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Texas Jeff

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Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. Pro tip: You can buy Amazon gift cards and just give them to your kids' teachers. Or VISA gift cards. Or bags o' cash. You don't have to just buy stuff on the wish list. Encourage/force your kids to write a nice handwritten note at the end of the school year and hand it over with the cash/gift card. Most of the handwriting will not be legible but that gives the teacher a little mystery to work on in May.
  2. Does it make sense to anyone to hold school spending constant in a time of high inflation? I would be OK with this if there was an accompanying bill to kill Robin Hood payments and allow local school districts to set whatever tax rates they wish, so long as voters approve. Maybe not so much for I&S taxes, because folks might borrow too much, but if a town wants to set their O&M taxes high and pay their teachers a lot they should be able to do that.
  3. Teacher are falling behind in pay; I'm not sure folks realize how far. Cap Metro is starting mechanics at $71k-$84k per year. The TSA is paying $48k to $59k in Austin for people to check IDs, move plastic tubs, and watch x-ray machines. As of Sept 2022, the Austin Transit Partnership employed 41 people. Thirty-one of those made more than $100k and eight made more than $200k. Austin Police pays an officer with two years experience about $81,000. These are all public, taxpayer-funded jobs and other than ATP do not require a college degree. Most early career Austin ISD teachers are stuck in the $50k salary range, although you can make more if you speak Spanish, teach special ed, or coach a sport. Teaching requires a college degree and certification. Many teachers that I have met feel called to do the work and inspire the next generation. Somehow we as a society feel it's OK to take advantage of this and pay them less than other public servants. It's not right, and we are close to the point where the new teacher pipeline out of college will dry up and we will wonder where our teachers went.
  4. Hey it's public money so it's free so no biggie... Do they really need a building 50% larger than city hall? In the WFH era, with the need for office space plummeting, can they not drive a better bargain for the citizens than $478 per sq ft? Also, just for the sake of irony, here's a picture of the new home of the bus service. Ample parking day or night:
  5. Some stats about our Great State of Texas: Public K-12 enrollment, 2021-22, sorted from largest percent to smallest: * Hispanic: 52.7% * White: 26.2% * Black: 12.8% * Asian: 4.8% * Native American: 0.3% * Pacific Islander: 0.2% * Multiracial: 2.9% Total enrollment was 3,224,916 in 1987-88, and increased to 5,427,370 in 2021-22, which is about 417,000 students per grade UT Austin student profile, fall 2022, sorted in the same order as the top table, adding International and Unknown: * Hispanic: 24.8% * White: 34.6% * Black: 5.3% * Asian: 21.1% * Native American: 0.1% * Pacific Islander: 0.1% * Multiracial: 2.7% * International: 9.8% * Unknown or Blank: 1.6% Total undergrad population 41,000 ... about 9,000 freshman enrolled per year. Your odds of attending UT coming out of K-12 are about 2 in 100. About a fourth of students are first generation. UT is about the same size it was in 1980, so obviously it's harder to get in. Are we OK with these numbers? If not, what do we want to do about it?
  6. I think it may have something to do with the probability that the camp is still there, but I'm not sure.
  7. Someone made a map of Austin's homeless camps, no idea if this is accurate or not. If you live south of the river and you're thinking, hey there's a bunch of homeless camps around, you're not wrong...
  8. There is no way the Austin area will have enough water for 22 million people in 2100... Probably not even 2 million. Austin headlines for the year 2100: "Rail extension to the airport approved" "East Austin focus group raises concerns about West Austin" "Texas may finally turn blue during the coming election cycle" "Traffic, affordability highlight local election issues"
  9. Zoom in. There's a little road that goes north from Texline all the way to the state line (Shamburger) then you can turn right onto Texas State Ln road, which appears to be just over the actual state line. It's on that map but that map is not showing it going all the way to the state line ... Google Maps shows it going all the way. Or, just ignore the roads and drive where you want, it's west Texas and it's really flat.
  10. The eastern border of New Mexico and Oklahoma is not lined up with the eastern border of New Mexico and Texas. You can drive north from Texas into New Mexico, take a right, and still be in New Mexico. Seems like someone screwed up and they just decided to live with it.
  11. 10,900 without power in Austin according to the outage map
  12. I was in Georgia earlier today headed east to the Atlanta airport to catch a flight back to Austin. A police car went by going 110 easy. Then five minutes later three more, same speed, then two more after that, pedal to the metal. My first thought was "Where the heck are they going and why do they need so many cops?" My second thought was "Holy shit, it's the Bandit..."
  13. I saw that line walking up to the airport yesterday and panicked a bit. Total time in line for precheck was 12 minutes. The suckers in the main line had a longer wait, but it was moving. The throughput appeared to be gated by the number of folks they had checking IDs. Add one more and the queue would have probably gone to zero.
  14. Also, I would like to point out that Centenary of Louisiana beat Texas A&M in College Station on the same day in 1928, 6-0. Centenary holds a 6-3 all time advantage over A&M. Centenary is starting up their program again, so Aggies, this is your chance to even the score...
  15. Vandy has had scoreboard on Texas since 1928, by 1 friggin' point in a game played at Fair Park. A chance for redemption awaits... Texas played OU the next year at the fair, the first game in the current streak of annual Texas/OU games in Dallas.
  16. Killed the market for N95 masks. Doing what he can to prevent a wider war in Europe. Took a train to Ukraine while wearing shades. America is still paying bills when due. Dude is quietly driving the bus back to sanity, that’s his biggest accomplishment IMHO.
  17. Outside of Omaha of course, which is the center of things and thus isn’t west of anywhere.. :-)
  18. After next year, you’re unlikely to attend Texas baseball game west of I35. If someone in Lubbock owes you money, you might want to collect now…
  19. Heartbreaking loss. Keep rebuilding and next year we can play at home with modern illumination...
  20. We just went through this with a relative. I'm not an expert but here are some things to think about: Check your retirement account beneficiaries. If you have them set up properly, transferring these accounts will be easy. Consider setting up any other accounts that can be transfer-on-death as transfer-on-death with beneficiaries identified. Have printed account statements prior to death, especially showing who the beneficiaries should be or letters you received from management companies when you set up beneficiaries. Once you notify these companies that someone has died, you are likely to lose online access to their accounts even if you have the username and password.
  21. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=101554192&page=1 That page shows 46 Austin buildings that exist or are under construction that are taller than the capitol. Some were built before the Frost building. Looks like the tower was the first. When finished, Waterline will be the tallest building in Austin, more than three times taller than the capitol.
  22. Little noted from yesterday: Apple's new Mac Pro uses Apple (aka ARM), not Intel silicon. That's it for Intel at Apple. End of an era. The headset thing felt like the original Macintosh announcement. Well beyond what is being done today, but expensive for now. Cool for niche applications today, like visualizing a house on a lot prior to building it, but we'll see if a mass market app shows up. They need to convince every dad of a kid who dreams of playing professional sports that THIS is the one thing that will get them into the major leagues. If they can, sales will not be a problem.
  23. The 20 runs from 5 am to about 11:30 pm, every 15 minutes from 5:40 to 9:40. It has many more stops that light rail will ever have. If Cap Metro were smart, they would call it the Airport Bus so that people might try taking it to the airport, but instead most have no idea it's headed that way. It doesn't have dedicated lanes but it moves pretty quick since few are riding it. It passes stops if no one is waiting. Downtown to the Airport is a 42 minute ride, plus up to 15 minutes to wait if you just missed the bus. The same trip by car is 20-40 minutes by car, depending on traffic. The bus is a little slower than a car but not much, especially if you have to park and ride a shuttle. At the airport, the bus isn't blocked by pickup traffic. It runs down the taxi/shuttle bus lane outside of the pickup curb and stops all .... the .... way .... at .... the .... end of the terminal, at a ridiculous $600,000 bus stop shaped like a giant guitar. The city cares enough about the bus to make a guitar shaped bus stop but not enough to put the stop in a convenient location. Total cost is $1.25 and you'll probably have the bus almost to yourself. Free if you are a child, UT student/faculty/staff, or city of Austin employee. Half price if you are a senior. Have I sold you?
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