MyFoxDC has details on this HD video of a train operator seeming to fall asleep at the controls between stations on the Green Line, taken by Metro rider Gregory Thomas — bigblockz8 on YouTube.

This happened on June 18th, some time after the Metrotexting video but before the Red Line collision, so trains were still running on auto at the time. It was the deadly June 22nd accident that prompted bigblockz8 to send in this video to Metro Customer Service. WMATA says the operator has confessed to dozing at the wheel. It’s chilling to know that there might still be sleepy train operators out there while the system is now running on manual. Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel says they encourage this kind of vigilance from passengers, but we certainly hope WMATA is exercising equal vigilance internally. How would you recommend keeping train operators from nodding off on duty?

(Tangentially, bigblockz8’s YouTube channel is a gem of wonderful DC transit geekery, earning an instant Subscribe click from myself.)

This here is Pickles, a green and very talkative rose-ringed parakeet last seen in a tree in the Haupt Garden behind the Smithsonian Castle. Pickles’ owner Scott likes to take the bird on his shoulder, pirate-style, for walks around the National Mall on weekends, and on nice days, perch Pickles on tree branches in the Gardens to let him get some nature.

Yesterday, Pickles disappeared. He turned his back for a moment while sitting on a nearby bench, and when he noticed that the normally noisy parakeet had fallen silent, he checked and saw that Pickles was gone.

Now, Pickles can’t fly (wings clipped, of course), and there were no large predators in the area, but there were crowds of people. We’re hoping it’s just a kind soul who saw what he or she thought was a lost bird, but after Molly the Dog’s disappearance from the P Street Whole Foods there’s cause for further concern.

Scott has talked to Smithsonian guards, Park Police, and MPD, and has flyers ready to put up. If any of you WeLoveDC readers know where this bird might be, drop me a line by email, IM or Twitter, and I’ll pass on the word to Pickles’ rather devastated owner.

Smithsonian Mag’s Around the Mall has a look at the cleanup of the Air and Space Museum’s Apollo Lunar Module #2 in preparation for the upcoming 40th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing:

When I stopped by, interns in the museum’s conservation department were on ladders shining the module’s metal parts as Paul Fjeld, the contractor for the project, and Amanda Young, a museum specialist, worked on removing the foil, which they then used as templates for cutting the new sheets. Bits of gold foil littered the floor below. It was like Christmas morning for Allan Needell, curator in the division of space history.

“I’ve never seen what’s underneath the foil, and I’ve been here 25 years,” said Needell, who pointed out where an antenna, then covered, caused the foil to bulge.

Here’s an image from NASM of the restoration in progress.

Now, before historical sticklers (such as myself) get pants all up in a bunch over tearing precious ancient gold foil from the LEM , it must be stressed that this is not an actual lunar lander returned from the moon; LEM #2 was built for an unmanned Earth-orbital test which was later cancelled in favor of actually going to the moon already. This LEM was used for ground tests, then part of it spent Expo ‘70 in Osaka, then it was all reassembled and modified to look more like Apollo 11’s Eagle for display at the Smithsonian. So it’s okay for restorers to pull bits of stuff off it; they’re not sullying the handprints of Neil and Buzz.

These peeps approve:

In the aftermath of yesterday’s Metro crash I went with my backup plan today of skipping the Red Line in favor of the Orange. A malfunction had just occurred at Eastern Market, causing some delays, but a train arrived soon enough at Capitol South — then was held for ten minutes due to a sick passenger (photographed above). The train got moving faster than expected, however, and as it passed Metro Center I spotted yet another sick passenger being removed from another train on the New Carrolton side. Later still in the day, there was notice of more Orange Line delays due to a sick passenger on the train at Landover. Lots of sick people today.

To WMATA’s credit they got trains moving faster than I expected given the all-manual mode the trains are running in. And I must give kudos to Foggy Bottom Station for having the escalators all running with relative reliability for the past week. Yay.

There has been a train collision on the Red Line between Fort Totten and Takoma Park. Updates here.

Streamliner: 1938

From Shorpy, the historic photo blog: a DC street car near the Washington Monument in 1938. The view seems to be looking west from 15th St, and could almost be a modern view, aside from the street car, rails, and old-timey automobiles parked on the ramp — right up to the base of the Monument, something you couldn’t do today, what with the ha-ha wall.

Orange and Blue Line riders had a hellish commute this morning thanks to a train down due to mechanical difficulties at Foggy Bottom station, causing single-tracking and trains held at stations up and down both lines in both directions. I waited on a Vienna-bound Orange Line train at Metro Center for about twenty minutes before wising up and getting on a taxi. You know it’s bad when the train operator doesn’t even use the word “momentarily.”

Unsuck DC Metro has collected TWITTER RAAAGE from the delays.

Update: From Get There blog, Orange Line problems explained. A combination of brake problems and communications dead zones led to a fifty-one minute delay on the failed Orange Line train before a Blue Line train could come within range to pick up communications. Both trains had to be offloaded before one could push the other to a rail yard.

If you pass through the Union Station 1st St NE entrance this afternoon, you might see this guy made up and posing as a living statue under the arches beside a chalk drawing on the floor.

Looks like a promo for an upcoming National Geographic Museum exhibit, Terra Cotta Warriors. I didn’t wait to see if he changed poses, but if anyone else gives him a poke, please do report back as to the results.

Famed stage and film actor Kevin Spacey just twittered about it being a “lovely day in DC,” and he’s right: today’s going to be mid-80s and sunny, almost summery. But Spacey’s not here to see the sights; via MediaBistro’s FishbowlDC we have Nikki Finke’s report that Spacey visited Cumberland Federal Prison to study imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whom he will be playing in “Casino Jack,” a stage production described as “a modern day GoodFellas” about the Bush administration.

Metro now features video ads in stations, the first of which is a 15-second trailer for the upcoming Star Trek XI: The Wrath of the Franchise Reboot, silently flashed onto the Farragut West Metro entryway wall by a ceiling-mounted projector. Metro Marketing Director Mark Rydstrom says “In the words of Mr. Spock, we hope this concept will ‘live long and prosper.’”

Fitting that this first Metro video ad should be at a Farragut Square station, considering that pre-reboot Captain Kirk’s first deep space assignment was to the USS Farragut as a young lieutenant. Next on the wish list: holodeck Metrobuses. If that’s too much to ask, I’ll settle for working turbolifts escalators.

Major Red Line delays this morning thanks to a track circuit malfunction plus a train offloaded for “mechanical difficulties” at Takoma station. Rail alerts just reported “Disruption cleared” but the Twitter feedback is rolling in. Thank you, Metro, for another morning rush hour of long waits and crowded trains.

In addition to Tax Day, today is the official Fox News/Freedom Works “Tea Party” Day, when thousands, nay, millions of outraged conservatives who do not know what teabagging really means will descend on DC to protest taxes, because a Keynesian stimulus package and a ~3% increase in the marginal tax rate for the super-rich marks the end of the Republic as we know it. Updates and pics after the jump:

@rkref is on the scene at Lafayette Park with pictures.

CP and WaPo inform us that they were originally planning to dump a million tea bags in the Potomac, but that wasn’t allowed, so they updated their plans to truck the tea bags to Lafayette Park, but their permit for that was cancelled. (Deliberate littering of a park not allowed? Unpossible!)

Photos from the Washington Independent: Part 1, 2.

Flickr photoset from Nathan Coffey. I remember seeing the AYN RAND WAS RIGHT sign at last year’s Ron Paul March, too.

(Added by Tiffany Bridge) Lori Goldberg’s got a Flickr photoset too.

Update, 2:30PM - Apparently someone just threw a box of tea over the White House fence, prompting an evacuation. Secret Service escorting people off Lafayette Park now.

Photos from Wonkette.

Via the National Zoo we behold Harrison Ford, his fiancé Calista Flockhart, and her son Liam at the National Zoo, getting a closeup view of 5000 pound Nile hippopotamus Happy. Word is that Ford was able to personally feed the hippo, whose diet, like a Nabooan shaak, consists mainly of grass.

No word on whether Mr. Ford then pulled out a whip to fend off the hippo from stampeding his future family. Anyway, ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

Tourist season is here: you can feel it on the sidewalk, on the Mall, around the Tidal Basin, and especially on the left sides of downtown Metro escalators. Washington Post reports that DC tourism is up, but that hasn’t necessarily translated to increased revenue for local retail and hospitality businesses. DC, after all, is Freebie Tourism Central: free monuments, museums, parks, even the zoo. Proximity day-trippers account for a large part of the influx of travelers: people driving in from nearby, not staying at hotels overnight, or opting to crash in local relatives’ guest rooms.

So while they’re here, they’re not always pumping money into the local economy. But here’s what does sell: this guy, whose name has increased traffic to a certain U Street NW restaurant; and these flowers, whose festival tickets and souvenirs are selling like hotcakes where other DC souvenir sales have fallen short.

(Potential revenue idea: photos with lifesize Obama cutout wearing cherry blossom leis. HOP TO IT, WASHINGTON ENTREPRENEURS.)

Did someone lose a kayak on the Potomac River recently? I just spotted this one floating downstream beside Washinton Harbour this morning, “Acadia DC 3128 N.” If it didn’t get stuck there I expect it might be down at Kennedy Center by now.

サー、あなたは着物を着ている！そしてあなたの犬は、ウサギのように見えます！それは素晴らしいことです。それは素晴らしいことです！

Above: news report from WAVY TV 10.

Update, Tue 3/30/2009 9:50 AM: There’s been some word from Geoff Chester at the USNO that the fireball might have been a reentering Soyuz booster from Russia, but the latest info from the Joint Space Ops Center at VAFB is that they have been tracking Russian rocket fragments among other space junk and the east coast fireball was not a manmade object:

The JSpOC tracks over 19,000 manmade objects in space. The “bright light” that was reported on the East Coast on Sunday, 29 March at 9:45 p.m. EST was not a result of any trackable manmade object on reentry. Natural phenomena are not tracked by JSpOC professionals.

So at the moment the likely explanation is a small meteor.

(end update)

There have been reports all up and down the east coast from Maryland to the Carolinas of bright lights and rumbling sounds in the sky last night (Sunday) at about 9:40 PM. I remember hearing a rumble over DC around then but dismissed it as just planes taking off from DCA or Andrews AFB; turns out it may have been a meteor exploding as it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Bad Astronomer has some notes on the physics of such debris-entry events, and Wonkette has rounded up more news links with the usual dose of snark.

Anyone pick up meteorite bits?

(See above for update)

Much gratitude to DC DDOT for paving over what I affectionately call “The Button Moat” around the pedestrian crossing button at Rock Creek Parkway and Virginia Ave NW in Foggy Bottom. (Bigger before-and-after-pictures after the jump.)

Set apart from the sidewalk by a patch of dirt on a traffic island, the Parkway crossing button is shielded from use in inclement weather by a large puddle of mud — which often turns to ice in the cold of winter. It’s always been just enough trouble to be an annoyance, but not enough to be worth calling 311 over, but someone else must have called, because on Friday morning I ran into some DDOT workers surveying the moat, and by afternoon on my way back the puddle had been buried in concrete, lovingly marked by locals with various messages and footprints. Now I will no longer get my feet wet walking to and from work across the Rock Creek Parkway. Yay.

Snow. It turns us into adventurers. Some of us bundle up to walk the chill, white, stormy landscape like Arctic explorers, braving wind and cold for photos or milk and bread.

And others among us get adventure by roaring out of parking spaces and skidding over slush so that our big black Nissan Pathfinder SUVs end up jumping service road traffic islands in Foggy Bottom, skidding further to straddle the traffic islands like a large, obnoxious, diagonal monorail, before finally triumphing over traffic regulations and common sense.

Snow. It also turns some of us into bemused spectators.

Hey Apple! So the Old Georgetown Board hates your store designs. I have a suggestion to make your Georgetown problems go away.

Why even bother with Georgetown? The traffic is awful, there’s no parking, the sidewalks are too narrow, the shops are too pricy, Wisconsin and M Streets form one of the worst intersections for cars and pedestrians alike, the closest Metro station is all the way down at GWU, and even if the Metro were closer it’s just three or four stops to the nearest Apple Stores at Clarendon and Pentagon City.

Why put up with that just to add another dot close to two already-close-together dots on your DC-area retail map, all for a tiny store that doesn’t meet your signature design needs because the local historic architecture board hates glass storefronts?

Forget Georgetown. There’s a perfectly good, bright, shining location, aching for a new Apple Store just a few miles down the road: Union Station.

Think about it: Union Station is centrally located within Washington, but also distant enough from existing Apple Stores in Arlington or Bethesda to avoid market-saturating Apple Store clustering. It’s directly above a major station on the Red Line, and a crucial daily junction for thousands of rail commuters and travelers — many of whom would love to purchase a new iPod or MacBook or camera or other accessory for long trips and daily commutes. It’s right in the middle of several well-established and up-and-coming neighborhoods: Capitol Hill, NoMa, the H Street Corridor, NY Ave/Gallaudet/Brentwood, Penn Quarter, plus dozens of hotels in East End. Union Station is historic, iconic, grand, majestic, and positively bustling with activity. Plus, it’s within sight of the Capitol — a great PR position for Apple to extend its government presence.

And not only will Union Station tolerate an all-glass storefront, they absolutely require it! Every store in the station shopping mall has a glass storefront, to meet a minimum requirement on glass set by Union Station Venture II. No word on whether the new leaseholders at Ashkenazy Acquisitions will keep that stipulation, but hey, your neighbors will have all-glass storefronts, not bay windows and brick detailing like the row houses of Georgetown.

Surely a lease on some Union Station retail space is cheaper than an old lot under the stringent auspices of the Old Georgetown Board. Turnover on retail space at Union Station can be pretty high, so there’s always space, and I’d much rather see a new Apple Store there than a Swarovski, Art of Shaving, or Harley-Davidson shop.

What do you say, Steve Jobs? Union Station: great location, or greatest location? Who needs Georgetown? Not Apple! Go for the Station! Go!

(Full disclosure: I live near Union Station and want a Genius Bar near my apartment.)