What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?

[royiv 9163]

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

A teacher who retired last year will sub this next week but retirees are banned from subbing more than a few days in a row. 

That seems shortsighted given the current circumstances.

[Samson's Wig 3181]

Not sure if you're AISD, but that story certainly sounds like AISD.  We've been on a slow death march toward shitty Texas inner city school system for a while.  The pandemic sped up the timeline, but it was already happening.   It still beats sending them to the suburbs to hang out with a bunch of Baker Mayfield clones.

[Armybrat 40744]

50 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Not sure if you're AISD, but that story certainly sounds like AISD.  We've been on a slow death march toward shitty Texas inner city school system for a while.  The pandemic sped up the timeline, but it was already happening.   It still beats sending them to the suburbs to hang out with a bunch of Baker Mayfield clones.

Don’t confuse RRISD & LISD with Eanes ISD.

[CooterBrown 17913]

That seems shortsighted given the current circumstances.

It sounded like it’s a Teacher Retirement System rule for anyone receiving their pension and not an AISD rule. Regardless it is shortsighted and I fully expect the legislature to ban retired teachers from subbing at all just to fuck AISD.

[TKthunder2 4981]

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

It sounded like it’s a Teacher Retirement System rule for anyone receiving their pension and not an AISD rule. Regardless it is shortsighted and I fully expect the legislature to ban retired teachers from subbing at all just to fuck AISD.

Otherwise teacher would retire, collect full retirement and then return to school full time and basically get double pay.

Teachers retirement makes them sit out a full year before they can do that. They allow them to sub X number of days during their year off but they can’t do more than that.

[royiv 9163]

4 hours ago, TKthunder2 said:

Otherwise teacher would retire, collect full retirement and then return to school full time and basically get double pay.

Teachers retirement makes them sit out a full year before they can do that. They allow them to sub X number of days during their year off but they can’t do more than that.

That seems like a great rule when there's a gigantic teacher shortage across the state.

[tx 3 putt 76399]

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

The teacher shortage is by design. When you realize that the dominant party is on a quest to end public education, it all makes perfect sense.

 

get those kids to non public’s schools !

full of teachers working for low pay and zero worries about the teachers retirement fund with them

ill also predict, they’re going to lower the education requirements for teachers. It’ll help staff all these new private / charter schools 

[GoPokes83 2236]

Otherwise teacher would retire, collect full retirement and then return to school full time and basically get double pay.
Teachers retirement makes them sit out a full year before they can do that. They allow them to sub X number of days during their year off but they can’t do more than that.

It was really similar when I worked for the state. They’d just hire folks back as a contractor for a year then just hire them back at their old salary. Tons of double dipping going on.

[Samson's Wig 3181]

2 hours ago, GoPokes83 said:

It was really similar when I worked for the state. They’d just hire folks back as a contractor for a year then just hire them back at their old salary. Tons of double dipping going on.

When it comes to teachers I don't blame them, really.  Pay them properly in the first place and it wouldn't happen.   As for the rest of the government schlubs,  let 'em eat cake.

[Bevo 13527]

4 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

When it comes to teachers I don't blame them, really.  Pay them properly in the first place and it wouldn't happen.   As for the rest of the government schlubs,  let 'em eat cake.

It would still happen regardless of pay. Anyone with a brain would double dip if given the opportunity. I had a colleague years ago who started working at Bayer when he was 15. After 18 years, at the age of 33 he was earning a full pension and went on to work at a biotech company earning 6 figures. So his pension went straight to a retirement account. He was probably on track to retire at age 50. All my military patients do basically the same thing. It is just the smart thing to do.

[CleverNickname 1293]

And yo Austinz get your airtraffic controllers straight

https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/02/two-plane-near-collision-averted-at-austin-bergstrom-airport-what-we-know/

[Wally Pryor 5244]

Thread topic fits given this unbridled power fiasco. 

Sucks for all of you continuing without it. No other way to describe it. As of now there's 65,000 customers still in the dark. Over how many days? Who knows at this point . Marc Ott probably has a handle on it from 1,500 miles away and three days behind the rest of the world. That's how pathetic the situation is.

We're the 10th largest city in the country, beating our chests at how progressive we are and at the forefront of everything -  technologically and otherwise. Surveys and consultants everywhere, including how to best immerse bicycles onto major thoroughfares and so much more shit. We have so much money at our disposal that, regardless of it being an abject failure over and over, we set aside $60MM a year to try and house a few thousand homeless people. $60MM. Yet, we can't figure out how to turn the lights on for our citizens. No worries. We'll still give the city manager a raise in a few months. The same person who is overseeing everyone involved in this clusterfuck.

I see the "sighs" or "damns" and, justifiably, livid people on this board. But there will never be enough of those, from this clusterfuck, or anything else, to get rid of the unbridled fucksticks overseeing Austin - the city manager, council, you name it. Because for all of the idiocy under that umbrella there's 10X that in the voting base that will continue to simply enable and vote in the buffoonery, directly or indirectly, because they're uneducated idiots when it comes to what's going on.

Nothing's going to change. So just continue bending over. Unfortunately, some of you are doing it in the dark for the 4th or 5th night this evening. 

[DalTxHornFan 3085]

30 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

Thread topic fits given this unbridled power fiasco. 

 

I was driving by the big new Apple facilities on Braker today.  Guess what, none of the lights around there had power, so they had to be treated as four-way stops.  Traffic was a mess.  I wonder if the Apple new facilities/relocation due diligence team is second-guessing themselves?

Think about Samsung. The chip manufacturing process requires absolute uninterrupted power during the manufacturing process.  If there is a single blip, the processing is shut down, all of the wafers are disposed of, and everything has to start over -- not an inexpensive proposition.

Blocking and tackling.  Yay team! 

[Brisketexan 104628]

Everything libs touch turns to S..t. Total morons.

Says the fan of the political team that literally designed their dream grid only to watch it function exactly as designed two years ago, killing hundreds of people.

Maybe, just maybe, one party rule of any institution for a generation+ is a bad idea.

[Wally Pryor 5244]

25 minutes ago, GlobalWarming2478 said:

Everything libs touch turns to S..t. Total morons.

There's a wing nut conservative on the city council who pulls more and more weight every day. 

I don't give a shit about party lines - red, blue, green, yellow, whatever. I hate pretty much all politicians, but especially those prone to idiocy and negligence. And we just have way too much of that in our backyard and it sucks that some of you still don't have lights tonight because of it. 

[hayden_horn 11360]

yall want austin politics go ahead and start an austin politics thread on cr. please and thanks. 

[hayden_horn 11360]

On 2/3/2023 at 7:56 PM, TKthunder2 said:

Otherwise teacher would retire, collect full retirement and then return to school full time and basically get double pay.

Teachers retirement makes them sit out a full year before they can do that. They allow them to sub X number of days during their year off but they can’t do more than that.

so what? public servants always get to double dip. why not teachers who have put in the time? 

[Armybrat 40744]

11 hours ago, Wally Pryor said:

Thread topic fits given this unbridled power fiasco. 

Sucks for all of you continuing without it. No other way to describe it. As of now there's 65,000 customers still in the dark. Over how many days? Who knows at this point . Marc Ott probably has a handle on it from 1,500 miles away and three days behind the rest of the world. That's how pathetic the situation is.

We're the 10th largest city in the country, beating our chests at how progressive we are and at the forefront of everything -  technologically and otherwise. Surveys and consultants everywhere, including how to best immerse bicycles onto major thoroughfares and so much more shit. We have so much money at our disposal that, regardless of it being an abject failure over and over, we set aside $60MM a year to try and house a few thousand homeless people. $60MM. Yet, we can't figure out how to turn the lights on for our citizens. No worries. We'll still give the city manager a raise in a few months. The same person who is overseeing everyone involved in this clusterfuck.

I see the "sighs" or "damns" and, justifiably, livid people on this board. But there will never be enough of those, from this clusterfuck, or anything else, to get rid of the unbridled fucksticks overseeing Austin - the city manager, council, you name it. Because for all of the idiocy under that umbrella there's 10X that in the voting base that will continue to simply enable and vote in the buffoonery, directly or indirectly, because they're uneducated idiots when it comes to what's going on.

Nothing's going to change. So just continue bending over. Unfortunately, some of you are doing it in the dark for the 4th or 5th night this evening. 

Now now, that ain’t very woke of you.

[Armybrat 40744]

10 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Says the fan of the political team that literally designed their dream grid only to watch it function exactly as designed two years ago, killing hundreds of people.

Maybe, just maybe, one party rule of any institution for a generation+ is a bad idea.

Wut?

Quote

The network controlled by ERCOT is often called the Texas grid. The term “grid” is a colloquialism that typically refers to the collection of generating facilities and transmission lines that produce electric power and ship it across long distances. The technical term is “bulk-power system.”[5] The term “grid” is also sometimes used to refer to the distribution networks that deliver power to individual customers. In this paper, I will use the terms “Texas grid” or “Texas Interconnected Power System” to mean the bulk-power system controlled by ERCOT, and “ERCOT” to mean the agency itself.

During World War II, Texas power companies organized two large power pools to meet the electricity needs of the defense industries. The two networks, called at various times the South and North Texas Interconnected Systems, the South and North Interconnections, and the South and North Texas Power Pools, linked public and private power companies across the state and operated at top capacity during the war years. After their intensive use during the war, the interconnections served primarily to facilitate assistance between companies during planned and emergency outages.[6] In 1967, the companies linked the two networks together and began consistently referring to them as the Texas Interconnected System. This name is still used to refer to the isolated Texas grid under today’s national regulatory schemes; the Texas grid is also sometimes called the ERCOT Interconnection,

 

[Armybrat 40744]

9 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

so what? public servants always get to double dip. why not teachers who have put in the time? 

+1,000.

Watched several of Mrs. Brat’s overlords at the Health Department Dd over the years, and my niece’s hubby at the Texas Water Commission.

[TKthunder2 4981]

1 hour ago, hayden_horn said:

so what? public servants always get to double dip. why not teachers who have put in the time? 

First, I wasn’t making a judgment call, just stating a fact but the issue is far more complicated than many here are acknowledging.

Teacher’s retirement sets most of these rules in order to protect the pensions for all teachers. While the legislature can butt In occasionally, most of the times when they do, it’s with the support of the TRS.

Allowing teachers to double dip puts the pension fund at risk which is why it’s discouraged, but even then, sitting out 1 year before you can double dip isn’t exactly a crazy stipulation if you ask me.

I have 2 family members currently double dipping as we speak and a third about to take their year off so they can.

[Armybrat 40744]

Son’s MIL just “retired” from teaching for a second time at age 80.

The TRS could waive the year wait, IMO. 
But the nabobs who have been running it are incompetent anyway. 
Paid themselves over $1 Billion for underperforming investment management of the fund over recent decades.

[Armybrat 40744]

Point taken, but the dicks running Austin are the primary culprits in the current crisis.

[Brisketexan 104628]

4 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

Point taken, but the dicks running Austin are the primary culprits in the current crisis.

Agreed.  Which is awesome.  Texas: where miserable failure is a bipartisan sport!

[Armybrat 40744]

That’s the way it has always been.

[demos 2992]

What the fuck is wrong with Austin?

Neighborhood associations.

[hornian 5205]

15 minutes ago, demos said:

What the fuck is wrong with Austin?

Neighborhood associations.

It’s the tragedy of then commons, only in reverse. 

[Fudge Nuggets 19151]

Sounds like Austin should start a cottage industry of Homeless Safaris.  Let the fattyflattie types hunt them for sport.

[bschoolprof 6232]

18 hours ago, CleverNickname said:

And yo Austinz get your airtraffic controllers straight

https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/02/two-plane-near-collision-averted-at-austin-bergstrom-airport-what-we-know/

Here's a vid with the actual ATC audio.  What in the blue fuck was the controller thinking?  Thank god for the pilots.  That would have been the worst aviation accident in our (Austin) history.  

 

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by bschoolprof

[WithoutAClue 15221]

I found this post on FB describing why this ice storm was so much worse than previous storms. No idea if this guy knows what he is talking

about but it makes for a good story. It's long so putting it in quotes.

Quote

Scott Hinson

 

2h  ·

Austin, TX resident here and long-time power industry professional. We have no electricity. Again. And many people are wondering who to blame. I’ve see a lot of misinformation going around, so I’m here to tell you… (1) What happened this time (trees), (2) How it’s completely different than 2 years ago (frozen trees in Austin vs. frozen ground in north Texas), (3) Who’s to blame (not ERCOT, not Austin Energy—you’re probably not going to like this answer), (4) Where we can make changes to prevent this in the future (did I mention… trees?), and most importantly, (5) Why you’re about to see a push to privatize Austin Energy and FOR THE LOVE OF QUESO, DON’T LISTEN; THAT WILL MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE. If you stop reading now, please take away that no matter what any idiot politician says, privatization wouldn’t have changed anything but will make our electricity more expensive.

So… What happened and how is this different than 2021?

***Electric grid 101***

Getting electricity to you has three main pieces: creation, transmission, and distribution. CREATION is done two ways:

mining for fossil fuels + power plant = electricity

wind/sun/water + electronics = electricity

Creation was the real problem during Uri two years ago because natural gas production shut down due to freezing temperatures and power plants and in Texas weren’t designed to withstand that much cold for that long. That’s why the whole state was affected: We couldn’t make enough energy.

**** This wasn’t the problem last week.

TRANSMISSION means moving electricity around the state from plants to cities. ERCOT is the transmission operator in Texas; they decide where the electricity goes and operate the markets for how much it costs. Unfortunately, ERCOT has no visibility into gas production and had no real enforcement authority over winterization rules. So two years ago, when the power plants were starved of fuel and ones that could get fuel started to shut down because equipment froze and broke, they raised prices because the state government told them to, thinking that somehow raising prices would… unfreeze pipes? I don’t know. The free market doesn’t solve everything, y’all.

Again, this was not the problem this week. ERCOT had nothing to do with this.

Time to talk about what didn’t break down two years ago… but was the problem this time: DISTRIBUTION.

Distribution takes the power off the transmission system and...well...distributes it to individual locations. Distribution operators are your local utility. There are many business models surrounding this, like private businesses, called investor-owned utilities (IOUs); municipally owned utilities (MOU or Munis), like Austin Energy; co-ops, like Bluebonnet, etc.

Austin Energy is one of the few MOUs left in the state, which means we, the people of Austin, own the utility and can affect it with how we vote. One odd thing Austin Energy will do in your neighborhood about once a decade (that’s how long it takes them to get through the whole city) is trim trees. Specifically, trees around power lines. And it’s possible, being electricity-minded folks, they’re more concerned with power lines than, well, arboreal beauty. Back in 2007, there was a coordinated effort across many Austin neighborhood associations to push back against Austin Energy’s tree-trimming enthusiasm. They raised enough hell that they got their way.

Fast forward to 2019...

With climate change increasing the weather’s crazy, AE decided protecting our power was more important than bushy trees, so they pushed back hard and won approval to go back to the old cutting amounts and allow fewer exemptions for property owners who don’t want their trees touched. However, it takes ~10 years to get through the 8000(ish) above ground miles of wire in big city like Austin, and 2019 + 10 =…dang....

Fast forward to 2021…

The state grid goes down...well, we don’t need to revisit this. But I will say that Uri was not great for tree health and strength.

Fast forward to 2023…

A wild weather pattern causes ice to coat trees, which are still stressed from Uri and summer droughts. The branches aren’t strong enough to handle the weight of all that ice. Branches, limbs, hell, large sections of tress break off, and on the way down, rip up hundreds of miles of electrical distribution wires.

The way the distribution grid works…

Austin has 15 substations that pull from the state grid (those poles are taller than trees) and another 61 that spread that power around.

Substations split the power out to feeders, one of several waystations on electricity’s way to your house. If the feeder wire from a substation was damaged by a frozen tree, it took out electricity for a whole neighborhood. Feeder then split off into branch circuits; damage to one of those wires would take out part of a neighborhood. Branch circuits have wires that go to distribution transformers; damage would take out maybe half a block. Then there’s a wire that goes from the distribution transformer to your house. Damage to that wire would take out one house—yours.

However, wires are not, like, wi-fi enabled; they’re just wires. AE doesn’t know if the reason your electricity is out is due to a feeder wire, branch wire, transformer, or your personal line. They can make really educated guesses/estimates/guestimates from the control center based on what they do know…but the guesti-esti-mets will never be 100%. It’s just not possible.

They just start fixing the biggest wires first. If someone’s electricity doesn’t go back on after they fix that, they know there’s a wire down the line that’s also broken. That’s why the outage numbers have made no sense—fixing a feeder wire is one outage (one broken wire) that covers thousands of homes. Only after fixing that can they look at the new outage map and start pinpointing which branch wires are broken—each broken branch wire being one outage covering hundreds of homes. Then as they fix branch wires, they can look at new outage maps and see which transformer wires are broken… etc.

IMPORTANT FACT FOR HOMEOWNERS …

AE owns the wire going to your house. They will fix that wire if it’s damaged. But there is a metal pole sticking up off your roof (for those of us with above ground service) that the wire attaches to. That pole is part of your house and, therefore, is where ownership switches from the city to you. If you still don’t have power, might want to look at your roof and see if that pole got mangled by a tree branch, because you’ll need to fix it before they can reattach the wire.

SO… WHAT CAUSED THE OUTAGES THIS WEEK?

I'm all for saving the trees. I work in renewable energy, conservation, carbon sequestration and emissions reduction. I would rather not have to trim the trees either. However, if we like having power, we have to. We didn’t let AE trim our trees the way they said they needed to be trimmed to avoid this. This isn’t AE’s fault. It’s ours.

SUPER IMPORTANT LAST THING ABOUT OPPORTUNISTIC POLITICIANS

Certain politicians are already trying to use people’s frustration to push for deregulating Austin Energy, putting Austin on the same retail market as most of the state. If done, Austin Energy would be owned by a private company, not the people of Austin. It would also add retail energy providers to the mix. So instead of having one city-owned utility, all 1.1 million Austinites would have to pay for electricity through two entities that want to make a profit.

Now, I know it’s expensive to live in Austin, but just take a look at energy prices across the state. Energy is, like, the ONE thing we have that’s cheaper than everywhere else. For the love of tacos, don’t let them deregulate us. We'll end up paying 20-40% more for our energy—and these blackouts weren’t AE’s fault; deregulating wouldn’t have changed anything. This push has already been started by politicians who don't even represent Austin Energy customers… because local control means other localities deciding what’s best for Austin, I guess? I know you’re frustrated with the blackouts—they’ve SUCKED. But blame our lack of foresight, blame climate change, blame trees—don’t get tricked into blaming Austin Energy and making a mistake that’ll make Austin more frustrating and even more expensive to live in.

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by WithoutAClue

[TPCJ007 48]

Quote

We didn’t let AE trim our trees the way they said they needed to be trimmed to avoid this.

Who is "WE"? I'm all for AE trimming the trees.

[TKthunder2 4981]

How about they spend some money and bury the damn lines at the most tree impacted neighborhoods that way when there is an outage they have less to worry about. Use some of the sweet sweet bike lane homeless hotel money…

[Bozo_Casanova 26284]

Pulitzer Prize winner Larry Wright gazes into his navel and describes what he sees the most tedious and self-parodying way, or, "The Astonishing Transformation of Austin"

 

Quote

I play in a local band with Ricardo Ainslie, a psychologist and professor at the University of Texas. (Rico’s on guitar; I’m on keyboards.) He recently told me, “There’s a line in ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’ in which Freud invites the reader to think about Rome not as a geographic space but as a psychic space.” We were on the patio of Julio’s Café, one of our favorite lunchtime spots, although you have to guard your food from the grackles. “I think it’s true,” he went on. “We have an emotional relationship to cities. We identify with them—not always without ambivalence.” We can complain about traffic, for instance, or the failure of services, “but when any calamity happens we are suddenly aware of the sense of loss or of psychic dislocation. When our cities undergo profound transformation, it poses challenges for us.” He added, “No city in America has changed more than Austin has in the last two decades.”

[MAUFRAIS 6577]

Touché

[crash_davis 23084]

15 hours ago, TKthunder2 said:

How about they spend some money and bury the damn lines at the most tree impacted neighborhoods that way when there is an outage they have less to worry about. Use some of the sweet sweet bike lane homeless hotel money…

why do you hate spending 100s of millions on the homeless? that's money so well spent.

[Orange&White 5516]

Just another complete masterful fuckup in a very long line of them.

City signs long term lease with tenant and then two years later plans an expansion and tries to eminent domain. Now they are on the hook for a $90M settlement and god only knows how much in litigation expenses.

Yet the dumbfuck citizens of this town keep re-electing the same idiots over and over.

 

 

[DalTxHornFan 3085]

17 minutes ago, Orange&White said:

Just another complete masterful fuckup in a very long line of them.

City signs long term lease with tenant and then two years later plans an expansion and tries to eminent domain. Now they are on the hook for a $90M settlement and god only knows how much in litigation expenses.

Yet the dumbfuck citizens of this town keep re-electing the same idiots over and over.

 

 

Justice.  What a par for the course fuck-up by City of Austin.  The South Terminal is really great from a customer standpoint.  In and out just like airports used to be.

[Armybrat 40744]

Austin’s legal team graduated from that aggy law school?

[YGIFS 19449]

36 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Justice.  What a par for the course fuck-up by City of Austin.  The South Terminal is really great from a customer standpoint.  In and out just like airports used to be.

Your mom was An airport terminal ?

[DalTxHornFan 3085]

3 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Your mom was An airport terminal ?

You are confusing Northwest Austin with @South Austin

[texasdago 7553]

3 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Pulitzer Prize winner Larry Wright gazes into his navel and describes what he sees the most tedious and self-parodying way, or, "The Astonishing Transformation of Austin"

 

My thoughts exactly... alll the tears and crying.  Its getting old.

Yes, 1989 was my perfect Austin and a bunch of people back then thought 1989 sucked ass and was ruined.  Its rinse and repeat.  Our kids are going to talk about the golden years of 2023.

[YGIFS 19449]

Just now, DalTxHornFan said:

You are confusing Northwest Austin with @South Austin

Not if she could see which way my dick was pointing. 

[DalTxHornFan 3085]

4 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Not if she could see which way my dick was pointing. 

All is not lost.  Get https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/curved-penis

[Steel Shank 9415]

On 2/7/2023 at 1:50 PM, texasdago said:

My thoughts exactly... alll the tears and crying.  Its getting old.

Yes, 1989 was my perfect Austin and a bunch of people back then thought 1989 sucked ass and was ruined.  Its rinse and repeat.  Our kids are going to talk about the golden years of 2023.

I laid some serious pipe in '89.

[Brisketexan 104628]

18 minutes ago, Steel Shank said:

I laid some serious pipe in '89.

[Steel Shank 9415]

48 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I do believe I was wearing some fetching cologne back then. Surely didn't need it though.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Steel Shank

[texasdago 7553]

4 hours ago, Steel Shank said:

I do believe I was wearing some fetching cologne back then. Surely didn't need it though.

Drakkar Noir?

[Brisketexan 104628]

Drakkar Noir?

Brut…..

By Faberge.

[MissingInAction 24824]

Thieving cocksuckers returned to the median, but the freeze caused most of the tree to collapse on them. 

 

[Wally Pryor 5244]

10 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

Thieving cocksuckers returned to the median, but the freeze caused most of the tree to collapse on them. 

 

That's tidy compared to the garbage all over the ground around Ben White now.  Least this guy is using a trash can, stolen or otherwise.