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Paper_jam

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Posts posted by Paper_jam

  1. I'd like to take just a moment to complain about one of the thousands of annoying things about driving in Austin: if you are on westbound Braker Ln and want to go south on Mopac, you make your left turn where Braker crosses Mopac, and then drive south on the feeder road, expecting to find a ramp that will let you get on Mopac, which is literally just a few feet to the left of you. But you keep driving, and there's no onramp. You keep driving, and there's still no onramp.  You come to a traffic light for 360, which you have to wait through. Then, just up ahead, finally the ramp you've been waiting for! Instinctively, you take it, and realize a second too late that Aw fuck, this ramp goes to 183S, not Mopac.

    Yeah, admittedly there is a sign that says 183 for that ramp, but it still seems very strange to me that it wasn't designed to have the Mopac ramp first and the 183 ramp further down the road.

     

  2. Is the XFL doing anything creative with offensive (or defensive) formations? I feel like the NFL has too many rules governing how you position players, how many must be on the line of scrimmage, who is/isn't an eligible receiver, etc. Why can't (for example) you just have a center, a QB, and 10 guys going deep?  Or a V-shaped phalanx formation to make a blocking wedge for your runningback, or... whatever insane formation a coach can dream up?  (Subject to the 11-man limit, and a rule that you can't be offsides before the snap.)

     

     

     

     

  3. Trivial road design issue that makes me surly: why doesn't the far north end of Lamar extend that last little bit to Howard Lane? There's a southbound connector from Howard/I35 to Lamar, but If you want to take Lamar **northbound** to Howard it forces you to turn back on the southbound 35 service road.

    *Unless you can cut through that school campus off the left, which is still not ideal

     

  4. 2 minutes ago, NowThis said:

    i knew she'd win, had that confident look.  Shot like Steph Curry, earned it.

    btw, tangent -- i have long wondered -- wtf do Marketing Executives do? They make shitloads of money, but what real work do they do? They are not Finance or Accounting. They are not product - that's engineers. They are not IT admins or coders, which requires real brains.  Heck, the delivery drivers do more substantive work . So what do marketing execs do that can't be done by some $20/hr guy?  

    I thought Marketing execs dreamed up marketing strategies. Which a $20/hr guy could also do, but he doesn't have an MBA or Marketing degree. 

    I don't know shit about Marketing but I've always liked this Bill Hicks routine:

     

    • Like 1
  5. 11 hours ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

    Kind of weird to think a large portion of those under 35-40 have never experienced not being in traffic to understand the olds love of performance.  Very few see the point and most care more about the interior than the performance. 

    I think this effect is slowly but steadily killing performance cars. Unless you have access to a track ($$$), or live someplace very rural, it's really difficult to drive with any degree of "sportiness" -- there's so much traffic congestion (and law enforcement) that you can't really do anything "fun" anymore on public streets.

     

    • Like 1
  6. Dumb question about residential mortgages: lets say someone with a strong credit history (800+), a solid employment history (25 years+), and no debt is planning retirement fairly soon. However, they're also interested in upgrading to a nicer home, just about at the time when their annual income will be dropping substantially (due to said retirement). This person has investment assets which could be collateral against a mortgage, but they are not really interested in liquidating a lot of those assets in the short term (i.e.. for a down payment).

    TL: DR If your income is on the low side, can you still qualify for a good-size mortgage on the basis of your prior credit history and the value of other assets? Or would banks run away screaming because there's not enough traditional income to support the mortgage?

     

  7. 13 hours ago, Bevo&Pevo said:

    Before I retired from the petrochem insanity our company brought in a tank truck with EO on it.  Coming down the highway it was surrounded by 8 cop cars.  When the driver rolled up to the gate we sent everyone home for the day except the most essential of personnel.  EO explosion back in '91 at Union Carbide Seadrift, looked like God reached down and swiped his hand across the site and said "Try again".

    I was living in Victoria at the time and I heard that explosion at Carbide 20+ miles away. It was the middle of the night and I thought it was thunder or a truck tire blowing.

     

  8. 6 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

    Update:

    Arrived after a 30 minute drive to go roughly 10 miles due to construction where we then waited from 10:50 to 12:00 in line to get our cafeteria food. I've never seen a worse spectacle of humanity.

     

    20191128-113254

     

     

    After seeing that line for Luby's, I would've taken my chances at the IHOP in the background. Shit, maybe the Valero has some burritos or something...

     

     

    • Like 1
  9. 8 hours ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

     


    with my dad now...the Huntsman/Motiva facility on Pure Atlantic makes ethylene glycol and propylene glycol, and ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, and ethylonolymanine. the crude facility on the river has been dismantled for years.

     

    those epoxides love to go boom

     

  10. The insane thing about LHOP was you could never be sure if you were going to get a lightweight country story about Pa building a chair or Ma's apple pie winning the fair, or an episode where a woman and a baby go up in flames on camera, or an episode where a clown rapes children complete with POV shots from inside the clown mask. I mean talk about a wide range in tone.

     

     

     

  11. I'm not a lawyer (as will immediately become apparent) and I'm also not well-informed about the current criteria that apply when a sentence of death is being considered. However, in the finest American tradition, this will not stop me from proposing my own ridiculous solution to these kinds of cases. When the prosecution is seeking the death penalty, the guilty/not guilty determination should be modified so that the jury either finds the defendant A) Not guilty; B) Guilty, based on the current "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold;  or C) Superguilty.  "Superguilty", as defined by me, means that the evidence is so clear and incontrovertible that virtually no doubt remains that the accused committed the crime. In the sentencing phase, the death penalty could be applied only for a "Superguilty" conviction.

    (This is a hypothetical kind of concept and I'm not making any claims about whether Reed is guilty or "superguilty" based on my terminology.)

     

     

     

     

  12. On 11/3/2019 at 11:56 AM, ChiTownDoc said:

    I don't follow the NFL that closely but Houston has to be the most confusing fucking team in the league.  Every time I think they're gonna go in the shitter they go on like this.  And when I feel they're finally a contender, they fall apart right on cue.  

    TLDR: WTF bro?

    For me, it seems like there is a Schrödinger's Cat effect going on with the Texans. As long as I ignore them, they do well -- but as soon as I start to follow them, they shit the bed in spectacular and amusing ways.

     

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