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Spaulding Smails

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Posts posted by Spaulding Smails

  1. On 1/31/2024 at 6:49 PM, ROFL BOX said:

     


    That's my route to come off Creek Road, then go down to Blanco & on to San Antonio. Do you live down thataways?

    . . . . . . . . . . . .

    Have been to Dreamland a few times for Scout "fun day" activities & we built the stage out back. (Attached pic)

    Every time we go to El Rey, a reasonable % of patrons appear to be Hispanic / non English speaking & that seems to be a decent reference.

    & FWIW, I think their food is good.

    The Flores taco stand is also good & IIRC, you can also get a brisket Taco.

    Don't base Pig Pen solely on a sandwich emoji849.png, the ribs are good & they have a good stuffed baked potato offering. I'm not a fan of Railroad BBQ for various reasons.

    One Shot Distillery is owned by folks that were "on scene for J6 but we didn't go in... I swear!" folks, so do with that whatever you want.

    Oak Creek is serviceable generic food; I try to go primarily because it is local & reasonably priced.

    I like Homespun. This location has been many different restaurants overr the past 15 years or so with the current owner doing the best, especially after they added the back / outdoor part. In many of the floods since the Homespun people have operated it, they keep asking for donations to help out.

    Turcotte... didn't you specify the cheese you wanted? Never a bad sandwich there & yes, I'm usually getting the Philly.

    Pizza Cave has a good pork soup & good slices with a nice view off the back of the building.

    For what you get, IMO the Filling Station is a tad bit overpriced. YMMV.

    Thyme & Dough is a good small-ish sandwich opportunity & @ one time, we occasionally sold eggs to them. I honestly have Ø idea what keeps them in business because they never seem to be busy / have enough seating to afford the space & all the costs associated with that (also, shared parking 290 frontage with Pig Pen).

    Back East in Belterra Spoon & Fork is good. Thai w/ lots of good broth stuff & just enough sweet / generic "Asian" to satisfy the average American's palette.

    I'm 50-50 on Switch. The "switch" part is ½ Cajun / ½ Q, however they never really have figured out what they wanted to be.

    The League has an excellent fish & chips & a good price for "Burger Monday". My son likes their pot pie, says it's the best ever (he's 17, so what life experience does he have?). The dirt year or so that we went there, every.single.time we ordered anything fried or with French fries , the waitstaff seemed to fear they were being "Mystery Shopped" & would always ask "Would you like to 'Truffle Up' that ____ ?" & it became sorta tedious. Shrimp cocktail is usually very fat offerings. I think they make their own pickles.

    West Henly Boilshack is close by & you're maybe paying $ 1 extra per pound due to location / distance to other options. Never a bad time there.

    Hill Country Ranch Pizza, when they first opened - the pie itself was cardboard crap. They must have received feedback because something got fixed & it's now more like a 7.5 / 10.

    I have been 1× to Tillie's @ Camp Luch & liked it, however my wife thinks it's "too strange & high priced" (she is more of a generic / typical offerings kinda eater). It has been some years, so I don't recall what we got.

    The building for Tillie's is interesting & has a background of "relocating" the structure from Vietnam.

    I don't remember the handle, however we have a Shag² member who lives across from Camp Lucy.

    & That's my perspective on the "Locals" review.

    d289de0b332910e05630f26e7bd16617.jpg


     

     

    I started typing out my responses, then read your post.  You nailed everything.  I mean, it was pretty much exactly what I was writing.  Kind of uncanny, really.

    I'm the one across from Camp Lucy.  Have been in this area since graduating from the 40 acres in '01.  Our food options in DS mostly suck.  Tons of average pizza and a few places that are good one day and sub-par the next.  Flores for breakfast tacos and Leyla's are the only two I puff my chest out for.  

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  2. On 1/29/2024 at 11:04 PM, Born to Run said:

    Anyone done the Devils River? Outfitter recs? Looking for Spring 25

    You looking for just a shuttle or fully guided experience?

    For a shuttle, Amistad is the best. 

    https://www.amistadexpeditions.com/

    Shoot me a DM if you want a guided experience.  I have a referral there but have never been with an actual guide / outfitter.  I've done the trip probably a dozen times in various forms and fashions.

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  3. 4 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

    This occurred about a mile from 141/281 intersect, about 10 miles north of Premont.  Maybe a descendent that’s grown down additional kickers down the line.   I’d love to tell you we regularly see deer like that, but we top out with solid 140s/touching 150.  I mean we could feed 50k in protein and bump that up but we get some 5.5-6.5 140’s and 150 with some protein and light management.  Best way to put it. 

    I absolutely sympathize with that.  I hunted between George West and Orange Grove for almost 15 years.  1,400 low-fenced acres.  We did all we could to manage the herd.  Shot the right deer at the right age and protein fed.  We shot a few freaks and saw some trash here and there, but we just didn't have the genetics to get anything above 160.  Still miss that place, though.  I miss hunting in South Texas.  

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  4. On 1/28/2024 at 7:16 AM, fattyflattie said:

    Coming into town last night, about 15 miles north of us, I saw the biggest deer I’ve ever seen on the hoof (that wasn’t in a breeder pen).  Standing right on the shoulder waiting to cross the FM. I hate to put a # to him because I certainly don’t have experience in judging horn like that, but I will say he’ll be burned into my memory for a very long time.  Dude had everything and then some. It’s a low fenced place right on the highway.   So that was a really cool experience.  Hopefully he was busy this season to a bunch of little rolling stones. 

    Had a similar experience when I was a kid.  Maybe 11 or 12.  Over Christmas break.  Left Corpus super early with my dad and uncle to head to my uncle's lease outside of Falfurrias in time for the morning hunt.  I remember it being super foggy once we got south of town.  I'm guessing we were around Premont when we saw him.  My uncle slammed on the brakes.  We sat there for a good 30 seconds looking at this just absolute tank standing on the right shoulder.  Just a massive, typical 12 point probably 30 yards from the hood of the truck.  Had to be 26+" wide with 12+" G2s/G3s.  Maybe it was because I was tired.  Maybe it was the scenario.  Maybe it's 30+ years of embellished memories, but it was the biggest buck I've ever seen on the hoof in the wild.  By a wide margin.  

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  5. 19 hours ago, AUinHsv said:

    I will vote for just keeping those chairs. They look pretty good there

    Good!  So that's two votes for those chairs (me and you).  We only need about 500 more votes in favor of them to override my wife's one vote for two steel + teak benches to match.  

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  6. 2 hours ago, Frank Drebin said:

    In Costa Rica. Tamarindo area.  Anyone have any charter recs?   Our family of 22 are here.  8 of us want to go offshore.  Would appreciate any intel.  Thanks.  @justhookit might know so I am tagging him.  Here until 23rd.  

    We were there in August.  Went out of Tamarindo.  Booked via CR Fishing Charters.  He's essentially a broker and coordinates with local captains, so lots of options.  Honest guys, easy to communicate with.  Everything went very smoothly.  We fished on Fish Tale II.  44' Hatteras.  Good captain and crew.  Seas were very rough the day we went out, but we raised 4 sails.  My kids loved it.  Great experience.  

    https://www.crfishingcharters.com/

  7. Speaking of culls, I forgot about this until a few months ago when I went back to Corpus.  Shot 20+ years ago by one of my best buds from our old lease in Live Oak County.  Sunbleached and needs a new cape now.  We saw him a few times and called him "Mr. Horndangles".  When he turned his head, the antler would literally sway back and forth.  Just held together by skin.  Evidently, the skull fractured or the antler came loose.  No clue.  You could wriggle it around under the skin when we loaded him in the truck.  Taxidermist did a pretty good job of keeping it intact.  Probably my favorite unique deer ever.  

    72438223291__926EDC33-AD77-4A08-89D1-36F4E7F4CC83.jpeg

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  8. 1 hour ago, CoTex said:

    Maybe this is the wrong topic but I'm not sure it warrants a new one.

    I am mentoring a young man who I think has a bright future.  In high school, he took all the mediocre classes, had a 2.9, and a 23 on the ACT.  His shop teacher encouraged him to be a welder.  Literally said "I'm going to help you get a welder job at ______ company.  

    My wife saw a spark and told him to take an ACT prep course.  He bumped his score up to 29, with just a little prep.  Encouraged him to apply to colleges, he got into OK state and a few others.  He ended up attending Texas A&M Texarkana because he can live with family there and they gave him money.  Basically paying him to attend.  He majored in Mech. E. and just finished his first semester.  3.8 gpa.  He told me "I can do better, I played too many video games this fall." 

    The whole time he was working part time at a local business basically as a gopher.  This young man was a quiet but good high school athlete who, for whatever reason, never had a ton of ambition.  Sort of just puttered through.  Family are good people, all auto mechanics.  No discipline issues.  To make extra money this young man finds broken gas string trimmers/weed eaters, fixes them and sells them on social media.  Can turn out 1 or 2 per weekend.  

    So, I personally think that, with his grades and apparent drive, I need to help and encourage him transfer to the best possible school that will take him.  If you're going to major in engineering, better school is ... better.  But, I understand there is an argument for "if kid is succeeding, why would you mess with that."  Yes, I understand a 3.8 at tamu-txk is not the same as splitting the atom, but I think it's a showing that he takes it seriously.  These are the best grades he's ever made.

    Assuming he doesn't discover beer this spring, and makes another round of grades, I think I can get him into UTD, Tech, ousux or maybe aggy.  I feel like Austin is a stretch but will likely apply.

    My basic questions are:

    1.  How big of an advantage would it be to graduate from UTD over TAMU-Texarkana?  I assume that UTD's career services is going to put its grads into places like Texas Instruments and Toyota.  I assume it's just better than a regional aggy school. 

    2.  Of those schools, how do you rank the engineering/computer science departments (UTD, aggy, ousux, Tech, Okie lite).

    3.  How much weight do you put on "aint broke, don't fix it... a degree from a mediocre program is good enough... if he wants more go to grad school somewhere better."  

    4.  He's thinking about changing to ee instead of mechanical engineering.  I think ee or computer science would likely be better but, any thoughts?  I'm not trying to tell him what to be but, he really doesn't know - likes to build things and fix things.

    5.  He's got 1 month until classes start again, and I am thinking about challenging him to something.  I'm thinking "take a google class on how to program Python and, if you can show me some proficiency, I'll give you $250."

    I can be an asshole and this kid may be the only one that comes to my funeral.  I want to help him as best I can.

    Please comment - any advice is appreciated.

     

    What does he want to do after college?  If he wants to get a graduate degree or go work for a big engineering firm, then I think the conversation around UT-D, etc is warranted.  If he's leaning more towards doing his own thing, then why upset the apple cart?  Graduating with an engineering degree and minimal debt sounds pretty sweet, regardless of where the degree is from.  

    I own a blue collar business, so my perspective is absolutely biased.  But, a kid that is obviously disciplined and a self-starter, has some technical skills like welding and graduates with an engineering degree from anywhere sounds like he's going to kill it.  Throw in some business basics and some experience after college, and that's a recipe for a killer career with an opportunity to own your own company doing something he really enjoys.  

     

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  9. On 12/6/2023 at 12:43 PM, thunderlounge said:

     

    Where's @EddieMoney been? Didn't he start-up a ticket brokerage or something?

    I haven't talked to him in a few years, but I'm pretty sure he's out of that game and moved onto other bigger, better ventures.  Though I'd bet my first born he'll be there January 8 if the Horns make it.  

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  10. I've got a couple of buddies who outsource everything.  I mean everything.  Lawn work.  House cleaning.  Pool cleaning.  Groceries.  Laundry.  You name it.  Their theory makes sense, and it's that their time is worth way more than wasting it on those tasks.  Whether that time is "billable" or spent with friends and family.  So, they pay others to do it.  I get it.  

    On the other hand, I've been notoriously hardheaded and have always tried to do everything myself.  Partly because I like it and partly because I'm stubborn.  I truly enjoy working outside with my hands.  Even the seemingly mundane stuff.  But, over the last year, I tried to put these types of tasks in three buckets.  

    A) Pay someone to do it because they're better or more efficient than me.  Moving is the PERFECT example.  Same with bigger house projects that I used to tackle myself.  I have guys at my house today pouring a new concrete step.  Five years ago, I would have done that myself and spent half a Saturday doing so.  

    B) I'll mostly do it myself because the cost doesn't seem worth it and I can do it on my own schedule.  Like trimming my trees annually.  I can't do the high stuff, but I'll spend a day meticulously trimming the Oaks.  Find some nice weather on a winter day, save a thousand bucks, break a little sweat and do it my way.  

    C) I just like to do it.  Like cleaning my pool.  I kind of look forward to emptying the skimmers, tinkering with the chemicals and making sure everything's running smoothly.  Cost doesn't matter, but I genuinely enjoy cracking open a cold beer after work and cooling off in the dead of summer while being "busy".

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  11. 4 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

    Ha. Familiar story.  The guys next to us aren’t that, though they do have some decent buggy’s and are “well to do”.  But our ranch manager works with another group that leases up 100k acres and they are that. They don’t drive down, but you know they are there because there’s 3x the normal amount of jets when you pass by the airport.  One of them tossed him a really nice dog once because she wasn’t performing and “he had 20k in her and that was enough”.  Our mgr said that dog hunts like nothing he’s had before.   Big boy sport.  

    I'll pile on the quail hunting stories.  Good family friend growing up in Corpus raised GSPs.  So, my dad and I had a chance to quail hunt some pretty cool ranches in South Texas once a year or so.  As a teen, I down at a place outside of Falfurrias with him.  This ranch leased one section to deer hunters, but most was to quail hunters.  I asked the rancher why not lease more to deer hunters.  He said, "Son... my deer hunters show up in nice trucks.  My quail hunters show up in private jets and helicopters."

    CSB:  One of those pointers he raised was with Cheney when he shot that other dude on the Armstrong Ranch a few decades ago.  

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  12. 16 minutes ago, tokamak said:

    If we win the Sugar Bowl, these are going to go into the stratosphere and anyone buying now will feel great about themselves. On the flip side, if we lose, you're probably going to lose a few hundred bucks per ticket (especially factoring in fees).

    That was my philosophy.  Bit the bullet today and bought two tickets.  They had already jumped $200/ea since I glanced Sunday afternoon.  The fees are ridiculous.  

    I missed 2005 due to a work commitment and 2009 due to a newborn.  And passed on free tickets to G5 of the 2017 WS.  Since that day, I made a pact with myself to never miss another once-a-decade opportunity.  I figured I'm saving on a flight and hotel since we're traveling from the Austin area and my in-laws live in Houston.  At least that's my football fan math that offsets $1,000 or so of the total.  Add into the equation that the day of the championship is my son's 16th birthday.  So, if the Horns are there, it's one hell of a birthday surprise and a bucket-list checked off for both of us.  And, if they don't make it past the Sugar Bowl, I may lose some coin on the resale market, but I'm thinking it's worth the insurance of having them in-hand at this point.  

    Go ahead and blame me for jinxing everything.  See y'all in Houston.

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  13. My wife's grandfather was a Justice of the Peace in deep East Texas from the early 60s through the mid 90s.  He and my wife's grandmother had tickets to a Democratic fundraiser event in Austin the night of November 22, 1963 where JFK was speaking.  They drove up the day before and spent that morning in Austin.  My wife got two things when her grandfather passed.  His gavel and the two admission tickets to that event that were never used.  

    https://shapell.org/manuscript/jfk-texas-november-22-1963-ticket/

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  14. 26 minutes ago, nnm said:

    Yeah, the bizarre ATV with a Frankenstein mashup rider on the shoulder, the guy interlaced with the guardrail in the bottom left, the pixelated fans right outside the concrete barrier on the top of the track—all pretty bad AI. 

    And the trailers are probably 1.5-2X the correct size in proportion to the trucks.  With the 5th wheel hookup visible and not connected.  Bizarre what people spend their time putting on the interwebs.  

    • Like 3
  15. 36 minutes ago, TrashMaster G said:

    Did anybody reply?  That could have started a really entertaining conversation.

    There was the typical responses of "I don't think you sent the right file" and "you may want to delete that" to a few baseball related jokes.  They took it in stride.   Lots of the same parents from the previous year, so most of us just laughed it off.  

  16. 40 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    This could be a really grim experience as a recipient, or something awesome. There are some hot moms that attend their kids' games and then there are some real pigs running around out there. I hope for your sake that it was the former. 

    I'd known them both for a few years, and always suspected they were part of "the lifestyle".  Which is why I'm not 100% convinced it was an accident.  Not the 300-lb variety prevalent in the select baseball world, but not someone you'd get excited about either.  Plus, the cinematography sucked.  

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  17. 16 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

    There is a nice big cell that looks like it's just going to park over Fredericksburg for a little while, which will be really nice for the Perd.

    Drove through it last night right before dusk on the way to the ranch.  It was coming down in buckets.  6+" in the rain gauge when I got here last night.  The ground is as saturated as I've seen it here in years.  Any additional rain will do wonders for the Highland Lakes.  

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  18. 6 hours ago, huge said:

    I hadnt considered the cost.  I saw several in those pics that I would be happy to have mounted above the mantle of in the great room of the house of my dreams that I don't own.

    My buddy shot a decent (but not great) 5x5 last fall during our NM hunt.  He ended up getting a Euro mount, and it turned out pretty slick.  His motivation was a low ceiling height, but the significantly cheaper cost didn't hurt either.   Plus, we didn't have to really cape it out in the field.  Which was nice.  

  19. 1 hour ago, dieucla98 said:

    Yes sir.

    I'm going to guess Onion Creek for you?

    Bingo.  Love it there.  Having 27 holes is a real plus.  

    GH is a fun course.  Great group of members too.  I've played in the Gold Rush the last few years.  Always a blast.  

  20. I walk every chance I get, especially when playing with my usual group or going solo.  Even in the heat this summer.  But, my club is very walker-friendly.  A few hills, but most tees are close to greens and with one configuration exception, you finish 9 or 18 back at the clubhouse.  I play probably 3-4 shots better when walking due in large part to more focusness and less distractions.  No push cart.  Just carry.  When I do ride, it's usually when I have a guest or drinking takes priority over golf.  

    @dieucla98 based on your description, I'm guessing Great Hills?

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