ssullivan

Very cool! I have a similar addiction, and also travel very frequently for work. Who knows... we might have bumped into each other in the Presidents Club at IAH before.

I wish the US would go strictly to $1 coins, and also issue a $2 coin. Sure, you end up carrying around more coins, but the financial savings to the country would be huge. I know it would be unpopular, but if you don't give people a choice, they'll soon get over their petty complaining and just deal with it. For me personally, I use so little cash that it's not a huge issue. 99% of my purchases are with a credit or debit card. I've gone for weeks at a time with no more than $5 in cash in my wallet.

I've heard both of my parents talk about Carla my entire life. Dad was going away to college when it happened, and Mom was just starting her senior year at Bellaire High School. Mom's family weathered the storm at their home in Willow Meadows and came through it pretty well, but I had a great aunt and uncle who lived in Seabrook right on the water. They lost everything. After Carla they moved into the city. Their old house in Seabrook is still standing, having been restored after the storm by the new owners. However, as bad as Carla was, my mother says it was nothing compared to their experience of being caught in the direct path of the eye of Rita in September 2005.

It is included in a later phase of the project.

Anything would be an improvement over downtown Lubbock in its current state.

Allen Parkway and 45 is a mess. I'll also add 45 and 610 North, which is just plain ugly.

Actually, based on a contact I have in upper management at Continental, Continental did have some influence over which 69 aircraft were pulled from service with Continental Express. Some of those routes mainly existed because they had more ERJs in the fleet than they needed, and the flights were operating in a perpetual state of loss. Boise was a good example of this. The attempt to get ExpressJet to lower the operating margin it had on some routes was more of an attempt to match the revenues on those flights to the expense of operating them. Of course the deal didn't work, and now those 69 planes are no longer flying for Continental Express, and some IAH routes are being changed as a result. The interesting thing is that those 69 ERJs still belong to Continental, who had sub-leased them to ExpressJet to operate them as Continental Express. Under the new agreement, ExpressJet actually has to pay Continental more to operate those planes since they are not flying for Continental Express. So in an indirect manner, Continental will actually benefit from the independent ExpressJet flights. Long term, I would look for routes like IAH-PSP and IAH-BFL to return year-round. Starting next year when Continental starts taking delivery of new 737-900ERs and more 737-800s, there is a planned trickle-down effect that will cause some routes that have had ERJ-145/ERJ-145XR service to get 737-500 service. That will allow some of the remaining ERJ-145/ERJ-145XR fleet to be reallocated to new routes. In the end, I think it will all balance out. For several years Continental has had too few large 737s, and too many ERJs. The reduction of the Continental Express fleet is part of the plan to better allocate the fleet based on demand, and stop some of the flying that was being done not to make money, but to just keep the planes from sitting idle.

"Low cost" in the airline industry doesn't necessarily refer to what passengers pay. It often refers to the airline's internal cost structure. Just because an airline calls itself "low cost" doesn't mean it's a true discount carrier.

Really? I've made IAH-CDG before in less than nine hours. It's about the same distance as IAH-LGW, which usually runs around 8-9 hours as well. Now CDG-IAH takes longer. Last September it was just over 10 hours when I flew it. If it took you 13 hours on the eastbound journey than you must have hit some pretty serious headwinds.

That's great! Darn, now I'm really sorry I missed the Tate again when I was in London a couple of weeks ago. Guess I need to go back now.

Very interesting. I would have expected that affiliating with a major full-service hotel company like Hilton would have been a wiser move than going it as an independent, but in either case the place looks nice and will be a big improvement over the other hotel offerings the areas around downtown and the Texas Tech campus. I'm working on the implementation of Tech's new ERP system. I work in HR and payroll consulting for the leading provider of ERP systems for the higher education market. This week was my second trip up to Tech for this project, and I must say, I'm really enjoying working with the people there. And surprisingly, Lubbock is really starting to grow on me.

Oh come on. TSU has not been able to responsibly manage what money it has been given in decades. I'm not saying that TSU isn't underfunded, because I believe that it probably is. But the fact remains that the school has an abysmal record of fiscal responsibility, and is one of the worst performers in higher education in Texas when it comes to the academic side of the house. Poor funding is only a small piece of the problem. Until the core management issues that start at the level of the Board of Regents are solved, no amount of money is going to solve TSU's problems. The fact remains that TSU operates in a culture that encourages poor performance and no accountability. I can't go into too much detail here, but TSU is a client of my company's and I know a lot about what goes on there. The state seriously needs to consider getting TSU brought under another university system. The Texas State University system is probably a good place, simply because it would allow TSU to retain a certain degree of independence (name, culture, etc.) but put a more responsible Board in charge of overseeing the university's operations. I know there are a lot of strong feelings about TSU in the black community in Houston, and for that reason I'm all for not making TSU into something like a Texas A&M-Southeast Houston. But on the other hand, the community leaders in Houston need to stop making excuses for TSU and people like Dr. Slade, and instead demand excellence from this institution. Given TSU's history over the last few decades, the community and alumni should be completely embarrassed, because TSU has done very little to make anyone proud.

Sounds like a nice project for Lubbock. Have they announced which hotel company will be managing the property? I actually just returned to Houston from working in Lubbock this week. I just started a major project for Texas Tech, and will be in and out of Lubbock every couple of weeks for the next three years.

Those have been there for years. I say leave it where it is on Westheimer. Besides, there's still ample room for more people. The stretch of Westheimer from the parade's starting point down to where Westheimer starts curving at Mulberry St. is usually not that packed with lots of room for the crowd to spread out. I can sort of understand the argument about the festival, since there's really not much room for it in Montrose, but why not move it to the parks along Buffalo Bayou, which aren't that far away? I've been to pride in San Diego and their parade is in Hillcrest (their gayborhood) but the festival is in Balboa Park, which is a little farther from the parade route than Buffalo Bayou is from Westheimer, and yet everyone has no problem walking between the two venues. Why not have a big festival in the park Saturday afternoon/early evening, then close the festival about an hour before the parade to give everyone time to migrate over to Westheimer for the parade?

Yes there is a sign as you approach the intersection that alerts you that the intersection is monitored by a red light camera. It's a white rectangular sign with a picture of a traffic light on it and it has words that alert drivers of the camera.

Metro never had plastic seat covers on its LRVs. I rode MetroRail on January 1, 2004, its first day of operation, and the seats were the same ones that they have now. I have pictures from that day and the seats are the same. However, most of Metro's buses have plastic seats with vinyl cushions.

Gee, thanks, I guess. Actually I much prefer flying to driving long distances — I've only driven one trip where it took me more than two hours to get to my destination from Houston in the last two years. I usually fly to places like Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio just because I get tired of long roadtrips. I'd just rather get there and be done with it. And I'm so used to the whole routine from checking in to security to getting luggage and my rental car at my destination that none of it bothers me. It's all very routine. But it has been nice to have the last week and a half off from work and jetting around the country. My break ends soon; on January 2 I'm off to San Diego, and before the end of January I will have set foot in San Diego, Lubbock, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, and London, and some of those cities more than once.

Over the years I've fluctuated between ESFJ and ESTJ. My F/T scores are almost always just about dead even.

This story is more hype and overreaction than anything. I fly every week, and check a bag on just about every flight, and more than 99% of the time my bag arrives at the baggage carousel right on time. I flew over 125 flights in 2006 and only twice did I have a luggage issue, and only one of those incidents was due to any sort of negligence or mistake on the airline's part. The other time my bag was not loaded on a turboprop flight that was weight restricted, and was sent to my destination a few hours later on the next flight, and then was delivered by the airline directly to my hotel. Yes, mistakes do happen, and in this case it looks like it was an inside theft. But it won't scare me away from checking my luggage.

Much, if not most, of the work on the shuttle's replacement vehicle is being done in Houston.

I haven't been to Barnaby's in ages. Those burritos are good, but I usually go for one of the chicken dishes, the lasagna, or the meatloaf.

While I still prefer a Richmond routing to at least the Greenway Plaza area, I think it's also possible Metro could make the new Richmond-Montrose-Southwest Freeway-Westpark option a very successful routing. This routing does have a big advantage in terms of speed, because it would place much of the line in a dedicated right of way and not in street medians. Travel time from Wheeler to the Hillcroft TC could be significantly shorter with this routing than a Richmond route. The key to making it work will be Metro coordinating excellent bus connections on very frequent local circulator routes that link Greenway Plaza and nearby neighborhoods to the rail line. If this is done right, the faster operating speeds of the trains could offset the transfer time needed to get from a rail line station to the final destination, resulting in no real increase in travel time. If the non-Richmond option could get you from Wheeler to a stop at Edloe 10 minutes faster than a direct Richmond routing, and Metro offers a transfer shuttle from that light rail stop into the heart of Greenway Plaza every five minutes, overall travel time would be about the same. I would envision light rail stations along Westpark being built more like the current Wheeler station than the stations downtown, where buses could stop adjacent to the rail platform to provide easy connections between the rail line and buses radiating out into the neighborhoods. To be effective, this would require Metro to possibly do some significant restructuring of local bus routes in this part of the city, with the addition of circulators that connect to the rail line, but if the headways between buses are short enough during the day, and the bus schedules are tied to the train schedules to minimize transfer times at the light rail stations, the route could be very successful. And if Metro can pull off running some University line trains onto the Uptown line so that some trains provide a direct link into Uptown, it's even better. Some of this I'm basing on personal experience from riding light rail transit in other cities. I've been working a lot in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area the last few months, and have become quite familiar with the Hiawatha light rail line there, which opened a few months after our Red Line opened here. The line starts in downtown Minneapolis looking very much like our Red Line does on Main St. downtown. Shortly after leaving downtown, the line enters an old railroad right of way, similar to the right of way Metro owns parallel to Westpark where the old freight rail line was. Most of the line runs in this right of way, with a short segment of the line running in the street median through a neighborhood (similar to our Red Line in Midtown, except there are actual houses people live in instead of vacant lots of and abandoned businesses). The line then hits the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, running through a tunnel under part of the airport and stopping at both terminals. A few miles later the line reaches its southern terminus in the parking garage at the Mall of America. The section of the Hiawatha line that runs in the old railroad right of way adjacent to Hiawatha Avenue is very similar to Westpark in Houston. There are a lot of neighborhoods and businesses nearby, but nothing like the type of residential, retail, and office development you see here in Houston along Richmond. At many stops there is no residential or retail development adjacent to the rail line. However, the line is highly successful, and not just because it hits the airport and Mall of America. Nearly all of the stops outside of downtown are designed for quick and easy bus transfers. Metro Transit has restructured bus routes and schedules in the neighborhoods near each light rail stop so that bus connections are fast and convenient. This results in extending the "reach" of each light rail stop beyond the short distances that riders might be willing to walk to reach a transit stop. Don't get me wrong — I still prefer a Richmond routing and I'm not about to start supporting Culberson's involvement in this. But I also believe that it's possible to make a Westpark routing for the western segment of the University line highly successful if the bus connections are managed in a way that makes transfers fast and easy, and the Westpark light rail line is built to allow trains to travel at higher speeds.

Ugh. This weather is nice in March-May, and would be wonderful in July and August. But it's December! It's supposed to be chilly! I was not happy last weekend while I was home in Houston and had to run the air conditioning. Sunday afternoon when I got in the car to go to the airport it was about 82 and down right hot in the car. I broke a little sweat before the air conditioning cooled it down. I really hate our winter warm spells. It needs to get cool and stay that way. Maybe not the -5 with a -18 wind chill I walked six blocks in two weeks ago in downtown Minneapolis, but not this above 65 degree stuff either. It's hard for me to get in the Christmas spirit when it's so warm that shorts are more comfortable to wear outdoors than jeans. Back up here in Minneapolis it's rather warm too (by their standards). This week the average high was around 40, and there's still be no decent snowfall this winter. Most people are complaining about how warm it is and that there is no snow on the ground yet, but at least it's not 80 like it is back home in Houston.

This year I spent way too much on personal travel. I realized the other day that I had spent over $35,000 on airfare alone this year! Granted most of that was reimbursed for work travel, but a good chunk of it was personal. I had two big international trips in 2006, plus about 10 shorter trips within the US. I've also spent a lot in the last year on paying off debt. It won't be long before the only debt I have is my car payment. In 2007 I'm shifting my budget around to put more money into savings. I'm planning on buying a condo or townhouse in late 2007/early 2008, so this coming year I'm going to cut back on the non-work travel and set aside as much as possible for a down payment on a place of my own.

Sounds like a good plan to me, especially if it's during the week between Christmas and January 1. I'm off work and actually at home in Houston!