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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    I don't remember exactly what technology was used, but IIRC it was something a bit novel at the time. It seems like they only worked for a few months, and after that, the tubes carrying the lighting element (whatever it was) started drooping like crazy. Lighting technology has advanced so much in just the last several years, it may be feasible to replicate the intended appearance with something both more economical and more reliable - perhaps LED based. I can't imagine TxDoT digging up the money to do so, however, unless they can come up with some sort of tolling scheme.
  2. mollusk
    Distilled, it means that beginning next March, the car has to pass inspection in order to renew the license plate; one sticker will serve to confirm both registration and inspection. You have up to 90 days before the registration renewal to pass inspection. In the transition year, if your inspection sticker expires after your registration you don't have to re-up the inspection until within 90 days of when you renew registration in the following year. It is a little tricky to describe clearly. Not stated in the article is that whether or not your vehicle passes inspection has been passed on to the state for at least a couple years now. As a result, I expect that having the receipt in hand may be handy but not necessary when renewing the plates (as was the case with proof of insurance the last time I went through). Personally, I don't know why they didn't go to linking the two ages ago. I'd rather have as little as possible on the windshield within my field of vision.
  3. mollusk
    IMHO the renderings for the new HSPVA are pretty grotesque, though that doesn't particularly fit into your list. The new Knapp Chevrolet, though, with an apparently suburban facade going up with a concrete parking lot between it and the street does, though, as does Sawyer Heights and its adjuncts, which some sharp commenter dubbed "Katyland" (or something similar).
  4. mollusk
    If it's just one truck, two things spring to mind: Either a reliance on GPS that goes beyond looking at whether the road is suited such a large vehicle (I've read that this can really be a problem in Europe, where OTR trucks get led into tiny village streets), or he blew a turn somewhere and is now trying to work through it. I live in a resolutely residential neighborhood across the freeway from a light industrial area, and we occasionally have OTR trucks wandering through that have no apparent business there.
  5. mollusk
    Adding to crunch... -- Stage diving at Rock Island -- Being young and skinny enough to stage dive.
  6. mollusk
    Agreed that just because Southwest hasn't weighed in yet doesn't mean that they won't. However, the overall situation is much different now, largely because of the amount of security theater we now have to put up with to get onto an airplane. Before the Global War On Terror, it was possible to leave my office in downtown Houston, run down to Hobby, get a walkup ticket on Southwest and be at a client's office in downtown Dallas or the LBJ area within two hours. That's not happening any more. Sure, Southwest started out with the idea of high frequency and low cost on high traffic, shorter routes, using secondary airports. However, it's now got a lot of much longer fights, and with its AirTran acquisition now goes into places it never did before, such as LaGuardia, Dulles, and Washington National. Also, it's much bigger in the northeast now than it was the last time the high speed train idea was floated, and competes with trains up there just fine.
  7. mollusk
    Most cool. Thanks.
  8. mollusk
    Yellow cheese Tex Mex, with the heat coming mostly from chile powder rather than jalapeños and habaneros, immortalized in the gatefold of ZZ Top's Tres Hombres album - Which is of course far prettier than any plate I ever had there. Also, for some reason or another you could never get any head on beer poured into the little water glassed they served with. The rumor at the time was that the old house literally started breaking up. I don't recall expanding Keneally's parking as having anything to do with it at the time.
  9. mollusk
    Nice privacy in that studio.
  10. mollusk
    There was another Longhorn over in the Park Shops. It, too, is closed. Personally, I still miss Leo's - though it was never the same after it moved onto Washington from its old, falling apart converted house location on Shepherd. About the closest one can get to that type of Tex Mex place these days is Spanish Village.
  11. mollusk
    Back in the day, taking Southwest from Houston to Austin or San Antonio was a far more viable option than it is now; shoot, even HOU - DAL isn't the no brainer that it used to be unless it's just for one day. It's also a much larger airline than it was even ten years ago. I suspect that the Texas Triangle Southwest started with probably isn't as integral a part of its business model these days.
  12. mollusk
    The wood fence on Main between the street and rail lanes is back down, though the southbound street remains blocked during the day. They've taken up a lot of the sidewalk and street in front of what I'll assume will be the front door; the street had metal construction plates over the hole when I drove over it yesterday evening.
  13. mollusk
    Side note: MayorBob may have done a bunch to impede building rail, but he was long out of office by 2003.
  14. mollusk
    Actually, it was built by Houston' equivalent of a noble family. William P. Hobby (the elder, for whom Hobby Airport is named) was governor of Texas, and owned and published the Post of eons. His wife, Oveta Culp Hobby, was the first CO of the WACS and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Eisenhower (back when R presidents would bring in D cabinet secretaries). Their son, William P. (Bill) Hobby, Jr., publisher of the Post at the time the castle was built, was also Lite Guv for a long time. Last time I looked the Chronicle was still using the presses there - they removed their downtown presses a few years ago.
  15. mollusk
    I believe that is a test mule they use to do clearance checking along the rail lines (notice the little outriggers on the sides).
  16. mollusk
    The garage now feeds to/from Travis; the Rusk entry is closed. Watching cars go up that outdoor ramp looks a bit like a full size version of a slot car track or something like that.
  17. mollusk
  18. mollusk
    I hear a lot more barking dogs and clamoring children on work related calls than I used to. Fortunately, I've got the flexibility to start my work day at home for an hour or two and then head in after traffic, the occasional early fixed time commitment aside. On a day in, day out basis, though, I could sure see the household projects becoming a major distraction. Subdude's right, too - if the work involves collaboration, it really helps to have the one on one face time.
  19. mollusk
    The EU adopted pedestrian safety standards a couple years back that effectively mandated a higher hoodline. The US has its bumper standards. And there is more attention to air flow now as a component of fuel economy, and the need to wrap all that around a passenger cabin of X size, all of which ends up setting the parameters for the overall mass. So in a lot of ways designers are sorta just moving the exterior trim around - notice how there's a lot more variation on instrument panels. But yeah, the universal Hofmeister kink is getting a bit overused - oddly enough, BMW manages to play with it a bit (see the X1, X3, and i3). Personally, I prefer analog gauges and clocks. Their gross level information is more easily assimilated with a peripheral glance (i.e., it's about half past 2 - I don't necessarily need to know that it's 2:29).
  20. mollusk

    METRORail Green Line

    mollusk replied to a topic in Transit

    The blocked crossing signal has been moved to the catenary pole, and is now easily visible from the crosswalk across Travis looking east. If a HAIFer reached out to someone with HRT or one of its contractors, thanks.
  21. mollusk
    Actually, the ethnic/racial component of drawing districts is mandated by the Voting Rights Act (and has been for decades). Regardless of the metric used (and grossly oversimplifying here), redistricting/gerrymandering as commonly practiced usually results in the party in power trying to cram the opposite party into as few districts as possible while carving enough of them off here and there to maximize the number of their own "safe" districts, and bumping off the occasional senior member of the opposition. That's why Austin is carved into a half a dozen districts, one of which reaches to the Houston burbs, and only one of which happens to have a D as its rep if my count is accurate. Edit: And yes, it's an old practice - the term itself refers to a Massachusetts governor's district drawing in 1812. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
  22. mollusk
    If this were exposed concrete rather than beige brick, would it be Brutalist?
  23. mollusk
    I think the 4C is the automotive equivalent of a restaurant's soft opening: Put out a product that will be pretty much self limiting to the True Faithful (who know it's an experiment, and who if they had Alfas before, expect them to break in the most interesting ways), perform essentially a beta test of whether the systems will hold up in actual use in the local conditions, and gradually open up to the larger market.
  24. mollusk
    There was a chain link fence between the driving lane and the rail track for quite a while; this barrier appears to be more substantial. Warning: wild speculation alert. Perhaps a laydown area for real stone to clad the bottom floors? They don't have a whole bunch of room on the Rusk side, what with the rail line being right up against the sidewalk. (we now return to sourced material...) There will also be a pretty good sized canopy on Main, with a smaller one on Rusk, plus a second ledge - http://www.jwmarriotthotelhouston.com/ As per that website, they're looking at an August opening.
  25. mollusk
    to quote the Ron Carter spokesman: This is HUUUUUGE.
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