TexasVines

I don't mind if someone is dogging me though I usually don't take a difference of opinion that way......but chron sources very little of ANYTHING these days and much of the information on a site like this may be unconfirmed at first, but usually within hours and sometimes even minutes there is some type of confirmation usually from a source that chron would never dig up my local paper just DROPPED their business section entirely...I rarely if ever read that part anyway because the bust LOCAL BUSINESS information was the blog by their business reporter that used unconfirmed information sent to him along with his own sources and information to track down and verify and or put to rest rumors about what is going on with retail comings and goings, restaurant comings and goings, and other stories....even if it was an "i contacted them and no comment or they are not coming"....it was still more interesting than seeing what the price of West Texas Intermediate was YESTERDAY same thing with another paper I read where they have a blog for the local college sports....guy says I am hearing some information on this recruit or on this player leaving and I am working on verification....a few hours later after some returned phone calls or interviews he can confirm or deny a recruit signing or a player leaving...then he does a full story for the paper....but by the time the paper hits the story has been beat to death on a fan forum and people have talked to their friend that is a roommate of the player mentioned and we know even more than the story does...but it got its start on that blog...and if that reporter was not tied down by having to write a story for a money losing print edition then he could probably do even more in depth and cover the rumors flying on the fan forums as well I am not trying to pick on chron specifically it is all LOCAL papers....because they have ALL ditched LOCAL information for AP rehashes...and I imagine a collection of "barely interesting to most" would bring in an aggregate TON more viewers than a collection of already news to most AP and wire feeds with some poorly developed gloom and doom or blood....because I bet a LOT of people on this site find it much more informative and LOCAL and interesting than 99% of what is on chron...I know I do

you are in a CAR....in HOUSTON....run his dumb ass over once he starts to harass you....he will get the message

who said amateurs....there are plenty of people with English, journalism, communications, or business degrees out there and are you saying this site alone does not have plenty of quality well sourced info even if it has grammar or spelling errors.....you can always hire someone to edit it.....and probably edit it better than the chron

I am 99% positive UT is still planning on trying to CUT 2,000 students to get down to 48,000 students just over 52,000 is what UT has been up to tops and they have declined as best they could from there

I believe both had the puffs.....they were great

sounds to me you have learned the chron to nearly the max of it's usefulness unless you have a pet bird that needs a cage liner or do a lot of shipping and need packing materials

newspapers killed themselves with a total LACK of local news....with the internet I can find the same AP story on 500 sites what do I need the newspaper for to reprint it like their "analysis" (from someone 1,000 miles from me) represents what I or most people I know think business "reporting" is the biggest example I can think of because it is just the same stories about layoffs and the poor economy for people 1,000s of miles away in an industry that was never here or anywhere near here.....meanwhile I can find what is going on with local business on sites like this or from bloggers the chron would do well to pick up a site like this.....hire some people in various areas of town like The Heights, Mid Town, Memorial, West Houston, Woodlands, Kingwood, Sugarland ect. to actually write and prepare NEWS about what is going on in THEIR area.....I know people are being shot and killed in new orleans every day and no one there (especially chocolate idiot) seems to care so why do I.....I would be much more interested in REAL news about what happened in The Heights the other night than just another riot at a notorious big screening in CT sports (which seems to be what holds most local papers up) is the last thing left that news papers report on locally and even that is falling to crap as they ignore it or AP it up with just another fact less, meaningless, blab with not real content there are people on sites like this that spend HOURS preparing FREE information that a newspaper can't touch and I can only imagine what they could pull off if they were actually getting paid something to do it newspapers are stuck in an old model of a guy in a hat working full time at a desk and typewriter actually getting out there and "scooping" something when we can get all the gloom and doom and the mindless obama butt licking from 5,000 "sources" how about hiring a few people that are stay at home moms or dads, self employed, retired, ect. and paying them something worthwhile and maybe even giving them a "benefits" pool to really lure them in and then turn them loose to find a decent restaurant in Katy (for all those that refuse to eat at a chain for some reason) or to get a REAL story on what is up in Galveston instead of some report from an idiot like geraldo who has been to Galveston one time in his life....pay the people by the piece/story or pay them based on "hits" or just tell them what they need to produce per day/week/month and then turn them loose to actually have some creativity to develop something people care about I bet there are 50 people on this site alone that could develop some worthwhile content twice a week and would do it for $1,000 a month, expenses, some equipment, and some benefits....maybe over time some could be full time or some even shift to $500 a month....and the "full timers" would be steering the overall group and focus of the content just think how many things on this site just today we all learned about (like the former Astroworld site plans that will never take off) that are much more interesting than 99% of the crap in chron.com hell for $200,000 a month plus benefits, expenses, and equipment you could have 200 people out there giving info on something people in HOUSTON actually care about.....if $1,000 is not enough then even $3,000 a month would be $600K in salaries for 200 people a month running around delivering 200 stories a week and then toss in a few full timers and cut and pasters for the AP crap and you just spanked the chron into the grave next to the post I know there are people that would do it for $3,000 a month and $200 in gas and a car write off and some meals....and then a few could even "meet people" if they wanted to like at HAIF happy hours and get more story ideas and really develop a COMMUNITY again instead of a rag with some local sports scores and AP retreads

it might give you a satisfactory feeling of knowing why you have worked hard to earn what you are buying no different than actually driving the car and having some squeegee loser try and "clean" your windshield

not really Chilis and OTB have a pretty different menu....sadly Chilis is moving away from some of their past offerings while I did not think OTB was horrible and the ones I had been to (rarely) were clean and the service was good....I think they were tricked up fru fru Mexican food that did stray too far away from the TexMex most Texans desire and they are better situated in other places that don't know any better and if you want real Mexican food (of various types) then probably no chain will do it

WOW....I can see this getting off the ground in about oh.....well never!

I am all for riding bikes and if someone can pull off living a "bike only or bikecentric" existence more power to them, but often I find a lot of "bike people" and other "cause people" think they are special or magically protected or they will get out there and make a point often with putting their life and limb and others life and limb on the line....they just pretend their cause or their mentality will protect them from people that don't care, drunks, reckless people, people distracted, or any of the other things that cause people to smash into people IN CARS much less people on bikes....I just figure "hey it ain't me or anyone I love so what can I do, but drive slower and gawk if anything happens" they don't care or seem worried so I won't worry either

don't wear your yellow hoodie you might stand out

dallas did not use the same actual tracks they used the ROW and tore up and rebuilt everything else....dallas is a bit different than Houston in that most of their tracks were not next to an existing freeway as well....Houston has decided to try and run theirs through existing population areas VS existing roadway areas.....dallas with a different track layout was able to do this with existing tracks....Houston not so much.....vastly different city layouts and situations between the two

Westside High would probably the best "regular" High School in HISD and even then it is still HISD and a public school, but it will probably be the best with the most affordable areas to live with houses that meet your criteria...unfortunately Westside and some of it's feeder schools took in a ton of Katrina trash so you will want to see how that is turning out....I believe Walnut Bend and Paul Revere (both schools I went to) have since lost much of theirs, but I am sure some still lingers until they are old enough to drop out or become socially promoted I would look at what areas Memorial High School or possibly Stratford pull from although Stratford goes up and down way more than Memorial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri-Kansas-Texas_Railroad The former MKT rail line (20 miles/32 kilometres) which linked Katy to Downtown Houston has been converted; a section between Interstate 610 and Katy, Texas, is part of the Interstate 10 expansion of the Katy Freeway since TxDOT purchased the MKT right-of-way in 1998, and the MKT line east of Loop 610 into Downtown Houston is currently owned by the City of Houston's Parks and Recreation Department (plans are underway to convert the right-of-way into a bicycle trail). those tracks were sold off by the Union Pacific for the freeway expansion.....UP had duplicate tracks going west to San Antonio that were acquired when UP and the Rio Grande merged I believe the Southern Pacific was the original owners of those duplicate tracks and SP and the Rio Grande merged then later in 1996 Rio Grande merged with UP and UP sold off those Katy tracks since they had the new route you can find enough info to make your head spin at http://www.railroadforums.com/ or at www.trainorders.com but trainorders requires payment to join and post and it had died off considerably since they started that, but there is probably someone on one or both of those sites that has operated a train on those tracks and could answer every question you could imagine

I believe deadmalls only updates every few months now if not longer....that site seems to have died and I think some info has even been removed you were born about 20 years too late you seem to love the mall and yet malls are dead as a doornail now....or maybe malls are coming back with the younger crowd and the mall owners just don't know it yet.....I used to love malls.....then I worked in one

did it reply back?

did you actually read some or all of that....after I did I wanted to give dallas to oklahoma and ask for several minutes of my life back what a thread

I know multiple people in all three levels of the alcohol industry; manufacture, wholesale, and retail that have had a number of issues with them over and over and I also know someone who contacted them twice in regards to how to follow the rules for a college kid party only to be set up and then mocked after arrest for not contacting them about how to follow the rules......he did twice

I wondered how the whole "dry" thing came about.....I thought Houston never had any of that stupidity when I was a kid and they reserved that for dallas which has some of the dumbest wet dry areas around I thought all of Houston was wet, but the annexed part explains why the Heights was not usually wet dry goes by county precinct or city borders or county borders or a precinct in a county/city borders and it is either all that precinct, all that county, all that city, or none, but since I am not sure if the Heights is all one precinct then I am not sure how that would work for them since it it might not be its own precinct and is no longer a city of its own if you have memberships it can really be the same as wet (plus or minus package sales) and since there are no rules on membership charges they can be handed out for free or sold for a penny ect and since 100% of any revenue from membership sales goes to the fools at TABC there is no incentive to charge for them to the club owner....the only thing is since the TABC is a pack or worthless idiots they will check memberships even if given for free because idiots need to find a reason to keep their idiot job....but that usually only cuts down on the "pack them in bars" where a waitress will be so busy she will forget to check, get tired of checking, or give some "hipster" a break only to find she has been set up and the bar is getting fined if you have membership now and the heights is not its own precinct then it will probably be extremely difficult to change since in 90% of the cases dealing with anything other than sales to minors TABC can't even really tell you what their laws and rules are because they are all morons and their laws and rules are so poorly written that different areas will interpret the same rules and laws differently I know people that have sat in TABC meetings with wholesalers and the wholesalers (who are part of the reason TABC stays around and stays so stupid) would ask them about specific rules and the answer was (multiple times) "you don't want me to answer that because if I answer it then I will have set the precedent and it is much easier for you to just do what you need to and it will not be looked at and if it is then you can fight it based on not knowing the interpretation and then the rules can be set in the courts when dealing with TABC it is best to go with "if it is not broke and you can work around it then don't ask" because if you ask and they have to set a rule or make a change usually it will come out on the side of lack of common sense and stupidity....because that is what the do best!!!

well OTIS and I are friends so he would not do that to me and I usually do not lead with my head into the elevator or use my head as the appendage to try and keep the elevator door from shutting

well at one time Austin was just a sleepy college town with a state capital, 500K people and a good, but not great university then they became serious about being a world class university and now they have Sematech, several other wafer and Tech companies and the largest venture capital pool in the state of Texas and direct flights to San Jose...so YES I think we can compete in Texas Houston has the largest medical center in the USA and we do not capitalize on that in the form of patents and research ventures and employment from it....same with dallas and telcom and federal research spending increases usually faster than inflation so some other state does not have to go down for Texas to increase and if some state that has been getting a larger share than the share of federal taxes they pay does go down slightly then that is just how it is at one time TAMU was a small school in a smaller town and only allowed men in....then they became serious about being a top university and now they are a leader in all facets of Ag and many in Life Sciences and a leader in engineering with a well respected business college....but we have still not made hay from that in the form of venture capital and business growth, but it is being worked on so yes Texas can compete with three of the largest metro areas in the USA and a huge number of fortume 500 companies and world class transportation infrastructure......we just need to be more serious about taking what is in the universities and turning it into real world products and we need more universities to be in a position to do that at one time even recently Atlanta was just a charming Southern city with a state capital and some decent universities and a big airport.....then Emory became more serious about being a world class university and even more so Georgia Tech did.....now Atlanta rivals dallas and Houston in job growth, beats them in college graduates, and is a respected city making a scene on the world scale....so it has worked other places as well

update man found floating in the bayou with HPD hand cuffs on......flash back to the past

well in his case he is one of those that is very against the name change because he believes there is no difference between UHD and UH and they should not try and differentiate one from the other when there is a big difference.....they are not the same university and they have vastly different admissions and degree plans just like the UT system schools...it is a lot less hard to confuse the UT schools since none are in the same city and since many have their own sports teams.....and they all have vastly different admissions requirements and degree plans

he can't he went to UHD not UH