
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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High-deductible health insurance: filing a claim
Texas Jeff replied to Parliament's topic in Can You Help Me With This?
No. Most HSA's give you a debit card. If you pay your bills for qualified expenses using the card, the money will come out of the HSA and pay the bills. If you have a mix of investments and a cash account at the HSA, you may need to sell some of the investments to fund the cash account before you pay the bills. Usually they will not automatically sell your HSA investments to cover the debit card, but they will drain the cash account. You can also pay the bills yourself, and then ask for reimbursement from the HSA. In that case, you will pay the bill, and then you will receive a check written to you from the HSA, or you can make an electronic transfer to your bank account. Keep the receipt for the expense you paid for out of the HSA, maybe write "paid for using HSA" on it. Make an envelope of expenses like this for this year, and keep them with your taxes. At the end of the year, you are going to receive a tax form showing how much you withdrew from the HSA. Should the tax man audit you, you may need to provide bills showing exactly what you spent the HSA money on, to prove it was a qualified expense. And certainly don't take my advice for this, I am not an expert. But I do have an HSA. -
Assuming Texas wins the rest of their Big XII games, they now control their destiny. The OU loss eliminated the chance of a three-way tie among 1 loss teams involving Texas. Among Big XII teams with one loss, Texas can move ahead of Iowa State and K State by winning. The winner of next weekend's OU / Ok State game is the likely championship game opponent. The Bedlam winner is in a great position. Ok State closes out at UCF, at UH and BYU at home. OU has West Virginia at home, a road trip to BYU, and TCU at home. Texas' path is more difficult, but they now control it.
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They got 13 rows in two sections of the upper deck, and one of those sections was really narrow. They would have had to receive 30 seats per row to put one band butt in each seat, for 400 seats. But there is no way that a tuba, bass drum, tenor drum, or lots of other instruments are going to fit in one seat. Usually you need 500 or so for a 400 piece band. Longhorn Band is on a farewell Tour of Texas this season, with stops in Waco, Houston and Fort Worth. Hopefully adding late season stops in Arlington and Houston. They are taking the entire band on the road, Southwest Conference style. And they are getting a bit smushed. The athletic dept is doing a great job of supporting them. Time to say goodbye and move on to new adventures elsewhere.
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A story about a pathetic man's downfall [34 Felony Convictions]
Texas Jeff replied to Francisco 2.0's topic in Cloak Room
Why anyone still cares about this guy is beyond me. America, on the count of three, focus on someone else... -
Start with a conditional overlay between Lamar and Guadalupe, between 38th st and the University Neighborhood Overlay, which I believe ends at 29th st. Enable construction of really tall buildings in this area, especially close to the rail stations at 38th and Guadalupe and 29th and Guad. Create a special tax for this zone to pay to extend the rail from 38th to the Triangle, and create a rail stop there. Redevelop the older parts of the triangle area as tall tower housing and create a walkable community around the new rail stop. Extend the special tax to that zone to help pay for the rail and the stop. Not all of the area is ready for redevelopment, but the state owns a bunch of property around there and a ginormous surface parking lot at 51st and Lamar. Go tall where possible. In between, decide how much area is really needed for the mental health centers and create a plan to build that. Redevelop the rest of the area as towers than are walkable to the 38th and Guad rail station, along Guad. Redevelop whatever is possible on the other side of the street. Hyde Park can't be redeveloped but the edges can. Redevelop what you can up and down Duval, mid rise or higher. The #7 bus is a damn good route. Make it easy to get farther north on that bus to the Highland Mall area and redevelop the crap out of the ACC campus area up there. Add a rail stop on the Red Line at about 55th and Duval and redevelop everything east of there between the rail and Airport, using tall towers. That area would have #7 bus access to downtown plus a two stop ride to the downtown convention center. Work with TxDot to implement the cap where the Red Line crosses IH35 and plan an overlay for that area, primarily to redevelop the HEB area (Hancock Center). Keep the HEB. Nuke the Sears. Create a walkable community across the cap with tall density close to the rail station. This could go all the way down to Fiesta Mart. Start talking with the state about moving DPS HQ somewhere else, or rebuilding it elsewhere. You could create a walkable community all the way from Lamar to ACC Highland Mall with lots of transit. Consider taxes on all of this new development to fund expansion of the rail line, so that it can get to the airport and go farther up Lamar. Once that rail is built, remove the new taxes, or reduce them to just enough to maintain that part of the system in good repair. I'm going to stop there, but that's just north central Austin. A few citizens could think about this for an hour and come up with many more opportunities like this that do not involve tearing down family housing and trees in interior neighborhoods. Most of my proposals allow people to commute downtown on transit, with an easy walk to a train or bus.
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80 year olds are just now getting their FW:fw:fw:RE:Fw:fw email and are clicking on the link to donate.
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Are we going back to natural grass in the near future?
Texas Jeff replied to Goo Punch's topic in Football
No way. Not in a million years. -
I think we went through a weird decade with cheap money. We still have zero tax rates on up to $500k in cap gains. As mortgage rates dropped, house prices rose. If you could buy a $1,000,000 house with 3% money and watch it appreciate at 10% per year with $20k in taxes, that's $50,000 in cap gain per year. Why have someone live there and wear it out? Use it for a vacation home for a few months a year and then move there permanently at the end for two years, figure out a way to sell it with low transaction costs .... and up to $500k is yours tax free. It's a risky deal but in a rising market with low rates everyone thinks we will always have a rising market with low rates.
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How much of the cost in our health care system is simply related to billing and collecting? Anyone know? It seems like a significant part of our current system is just figuring out who owes what and trying to collect.
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They started as Florida Tech or something like that in the 1960s, to provide engineering talent to the space industry. They now have an enrollment similar to A&M. UT-Dallas has a similar history. UTD started as a grad school to create talent for TI and the DFW tech industry.
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If Texas wins out: Everyone is eliminated from the championship game except OU, Kansas, Ok St, and West Virginia. OU has games remaining against the other three. OU wins pretty much eliminate whoever they beat, unless OU loses two. Kansas plays Ok St tomorrow and Ok St plays West Virginia in a week. Losers of those games are probably out.
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2024 Solar Eclipse - never too early to get ready
Texas Jeff replied to Wally Fairway's topic in Daily Texan
I don't trust the paper glasses ... just my opinion. I will be making a pinhole camera to check it out, which is really simple to do. Something to check out during the eclipse tomorrow. Find a tree with leaves throwing a shadow on the ground, or on a building. You may see some half moon shapes, which is pretty cool. -
Also, the increased money for security is not going to teachers. The state is mandating that schools have someone at each campus ready to blast away, but did not provide enough money to fund the blasters. So districts are creating or expanding police forces, at a cost higher than what the state is providing, leaving even less money for teachers. I know this is a crazy counter proposal but perhaps we could not sell guns to young people and instead provide them with more mental health resources.
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Texas has about 5.2 million kids enrolled in K-12. Providing $5.2 billion for 5.2 million is easy math ... $1000 per kid. How does that end up being only $75 per kid? Even a $3000 one time bonus adds maybe $200 per kid, and it's a one-time thing.
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This article suggests you can build an ADU on SF-1 and SF-2 under current code. This was allowed in late 2021: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2021/12/council-to-allow-adus-in-more-places/
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They are also considering reducing the minimum lot size to 2500 sq ft, so a developer could, in theory, buy a single home on a 50x100 sq ft lot and subdivide it into two lots, then build three units on each lot. On site parking requirements are also possibly changing. There are other restrictions like setbacks, floor-to-area ratios, building height, and so on that constrain what can be done on a lot, and those could also be changing. The two changes that have been most publicized are the 1 house to 3 house change and the 2500 lot size change. Austin has a variety of single family zoning categories, from SF-1 through around SF-5. If you have SF-3 zoning, which is common, you probably can either duplex your existing property or add an ADU for your family member under existing zoning.
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I think Texas is going to go undefeated through the rest of the conference schedule. I thought that maybe they would beat OU and then drop a game late, and have to beat OU again to make the playoff ... now I think if they are a playoff team then they will play like they are and win out. It will help if OU wins out and the teams Texas does NOT play (West Va, Cincinnati, Ok State, UCF) all get two conference losses to prevent wacky tiebreakers. Cincinnati and UCF already have two or more. West Virginia probably is the most likely tiebreaker spoiler. Root against those four. IF Texas gets a rematch agains an undefeated OU, I like their chances. The winner will claim a playoff spot. It will be epic.
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make a sign with the Big XII logo but make it just say Big II
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What are you doing to prepare for October 4th?
Texas Jeff replied to Beau Vine's topic in Daily Texan
They should do this during UT home games. Right after the drone show but before the fireworks and smoke cannons. Liven up the place… -
I used to work for a chip company with about 3000 employees, at a satellite office. Our CEO would visit about two times a year and give a little talk. The best one was him describing his path from new hire engineer to CEO. He put up an org chart of our company with all the departments and said "This is what I *thought* I was supposed to do" ... and highlighted a line going directly from the bottom to the top. Then he said "This is what I actually did" and the next slide showed him going all over the company. Engineering, marketing, working in the factory, supply chain, sales, back to engineering, across to marketing again, and so on. Everything except the cafeteria. The rest of the talk was about his different experiences with the company, but he said he could never have been CEO without first having the experience of being in all parts of the company, to see how it fit together. If your goal is to make it to the top, it helps to have a breadth of experience, wherever you start.
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Congrats to Austin High! Bowie took the lead with about a minute and half to go up by 3. Austin High scored on a 3rd and long with 3 seconds to go for the win.
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The destruction of America's public education system
Texas Jeff replied to Captainant's topic in Cloak Room
I would tweak that a bit to say “your relationship to the district”. My kids are recently out of school and I have a wife teaching in the district, so I’ve seen a lot of what is right and wrong, but I no longer have kids in the district. But generally, I like your idea… -
If you feel the need to read even more about colleges you may not be familiar with, you can buy the Fiske Guide for $25. https://www.sourcebooks.com/fiske-guide-to-colleges.html 2024 edition via Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fiske-Guide-Colleges-2024-Edward-dp-1728271835/dp/1728271835/ref=dp_ob_title_bk It has a small writeup on most US colleges and universities. The physical book feels like looking through an old phone book, with super-thin pages bound in a giant book. It's OK. It gives you some idea of what to expect if you just want to leaf through a bunch of schools.
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Correction: SMU's enrollment is actually about 12,053. Rice is about 8,672. I think I left off grad students for those two schools...
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I was curious, so I looked up enrollment numbers for Texas public schools, in this case from Fall 2022. Here is everyone with an enrollment over 20k, which is about 80% of the Texas public university enrollment. The Aggies are growing their main campus but UT is putting together a system: Texas A&M: 67,165 UT Austin: 52,189 U of H: 46,580 UNT: 44,349 UT Arlington: 40,942 Texas Tech: 39,743 Texas State: 38,171 UT San Antonio: 33,557 UT Dallas: 31,570 UT RGV: 31,317 UT El Paso: 23,880 Sam Houston: 20,996 Other UT System: SFA: 11,232 UT Tyler: 8,968 UT Permian Basin: 5,250 Other former SWC Texas schools: Baylor: 20,709 TCU: 12,273 SMU: 7,056 Rice: 4,494 Any surprises on this list? I didn't realize that UNT and U of H were that big....
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