Pentagon Gouge: Cell Phones

Happy Snowmaggedon Day everyone!

The Washington Post proposed several names for this storm. They used "snowpocalypse" for the storm that happened just before Christmas. My favorites that they suggested for this storm were "snowmaggedon" and "SnOMG!"

As you can see in the pictures above, we got 33" here in Ashburn. It came down faster than the snow plows could keep up, and word in the news is that it'll take a couple of days to dig us all out. The local schools being closed aren't that much of a surprise - they close at the mere mention of snow. The real indication of what a bad storm this was is the fact that above-ground Metro service is shut-down, and there is no bus or VRE train service today either. On one of our two worst snow days last year, Loudoun County canceled commuter bus service for the day, but the rest of the DC area was still in business. This is the first time I've seen all of the DC area above-ground public transit canceled.

I hope everyone got the news that the federal government in the DC area is CLOSED today. In case you didn't know, you can go to the OPM website to check the operating status of the government (normally).


Note that you can also sign up on the OPM website to receive email updates. Sunday (yesterday afternoon), I received an email from OPM announcing the closure of the Federal government on Monday along with a notification that the OPM website was down, so I might not have known if it wasn't for the email. However, the Washington Post did announce it, too.

I had actually written the blog post below in advance for posting as this morning's Pentagon gouge, but it actually seems fairly appropriate considering only underground Metro service is in operation today. Here's what I originally intended to post today.

Are you new to the area or otherwise in need of a new cell phone?

If you spend any amount of time on the Metro, then I recommend Verizon. No, Verizon didn't pay me anything for this endorsement. Why Verizon? They have the best coverage in the area, particularly in the Metro. I was amazed to go down into the underground Metro stations and find that I still have service, or that I have some service actually on the Metro trains between stations.

Thanks to my friends over at Two DC, now I understand why.

That being said, I have noted significant spots with no coverage inside the Pentagon, but I attribute that to ginormous size of the Pentagon itself. I would be interested to hear from anyone else who works in the Pentagon if they have evidence of one cell phone company having better coverage than another.