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PTINS

Burnt Ends
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  1. "Where you from? Southwest!!! Do You Like it? Hell Yes!!!" STSU was the #1 party school in the US back in the day, per Playboy. I worked at Safeway on Riverside Drive in '74. During some spring campus party/festival, San Marcos ran out of beer, and people drove up to Austin to get some.
  2. The South Texas Nuclear Plant is ~ 75 miles from Downtown Houston. The Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant is ~ 40 miles from Downtown Fort Worth and ~ 66 miles from Downtown Dallas (DFW @ 8+ million people). The STNP and CPPP are both ~ 140 miles from Austin.
  3. Great ball game. Nice bounce back from last night. Quite the treat to get this kind’a adrenaline rush in March, for baseball.
  4. The size of the footprint for the power generation facility, and where it is located, is germaine to some sources, and somewhat insignificant to others. It tends to be an intangible consideration rather than an economic one. To the extent that the gas is produced as a portion of the invested capital, yes it should be included in the investment economics. Draw a circle around the the areas requiring capital investment and run the economics base on what goes into and out of the circle. Rarely is a gas fired power plant built in the middle of a production field by the same company. Even then, for most public companies, they are different parts of the company, two different businesses, investment criteria, and profit centers. There may be company synergies, but each investment must stand alone. Windmills/generators have to be built where the wind blows, and where there is room. Gas fired power plants are generally located close to pipelines and transmission lines, and the smaller footprint, allows for locations proximate to population centers, minimizing the need for infrastructure, and capital investment, outside the plant fence.
  5. ... and that is when the system breaks down. The reality of the predictable late season swoon; the mercenaries don't really "get A&M", they only fight while they think the fight is winnable. When the roller coaster crests and begins the downhill slide, the rats jump ship, and viola, 8&4. The business Hall of Fame includes the eskimo who started selling ice to the eskimos. Looch perfected the business model, realizing fish camp funnels every aggie to the wishing well.
  6. I bought some air freshener at Walmart today. They no longer have aerosol cans, just the pump style (Fabreze). Aerosol cans use a propane-butane mix (hydrocarbons) to atomize the spray, and the propane-butane mix stays into the atmosphere. I prefer the atomized cloud to the spray, but this has been low hanging fruit for a long time coming.
  7. The reports and videos of Russian troops using a gas pipeline to as a means to get behind the Ukraine troops in the Sudzha area should be taken with a large salt shaker nearby. I believe the pipeline is a 56” outside diameter pipeline, with a wall thickness of +/- 1.000 inch, making the inside diameter less than 54”. Certainly big enough to walk in, but not without bending over. The video’s I saw of guys talking and smoking? High probability of BS. Natural gas always includes richer gas molecules like propane and butane, which tends to condense over time and accumulate in the pipeline. These light hydrocarbons, along with any residual lube oil that is consumed in compressors, tend to leave an oily coating around the entire circumference and length of the pipeline. Any body that has changed oil in a car know what that looks, smells and feels like. Walking through that environment requires fresh air equipment, and you most certainly would not be smoking in there, and you would look and smell like a swamp rat when you came out. Staying in the p/l for days would require a proportionate amount of air. Cross country steel pipelines are meant to keep high pressure fluids inside, and there has never been a design basis I’m aware of that includes humans being able to get out from the inside without someone doing something from the outside. Unless your James Bond. It is possible for them to egress via the “pig launchers/ receivers” at the various above ground stations, but that would require people to open the closures, either by remote control, or manually. Ukraine would most likely have access to any distributed control system along the pipeline. Opening manually is not a wrench and a cheater bar operation, it would probably require would pneumatic equipment, and impact wrenches are a bit noisy. No idea how another how well cell phones work inside a closed steel container, or a gps. But coordinated communications between those inside and outside the pipe seems problematic. I suppose a Seal Team quality force could make it work without anybody knowing, but nothing we’ve seen in the past 3 years tells me the Huns are that force. Andy Dufresne crawled though 500 yards of sewer. I guess a few Ruskies could do it for a case of vodka.
  8. Que the "Make A&M Great Again" hats. Always gonna be tough when the players look older than the coach. Trim your trees? Texas is hot as fuck already, and it's getting hotter. And dryer. We drilled a new water well 3 years ago 100 miles west of here, and the water table in the aquifer dropped 40 feet in a bit over a year. Not in an above ground lake, the aquifer. Larger ranches are being cut into smaller ones (deaths & developers), which means every single parcel is drilling their own water wells. "Hey, let's build a water park in the desert!" The idea of having and watering those lush green lawns is so last year. Do you want a drink of water, or should I just pour it on the ground? Growing up, I remember seeing the knuckle of an island in Lake Travis once or twice. The last time I saw it, there were trees on it. 2002, after a wet spring & summer 2025, (water well) Don't be hating, but I pray for Tropical Storms to park and dump.
  9. In the late 60's-early 70's, UT (students, staff & admin) represented ~ 15-20% of Austin's population, which had a disproportionate amount of school kids. Other than game days, seeing non-UT fans was pretty rare. Now UT's share of the Austin metro is something like 65,000/2,300,000, or ~ 3%. Not only is Austin a much smaller portion of Texas fans, there are enough people here from other schools and places to have watch parties around town on game days. It used to be the super majority of people in Austin were from Austin, you just assumed everybody was from around here. Now, I just assume everybody is from somewhere else. I wear more Texas gear now that I did when I was a student, no hair being the biggest reason. I always take Texas stuff when I travel, and see it just about everywhere we go. I always liked the way people responded when I told them I'm from Austin. 100%.
  10. I have arthritic thumbs. I can pick up rocks and do outside work all day long. The things that bother me the most include mixing tuna-salad, washing a coffee cup, or unbuttoning my wranglers to take a leak, which comes up about 20x a day. The idea of not having to open and close buttons on my clothes is very appealing. Pearl snap shirts are easy. Trading my wranglers for sweats, track suits, and overalls is a much tougher choice to make. That is an admission that I'm as old as my friends, and I'm not there yet.
  11. Happy to discuss in the Mozambique thread. Where, please?
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