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Nice Guy Eddie

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Nice Guy Eddie

  1. When my mom was ~80, her home was severely damaged by a hurricane. She basically only had me to help her move all of her furniture and the majority of her belongings to the sidewalk to be trashed. She could effectively do nothing to help. This was about 2-3 weeks after the hurricane. A house that had water in it, exposed to the elements and no power/AC for weeks is a nasty place. A church group from Washington state came down to Texas to help people. They were saints. Helping to haul things. Clean out the fridge. Even willing to assist my mom in going through personal items to see what could be salvaged. We knocked it out within 6-7 hours instead of the days or weeks it would have taken me. I forget their individual names but will forever be grateful for their help. EDIT: One benefit of strangers helping someone out is that the strangers are less emotional. A family handling this task on their own will naturally experience emotions that slow progress. The downside of strangers is that they might toss out something with sentimental value.
  2. Noem, the WH and the GOP-led Congress will do nothing to investigate Noem and FEMA's shortcomings. She probably can't fully avoid questioning by a Dem rep or senator, perhaps even Chip Roy, but she will deny that any delay occurred and definitely she doesn't have any rule in place that could lead to a delay. And it's not the GOP leaders' best interest to look too deeply.
  3. I'm still scratching my head on why they provided me 4 for 1 pricing. The initial guy at Discount Tire made some comment that they recommended all 4 because as tires are rotated or changed, the car's monitoring system may alert you to the wrong tire. I don't know but if that's correct I could see it almost being cheaper for them to solve the problem the first time by just fixing all 4 tires at once. And if the customer (me) refuses all 4, just doing it for free to get the customer out the door ASAP. In a related manner, the Discount Tire place I visited was the most amped up car repair/service location I've ever seen. I literally think they were completing a service every 2-3 minutes. They were running it like a chick-fil-a drive thru. You get some asshole like me complaining about a problem, do whatever it takes to get him out. I've been to other discount tires and it was a different experience. I believe I will be a customer for life now.
  4. Can BTC just get to $1.1M so I can quit my job?
  5. Kirk attended community college for a semester. He received all of the education he needed by retaking algebra.
  6. To my knowledge, there isn't a democratic party commercial. Yes there are candidate commercials only, and they too often don't want to get dirty. Instead they run a campaign that will lose.
  7. I'm sure everyone has been waiting for a final update from me so here it is. I finally was able to get back to Discount Tire and basically a competent mechanic was able to get the 4 new monitors to communicate to my explorer. Thanks for all of the advice. Y'all saved me some money.
  8. Not exactly a shock that a small town mayor has zero ability to deal with media. Not to mention that he probably has limited ability to deal with an emergency.
  9. I don't have a problem with Cruz going on vacation in Europe although July 4th seems like a bad time for a senator to leave the US. However I hope that someone asks his office about his trip especially if the US taxpayer funded it. Or did lobbyists pay for it.
  10. The missing girls cabins look to be at the bottom of a cliff that I would assume did not flood. With the paths and road, that might be a 5 minute walk even for a young person. You would want a building up there, assuming they own the land. Or if the camp to the south was untouched, march the campers over there. I can appreciate that marching kids through a heavy downpour at night would not be an ideal option but its better than the alternative.
  11. horrible people are found on both sides of the aisle. Remember when those evil Californians had those fires sent from God. Plenty of people online said so.
  12. I think everyone gets the idea of summer camp but didn't experience it themselves. Meatballs was a favorite movie of mine when I was a kid. However my parents sending me to camp? Nah. I don't think they really cared what I did during the summer. Typical Gen X neglect. But knowing myself, if my parents had asked me if I wanted to go to camp, I would have said no. EDIT: While I would guessed there were camps in Texas, I had zero awareness that many were centered around Kerrville.
  13. Abbott and Patrick will send over a few million for a river warning system and pat themselves on the back. Only a few months after they refused such a request.
  14. Depends on the person and also how old they are. I'm in my 50s, so there wasn't a simple way to keep up with wide groups of friends after high school or college unless you live near them. Guys in the 80s or 90s weren't exactly calling or writing their male friends. Sounds bad to say but for me most hs or college friends were in the rear view mirror for me as soon as that time ended. I can look at my hs yearbook, see someone that I spent 100s (1000s?) of hours with from 5th-12th grade, and hs graduation was the last time I saw or spoke to them. And obviously I'm in the rear view mirror for them as well. When I hear someone speak about frequently seeing their old friends, it's just a different life experience than I had. Not weird, just different.
  15. Thanks for the clarification.
  16. You could be right. I assumed, and could very well be completely wrong, that the cabins in question were on the south part of the picture I highlight. That's a lake off something referred to as Cypress Creek. The Guadalupe is at the top of my photo. And I'm looking on a flat map where the elevation changes could be significant for this property.
  17. From what I can tell from satellite photos, that really isn’t a river but a lake off a Guadalupe tributary, that most likely has a weir style dam. That would normally keep the lake from exceeding much over the dam height. Except in times of extremely flooding and/or if the downstream lake or river is also at flood stages. if I’m wrong about my above speculation (100%) I hope someone corrects me.
  18. It’s natural tendency to assume that everyone has it under control. If you’re a new-ish official for a small county, are you going to start telling 80-year old businesses that they have unsafe practices or need to evacuate their campers right this minute? I would also bet the sheriff’s office is probably sized for the permanent population and not increased for temporary visitors especially the children of well-off parents. in a developing natural disaster, no county official (elected or law enforcement) can adequately address the needs of all residents. It’s like when a hurricane hits the coast, and law enforcement tells you that you’re pretty much on your own during the height of the storm. (I realize hurricanes are not flash floods.) lessons will be learned from this flood and eventually forgotten.
  19. In looking at maps of camp mystic and what I assume is another camp up stream from up, I see a series of what looks to be dams to produce private lakes. Something called cypress creek, not the Guadalupe river. I can see why a camp needs a lake especially in times of droughts. Flash floods, especially in prolonged droughts, can initially bring large amounts of debris. Could the debris hit up against the dams create a temporary larger dam until the water/debris breaks free only to hit the next dam, and so on? Im ignorant of private dams but wonder if they can contribute to the 100+ year storm impacts in terms of people in the immediate area. I don’t care if people dam up smaller creeks assuming they are following the law but I doubt Texas does a good job of regulating them.
  20. Very weird to release this story on Sunday night. Obviously they want to end the story quietly but why not release it this past Thursday afternoon going into the weekend of the 4th. Or maybe a news source was about to announce that they were intentionally sitting on it so they quickly released their findings. Odd.
  21. In hindsight, his vote would probably be different? Way to take a stance there Virdell. I bet your constituents will feel the same about their votes for you.
  22. My parents would have never spent money on sending me to camp. Admittedly they did buy me a nice car when I went off to UT.
  23. I’ve lived in Texas for my entire 50+ years and I had zero knowledge of the camps around kerrville until Friday. I would guess >95% of Texans have no clue about this culture.
  24. Send the dodger fans home on that.
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