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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    No spit, Sherlock. I do not care for gratuitous violence (though I do loves me some mayhem, action, and adventure). Frankly, the only reason I saw the head smashing in GoT was because my Director of Domestic Bliss starts having vibrating withdrawal symptoms when the show goes into hiatus, and the DDB puts up with a certain number of improbable chase scenes and explosions in return. But I'm not going to try to cram my own tastes and sensibilities down other people's throats. I despise censorship. Adults can make their own choices, and those who have children can certainly monitor, guide, and explain what those kids are exposed to. In my view, that's part of being a parent; it's certainly the way my parents raised me (they even managed to do it without hovering. Too much.).
  2. mollusk
    I used to work at 100 Waugh back when it was the Gary Greene Tower. For a while at least, Brown & Root owned it after Gary Greene; their modeling shop was on the bottom floor or two. There is a lot more dirt associated with that property than what is apparent at first glance. Access was a bit dodgy even back then, when the brontosauruses didn't move nearly as quickly, all phones had wires, and the only large apartment complex nearby was Bayou Whatever (edit: we'll now call it Bayou Heights) next to St. Thomas. IIRC, what we'd do if coming from any direction other than heading south on Yale was to cloverleaf as necessary and then exit Memorial at Jackson Hill, ultimately entering via Feagan.
  3. mollusk
    Hmmmmmm... Maybe I paid extra for it without knowing it, but the TVs in my house all have a method of changing the channel if there is something on that I don't care to watch. Likewise, I cannot remember the last time I awakened from some sort of blind fog and was startled to find myself sitting in a movie theater. We all have our own tastes, likes, and dislikes. Like arche, I don't get nearly as worked up about ta tas and wah wahs on screen as others do. In general, I also prefer generalized mayhem to actual violence. And I can find such things, and ignore the others. Point being, if you don't want to watch Dr. Gene Scott or some such, then don't. Shut your eyes and put beans in your ears if you have to. But there's not a whole lot of point about engaging in a bunch of pearl clutching and hand wringing about what others want to view.
  4. mollusk
    Among my cronies, we refer to that area as being "behind the Pine Curtain."
  5. mollusk
    VWs were definitely floaters, too. A handy trait in Houston, to be sure.
  6. mollusk
    They're working west to east, one building at a time. There's a better view from Usener.
  7. mollusk
    Oh, the original Beetle was downright huge compared to the Mouse of the Rising Sun - the original Honda cars.
  8. mollusk
    RICH-ard-son. Chev-ro-let. Greatest Dealer in the Great South-west. Richardson Chev-ro-let - Southwest Freeway at Hill-croft. Earworms unite.
  9. mollusk
    Just - west - of - Post - Oak !!!
  10. mollusk
    Knapp Chevrolet is still where it's always been, at Houston and Washington Avenues (not that GM didn't try to kill it during the auto industry implosion), and is even building a new showroom that promises to be properly corporately execrable. The Katy expansion took out what had been Courtesy Chevrolet back ages ago.
  11. mollusk
    The original, late sixties sanctuary at St. John Vianney, now used as the chapel. BTW, it has wonderful acoustics. Their massive new sanctuary, not so much - the priests have to be mic'ed to be heard.
  12. mollusk
    Would the brick color be better if we called it "fawn?" Or perhaps we can click our heels three times and think of it as an homage to the brick on the Gulf Building and various other historical structures with buff brick. For some odd reason, the giant letters are starting to grow on me - particularly now that it's clearer that they will separate off the porte cochere.
  13. mollusk
    Awwww... that Springfield building's such a cute little thing. I wonder what it will look like when it grows up?
  14. mollusk
    The train that makes stops bypassed by the express would be the local. A stop, no matter how perfectly aligned with the main route, will still add time to the schedule, if for no other reason than slowing down and sitting still long enough to allow people to get on and off, and then getting back up to speed. If it causes a diversion from a straight line, more so. This is not a zero sum game. However, having an allegedly high speed train go dozens of miles out of the way to make intermediate stops with few incremental passengers is kinda self defeating. True story: Back when airplane reservations were always made over the phone, I was booking a trip to and from Dallas. Almost all of the returns were nonstop (of course), save one that was a direct flight with one stop. I asked the Southwest agent, "Where on earth does it stop?? Centerville?" She laughingly agreed that sounded pretty silly and looked up the route - it went through Austin, which added roughly a half hour to what was ordinarily a 50 minute flight.
  15. mollusk
    Each time you add another stop, you chip into the "high speed" aspect of the trip. I also question the viability of Waco or College Station as stops in terms of the number of passengers they would handle. While they both have fine educational institutions, they don't support anything beyond puddle jumper air service, and even that doesn't have near the frequency of just Southwest's HOU - DAL service (not counting other airlines or service in and out of IAH or DFW).
  16. mollusk
    HCAD's build date entries for older structures are notoriously unreliable. In particular, 1920 seems to be a popular estimated build date for anything that can fairly be described as "pretty old."
  17. mollusk
    Sorry, Tige, but Waco and College Station are only likely to see passenger rail service by the modern equivalent of a local, just as their commercial air service is via puddle jumper. Shoot, not even Amtrak stops in Waco - and nobody claims that the Texas Eagle is any sort of paragon of swift passage.
  18. mollusk
    Sounds about right. Any more it seems like the only alternatives on a lot of cars are silver/beige/gray/white/black, with perhaps a red or a blue thrown in for the true bohemians, and your choice of a taupe or gray interior. I get it that it's cheaper to produce a smaller universe of combinations, and that those are the least offensive, and that a Malibu with a Kermit the Frog green interior (as used to exist) would sit on a lot forever these days, but geez....
  19. mollusk
    I'm eager to see the finished product. Driving by today I could see that they are going gangbusters on lower floor interior buildout, even though they still don't have the bottom few floors closed in yet.
  20. mollusk
    It's interesting to see all the orange accents in the renderings. Any bets that those details get changed before completion? Edit: The fact that the tent in my avatar is orange is a mere coincidence. It is a popular color in the small tent world. I have always cherished my neutrality in what used to be called the Southwest Conference.
  21. mollusk
    I will defer to those on this forum who actually are design professionals... but aren't symmetry and proportion the holy grails of Italian Renaissance in general and Palladian in particular?
  22. mollusk
    The circus is in town!! They came in via Memorial. The caravan stretched from Houston Avenue almost to Studemont.
  23. mollusk
    They're not going to have a route fully selected until after they get through the environmental impact evaluation process, which according to the fishwrapper is just now getting started. However, everything I've read at least implies a fairly straight line, non stop run between Houston and Dallas - doing otherwise would nick into the 90 minute trip time goal that keeps getting bandied about. Since they've also mentioned the idea of running their fully grade separated line adjacent to existing rights of way (rail, electric, and road), I'm guessing the BNSF route may be in play - it's a more direct route to Dallas than the UP has. I can't help but wonder what they're going to do for a terminal here. In Dallas, it's easy - Union Station is still in use. However, we've got the downtown post office sitting where the SP station was, Union Station's railyard has a baseball field on it now, and the Katy station is long gone. I can't imagine how the Amtrak station as it currently sits would be considered even remotely useable. My speculation is they'd build something adjacent to the Burnett Red Line station - there's plenty of former rail yard there, and it's a short, uninterrupted run to either the BNSF right of way or the Hardy Toll Road extension.
  24. mollusk
    Fair enough. I was just giving reasons why an inappropriately large truck would be on what was described as the "worst route possible."
  25. mollusk
    ^^ eh, not so much saving money as kicking the can down the road, and opening yourself up for a ticket in the process. Granted, not a moving violation - still, I prefer to keep my interactions with the po - po out of the "do you know why I stopped you" territory.
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