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Isn't mayor of Houston a significant step down from long-term member of Congress? I wonder what her motivation is. Maybe she doesn't think she can win another congressional election? I don't know what her ratings are these days.

I took this yesterday: The Highlight giveth… And The Highlight taketh away… Which is a darned shame because I had seven cards to buy yesterday. I guess I'll hit the CVS at Market Square to see if that's an adequate replacement.

The Chick-fil-a at Pennzoil Place and Allen Center are open until 5pm M-H. For some reason at Highlight it's only open until 2pm, even though there are more people living near there than the other locations. I think Downtown Houston is more than 10,000 people. I think there was a newspaper article in the last couple of months that put it at 20,000 with a goal of 30,000. But my memory on that topic is weak.

I saw another one of those gaps between potential customers and downtown's offerings. Last night I was walking home from church and went through Greenstreet. There were a hundred or so (that I could see) people hanging around. Maybe waiting for a concert? Dunno. A number of them were wandering the streets looking for a place to eat. Some were looking at their phone apps, and a small group was bugging the Greenstreet valets. No luck. The valets say this happens all the time. These weren't Alley Theater people, so The Palm wasn't an option. I don't know what M&S is like, but I guess the dress code is similar. And even if it isn't, based on what I was listening in to, they weren't looking for a sit-down steak dinner experience. Some enterprising food trucks could make a pretty good penny parking near GS during events. It's not an ideal solution, but it would be a step in the right direction considering the dearth of dining options at Greenstreet, and the fact that what exists there isn't open full-service hours, or caters to a very specific clientelle.

If you've ever wondered why the south end of downtown smells like a truck fire some days, the culprit is SoDo on Main. I understand that buildings have to test their backup generators every week. But there's this magical device that uses magic fairy dust and unicorn farts to scrub diesel exhaust so it doesn't ruin the neighborhood. I know it's new — it's only been around for half a century.

Taken earlier this week:

Not everyone who comes to Houston on business works in the oil industry, and for these people from Paris staying in The Woodlands or Spring would put them very far from what they came here for. You are correct — I meant downtown. These people, being European, are used to going out and doing things after work and eating late. As you know, what little there is in downtown Houston buttons up after 4pm, and sometimes after 2pm. But let's pretend these people were likely to rent a car (not really likely), or take a ride-sharing service (even less likely), what would they go to see in Houston after 5pm on a weekday?

I can concur. I know of a group of people who were in town a couple of weeks ago from Paris. Their company put them in a big downtown hotel. After their meetings during the day, they were shocked that there wasn't anything for them to do or see after work. Bar-hopping and taco trucks at Discovery Green are fine, but not to everyone's taste.

You are correct. Once again @mattyt36 has steered a thread off-topic, and I've followed him. Thank you for calling me out on it. Now, back to Hardy Toll Road posts…

It depends on the night. Some nights, it's dead. Some nights — even weeknights — it's pretty busy. It's all about how full the hotels are, and what events are going on downtown. I've seen plenty of nights when Main Street has a good number of tourists wandering around looking for something to do and somewhere to eat, but everything is closed or hard to find (underground, unsigned, scary looking). My guess it they wouldn't complain. For the office building owners, the more amenities there are, the more rent they can charge. For the hotels, it means higher prices and occupancy rates because visitors are lured away from the Galleria Area.

I'll defer to you. I searched for "totonto art school" and the correct building came up. I have my own photos of the building, which I hope has the right name, but they're on offline storage and not readily accessible. Thanks for the correction.

I did not move to Las Vegas. I'm not sure why you would presume that, but you seem consistently eager to build a mental model about me and my personal life; as you do for other posters on this forum. It's creepy and weird. Your link to the Daily Mail article is meaningless. CES is the largest event in Las Vegas all year, so naturally any system — especially a novel one that appeals to the type of people who attend CES — will be bogged down. Just like when Memorial Drive gets bogged down during the art festival. It's one of those "No shit, Sherlock" moments. More to the point, it's not surprising that Musk's tunnel system would get bogged down, because it's still not done. Only one pair of stations have been completed. Unlike you, who bases everything he knows about the Vegas tunnel project on Googled links, I base what I know on my personal experience of having used the tunnel and reading the local newspaper accounts of its progress. I am in no way defending the Musk tunnel project. I think Vegas has far more pressing transportation needs, but since it's not public money, I'm OK with just watching to see what happens with it. If nothing else, at least it's someone trying something. People don't do that much anymore. "Just the beginning" actually can correct for inadequacies because on this planet, time moves forward, allowing for a thing called "change." We are not stuck in a single moment in time where the tunnel can never be modified and additional tunnels never built. What is it that makes you think it is immutable? Does the phrase "Daddy Elon" have any meaning? Is he your father? Your pimp? Or are you trying to imply that I'm a fan of Mr. Musk? If so, you are gravely mistaken, as in other fora I am among his harshest critics. Again, I am not the person you wish me to be. I suggest you stop trying to mold people to your stereotypes, because you do not appear to be very good at it. As for going back and digging more, he could if he wanted to. Why shouldn't he? It's his project. He's paying for it. It's a private transit system, not a public transit system. Let him throw away his money how he sees fit. Or do you hate capitalism as much as you love inventing arguments against transit? I have no break to give you. Do you require one? Perhaps now is a good time to take a break from HAIF.

I happened to be in the right spot to get a picture of the battleship Texas in dry dock down in Galveston. Here's how it looked last week:

I'm not sure it's correct to call Musk's Vegas project a flop. It's just at its beginning, and there are articles in the Vegas newspapers every month about the progress of its expansion. There was one just two days ago: Sorry I don't have a link to the R-J article. I subscribe to the dead tree edition.

Looks like you and I got caught in opposite sides of the same traffic jam!

Reminds me of the Toronto School of Art: The problem with the Toronto building is that it's too big. From the street, it's hard to find a place where you can stand and appreciate it. The Houston building looks more manageable.

I was thinking Howard Johnson's, but Whataburger is funnier.

I am. It was announced at mass on Saturday that demolition is imminent, with asbestos abatement starting this week. The verbal announcement was mostly about contingency plans for parking, since the existing surface parking lot across the street will become a staging area for the entire project, and will become less and less available for parking over time. Amegy Bank is helping out with that, my guess is because its parking garage is empty on weekends. The parish is talking up the plaza, and downplaying the parking, even though parking is clearly the vast majority of what's being built. There was also a note about it in the bulletin yesterday:

Much to my disappointment, I'm not able to go to the rodeo this year. But I did make it to a portion of the rodeo parade last weekend, and took some photos. I've posted the photos below. If you are able to go to the rodeo, I'd love to see your pictures, so please add them to this thread. I spent a decade as a professional architectural photographer, so now I'm trying to learn to photograph human beings instead. That's why the pictures are very people-centric.

I've seen a bunch of school districts in a bunch of states implementing this over the last two years. I think it's too soon to say if it's a good idea or a bad idea. I remember that one school district noted that the cost savings didn't come from teachers and administrators, because they're salaried, but from reductions in other areas: Janitorial services, security, transportation, electricity and other utilities. I seem to recall that school buses were a big chunk of one district's projected savings. Of course, it's a burden for the parents who now have to figure out what to do with their kids on that odd weekday. But I don't think it's as widespread a burden as most people assume. The days of 99% of the country working 9-5 M-F are long behind us. It's not just the recent work-from-home or four-day-workweek trend, this goes back decades to America's shift to a service economy. People who work M-F very often don't think about all the millions of baristas, waiters, cooks, shopgirls, police officers, utility workers, and a million other professions that service them on their days off. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 32½% of Americans workers have to work at least one weekend day. That means they're home an extra day during the week. Hopefully their employers will be flexible enough to let that day match their kids' extra day off of school.

I guess you've never walked down a sidewalk in the Medical Center and noticed all the doctors and nurses smoking outside.

It's the result of a different method. "Best use now" is what you get when there's no zoning. The owner decides, and the owner has a finite lifespan. "Best use 30 years from now" is what you get when you have zoning, where a group or committee guides what the city will look like in the future. Which is better is an argument older than HAIF, and out of scope for this thread.

I looked into this a bit more last night, and I'm not right. The connection thing that expired is only used for the "Log in with Facebook" function, and not for embedded content. I'll look into it a bit more to figure out why embeds are not working. In case you're curious, these are the services that embeds are supposed to work from: College Humor, Coub Dailymotion Facebook Flickr Funny Or Die Gfycat Google Maps Hulu Instagram ReverbNation Screencast.com SmugMug SoundCloud Spotify TED Twitter Ustream Vimeo Vine Wistia YouTube

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/business/austin-soco-south-congress.html

Ah. Yeah, that's a problem. And not one that I can solve. The Facebook/Instagram embeds happen through a magic service that links HAIF with Meta. It has to be set up on the HAIF Facebook page in order to work. Which is was. However, around 2018, Facebook locked me out of my account. I haven't been able to get back in. I've gone through all the hoops on its web site, and even sent in pictures of my gub'mint ID twice, but received no response. A few months ago, Facebook sent me an automated e-mail stating that it is upgrading its magic linking service to a new version, and the old one would stop working. I was unable to upgrade the link because I still can't log in to my Facebook account, no matter how many hoops I jumped through. My guess is that Facebook has finally turned off the old service now, in favor of the new one. Thus, the link between no longer works. It's an important lesson for everyone: You get what you pay for. Facebook costs $0, and thus you get $0 worth of customer service. Do not tie yourself to any of the big data platforms. Facebook, Google, and others are notorious for kicking people off of their platforms at random, often for no reason. Have you ever used "Sign in with Google" or something similar? Think about what would happen if you suddenly got all of your personal and business Google accounts suspended because your kid said a naughty word into a microphone while playing a video game. Crap like that happens all the time. I'm sorry I don't have better news for you. But since I don't live in the E.U., I have no rights and no remedy when big tech companies misbehave. The dumb thing is Facebook requiring the use of that linking service for something as simple as a post embed. As you saw above, Flickr allows embeds without going through a bunch of crazy hoops. Even newly-evil Twitter allows it. I just embedded a tweet below. It's just Meta that is being stupid.