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Paper_jam

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Everything posted by Paper_jam

  1. One thing that makes me surly is public bathroom stalls (and sink areas) that don't have anyplace to put your shit. If I designed any bathroom, each stall would have a coathook and a fold-down shelf to put your briefcase or other objects on. And there would be shelves or storage options near the sink area. So you don't have to just dump your stuff all over the piss-soaked floor, or put clean items down on the wet sink counter. Why doesn't anyone think of these little details? I'm not that smart so the lack of these extremely basic amenities must be intentional.
  2. I'm single with no dependents. Typically I have ~ $9 or 10k in itemized deductions (combination of property tax, mortgage interest, and sales tax) plus my $4k (or so) personal exemption. So effectively that was a ~ $14k deduction. This year, I can't seem to get my itemized deductions above the new 12k standard deduction, and there's no more personal exemption. So the bottom line is it looks like my taxes are actually going up. I did buy a new car this year; is there any way to claim the sales tax on that as a deduction outside the normal itemized deduction process?
  3. I had Gleeson as well, for 303K in ..Fall '89, I guess. That was one of my top two or three favorite classes at UT, although it wasn't easy. Managed a low 'A' somehow.
  4. I gotta go with sudden failure of elevator, elevator controls, or horizontal stabilizer. Although I'm interested in the sequence of events...were the engines pushed to full power before the nose pitched down? Because that'd be weird.
  5. I'm talking out of my ass but I would guess that the Texas government wants to make sure there's no organized prostitution or sex slavery going on in connection with major races.
  6. I'm in NE Austin and haven't really noticed the smell (yet?) but I have noticed a slight brownish discoloration to the water if I open a faucet that has been idle for a day or two. May be a local issue (or isolated to my own house somehow).
  7. The website and billing has been a clownshow forever. And now SH130 is all bumpy and under construction so I can't even fully enjoy the 85 MPH speed limit I'm paying for. On the other hand, huge props to the TxTag roadside assistance guy who helped me out when I had a blowout. (Not quite as many props to whoever is supposed to clean the debris off the road which caused said blowout.)
  8. Started out as a coal miner in a small Pennsylvania town, and became a giant in the field of Chem E. RIP John, and Hook 'Em.
  9. As a slight tangent, I'd be more interested in renewing if the audio quality over satellite didn't sound like I was listening to it using two cans and a string. Is there any hope of them either upgrading their bandwidth or improving their compression method? I guess anything they do has to be backwards compatible with the population of satellite receivers already out there, and hardware limitations in the satellites themselves...
  10. Paper_jam

    Thujone

    This^^^. You don't rush genius.
  11. Not CR but it's been reported that a certain POTUS with large hands enjoys his steaks well-done, with ketchup.
  12. One trivial thing that makes me surly is major, brick-and-mortar retailers which have a website that can't even tell me if a specific product is in stock at a given physical store location. Why would you not use your website to leverage and support sales at your own stores? If I wanted to order online and wait, I'd use Amazon. Sometimes I need something FAST and I just need to know, before I drive all over town, whether or not it's in stock. Yet (some) companies still make it a total pain in the ass to find this out. I swear, some companies have their online shit set up like it's designed to compete with their own brick and mortar assets, rather than complement them.
  13. In the mid-1990s, a friend of mine lived at the place below for about a year. It was...tolerable then, but I don't know what it's like now. It was a little "crimey," it wasn't unusual to hear gunshots some distance away. Their website shows rent for a (very small) 1 bedroom starting at $775. https://villasoflacostaapartments.com/
  14. What a wasted fucking half. How do you come out of that with zero points. Dak looks like shit on some of those sacks.
  15. When replacing an old water heater In the Austin city limits, do they make you also put in an expansion tank now? I'm looking at reviews on new water heaters and it seems like the modern computer-controlled valves/burners are a PITA that shut everything down if there's so much as a mousefart of a problem or variable out of range...
  16. Memphis uniform looks like knockoff Spider-Man pajamas. Salt Lake : "while the team logo resembles a car hood reflecting the city’s fastest and most famous cars." Seriously?
  17. Unbelievable crash in Formula 3 Macau race. No fatalities but daaaaamn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHZWJkcBz8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FCeMau0heY
  18. I hate that damn Buc-ee's on 183 at I-10. The traffic from that monstrosity fucks up the whole interchange. There's like 4 stoplights there now, I think you used to be able to cruise through there and there was only a flashing yellow light.
  19. Check out reviews/recommendations at www.rtings.com and www.avsforum.com In that price range (or a bit over) I'd say that the Sony x900F is very popular, but the 65" will be above your budget. The 55" is right about $1200 now, probably will be some good Black Friday sales. I'd also suggest you consider the Samsung NU8000, which is a bit cheaper than the Sony. You can find that in a 65" size for around $1200. TCL and Vizio make some popular models with a strong feature set at lower prices, but IMHO also prone to more issues. You didn't ask about viewing angles, which may change the situation. All of the above are VA-based LCD's which will tend to wash out some if you are watching from a position of more than 20-30 degrees off center. IPS models have slightly wider viewing angles but then you get different issues with the picture quality. (Note that I don't own any of these, I'm sticking with an old Panasonic plasma until it breaks or until OLED tech gets cheaper.)
  20. There was a huge political fight 8-10 years ago over whether to build one of those treatment plants. I guess it turns out that we did need it. As to the current crisis, I don't see this problem so much as an issue of capacity, as one where the design parameters of the current plants were set based on the normally-decent-quality of the intake water from Lake Austin/Travis. When I toured the Davis plant, although it was many years ago, and I was surprised how "little" treatment was actually needed. Basically just a couple of big clarifying basins and some filters, as I recall (plus the chlorination). But if the intake water is loaded with fine solids, it takes longer for those clarifiers to settle the solids out, and I'm sure the flow is quickly reduced as stuff builds up in the filters. Hence the reduction in clean water output.
  21. "Depending on the size of the breach, a wall of water will be blasted out at speeds in excess of 1,000 MPH and could still be traveling at 50 MPH by the time it reaches Austin. In the Teton Dam failure, initial wave velocity was 1,090 MPH (1,960 ft/s) and the wave was 120 ft tall. The St. Francis Dam failure was an instantaneous failure and released an initial wave of water at 2,018 MPH (2,960 ft/s). These velocities are the result of massive amounts of pressure being created by the weight of the water."
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