plumber2

At least she isn't a scam artist. A $25 million out of court settlement for the Trump University lawsuit says it all to me. Donald Trump is no more different than the Kevin Trudeau. A TV huckster scam artist. The only difference is that Kevin Trudeau is in jail! and Donald Trump is president elect of the United States and about to pull off the biggest scam in the history of the world.

Or he'll lead us to economic ruin. Cutting taxes for corporations from 33% to 15% while the CEO's respond, "Why thank you very much., our stockholders will be very appreciative to you". And yes, Obamacare is horrible garbage, since it was designed by and written for the insurance companies, hoping for, yes just hoping that they would cover the uninsurable with affordable health care, but of course they couldn't. It was a failed business model, designed for the insurance companies to manage. It's unfortunate that they couldn't (or possibly wouldn't) manage it for their benefit. So let's go back to open markets with companies selling cheap hollow, and worthless coverage to unsuspecting families only to be cancelled after their first really big claim. Oh and about that wall dog. Are you expecting the landowners in south Texas to just hand over their property for this wall easement? Will you be okay with eminent domain?(government confiscation) for this easement. And then some type of private corporation to build and manage this wall, because as your party has alluded to so many times, the government is not good at this kind of stuff.

Is there actually a cover up? I haven't heard that. She did instruct her staffer to turn over all of the government related emails on her server, which they did. All other emails on her server where hers to do with however she wanted to dispose of them. Common practice. Nothing has been discovered to show that she lied or intentionally covered up anything. It's been investigated for months now. Am I missing something?

Cripple small business? How so? Paying people for the hours that they actually worked. How can that be crippling? Sounds like fair and sound business practice to me. Would you want to do business with a company that cheats it's employees? You don't think they would just as easily cheat their customers?

Forbes, just some rich guy's magazine.

To me it feels probably like what the french citizens felt during the fall of France in WWII, watching the Nazis march down the Champs Elysee. I'm that guy in the classic photo, crying as they march by. Really can't say much of anything else right now. I don't even want to be around people. A big dark cloud has settled upon us.

Can you tell me what crime she has committed, or are you just repeating what you've heard from Republican supporters. I'd be all for someone going to jail (especially a politician) if they actually committed a crime. Receiving a unsolicited email, or leaving something out on a coffee table for someone to see may be careless, but committing a crime it is not. I've walked up to the copy machine at work, and seen stuff that belongs to the CEO in the print tray. I thumb through the stuff to get to my document, but do I think he needs to by fired for leaving it in the tray? No of course not. Careless? Yes.

The top floor of the Gulf Building was only accessible by stairway, as the public elevators stopped on the floor below. Do you remember having to walk up the stairs?

They are considering building a new causeway to Pelican Island, so he can have that one!

The other IWA buildings shown in this picture were taken and replaced after the Sisters of the Incarnate Word sold their property in Bellaire on Bissonnet in the early '80's. They used the proceeds of that sale to fund the newer buildings at their downtown campus. They assumed that as enrollment had peeked at Marian High School in the mid 70's and was starting to decline, that there was not a future for parochial higher education in Bellaire. How wrong they were, as the Episcopals are having great success at that location.

I remember going to Jones Hall for a class field trip sometime around 1967 or '68. Us boys got a kick out of scuffing our shoes on the carpet (it was red) and then touching the person in front of us, shocking them. Most of the girls would scream out loud (was that harassment?)

The Jesus mural shown in the renderings above is actually a copy of the the 1960's original that is still in place out front on Fannin Street on the exterior of the old Main Building. The original mural was a huge lighted mosaic spanning probably 60 feet in length and about 7 to 8 ft tall. Of course it is currently obscured by a later 1980's (Dunn Tower) addition. One can still see it (now unlit) from the upper levels of the Marriott Hotel and Scurlock Towers across the street. Interesting that they would want to resurrect that theme from way back when in their new tower.

I bet if this was the Keystone Pipeline instead of high speed rail, Texas legislature's would be falling all over themselves to introduce bills to push eminent domain efforts to get any holdouts out of the way.

There used to be a lounge and restaurant in the building called "The Inns of Court". It was on the top floor of what we used to call TCB, the addition on the northwest corner of the block. I was told it catered to lawyers and such folks that were common tenants in the building and also in the adjacent Houston Club Building. Once Texas Commerce Tower was built across the street and Gulf Oil vacated I think the clientele base drifted off. There was also a small dentist's office on level 6. It was a single chair practice with pictures of his daughter (Jacqueline Smith) adorning the waiting room walls, reminding his loyal patients that he had a celebrity daughter.

The real City of Houston Inspectors are mostly all gone, being replaced by entry level rookies, with no experience, little benefits, and no access to anyone with practical knowledge. I used to take a continuing education class taught by a former City of Houston inspector. He had to quit and go back in the field, just to make ends meets. City inspector careers used to be a job that older tradesmen could gravitate to once they got up in age. They would take the lower paying job, knowing that the non cash benefits would make up for the smaller take home pay. That has all changed. The pay is low and there are very few benefits. There is no incentive for trained people to take an inspector position with the City of Houston anymore. The talent is all gone. Even some of the plan checking for permits are now outsourced to a "resource" in Plano. There is no "bribe" incentive going on here. These guys your friend is dealing with just don't know what they are doing. They have never worked in the trade that they are expected to be knowledgeable in. It's not that they are dragging their feet, the fact is that they are truly clueless at what they are doing. It's a sad state of affairs, when an "apprentice" on the job has to explain to the inspector what he is there to look at. And these guys have to take a State exam to become inspectors. I'm not sure what kind of exam they give these guys. It's just truly sad.

I've always been curious if North Braeswood at Main St. ever connected, or was ever intended to connect with the short stub of North Braeswood at Greenbriar? I've looked on Historical Aerials and some older maps, but it does not appear that it ever did. The Google view shown above does give a hint of North Braeswood curving north as it approaches Main St. Even the house on that corner is situated on it's lot hinting that the road may have had a curve to it. As for the 11 story apartments, yeah I'd welcome that. This lot has been empty for some time. In fact I remember several years ago, a group of us superintendents for the plumbing company I worked for decided to meet up for lunch at La Hacienda restaurant, which was at that site for years. Little did any of us know that it was gone. Not just closed but gone! We had to wait until all of us pulled up before we decided were else to go since it was back in the day before cell phones.

When I was growing up and not really driving yet, the Richmond Rd.(Bissonett)/Bellaire Blvd. intersection was awfully confusing to folks. My mother would often use one of her "j" words when navigating that multi lane crossing. She had several words that began with the letter J.(jerk, joker, or jack-ass when someone really perturbed her). The intersection was nothing like it is today. Bellaire Blvd. had a wide median but the main lanes tightened together as it crossed at a painfully biased intersection with Richmond Rd., but there were also frontage lanes that continued on either side of Bellaire Blvd. that crossed Richmond Rd. also. It took a seasoned resident to keep it all straight in your head trying to figure out who went where. People on Richmond Rd. often turned mistakenly into oncoming traffic. I think the City of Bellaire made several attempts through the years to fix this until finally settling on the current configuration.

Aye, Uber is just a flash in the pan.....kind of like the hoola hoop. In a few years no one will be riding Uber. Soo 2016!

The little old ladies from the "United Daughters of the Confederacy" were the big pushers for these building names back when they were constructed. I don't believe the school board members back then were Confederate sympathizers, or for that case even racists. These guys just couldn't say no, or saw no reason to say no to these ladies. It would have been disrespectful to go against their wishes, or kind of like talking back to your grandmother. I'm indifferent about these proposed names changes. I have no problem with naming schools after the neighborhood they are built in, such as Northside, Eastside, Westside and so forth. But renaming a school after it has been called one thing for several decades does seem kind of needless. Why not wait until the building itself becomes obsolete, or outlasts it's purpose and is torn down. Then rename it.

You can see the current Harris County Morgue building (red brick) just the left of the new building under construction. As a side note the Harris County morgue was once located on the B2 level of TMC Garage #1. What remained of the built out space was used by various institutions, mainly Methodist after the morgue moved out. There was a plague on the wall, just outside the south elevators on the B2 level for years. I'm going to go see if it's still there next week. Nice high water picture btw.

Being a plumber, my avatar is quite simple and self explanatory. However,I'm not sure what I will do when hands free faucets become the norm.

There was a movie theater at this location way back when. I remember taking a date there when I was in college, however, I can't remember the name of the theater, the name of the feature, nor the name of my date. ha! I walked by this site the other day, and walked around back along the bayou and then back up to Fannin St. I'm curious as to how the UT Health building sets so close to the bayou bank, while this building and the existing Coleman campus property line is much further back.

Well excuse me!

That's Hoar Construction tunneling under the street. They are trying to reach a Centerpoint manhole on the north bound side in front of Pavilion for Women.

Avondale is a wonderful neighborhood. My niece used to live in apartments around the corner from Avondale. I used to save plastic grocery bags for her as she used to walk her two dogs in the neighborhood. She told me the dogs loved to poop in mayor Parker's yard. She couldn't get them to go anywhere else but there. Go figure. Dogs can be very smart sometimes.