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crimsonlonghorn

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Posts posted by crimsonlonghorn

  1. 7 minutes ago, Born to Run said:

    10 out of 10. We got a break in the clouds for totality. Exceeded our expectations.

    I have never heard anyone who saw a total eclipse for the first time say, "That was lame. What a letdown."

    Most people - as evidenced by this thread - say, "HOLY SHIT! THAT WAS AWESOME AND EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS!"

    But there are lots of people who have never seen one who will still say, "What's the big deal?" They are also usually the same people who say, "Well, it's going to be __% here at my house. That's close enough."

    After we went to Missouri in 2017 and saw that one, I knew it was going to be worth driving and sitting in traffic to see it again this time. 

     

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  2. The moon's orbit is elliptical and not constant so the distance from the moon to the earth is what determines whether it is a total eclipse or just an annular eclipse. If the moon is too far away the apparent size of the disc is too small to entirely cover up the sun even if it passes directly in front of it, which makes an annular eclipse. The moon needs to be closer to the earth and appear bigger for it to be a total eclipse.

    The earth's orbit around the sub is also elliptical and the distance from the earth to the sun and the apparent size of the sun also varies a little bit and also factors into this determination, but the distance to the moon is the main determinant. 

    Fun fact that I read recently: the moon is slowly moving away from the earth which means that the occurrences when it is big enough to completely cover the sun are gradually getting fewer. Several million years ago in the past there were many more total eclipses and fewer annular eclipses than today. Eventually - like 600 million years from now - the moon will be far enough away that total eclipses will no longer be possible and we will then only have annular eclipses. 

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  3. The worst part about our experience in the Walmart parking lot in Gatesville was that someone started blasting "Bad Boys" from Cops during totality. I still don't quite understand the logic but they must have had some. 

    Also the traffic getting back to Houston was pretty bad. South of Temple there were lines of cars everywhere on every little highway and farm to market road. We cut over to Highway 6 which was slightly better but still not great getting through Hearne and College Station. At Hempstead we came home to Sugar Land through Bellville and Sealy. Apparently I-10 and 290 were even worse once the northern traffic from Waco met up with the western traffic from Austin. Houston news this morning said traffic was backed up on those roads until after midnight. 

    But it was still worth it. 

  4. On 9/14/2023 at 10:59 PM, luke duke said:


    Who writes $10,000 checks? That’s $200-500 worth of points.

    To Mrs CL's credit, that's the cash price and the furniture store charges an extra 3% for credit cards. At least she was trying to think through it a little bit.

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  5. 48 minutes ago, BHMCruiser said:

    Dude I threw my wife's interior decorator out of our house and told her to never come back. What a racket. They dig into your wife like a fucking tick and I bet your wife ended up doing all the work anyway

    Not 100% sure that is the case, but I will say that they haven't told her "no" enough.

    Mrs CL has some unique aesthetic preferences and all they've really done is enable her and tell her how to do it more expensively. 

    "You want blue tile in every bathroom? Awesome. Here's some really expensive tile that's blue. We hope you like it!"

    They are working to make sure it all looks good together, but they also haven't told her she's nuts, which she really needs to hear some times. 

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  6. 1 hour ago, TrashMaster G said:

    $10K for a damn breakfast table?  Does it come with breakfast included EVERY DAY?

    When we started building this house, she hired an interior decorating firm and said one of the reasons she chose them was because they worked on an hourly basis and didn't get commissions on all the stuff they picked out for her. Then, 12 months later, now that the house is almost done, I find out that they recommended $120k worth of furniture, which Mrs CL has supposedly whittled down to "only" $50k, including the $10k breakfast table. I asked why she couldn't just ask them to go a notch below and go a little more consumer level and she replied, "I don't think that's their business model. They want you to buy really nice stuff."

    No shit? Really? So they don't work just for an hourly rate?

    As usual, there was an issue with my tone. 

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  7. With interest rates where they are, I've started keeping a very low balance in the checking account and trying to park as much money as I can in our various money market and savings accounts. Since I pay the bills, I know when a large withdrawal is coming and I make sure there is sufficient money in the account. 

    I'm not sure if the "Stupid Wife" story here is the fact that Mrs CL didn't tell me she wrote a check for $10,000 or if she thinks we need a new $10,000 breakfast table for our new house. Maybe this is a stupid husband story for telling her she could buy whatever furniture she wanted for the new house. My bad. 

  8. 14 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

    I had read that those are invasive but what's the problem with them?

    They live in mostly the same habitat as the native species - especially mourning doves - but since they are bigger and (supposedly) more aggressive, the collared doves consume more resources and displace them. Just like any invasive species, the environment evolved without them, so their sudden presence can be damaging to the local ecology. Think about how hogs tear up pastures and fences and consume food meant for livestock and deer, then scale it down and think about the same thing happening to the native doves. 

    They generally are very easy to identify (big and fat, black tipped wings, fly in pairs) and are somewhat slower fliers than mourning doves, so they can be controlled pretty easily. Like I said previously, the only issue is if you accidentally shoot a morning dove. Then that's technically poaching, even if it's inadvertent. 

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  9. On 9/4/2023 at 12:24 AM, 686 said:

    @Buzzrock morning doves predominant in most of the state, white wings more predominant in the southern part. Invasive Eurasian ring necks spotted occasionally and don’t count towards your limit.
     

    Best part about the collared doves is that as long as you're absolutely sure what you're shooting at, you can shoot them all year long, just like hogs and coyotes. It's pretty easy to tell since they have black wingtips and are about 30-40% bigger and fatter.

    But take a shovel with you just in case. 

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  10. 43 minutes ago, D_Goose said:

    Re: the prospect of potentially benching QE in a game for performance issues… I’m not holding my breath. Anyone with two eyes and a pulse could see we would’ve likely won those Tech and Ok St games last year if he’d been benched for Card. We were joking Card must’ve fucked his wife or something. It was incomprehensible leaving him out there.

    Uhhhh.....

  11. 7 hours ago, 686 said:


    Haha - Beretta 686’s are great too, although a buddy (who wasn’t much of a hunter/gun guy) had one that occasionally would hang up after you fired the first barrel. You would pull the trigger a few more times thinking “WTH is going on here?” and then “Boom!” I told him he needed to take it in immediately, hope he did.

    My username is an homage to my Smith & Wesson 686, a great wheel gun.

    My man.

    image.thumb.jpeg.7cab5d13f52bc923280aebe858ebfb7a.jpeg

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  12. Just now, Storm the Field said:

    From TPWD this morning:

     

    I was thinking about this recently. Plenty of food and water in the spring, and now it's dry and they have very few choices where to eat and drink and very predictable places to find them. It might be a really good opener here in a couple of weeks. 

    Then again, the gulf is now waking up and we might get a couple of hurricanes by the end of August too. Never fails.

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  13. 3 hours ago, 686 said:


    All of what you said, plus: serial violators (who GWs should and do spend a good amount of their time tracking) aren’t going to use digital licenses or tags. So directing wardens to police generally law abiding hunters via digital tags takes the wardens away from what is a better use of their time: catching people completely disregarding the law by not using tags/licenses at all, taking game out of season, trespassing, etc., etc.

    Well said.

    The only reason to show up like that after a reported kill is to look for "process crimes" among the group that just made the report. Like you said, the more serious poachers aren't going to be tagging their kills anyway. 

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