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Earth, Fire, and Wind A Series of Three Civic Forums Sponsored by the Rice Design Alliance This season, RDA's civic forums will focus on the Houston region's self-assessment at the beginning of a new century. In June, Part 1, Earth, addressed the successes and challenges in shaping the face of our residential life through various neighborhood organizations and activists. The series will continue with the following discussions. Part 2: Fire Wednesday, September 22, 7 pm The second forum will focus on the current economic engines and their impact on the city form, such as the growth of the Texas Medical Center (e.g. biotechnology), the future of energy companies' investment in the city, the NASA/space campus, and transportation infrastructure. Panelists:

You don't need to have a web site to post your photos. You just need somewhere to store them online. Most ISPs give each customer a certain amount of web space they can use for their personal home pages. All you have to do is upload it to that space and then type the proper address into the URL dialogue that pops up when you click the IMG button. It's not as hard as it sounds. Which ISP are you using?

METRO SCHEDULES BUDGET HEARING METRO will conduct a public hearing on the agency

That notion is mostly stereotype and hyperbole. My wife and I used to drive around River Oaks once or twice a month just to admire the houses and dream of where we might live "someday." Christmas and Halloween were the best times because of the decorations. We drove around in my beat up Probe and never once were harrassed by the River Oak Patrol.

Bellaire Electronics Recycling Event Did you get a new computer for school and don't know what to do with the old one? Do you have an old TV that quit working? What do you do with your old electronic equipment? Here is an opportunity to recycle them. The Bellaire Recycling Committee will hold an electronic waste recycling event on September 11, 2004 from 9AM- 2PM at the Bellaire Department of Public Works, 4337 Edith. This is one block North of Beechnut just off Newcastle St. There will be a recycling fee of $5 that includes the recycling of one computer or TV and all your other electronics. There is an additional charge of $5 for each computer monitor (CRT) or TV that is 19" or smaller. Larger CRTs and TVs will have an additional $5 surcharge for each. Please use cash for the recycling fee no checks or credit cards.

HARRIS COUNTY TO HOST BIO-TERRORISM WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION EXERCISE Houston - Governor Rick Perry has selected Harris County to host a Bio-terrorism Weapons of Mass Destruction Modified Full-Scale Exercise (MFSE). The MFSE will test the command and control nodes of the incident itself and the actual response capabilities of the combined Harris County and City of Houston Health Departments in the event of a potential bio-terrorism attack. "We appreciate the opportunity to conduct this drill," says County Judge Robert Eckels." This MFSE will allow us to sharpen our coordination of our response to any potential terrorist event. We are also grateful to Governor Perry and the Department of Homeland Security for providing the funding that will enable us to ensure that our county is prepared. The exercise will be a valuable lesson for our city and county departments to learn how to better work together in the event of any disaster--whether natural or manmade. We can never be too prepared." The scenario developed is a worst case, realistic scenario intended to demonstrate and test consequence-management ability. A tabletop exercise will be conducted to emphasize coordinated strategic responses from the federal, state and local decision makers. A decontamination site and the dispensing of pharmaceuticals to the public will also be tested. The Emergency Operations Center located at Houston Transtar and the City of Houston's Emergency Operations Center will both be activated. Reliant Center, Hall "A", will be the staging site for the tabletop exercise, as well as the decontamination and dispensing activities.

I'd say my favorite new features are the QuickReply, and the Lo-Fi Version -- great for my Palm Pilot.

It's easy to say that when you're Smith Street. Just wait 'till you're Williams Tower.

I took a tour of that building when I was looking for a new place to live. I was unimpressed. Concrete floors and metal stairwells everywhere -- even in the apartments. It was like living in a dorm room. The worst part was that the unit the agent showed me was occupied by a man who hadn't left yet. It had two bathrooms, and apparently he never cleaned one of them. He just let it get dirtier and dirtier and more disgusting until even he couldn't stand it anymore and he then started using the other one. Imagine what a year's worth of man-funk does to the porcelain. When I jokingly said that they'd have to replace the tub and toilet before I could move in, the woman had the nerve to say that it would be MY responsibility to clean it up. Um... no. I don't think so. I went somewhere else.

Connecticut is the only state I've ever heard of that actually took down the toll booths. I-95 used to be the Connecticut Turnpike. When the booths went up the state promised that they would only remain until the road was paid for. I've heard other states make the same promise and fail to live up to it. But some time in the 90's, Connecticut actually lived up to its promise. I was floored.

I've had mixed success with H.E.B. Some of them are really nice and stock all those strange foods I sometimes have a hard time getting. Then some of them are GhettoMarkets where I wouldn't think of shopping. On a related note, I have a love-hate relationship with H.E.B.'s Central Market. Sometimes when I'm in there I'll just pick up stuff that I've never heard of before just because it's different. But I have a hard time getting out of there for under $100. Still, I think they have the best bread in town.

Doesn't sound familiar. Any pictures?

Forgive my ignorance of the geographic bounds of Dallas neighborhoods. Is Uptown where the big mall is with the Neiman Marcus and S5A?

Nice place. When I was there, people seemed confused like they'd never walked around art before and weren't sure how close they should get to it.

Or people could post them right here, and you could return to the forum to get the information.

Are those images on Victory Plaza moving video walls, or are they static images?

The 1/2 TB is just so I can keep daily copies. I'll set up a cron job to make backups daily and keep about a month's worth on the drive. Of course, there's more to the enterprise than just the forum. There's Houston Architecture Info, Chicago Architecture Info, New York Architecture Info, ViennaArchitecture.at, Prague Architecture Info, and the biggest of them all -- Glass Steel and Stone. Naturally, since I run them all by myself, some have gotten more attention than others. For some reason, every time a visit somewhere I have a hard time resisting starting a web site for it. Some day I hope to get some volunteers to help write and take pictures. But I intend to fill them all out eventually, even if I have to do it on my own. Coming soon: LondonArchitecture.co.uk ChineseArchitecture.cn Tokyo Architecture Info The HAIF database was 44 megs uncompressed, but as it's all text it should compress quite nicely. What the vandal did was run through a couple of the index tables and overwrite every third entry. It's been an exhausting weekend, so I'm content to just put the old database behind us and start fresh. With 70 people signing back on in just two days, I think we have a good chance of seeing this forum return to its former glory.

The only reason I ever voted for Brown was because of his stand on light rail and revitalizing downtown. He and I disagreed on every other possible issue. He would come into my office once a week to see other people and occasionally I would chat with him. Never about issues, because I'm sure he gets that from everyone. Just regular talk, and he always seemed like a real jerk to me. Like a salesman. All words and no reason. That's why I voted for White the next time.

The first time I went to New Orleans, I loved it. The second time I went, I loved it. The third time was not so great. The fourth time I didn't like it. The fifth time I just thought it was gross. I don't think the city changed all that much over four years. I think the magic just wore off. I agree that it's dirty, and much more dangerous than Houston, but maybe not so dangerous as New York. But it's the filth that bothers me more.

I'm going to be in Tokyo for a few weeks in the Spring, and was surprised to learn that many large Asian cities, including a few in Japan, have Chinatown sections. I realize that the Chinese and Japanese cultures are vastly different, but this struck me as strange, like Chicago having a Canadatown, or Houston having a Mexicotown. Oh, wait...

Not everywhere. In Cincinnati, jaywalking is SERIOUSLY enforced. In fact, the local prosecutor when I lived there was nick-named "Jaywalking Joe" because of all the jaywalking offenses he pushed. The result was a very very orderly and clean downtown area where it was unheard of for someone to get hit by a bus. In other cities I've lived, jaywalking is bad for your wallet. It's how muggers can tell who's local (the people who wait) and who's a tourist. Social order has to start somewhere. Rudy Giulliani cleaned up New York not by going after the serial killers. It was when he formed the "Piss-And-Beer Patrols" who arrested people drinking and urinating in public. These people usually had warrants for other offenses because when you're wanted for armed robbery, sipping a Mad Dog 20/20 in front of an elementary school doesn't seem all that bad. It worked in New York. Oh, and I think the little walking man is white, not blue. The Chron writer needs new glasses.

The User Rankings have been updated. As of 7:00am, Montrose 1100 and everyone else with between 10 and 50 posts is now ranked "McKee Street Bridge." Just for fun, there are now 27 levels (plus administrators) based on the height of structures in the area. 0 Posts - Smith Street 5 Posts - Eleanor Tinsley Park 10 Posts - McKee Street Bridge 50 Posts - The Galleria 116 Posts - Bolivar Light etc... This is not intended to get people to post a blizzard of one-line messages just to see what the next rank is. It's just to beak things up from the old boring Newbie, Member, etc... rankings that every other forum uses.

Just one of many little details I still have to iron out as the week wears on. But it's good that you mention things like that, otherwise I might not notice. Hopefully everything will be better by Friday.

I'm not sure who did it, but I've changed the passwords on everything as a first step toward more security. I've also purchased a 1/2 terrabyte external drive so I can do automated weely backups of everything. Hopefully if I can figure out the automation, I can make it a daily backup so that when these things happen they're not so traumatic. I would like to reassure everyone that their e-mail addresses and passwords were not compromised in any way. Once I get the board running smoothly again, I'll look into the server logs and see if there were any footprints left behind.

On Friday, August 27th, this forum was attacked. Serious damage was done to the database which runs the forum and more than 25,000 messages were lost along with most of the user names and passwords. The forum is slowly being re-built, and hopefully will be fully functional by the end of the week. We had more than 1,100 registered users and hundreds who returned every day to read the latest news and gossip. If you are one of those people, please re-register. If you are new to this forum, welcome, and feel free to stick around and watch it blossom again. Many people have sent e-mails expressing their sympathy for the money and time being expended rebuilding the forum. At this time, the best thing you can do to show your support is to be active. Post new discussions. Reply to others. Let's get this forum back off the ground and develop it into the largest Houston-oriented discussion forum on the internet. Thank you for coming back, Wayne Lorentz Editor Houston Architecture Info