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Texas Jeff

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Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. They have a new water deluge system, let's see how it works out for them:
  2. SpaceX's Starship launch, second attempt, may happen Friday, Nov 17th. The two-hour launch window opens at 7am central time. https://www.space.com/spacex-faa-license-second-starship-launch The Starship stack, vehicle plus booster, is 397 ft tall. It's 90 ft taller than the tower.
  3. I'm both pro and anti sidewalk... If a street has a yellow line in the middle of it, it probably needs a sidewalk. If it doesn't, it may not. The sidewalk/bike lane/car lane paradigm put buffer between the people and the cars. The new wide sidewalks have folks walking a lot closer to traffic, but mostly they are empty. It's also a little weird for bikers, because I thought you were not supposed to ride bikes on a sidewalk, but I clearly see bike lanes ending with a ramp onto the wide sidewalk ... are wide sidewalks OK for bikes but narrow ones off limits? I walked my kids to school on roads without sidewalks, except for a small stretch on a yellow-line road. We walked over 1000 miles without a problem. I walk around our neighborhood, sidewalk free, almost every day. Putting sidewalks everywhere would coat about 3% of our neighborhood in concrete, with a lot of that occurring over the root zone of mature oak trees. Austin does not maintain sidewalks, the ground does move and a lot of our older sidewalks are broken. We do need a solution for wheelchair-bound folks, and I'm not sure how you balance that need with the desire to keep the green space.
  4. Oops, meant to type facilities, not factories. Autocorrect got me....
  5. LT’s bond passed. $143 million for athletic factories at two high schools.
  6. If you can afford it, have them live near campus or in a dorm. You are getting a great deal on tuition at a top school, you have no transportation costs to school, and the dorm isn’t that expensive. It isn’t free but it’s pretty darn cheap as college goes. They have to deal with other people and solve problems that they would not have to do living in your house.
  7. The City of Austin for the last 50 years: "IH-35 has divided our city and created a barrier that separates us to this day." TxDot in 2023: "Hey we want to make it not suck so much, plus tear down the upper deck. You can cap it with parks if you have the bucks." The City of Austin: "You are tearing us apart!" Not only was Greg there, but the city council was halfway to a quorum with three council members. What a bunch of NIMBYs. 🙂 The big chance to move traffic out of the city was SH-130, and they screwed up that opportunity. They should have made that the new IH-35 and made it faster and cheaper for trucks to go around rather than through Austin. We are spending billions on Project Connect but we never came up with the billion or so ten years ago to re-route Mopac freight east of Austin and re-purpose the rail as regional transit from Round Rock to San Antonio. TxDot is not closing part of the national highway system and turning it into an "urban boulevard". Good riddance to the upper deck. Hopefully they find a way to pay for the caps.
  8. BTW this is the Big XII championship thread, not the CFP playoff thread, so, first things first ... just win the next four... However, checking out this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Football_Playoff 28 of 36 CFP teams were power five conf champs with 0 or 1 losses. 6 were one loss teams that either didn't make their conf championship game or lost in the championship game. The other two were an undefeated independent team (Notre Dame, duh) and an undefeated non-power five team (Cincy) No two loss team has been selected. Baylor and TCU had 11-1 records in 2014, but there was no conf champ game, so both missed out. Ohio State went 12-1 in 2018 and won the Big 10, but missed out. They are the only one loss team to win their conference championship and not make the four team playoff. Alabama has been picked seven of nine times, but was only undefeated three of those times. There have never been four undefeated teams selected.
  9. Assuming the one loss / two loss teams beat all of the 3 or more loss teams, there are only four games that matter. Nov 11, West Virginia @ OU - loser is out Nov 18, Texas @ Iowa St - Texas wins and it's Texas vs OSU in the championship. Otherwise a lot of ties that do not favor Texas. Nov 18, Kansas St @ Kansas - loser is out, but the winner does not have favorable tiebreakers Nov 25, Iowa St @ Kansas St - loser is out. The winner either has tiebreaker advantages (Iowa St) or does not (Kansas St). If Texas loses to Iowa St, there will be a three or four way tie between Texas, one or two of Iowa St/Kansas/K State, and the winner of OU/WVA.
  10. More parking / transit wackiness: The city rebuilt Westenfield Pool a few years ago. Everyone parks for the pool along Winstead, aka the Mopac service road. The city put up a sign asking for suggestions. I called them and said hey there is no sidewalk to walk from the Winsted parking to get to the new pool. Could we get a sidewalk? The nice person at the city told me that I was never, ever supposed to park on that road to get to the pool. That the pool was built as a neighborhood pool and I was supposed to walk or bike to the pool. And, that the state owned the parking on that strip of road and would tow me if I tried to park there for the pool. I said "but, it's obvious that people park there for the pool" and she said "don't do it, walk or bike. We are not putting in a sidewalk to the pool because it would encourage people to park on the street next to the pool." Farther down the same street, on the Atlanta part, there is a kick ass hike and bike trail by the Mopac bridge. You may be familiar with it. Goes all the way around the lake. The city put in parking meters along the trail and started charging for parking in the lot under Mopac. So people started popping the curb and parking in the dirt to get free parking, and the dirt is now eroding into Johnson Creek. The dirt, and the land underneath it, is holding up southbound Mopac. What could go wrong? When Cap Metro created the Pickup Exposition service, they asked for suggestions about the service. It was scheduled to serve everything west of Mopac and south of 35th street, but nothing beyond that. I suggested they extend the service just to cover Austin High and the hike and bike trail, so that runners and walkers could use it and that students at Austin High could use it to get to and from school at odd hours. The response I got was "No, they should take a bus to a stop within Tarrytown, then call Pickup from the bus stop." Yeah, no one does that, people just drive. You have to walk to Deep Eddy to get Pickup service. We all know our neighborhoods pretty well and we all have suggestions to make things better. The city often asks for feedback about something they have already decided to do, probably because they are required to ask for feedback. In my experience, they want affirmation for decisions already made, not suggestions about what to change.
  11. For an unknown reason, the street magically changes names to Atlanta around the 600 block.
  12. Our city council, in case anyone isn't yet aware of this, simply follows trends started by trendier cities elsewhere. Our neighborhood has Littlefield's Tacos, a family-friendly place with little parking that also happens to be very close to a Mopac exit. It's on Winsted, which is used a Mopac bypass during traffic times. Lots of kid's birthday parties on weekends. The pitch for the place was that it would be a walkable neighborhood place to get some tacos. The reality is that there are now often giant SUVs parked up and down Winsted with taco-crazy kids flying out of doors directly into the street. It is an accident waiting to happen. And I hope it never does, but I see close calls all the time. Winstead is too narrow to support rows of SUVs on both sides of the street, with more SUVs driving down the middle, while kids run in the street in search of tacos. Cars turn northbound onto the road having come right off of Mopac at highway speed, and suddenly they are in the middle of a bunch of parked cars with kids mixed in. So yes I agree we need some parking reforms but I'm not in favor of the free-for-all approach. I would rather Austin focus on building towers in the north/south transit corridors and try to provide as much as possible along the lines. Most people would still have a car parked at their tower for around town or out of town trips, but at least they would be able to get through a lot of their day on transit.
  13. I’m not saying I’m for it, I’m just saying what would prevent that from happening. If this funds privates better than publics, the publics will fade away. Which is probably the point.
  14. Why won’t todays public schools just close and reopen as “private” schools to get the higher funding? Rent the buildings from the school district that now has zero students.
  15. No. Most HSA's give you a debit card. If you pay your bills for qualified expenses using the card, the money will come out of the HSA and pay the bills. If you have a mix of investments and a cash account at the HSA, you may need to sell some of the investments to fund the cash account before you pay the bills. Usually they will not automatically sell your HSA investments to cover the debit card, but they will drain the cash account. You can also pay the bills yourself, and then ask for reimbursement from the HSA. In that case, you will pay the bill, and then you will receive a check written to you from the HSA, or you can make an electronic transfer to your bank account. Keep the receipt for the expense you paid for out of the HSA, maybe write "paid for using HSA" on it. Make an envelope of expenses like this for this year, and keep them with your taxes. At the end of the year, you are going to receive a tax form showing how much you withdrew from the HSA. Should the tax man audit you, you may need to provide bills showing exactly what you spent the HSA money on, to prove it was a qualified expense. And certainly don't take my advice for this, I am not an expert. But I do have an HSA.
  16. Assuming Texas wins the rest of their Big XII games, they now control their destiny. The OU loss eliminated the chance of a three-way tie among 1 loss teams involving Texas. Among Big XII teams with one loss, Texas can move ahead of Iowa State and K State by winning. The winner of next weekend's OU / Ok State game is the likely championship game opponent. The Bedlam winner is in a great position. Ok State closes out at UCF, at UH and BYU at home. OU has West Virginia at home, a road trip to BYU, and TCU at home. Texas' path is more difficult, but they now control it.
  17. They got 13 rows in two sections of the upper deck, and one of those sections was really narrow. They would have had to receive 30 seats per row to put one band butt in each seat, for 400 seats. But there is no way that a tuba, bass drum, tenor drum, or lots of other instruments are going to fit in one seat. Usually you need 500 or so for a 400 piece band. Longhorn Band is on a farewell Tour of Texas this season, with stops in Waco, Houston and Fort Worth. Hopefully adding late season stops in Arlington and Houston. They are taking the entire band on the road, Southwest Conference style. And they are getting a bit smushed. The athletic dept is doing a great job of supporting them. Time to say goodbye and move on to new adventures elsewhere.
  18. Why anyone still cares about this guy is beyond me. America, on the count of three, focus on someone else...
  19. Start with a conditional overlay between Lamar and Guadalupe, between 38th st and the University Neighborhood Overlay, which I believe ends at 29th st. Enable construction of really tall buildings in this area, especially close to the rail stations at 38th and Guadalupe and 29th and Guad. Create a special tax for this zone to pay to extend the rail from 38th to the Triangle, and create a rail stop there. Redevelop the older parts of the triangle area as tall tower housing and create a walkable community around the new rail stop. Extend the special tax to that zone to help pay for the rail and the stop. Not all of the area is ready for redevelopment, but the state owns a bunch of property around there and a ginormous surface parking lot at 51st and Lamar. Go tall where possible. In between, decide how much area is really needed for the mental health centers and create a plan to build that. Redevelop the rest of the area as towers than are walkable to the 38th and Guad rail station, along Guad. Redevelop whatever is possible on the other side of the street. Hyde Park can't be redeveloped but the edges can. Redevelop what you can up and down Duval, mid rise or higher. The #7 bus is a damn good route. Make it easy to get farther north on that bus to the Highland Mall area and redevelop the crap out of the ACC campus area up there. Add a rail stop on the Red Line at about 55th and Duval and redevelop everything east of there between the rail and Airport, using tall towers. That area would have #7 bus access to downtown plus a two stop ride to the downtown convention center. Work with TxDot to implement the cap where the Red Line crosses IH35 and plan an overlay for that area, primarily to redevelop the HEB area (Hancock Center). Keep the HEB. Nuke the Sears. Create a walkable community across the cap with tall density close to the rail station. This could go all the way down to Fiesta Mart. Start talking with the state about moving DPS HQ somewhere else, or rebuilding it elsewhere. You could create a walkable community all the way from Lamar to ACC Highland Mall with lots of transit. Consider taxes on all of this new development to fund expansion of the rail line, so that it can get to the airport and go farther up Lamar. Once that rail is built, remove the new taxes, or reduce them to just enough to maintain that part of the system in good repair. I'm going to stop there, but that's just north central Austin. A few citizens could think about this for an hour and come up with many more opportunities like this that do not involve tearing down family housing and trees in interior neighborhoods. Most of my proposals allow people to commute downtown on transit, with an easy walk to a train or bus.
  20. 80 year olds are just now getting their FW:fw:fw:RE:Fw:fw email and are clicking on the link to donate.
  21. No way. Not in a million years.
  22. I think we went through a weird decade with cheap money. We still have zero tax rates on up to $500k in cap gains. As mortgage rates dropped, house prices rose. If you could buy a $1,000,000 house with 3% money and watch it appreciate at 10% per year with $20k in taxes, that's $50,000 in cap gain per year. Why have someone live there and wear it out? Use it for a vacation home for a few months a year and then move there permanently at the end for two years, figure out a way to sell it with low transaction costs .... and up to $500k is yours tax free. It's a risky deal but in a rising market with low rates everyone thinks we will always have a rising market with low rates.
  23. How much of the cost in our health care system is simply related to billing and collecting? Anyone know? It seems like a significant part of our current system is just figuring out who owes what and trying to collect.
  24. They started as Florida Tech or something like that in the 1960s, to provide engineering talent to the space industry. They now have an enrollment similar to A&M. UT-Dallas has a similar history. UTD started as a grad school to create talent for TI and the DFW tech industry.
  25. If Texas wins out: Everyone is eliminated from the championship game except OU, Kansas, Ok St, and West Virginia. OU has games remaining against the other three. OU wins pretty much eliminate whoever they beat, unless OU loses two. Kansas plays Ok St tomorrow and Ok St plays West Virginia in a week. Losers of those games are probably out.
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