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Texas Jeff

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  1. Interview with the guy that created the logo: https://www.fastcompany.com/91398484/how-pentagram-designed-austins-first-ever-logo He claims it was the ultimate design by committee. I believe him.
  2. Some stuff I looked up: How much does an Austin Police Officer make? Base Pay: While in academy, $60,000 per year. After graduation, base pay rises to $70,644 After 1 year, base pay rises to $79,277 After 2 years, base pay rises to $87,498 After 10 years, base pay hits $100,176 .. and tops out at $118,132 Officers can earn overtime pay and other pay stipends based on language skills, certifications, education, etc. These might add $10,000 or so to base pay, for those that qualify. This job requires a high school diploma or GED, US citizenship, a drivers license, the ability to read, write and speak English, and either 12 semester hours of college credit or 2 years in the military or two years of work experience. You have to be 20.5 years of age to enter the academy. You can graduate high school, work two years somewhere, and you are good to apply. The job comes with health benefits and a pension. Officers get 150 hours of vacation, 150 hours of sick leave, 88 hours of holiday leave, three personal holidays and 16 hours of wellness leave. Officers work four 10 hour days in a row, then have three days off. At 10 hrs per day, they have about 43 days of leave per year, if you add up all of their vacation/sick/personal/etc. They can take an additional 120 hours for military leave. Most of my data is from here: https://www.austintexas.gov/apdrecruiting/pay-benefits How dangerous is it to be an Austin Police Officer? I could not find data on officer injuries, but the city lists 29 officers killed in the line of duty from 1875-2025: https://www.austintexas.gov/page/officers-killed-line-duty I count eleven that were killed by gun violence and fourteen killed in a vehicular collision. One had a heart attack. Three were killed by COVID in Fall 2021, which was after vaccines were rolled out. Either they didn't get the shot or were unlucky. The police department has about 1500 officers. It's possible to die on the job as a police officer, but it's not common. You are as likely to be killed in a crash as you are by a gun.
  3. I asked ChatGPT to come up with a new logo for Austin, Texas and it coughed up this for free in 5 mins:
  4. Meanwhile, in America:
  5. How clogged are your arteries? If you are close to the edge, Chicago pizza can seal the deal.
  6. Alabama must get their US reps out of an old white guy Pez dispenser.
  7. Elect me president and I will rename it Starfleet and move it to San Francisco. Might as well get started on the future right now.
  8. If Trump does not win the Nobel Peace Prize, I am certain he will create a new World Peace Prize and award it to himself. When it happens you can say you heard about it here first.
  9. Some schools offer "rolling admissions", which roughly means that they will admit a student they want at the time the student applies. Texas A&M is a school like this, but only for certain majors. Other schools have a "early action" deadline and a "normal" deadline. UT is a school like this. "Early action" just means that you will hear back from them sooner, but it does not mean that they will fill up the spots in the order the applications were received. But there is no admissions advantage to getting an "Early action" application in early. "Early decision" is different ... not all schools offer early decision. If your kid is top ten percent, or top 5 or 6 for Texas, then you will probably be automatically accepted to the school within days of applying. Because they have to let you in. You will be accepted to the school, but probably not to the major. You have to wait until Jan/Feb to find out if you got the major. However, getting accepted to the school generally lets you to apply for university owned housing. And housing is generally handed out by date of housing application. Generally, the earlier you are accepted by the school, the earlier you can get in line for housing, which means that the earlier your kid will be able to pick their dorm or room. And all of that varies by campus. So, there is an advantage for certain campuses for certain majors, if they offer rolling admission for that major. And applying early to a top ten percent campus, if your kid is in the top ten percent, may give you an earlier acceptance to the school, but not the major. And that may allow you to apply for housing provided by the campus sooner. My kid did all of the apply to school work and I did all of the fill out housing application work. Obviously we ended up cancelling all of the housing apps except for one.
  10. Rudy’s is well defended…
  11. Estimated cost of attendance for 2025-26, full time undergrad living on or off campus, but not with parents ... from each school's websites, I picked costs for a CS major when I had to choose: UT: $32,344-$35,152 UTD: $35,982-$37,830 UTA: $29,256 UTSA : $31,120 UTEP: $24,680 Also: Texas A&M: $32,960 Texas Tech: $30,277 UTD has a lot of money for scholarships, so a lot of students are paying way less than that MSRP price. As of Fall 2025, the UT system offers the Promise Plus plan at all of its institutions, which gives free tuition and fees to all students from families earning under $100,000. Generally tuition and fees are about $13,000 of the total cost per year.
  12. Lloyd needs to go. He's been there since before the Cowboys' last Super Bowl win. Like the Cowboys, it's hard for me to think of his accomplishments since 1995. Folks shouldn't occupy a House seat for 30 years. 10-12 years is enough. It's supposed to be service, not a career. If you want more, run for something else.
  13. It was a misprint. It was supposed to say "Pursuing Peace Prize".
  14. We visited the National Museum of the American Indian in May. Many of the exhibits displayed some artifacts along with two perspectives that went along with the display ... what the settlers and the US government were thinking at the time and what the native Americans were thinking at the time. I thought it was a pretty cool way of showing the disconnect between the two sides. I wouldn't want it altered to show just one perspective. I also spotted a MAGA hat on display at the American History museum in an exhibit on presidential stuff, so there's that... Trumps claims about nothing about success ... I saw Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecrafts almost side by side, next to Neil Armstrong's suit and across the hall from Yeager's plane, next door to mock-ups of all the Mars landers which were underneath a model of Voyager .. yeah nothing to crow about at all inside the Smithsonian.
  15. And all the moose are like, "God dammit I voted for Trump! Who could have seen this coming!"
  16. CNBC folks were just talking about the administration asking for stock in exchange for the Chips Act dollars for Intel. They were talking about the government taking a 10% position.
  17. Perhaps ... I was going off these news reports, which are now about six months old. Things may have changed:
  18. The city is being a little weird, IMHO. On 6th street, they are adding cars to a heavily pedestrian street to make it safer. But over on Congress, they are proposing closing part of the street to cars to make it safer for pedestrians. What if the folks that are causing issues on 6th just migrate over to Congress?
  19. So a B-2 crew flew from Missouri to Anchorage, did a fly over for the benefit of two people, and then flew back? What a great use of funds.
  20. Putin is mostly KGB, Trump is mostly WWF ... that's about all you need to know.
  21. Is the world really seeking faster ways to get to College Station?
  22. I've been to DC every 10 or so years, plus or minus, since 1989. It seems cleaner and safer every time I visit, but I've never felt unsafe there. I was there in May. Nice streets, clean subways, fewer homeless than I remembered. Such an absence of homeless folks that I thought that they must have built shelters or housing somewhere and wondered if Austin should be following whatever they are doing. The DC Metro was in better shape than Seattle's Link stations, which are much newer. I walked around the Mall at night with my family and found nothing more than other families doing the same thing, having a great time exploring the monuments. Washington National Airport is historic but sucks, but at least their train goes all the way to both airports.
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