editor

I find it curious that the mayor seems to respond publicly to every little criticism that comes his way. Dude needs to keep his eye on the ball, and off of social media.

It's a thing. Or, at least it was back then. But not unique to that station, or that location. At one time, the newsroom had reporter offices all along the windows facing Allen Parkway. One morning, around 3am, someone drove by and shot at the station, as they sometimes do. It was the first time it happened when I was there, and everyone was all blasé about it, saying it happens all the time. But this time the bullet was more on target than usual, and when one of the reporters came in in the morning, there was a bullet on his desk. After the next flood and newsroom renovation, that area was converted into a conference room.

While I think I understand your concern, I'm not sure this building will make any difference. To me, it doesn't look like it's covering any more land than KHOU did. And more importantly, there's no way that amount of land could absorb enough water quickly enough to prevent any flooding. Even a basic thunderstorm would wash over it and into the bayou, let alone a good Texas possum-stomper. All I can think is that people building these towers along Allen Parkway are doing so in a manner where the entire first floor can be sacrificed and hosed out every couple of years.

According to the Times: I feel like he checked out after his presidency. And who wouldn't? If I was him, I'd spend the rest of my life on a private island drinking things out of pineapples. Politics can go stick its head in a pig. Or, maybe he's waiting for the DNC to pay off his campaign debt, if he has any left. Endorsements have been withheld for that sort of thing before.

"Flawless donuts and roaring burnouts" I can see that for free every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night from 8pm to 4am at Market Square! (Seriously, though - Sunday 4am? Don't these people have jobs to pay for all those rented tires?)

No frickin' lasers on that shark's head. Fake news.

Thanks. "Logix" was the name of the company I couldn't remember. Slightly more expensive than what I have now, but I really liked their service. Shame they were kicked out of the building by the new management.

Sorry for replying to an old post, but I can confirm that's how KHOU looked on a number of occasions. I wasn't there all that long, and it flooded like that at least four times. I can't imagine how much money Belo spent renovating that newsroom and studio over and over. IIRC, the control room and ENR/ENG area was elevated because of the cable raceways, so that equipment was safe. But they ripped out the walls over and over and over again. I remember the first time I saw it flood. We were on the air, and watching the water from the bayou slowly creep up the driveway, into the loading dock, and into the studio. I don't remember the water ever knocking us off the air, though. There was a generator for long-term outages, and rows and rows of car batteries on shelving units to keep things running until the generator could get up to speed. After the second big flood when I was there, Belo decided not to rebuild the private showers for the anchors. Only one was mad, though, because he was the only one who used it because he rode his bicycle to work most days. I'm sure that Hines of whomever is spending a crap-ton of money on flood mitigation for this property, but I wouldn't go near it with a ten meter cattleprod. You can't fight the bayou from that close. Another piece of advice: Bullet-proof windows on the first floor. People in Houston like to shoot at TV stations as they drive by, and KHOU was a duck in a barrel with Allen Parkway right there. I'm sure not everyone knows or cares that the station moved. /OldManRant: off

Yep. And Fannin. And San Jacinto. And I was surprised one evening to see them racing through River Oaks. If River Oaks people can't get any peace at night, what chance do the rest of us have?

There's been a lot of talk about how the electric infrastructure failed during the hurricane. I'd like to hear people's experiences with internet service during and after the storm. The reason I think of it is because I keep hearing ads on the radio for Comcast internet (Xfinity), claiming it is more reliable that wireless internet, and during the hurricane my experience was precisely the opposite. Hurricane Beryl knocked out the Comcast/Xfinity internet service to my entire building for a week. The building management said the outage didn't just affect us, but was across all of downtown. I don't have a way to verify that. All of my work-from-home neighbors who rely on Xfinity had to either go into the office, or burn PTO days. My personal internet is through a T-Mobile Home Internet box (actually, it looks like a little trashcan), and my job gives me a Verizon Home Internet box to use for work. Neither of those went down, or saw any degradation of speed; although the T-Mobile box had its usual 4am daily reboot, which is an annoyance, but better than being without internet service like my Comcast/Xfinity neighbors. (My phones are on AT&T, and like T-Mobile and Verizon, had zero problems with that.) My building's Comcast connection isn't old, so it should be the latest stuff. We had DirecTV service building-wide until last year, when Comcast dug up the sidewalk on Fannin Street and hooked us into their underground network. So it should be as reliable as Comcast can make it. But apparently that isn't very reliable. At least downtown. What were your experiences elsewhere in Houston? I'm particularly curious about Phonoscope, which I used to have when I lived in Midtown, and the local fiber company that used to provide service to my building, but I can't remember its name.

Yes, it would. But considering that, according to today's Chronicle, CenterPoint wants to tack extra money onto our bills for ordinary regular maintenance by sneakily labeling it a "resiliency plan," my guess is that CenterPoint is playing semantic games with the words. "Are already served" means what exactly? That the lines from the power station to their homes are all underground? I doubt it. That a small portion of the route, perhaps where it passes through a rich neighborhood, is underground? Maybe. Like most of CenterPoint's statements recently, they're meaningless flak double-speak, and disconnected from the truth. Since I asked for his neighborhood, and not his address, you'll forgive me if I choose not to believe you. All I want to know is if his neighborhood lost power. Why would something like that be a secret? Also noted in the newspaper today is that at least one CenterPoint executive was in Taiwan with the governor during the storm. And the fact that CenterPoint's PR department is not answering questions from the media tells me, as a former journalist, that there's a lot that the company is hiding. It's also worth noting that there's a lot of anger around town directed at "CenterPoint." Let's not lose sight of the fact that CenterPoint is a company. Companies don't make decisions, good or bad. People do. There are actual human beings who are responsible for making what should have been a low-end hurricane a major catastrophe.

I didn't hear anyone saying that the City of Houston would foot the bill for burying the power lines. That's just the same red herring we've heard for generations, and like a generations-old herring, it doesn't pass the smell test. I'm OK with the city paying for the underground power lines, if that also means the city takes ownership. If CenterPoint wants to keep ownership, then it can bury the lines. There's no shortage of federal disaster mitigation money waiting to help any combination of the city or CenterPoint to bury its infrastructure, like it should have in the first place, but was too lazy and greedy to do so. "Mediocre idea" requires an explanation. Why is it mediocre? Compared to… what? Doing nothing, killing more people, and rebuilding again? Also, we all know why CenterPoint owns the lines. We all know what a natural monopoly is. We don't need someone to man-splain it to us. Bringing it up has nothing to do with this discussion or fixing the problem, it just makes everyone think, "No shit, Sherlock." Remarkably, in other cities incumbent power delivery companies have no problems burying power lines. Why is CenterPoint so broken that it can't take this very basic step? Perhaps because it knows it can just keep passing the cost of repairs on to its customers over and over and over again, and nobody in Austin is going to do anything about it. CenterPoint is truly backward. Other power companies bury their power lines to protect their infrastructure investment. CenterPoint fights it. Other power companies encourage home solar because it lowers the cost of building and maintaining power line infrastructure. CenterPoint fights it. CenterPoint's monopoly on power delivery should not be perpetual. It should have to have its franchise reviewed every 10 years to see if its meeting its obligations. Currently, there is no method of holding CenterPoint accountable for anything. It could turn off all the power to the entire city for five minutes just for shits and giggles, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. That is not in the public interest. I was having lunch in the tunnels yesterday, and sat near a couple of people who I presume were from CenterPoint. I assume they were from CenterPoint because they were complaining about how much they pay each year to contractors to trim trees from around power lines. Well, if you can't do the job, maybe you shouldn't be in business.

The New York Times has an article today about people being so frustrated with repeated infrastructure failures in Houston that they're considering moving elsewhere. A few points: People moving because of things like this is real, and is studied by sociologists and demographers. People with the most money, education, and youth tend to be the people who move for these reasons, which leaves cities with older, poorer, less educated residents. Though the region and the state may gain people, when crap hits the fan like this, the cities lose people as they move to the suburbs. The people who are most likely to move are the people who didn't grow up here, who haven't developed "place attachment." For those who don't subscribe, here's a gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/us/houston-exodus-climate-hurricane-beryl.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7k0.ME4l.XEAiKj6kpeAt&smid=url-share On a related note, there was an article in the Chronicle today about how Texas ranks dead last for quality of life.

Or they can put it in front, under the street like in most places. Citing your inability to control your pets as a reason your neighbors shouldn't have reliable electric service doesn't hold water. That's just grasping at straws. You don't see the benefit because you're not on day eight of no power.

Because it's much closer to where the bulk of the tourists are? If it was easy and simple for out-of-towners to get to the Space Center, then there wouldn't be companies selling package tours with bus pickups at the big hotels to take people down to NASA. Tourists took two million rides on Metro trains to the rodeo last year. Seems to me like they understand how to do that.