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Larry T. Spider

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Posts posted by Larry T. Spider

  1. A lot of Wilco gets its water from lake Georgetown, which is supplemented with water pumped in from stillhouse hollow.

    Wonder if we could devise a larger system with non-force field lakes such as Whitney, which is currently 100% full. Also Belton is close and 75% full. Obviously this only works if they receive rain when we don’t.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. 3 hours ago, troph said:

    Not sure where it lands by the end of the summer if not sizable rains in May, but it won’t be the end. We’ve got one more year before we are all turbo fucked. So hope for floods in May then October then next spring. We need a Noah’s Ark event, they happen, no doubt we just need it in the next 12 months or we are fucked 3 ways til Sunday and then really fucked on Sunday because Jesus hates Austin and it’s sinners.

    In this part of the world droughts end in floods. The lake will eventually be full again no matter what this summer or next brings. It’s just a matter of the prolonged pain until it happens. Sadly, most of the Austin population is completely oblivious to how this could play out in the very near future.

  3. On 4/1/2024 at 1:38 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    I would guess that for some of the cases when the convicted are getting a low or no prison sentence, it’s due to the prosecutor having evidence or testimony problems. The children or parents of the children, may not want to testify even in a closed court. At least with a guilty plea, the convicted will be on offender registries.

    the real tragedies are when they are allowed to plead guilty to lesser crimes.

    I was going to say the same thing. No way these guys are getting deals if there is strong evidence. 

  4. 2 hours ago, Orange&White said:

    Let’s get rid of all of them then. Let’s just roll with no police and see what happens. Obviously they are serving no purpose at all right now. So we can save a few hundred million a year and all of Austin will be really happy to be rid of them.

    Might just be talking out of my ass here but maybe there’s a middle between backing cops that do heinous shit and getting rid of all police.

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    • Like 2
  5. 1 hour ago, Samson's Wig said:

    I know you know much more about all this than I do, as my perspective is that of a parent and not an educator.  The inclusive classroom movement has done more damage to public education than almost any other factor, in my opinion. It has turned teachers into caretakers, and nothing is getting done academically.  Kids are stuck in an already overcrowded room with 20-30 kids in it, and no one can learn anything because one single kid is incapable of controlling his behavior and he has a litigious parent.  We have a system that has been headed down the wrong road since the 90s on this issue.   It was well-intentioned, but it absolutely did not work at all.  We know this objectively now, but it's really difficult to change feel-good policies because no one wants to be seen as the bad guy.  Politics ruining everything as usual. 

    In elementary school, I think we had only one year that one or both of my kids weren't stuck in a classroom with a kid bouncing off the walls and completely derailing every day. These were not poorly disciplined children but kids with genuine diagnoses who were not capable of typical classroom functions.  My son's second-grade teacher would cry after school every day thanks to one kid and his asshole mother, who had already filed lawsuits against his kindergarten and first-grade school districts before moving to AISD.  They moved after second grade and, for all I know, have sued many more districts in the passing years. Certain kids need to be outside of regular classrooms, at least for the academic portions of the day, but we've decided we'd rather support feel-good bullshit and not educate anyone.  We pretend it's for the good of the kids, and their parents often believe this to be true, but it's really because we can't afford to do anything else but stick them in a normal classroom and hope for the best.  It's maddening, and it's not helping the special needs kids or the other kids at all.

    My son is autistic.  I'm not coming at this from an insensitive or ignorant place.  The lack of resources for kids with genuine special needs is insane.  AISD has been in violation of federal law for years now, but it's hamstrung by state politics, which has led to a lack of funding.  I don't know what more they can reasonably do.   The bigger issue is no one really gives a shit who has the power to do anything about it.  And in Texas, those with the power actively work to make sure things don't get fixed for their own messed up agendas.

    This is a national problem, but Texas is handling it about as badly as any state can. This is just one of many factors contributing to the brain drain we're experiencing. Texas will be a wild and wooly place in another 20-30 years when no one will have an education equivalent to or better than a sixth grader in 1965.

    Anyway, thank you for the work you do to stem the dismal tide.  I, for one, very much appreciate it.

    First, no need to thank me. I quit after 15 years in public education. Currently work for a company that provides exactly the types of specialized classrooms you are talking about to districts. Most districts just don’t have the capacity to meet the increased demand over the years. Waaaaay more kids need these services than even 10 years ago. See the other thread about kids that’s blowing up.

    The number one reason teachers are leaving is exactly the scenario you outlined. They can’t teach. Number two is dealing with parents in relation to why they can’t teach. Throw in testing score pressure and needing a second job and we are getting a “hell no” from teachers. 

    FWIW, most districts want to do inclusion in a non-disruptive manner where the sped kids have assistants with them. This allows them to take breaks and only be in the class when they are focused and ready to learn. The reality ends up looking like the teacher being a 3 ring circus master all day then fielding parent complaints at the end of the day. The assistants get the shit kicked out of them for $15 an hour so even if the district is trying to hire, they usually can’t.

    We can go back to self-contained classrooms for those kids, but then we have to pay for it. I recently wrote a proposal that was for fewer than 50 students and the cost was over 2 million a year. Now, we are taking on the toughest kids, many of which would be in a residential treatment facility without us. But most superintendents just aren’t going to write that check unless push comes to shove - ie the state getting involved.

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  6. 2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


    Maybe that’s because there really aren’t any that can actually be achieved - that’s the rub. We have the system we have, and there is no political will or willingness at the Legislature to change it.
    All kinds of possible solutions. None can be achieved. Want to change things? Change your government. But I suspect you’ll just keep voting for the same old same old.
    We get the government we vote for. We keep voting for “let local law enforcement be our sole mechanism of addressing mental health dangers, and let’s not even give them any real tools to do that.” So that’s what we get.

    Is the Texas GOP’s aversion to forcing them into mental health facilities purely financial? My family is almost all republicans in the Austin area and they are all for it. Now I don’t get into how we are going to pay for it with them….

  7. 34 minutes ago, Orange&White said:

    I’m really curious about the opinions and ideas of what can and should be done, in the current environment and budget constraints, for people who attack random and innocent people with machetes, and destroy a small business owner repeatedly.

    Sure, you can sit and bitch and moan about mental health care and unfit to stand trial, but what do you actually propose be done with the machete guy RIGHT NOW? What do you propose should be done with the guy that repeatedly breaks the window of the exact same establishment, right now? 

    Im not talking about pie in the sky perfect plan with unlimited budget that everyone magically agrees upon. I am talking about today.

    Because some of you seem to be content to just keep letting these obvious dangers to society keep getting let out, knowing damn well they are going to do the same shit again and again.

    Is that it? You are good with the way Garza is handling this right now? Are you fine with the collateral damage now as long as you believe it is going to eventually lead to some kind of reform? 
     

    If the guy was breaking into your house once a month and threatening your family would you feel the same? Or is it because it is a business owner downtown or some rando on a hiking trail that you are fine that they keep getting set free to do shit again?

    Seriously, what are y’all’s recommendation for the immediate problem, within the immediate environment of public opinion, politics and budget?

     

    If there is strong evidence of a person committing a crime and they are deemed unfit to stand trial, they should go to a state run mental health facility. They stay there until they can go to trial. Every major city should have at least one. It will be expensive, but that is the cost of not having psychos roaming the streets.

    There should be youth facilities as well to give these kids the around the clock care that they need. The most mentally ill child I ever worked with was completely incapable (at that time) of safely living in a home environment. She bounced around foster homes until a residential treatment facility in another city could take her in. It took a year of hell, worsening mental health, and a move to a completely new city to get help. Right now they just go to Dell children’s until they are deemed to not be a threat to themself or others then right back home.

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  8. 35 minutes ago, deadshank said:

    You’re doing the right thing when compared to your deductible.
     

    What type of window?  Single pane?  Double pane?  Wood? Aluminum?  Vinyl? Clad?  
     

    Recent  replacement windows or old, original equipment?   Do you know who the manufacturer is?

    That kind of information matters so you can contact the right people and not waste your valuable Surly screen time. 

    Double pane, I assume aluminum. It’s ‘99 builder grade stuff. The locks have “GA” on them, which I assume is the manufacturer.

  9. 24 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Sorry....best we can do is a law requiring every person to carry a gun at all times.

    Seriously, you know that a bill doing just that has a 1000X better chance of getting passed in Texas than anything else you're talking about.

    We’ll just go to a 4 day week for students because it’s the only way we can convince people to work in these conditions. Yet another one of my customer districts just announced this today. It’s about to be extremely common.

    Remember when we kept warning about how bad it was for teachers? The resounding response was to quit crying and find another job if you don’t like it. Well, here we are….

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  10. These issues usually start well before they are running around Austin with a machete on the streets. Typically, they were public school students with a special education label that severely limited consequences for disruptive, or even violent behavior. There are some limits, such as bringing drugs or a weapon on campus but the daily insanity is legally protected. 

    I talk to special education directors at major districts all day for a living. The increase they are seeing in students that fit this profile is disturbing. Districts are not funded to hire a bunch of mental health therapists, and the ones that find the money can’t fill the positions. They are able to get some kids into residential or other treatment facilities but then are on the hook for the cost. I talked to a superintendent in another state that’s paying 100k per kid in some cases.

    When I was a principal, I shared 1 therapist with 5 other campuses. Regular school counselors are not equipped to deal with this level of need. Private schools aren’t taking these kids with their $10,000 voucher if we go that route.

    We need a school to treatment facility pipeline instead of the current school to the streets pipeline. The teachers deal with it until it’s the cops turn. It will take funding and changing laws, but the alternative is more people getting stabbed.

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  11. Are there any places to get water data to compare normal usage to things like SXSW week. The hordes aren’t watering lawns but that’s a shitload of extra showers and toilet flushes. I’m sure it doesn’t have any measurable impact but I find it interesting.

  12. The reason they don’t leave it at or over 100% full is because the risk of flooding. Usually the ground is saturated so it would take much to generate a lot of runoff into the lake.

    I do think they have brought it down a little too far in the past though. For most of Austin’s history, floods have been a bigger threat than drought, but it’s time to recalibrate.

  13. I think we had one of these threads on TOS and it’s time to fire it up again. Travis is currently at 631 feet, which is 38.1% full. One year ago on this day we were a little over 45% full, so we are in moderately worse shape.

    It’s stayed pretty flat over the last month, but now come the months with a chance to make a dent in the drought. We’ve seen it get low before, but there are significantly more people drawing from Travis than in years past. It got down to 618 in 2013. 

    Buchanan is at 46.2% full FWIW.

  14. Went for a short trip last month and stayed at Caesar’s. Gambled there plenty but never stayed there before. Had a room with a good view but overall it was very average and in need of a refresh. Honestly, the service was about as friendly/helpful as a local motel. 

    Ate at Jaleo and China Poblano because I’m a slut for Jose Andres. Also the new Bobby Flay restaurant that replaced Mesa grill - Amalfi. Momofuku for lunch one day. All were good. 

    Checked out Circa. It’s pretty bad ass if you are a sports bettor. Definitely worth the trip DT.

    • Like 1
  15. 12 hours ago, Skipper said:

    Anyone have a rec for a good property manager in Dallas?  I've handled myself for the past 6 years but getting tired of dealing with tenants directly.  Latest issue (daily complaining about taking a few extra days to get AC unit installed due to part having to be ordered) has made me start thinking it might be worth it to outsource.

    It’s February. “Quit yer bitching”

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