TheNiche

Good call, then. There's little doubt in my mind that you'll be happy with your selection.

Care to explain why? I'm not proposing that we stop using any state or federal monies that come our way for free-access transportation projects either, btw.

It is new high-quality product, well-located relative to everything, is on a street with a prestige address, is perceived of as safe, and has a very unique site. It is high priced because lots of people want to live there. If I were you, I'd use craigslist.com and har.com to shop around between rentals...that is, of course, if you really want to rent. Home ownership is much more attainable in Houston than it is in the northeast for most folks. A condo or townhome might be more to your liking, depending on your circumstances and personal preferences.

Amazingly, a lot of those little independently-owned stores that once catered to Bellaire's formerly blue-collar residents are still there. The grocery stores have changed, of course, but do you realize how many little repair stores there are? In an age where everything is disposable, they somehow make ends meat repairing watches, clocks, microwaves, and vacuums. Its actually pretty amazing how driving down Cedar Street can be like going back to the 50's and 60's. There are also still quite a few restaurants and BBQ places back in there that are still authentic to the area as it was.

Oh, that reminds me of one I had as a kid that stuck in my mind on account of how funny it was. I was somehow stranded in my middle school, which was closed up overnight. I stumbled upon a bunch of uniformed Nazis breaking in, so I ran to the cafeteria, raided the freezer for frozen sausages, and started sneaking around in the dark beating Nazis to death with the frozen sausages.

No, just anyone willing to pay for the road they use. That's exactly right. We should keep increasing prices and building more toll roads and added capacity until there is insufficient revenue (at any toll rate) to cover further expansion.

After 4,582 posts, I'd think that you would know about everything that you would need to about my personality. Nah, as far as the childhood goes, money was never really a problem, but it also has never been a big motivator for my parents. ...but they have told stories about me from before I can even remember about how I'd collect interestingly-shaped and colored rocks from our property and haul them around door to door trying to sell them for money. When asked by neighbors why they should buy my rocks when they had plenty of their own, I apparently replied "because my rocks are better." There was an old indian campsite on our tract that yeilded a lot of artifacts, so there actually was truth in advertising. Frankly, though, for all I know, I was possessed by the spirit of an engineer that built wastewater treatment plants for a living and that wanted to express his satisfaction at my being a customer. I haven't a clue.

...ether that or you REALLY gotta love those leather seats NOT to pay it, and just take the feeder.

Dude. Wtf?

The Pearland area by itself is pretty small compared with the vast swaths of land covered by the other sections, and the number of posts in that forum seem to reflect that. From the communities listed in the description, it seems that the focus is basically on all the coastal counties, Brazoria, Galveston, Chambers. Except for Clear Lake, Harris County seems to be captured by the East End subforum, per the description provided. The name does throw me, though, because it sounds like advertising for Tilman Fertitta. Bay Area Houston is well-recognized, but doesn't extend so far to the south or east. Perhaps something like "Coastal Prairie", "Seaside Villages", or just a simple "Clear Lake / Southeast".

Not usually, and in this case the symbology is hard to interpret. If I were just dreaming about money by itself, or my taking of money, it'd be difficult to say whether or not it were a reflection of a good or bad aspect about myself. For all I know, it could be about excessive greed just as easily as it could be about a desire for independence and control. ...and when I'm sitting on the pot with my pants down and an outside force possesses my ink-filled finger to communicate the concept of money to me, well I just don't have the slightest clue what that's supposed mean.

Depends where the money goes. If the commissioners' salaries don't change and they aren't getting kickbacks from whereever the money is spent, then no. It isn't greed. Frankly, if all they do is use the money to build more toll roads and increase capacity, that'd be ideal.

That's an old map. It's since been updated.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt. They're large enough that their inner loop corporate staff will probably pull through, even if there were layoffs around town.

In one episode, they developed a rivalry between "North Texas", embodied by Wichita Falls, and "South Texas" embodied by Arlen. I have difficulty thinking of anything north of Temple as ever conceivably being labeled "South Texas".

Actually, a Texan invented Chicago-style pizza.

It is supposedly a 3-hour one-way commute to Houston, is along I-10, is at least near I-35, has a large sausage manufacturing and pork processing operation (which suggests that it's in part of the Czech/German belt), has a community college and a university, has an army base, and is distant enough from Austin or San Antonio that when one travels there, they stay in a hotel. Bear in mind that when the show started airing, Dallas was the only NFL team in the state.

Actually, OPEC isn't holding very much back. They have to play tough to convince folks that aren't in the know that they seem to have power, so they do hold some nominal amount of supply back no matter what happens, but they are fully aware that every day that oil is above $45/bbl. is a day on which more people will shift to more energy-efficient lifestyles. Prices at these levels are not in their long-term best interests. By the way, pulling data indicating how far in the red oil companies that you know of today went wouldn't reflect the true severity of the crash because many of them didn't survive it to be around for present-day comparison. Strange how easily you flip-flop between words like "forced" and "choose". As for your concerns over what is a "fair profit," what is fair is only what provides the incentive for existing companies to ramp up production as soon as possible and for other firms to enter the market so as to bring more supply on stream. Eliminate the possibility of profit, and supply will be constrained. Then prices go up. ...come on, man. This is easy to understand! Do you realize how many firms produce valves? It isn't one company. There is no monopoly. There is no cartel. If there were a domestic cartel, the Chinese manufacturers would undercut it and the whole thing would collapse in on itself within months (or sooner). Do you realize how expensive a rig is these days? Do you realize how expensive they are and how much time they take to produce? This is why Houston's manufacturing sector is going gangbusters. What, you think all those welders sit around all day taking a paycheck for shooting the breeze, and firms are hiring more and more of them out of the Rustbelt just so they can continue to sit around and sap the oil companies dry? You already know better than that! Oil companies are greedy, after all! Ding ding ding! If you want to talk about conspiracies, start here.

The actual location of 'Arlen' is fictional and could easily be anywhere from Waco down toward Columbus, and then back toward Seguin, given how many countervailing facts they've provided in various episodes.

Yeah, when my parents were shopping around for lofts down there a couple weeks back, they stumbled upon several buildings with very reasonable prices, but the owners refused to lease to students and the units were on top of bars and clubs. Doesn't really work too well as an investment strategy.

Peace.

In commodities markets, there is no such thing as a permanently capped price. When it's been tried in the past, we overconsume the commodity, resulting in shortages and lines.

According to TSARP, the area around Jean Street does not flood frequently. It isn't even in the 500-year floodplain. Also, most of the area around Knobloch, Lidstone, Cumberland and Auburndale streets does not flood, just that which is close to the bayou.

I'd considered that possibility as an impediment to development, and it'll be interesting to see what comes of this, but it doesn't seem as though we're at a point where anyone can draw conclusions on the nature of the impact. I think that a performance venue similar to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Theater could be enormously successful on the island, especially considering that Galveston already has such a large tourist infrastructure towards which event-goers could gravitate before and after concerts. It'd certainly beat the pants off of The Woodlands. But having anything more than just the performance venue and concessions open for events could indeed hurt the downtown area if it was not a destination unto itself capable of inducing more tourist traffic to the island. ...now as for the claim that Galveston could unseat Austin as the live music capitol of Texas--not gonna happen. Barring an enormous public subsidy, that's just insane.

Umm...no. You do realize that whenever a Texan gets cast in a role in which it is made known that he/she is from Texas, they absolutely must put on a heavy accent and become the stereotyped charicature that folks outside of Texas think of us as, right? It is just a lame trick that producers put on to create an illusion of the exotic, which helps to build ratings. The only decent show about Texans is animated, and that is King of the Hill. Insofar as it depicts a lifestyle within a town that I'd imagine is about the size of B/CS, Temple, or Waco, and is located in that broad area the culture that is portrayed usually remains reasonably recognizable. ...but even then, they are still charicatures. Such is the nature of the beast. Frankly, I could go any direction away from Houston and come across a different kind of redneck subculture, each with its own quirks. Go to west Texas or up in the panhandle and its like being in a whole different state as compared to our East/Central variety...but as far as entertainment media is concerned, its pretty much all the same thing.