote above qualifies as a violation, huh? Tsk, better warm up my lawyers.

Around this time of year, I find my thoughts turning towards all the scary fun and frights of Halloween. And I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say, “Nothing captures the true spirit of Halloween more than a giant burrito!” Yeah sure, bobbing for apples, gobbling candy corn, and carving pumpkins are all traditional Halloween food-related treats, but gimme a giant burrito to nibble on any day.

Well finally, Corporate America is here to help us with all our Halloween burrito-eating needs. If you go into any of the legion Chipotle restaurants in the DC area on Halloween dressed as a giant burrito (or any Chipotle-brand food product I’d wager), they will give you a free burrito.

Even better than eating a burrito is dressing like a giant burrito, right? The fun of dressing like a burrito might make up for the fact you are almost guaranteed to spend more $$$ on the costume than you would have if you just paid for the food directly. Plus, Halloween is all about the scary, and what’s more scary than a giant corporation getting free advertising by encouraging people to dress up as their product for a traditional Holiday?

Photo by DC Metroblogger

If you are planning to cheer on a loved one in today’s 31st Marine Corps Marathon you better get a move on.

As you can see here, runners are off the National Mall and headed into NoVA.

If you are a techno geek like me, you are getting runner updates sent to your cell phone and are using them to estimate location with great accuracy.

If you’re not, be ready to face scan at a massive pace. Either way, the marathoner in your life could use the support right about now.

Photo by DC Metroblogger

As the last of the runners in the Marine Corps Marathon pass, these recruits spring into action.

Cleaning up the mess of too many thirsty and hungry runners, uncomplaining marines quickly return the city to its usual pristine state.

Thank you US Marine Corps. From the famous Iwo Jima Memorial to the middle of Independence Avenue, the 31st Marine Corps Marathon is a great success!

Photo by DC Metroblogger

This is the scene in Washington DC today: The Marine Corps Marathon.

More a moving street party than a foot race, the runners are outnumbered by the cheering squads.

Runners: how was the race for you?

Us spectators are hoarse from shouting out encouragement.

photo courtesy of Calleva Outdoors

There’s three nights left to pay for the privilege of tromping through the forest and being scared. I highly recommend it.

I’m talking about local staple Markoff’s Haunted Forest in Maryland, of course. An annual event organized by Calleva Outdoor Adventures, MHF exchanges about $20 of your greenbacks for a dark & spooky wander through the woods. Punctuated by noises, slithering things, grabs, starts, shakes and eerie decorations, it’s a thrill ride. It’s not for everyone – my darling girlfriend responded to my invitation to come along with laughter and assurances that she and the Gilmore Girls would happily sit this one out at home while my judgment-impaired friends and myself waited in the cold for our number to be called.

That’s not a metaphor a la “getting your ticket punched,” it’s the tradeoff for a fun but popular event – the wait-time for your chance to walk down the garden nightmare path can be onerous. Our weeknight outing over a week ago had us arriving at 9:30pm and getting out turn at about 11:20p. There’s hot cider and bonfires, hayrides and projected spooky movies to occupy your time while you wait, but do yourself a favor: wear a warm hat. As we close in on Halloween you can be sure the crowds won’t be small, though they have supposedly opened up a second path. During my visit only one was open.

If the location doesn’t thrill you, Cavella links on the MHF page to Nightmare Forest, which is out in my neck of the woods. I haven’t given it a shot yet so I can’t speak to its quality, but if the Markoff’s people feel comfortable suggesting it I’m betting it’s worth a try.

This is a live story, with several updates. Please read it all, it takes many turns, and you won’t know what happened unless you do. There are several updates, which are listed at the bottom of this story and are crucial to understanding the context and content of this story.

By now, I’m sure, there are many people who have heard of Christopher Soghoian. Chris is a PhD student at IU, working on a PhD in Informatics, and recently published a PHP-based system that could fake a Northwest Airlines Boarding Page, in an attempt to show how TSA is more “security theatre” than “good security”. It’s no surprise, then, that BoingBoing picked up the ball and ran with it both before and after Soghoian was visited by the FBI and a Congressman had called (wrongfully and idiotically) for his arrest. What’s interesting here, and what’s applicable to our local jurisdiction, is that Brian Krebs, security blogger for the Washington Post picked up the same story, and it reads in similar tone, with similar information.

While I wouldn’t call it “irresponsible journalism,” in the vein of plagiarism, or anything like that, let’s pause for a moment and take a look at Brian Krebs. Back in August, Brian Krebs put out a piece called Hijacking a MacBook in 60 Seconds or Less which, full of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, was taken apart handily by Blogger Jon Gruber, including a rehash, or two, or three, in which Krebs’ account is challenged by other writers. Should we be at all surprised if he did take the story from another blogger and repurpose it as his own? Probably not. Hey, those new media bloggers for the Post have to make their shiny nickles somehow, why not do it on the backs of other bloggers?

An Update: After looking at Jardin’s story on BoingBoing, and looking at Krebs’ tale on the Post, I’ve got a major objection here, perhaps someone else can figure this out for me?

The timeline appears odd. BB’s story goes up at 5:30pm on Friday, an hour and forty-five minutes after the form was taken down by the FBI. Krebs wrote in the comments of his post at WaPo: “When I phoned Soghoian Friday evening, he abruptly ended our conversation shortly after it began by saying that two FBI agents were banging on his door asking to speak with him. A short time later, the tool he had posted on his site vanished.” If the timeline holds that the site was offline at 3:45p Eastern Daylight time, how was it that Krebs was still at the site three hours later? That doesn’t fit. The FBI visited Soghoian at 3:45 and the site was taken down around then. If Krebs hears about this at 6:50, calls Soghoian at that instant and only just then is the site taken down, we have a major discrepancy between Krebs’ account and Jardin’s account.

I trust the earlier story. [Further updates cast these stories into interesting light. Read on]

Further Updates Behind the Cut
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One of the perks to my new place is that it has a genuine gas streetlight out front. My little piece of sidewalk is lit by a real old-fashioned flame. I thought it was pretty neat until I found out that I ended up with the defective one that always peters out (that’s my dead one on the left). While the virile flames of my neighbors burn eternal, mine gives out whenever the wind picks up.

Aside from the darkness and feeling of emasculation, I can smell the unburnt gas escaping from it. Does anyone know if it’s advisable for me to light it on my own or is that just asking for third-degree burns? Will Washington Gas actually light it for me if I bug them about it? Someone re-lit it when it died before but it took a couple of weeks to happen.