august948

I just tried Southwest for December 10 -12.  It was all within a buck or two regardless of where the round trip started, though it was a bit cheaper in/out of Oakland.  

 

I fly between Houston and the Bay Area with some regularity.  Southwest and Continental used to be pretty much in lockstep on stated fares, with Continental getting more expensive once various fees were added in.  United never seems to match Southwest, not that it really matters that much - I'd much rather use Hobby anyway since it's a lot more convenient for me here.  On the other end, travel time on BART from SFO or OAK to the Financial District is pretty much a wash, and if you're going anywhere not on the peninsula OAK pulls ahead.

 

As a side note, not only does United have a fortress at IAH, it has nearly as big a chokehold on SFO. 

It's been a few years since I flew into OAK.  Do they still run shuttle buses to the nearest BART station?  I heard that they were going to put in a rail connection of some sort.

Sooner or later I'm going to have to go back on a business trip.  Thinking I might try SFO for a change.

I was in NYC recently and it was completely silent at Ground Zero, apart from the noise of the fountains. Probably the most quiet place in the whole city. It was surreal. Anyways, it was another Tuesday at Strack Intermediate... The teachers didn't tell us much. I was saddened by the loss of life, shocked we had been attacked, but I was also obsessed with the WTC buildings themselves. I had 4 different posters of them on my wall. The WTC infatuation came after my Titanic infatuation (strange huh).

 

Edit: I even had that weird UFO/rainbow sunflower/giraffe poster of them that could be found at Hobby Lobby.

 

Edit II: Does anyone else find it weird to see large children and find out they were born after 9/11? 

It's interesting that each generation seems to have a "where were you when..." event that we all remember.  For my generation it seems to have been the Challenger disaster.  For my parents it was the Kennedy assasination.  For my grandparents it was Pearl Harbor.  9/11 does double-duty with me, though I was much older when it happened.

That weird feeling you have reminds me of the Mindset List ( http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/ ) put out by a couple of professors at Beloit College.  In just a few years, I'm sure the list will include an entry that the incoming freshman don't remember the world before 9/11.  As it is, the current list has this as it's first entry...

 

1. During their initial weeks of kindergarten, they were upset by endlessly repeated images of planes blasting into the World Trade Center.

On a lighter note, I found this as I read down the list...

 

22. Students have always been able to dance at Baylor.

Way back when I attended Baylor, there was a persistant rumor that if dancing were allowed on campus, half of the buildings would have to be torn down due to clauses put in by donors.

Oil less than $75

So much for "peak oil" and "The End of Suburbia", huh?

It seems as though a lot of buildings are done in this sort of bland box style  Is this sort of thing really popular in the architectural community or is its prevalence due more to clients coming in and saying "give me a big, cheap box and dress it up a little"?

How much was Katy freeway expansion from northwest mall to downtown? The total project was 3 billion so it was in the hundreds of millions as well. I don't know why people complain about cost of trains but for freeway everything is okay.

Apples and oranges.

I'm one of these people

 

Who pulls a knife at a poker game?

Was there yesterday and visited the Verizon destination store and the Whole Foods bar/brewery.  Fresh brewed makes a big difference.  We need more of that here. 

Nice having the parking under the store.  A neat feature of the underground parking is that they have colored lights hanging over each space so you can see from a distance which spaces are open and which spaces are filled.

A lot of the financial in Houston is energy trading.

 

Although, as I have said in this thread in the past, anyone comparing the potential of any crash being as bad as it was in the 80s is fooling themselves into a doom scenario. 

 

Massive layoffs, companies shuttering, etc. probably not.

 

Will companies stop hiring at the breakneck they've been hiring at? Probably.

 

The conspiracy theorist in my head is whispering that the dropped price stabilized to conveniently. Saudi increased production just enough to drop the price to make it lower than what it costs Russia to produce, but it's still high enough for US production to stay profitable. That's pretty convenient, in my mind. Here's an interesting article from back in March...

 

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Using-Oil-to-Fight-Russian-Gas-Politics-in-Ukraine.html

 

It may be complete conspiracy theory land, but it's way too convenient, in my mind at least. I will say I won't at all be surprised if prices go back up again should Russia back down regarding Ukraine.

There's also this

Houston has one of the most overvalued housing markets in the country, according to a national real estate website

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/morning_call/2014/10/houston-may-be-headed-toward-a-housing-bubble.html?s=image_gallery

Houston is at the bottom of the list at +8% vs fundamentals.  Austin is at +19%.  I think we can wait this one out.

Railed by who? It was a fair discussion until a couple of childish posts.

You mean like this one?

 

Please stop being a homer you are the Matt Bullard of haif.

I haven't lived with my parents in 12 years

It's not negative it's just predictive analysis. Please stop being a homer you are the Matt Bullard of haif.

And you are the Harold Camping of HAIF.

And layoffs

20,000 is less than 24,000 that are expected to open.

Are you hoping for a drastic downturn so you can afford to move out of your parents house?

If it runs what's the issue? And taxis don't have that rule

Obviously, the issue would be that it quits running somewhere along your trip.

Let me give another example über cars are subject to 150,000 mileage caps whereas taxis have no such limit.

So the city prohibits the use of clunker cars in Uber's service?  Is that a bad thing? 

HBJ has a different take on all this:

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2014/11/21/report-houston-apartment-rents-will-continue-to.html

 

According to Transwestern, vacancies are down to 9%, and rents are way up. This might be the big reason Class A's are more vacant than B and C properties.

 

The absorption rate is still 20,000 units a year, so that would take care of everything either under construction or proposed in two years. 

By which time the current oil price correction might well be over.  We'll see how long the Saudi's can keep it together.

The rental market will fall first. Housing market will take longer since there is still more demand than supply, 10,000 is the number right now. Another side effect is all these projects that haven't started, some of them won't happen.

Some projects will get delayed and more houses will get built, probably out in the suburbs.  Rents on apartments will go down.  Driving will be cheaper so we can do more.  Oil and gas will keep flowing.  Not too bad for a correction.

Long article about effects on Houston economy because of drop in oil

houstonchronicle.com/business/economy/article/Falling-oil-prices-cloud-the-forecast-for-Houston-5907720.php

 

Gilmer didn't declare doom and gloom and he doesn't see the region losing a substantial number of jobs any time soon. But he does see a cooling off of a local economy that had grown white-hot as oil and gas production boomed amid higher prices and improved industry efficiencies.

 

"Certainly the economics aren't as good as they were a month ago, but the overall trend is still positive for our country," said John England, vice chairman and U.S. oil and gas leader for consulting firm Deloitte. "The fact is we have a lot of oil we can produce economically at current price levels and there are many plays that work at lower price levels than today."

A report this week from BBVA Compass said that because the Houston and Texas economies have diversified over the last 30 years, they don't risk the same level of pain suffered during the oil bust of the 1980s.

 

While the dropoff may force hard decisions on oil executives, Gilmer said refineries and petrochemical makers have benefitted from cheaper oil, a key raw material for producing gasoline, diesel and chemicals used in plastics and other goods.

Another beneficiary, he added, is the retail sector that is almost certain to gain as consumers find themselves with extra money in their pockets due to the slide in gasoline prices.

Residential and commercial real estate are caught somewhere in the middle. The single-family industry is likely to remain steady, Gilmer said, as demand still exceeds supply and will continue to drive up prices. For example, he estimated some 10,000 families are seeking houses but either cannot find one or cannot afford the ones on the market.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/economy/article/Falling-oil-prices-cloud-the-forecast-for-Houston-5907720.php

We'll be just fine...and with cheaper gas prices it's easier than it's been in years to live off the Grand Parkway.  Look for a boom in suburban house building to meet the pent up demand.  It's a win for us either way.

Speed limits are statutory presumptions of what is reasonable and prudent. Cops spout the "safe" mantra in an effort to sound knowledgeable. I know people who have avoided paying a fine by arguing that going 50 in a 30 was reasonable and prudent given the conditions and vehicle.

I'd like to hear the argument they used for being 20 mph over the speed limit.

"But officer, it's reasonable and prudent for ME to drive over the speed limit.  My car is German-engineered for the Autobahn!"

Doesn't matter what people think of me I come to speak the truth. Stick to college station topics.

It's the voting mechanism.  Whenever someone votes, it displays the last post with the last voting time.

Way to ignore the point I was trying to make completely.

Way to ignore the point I was making...completely.

The price of gas in Asia right now, depending

on the contract, can be as much as $16,

whereas it's $2.50 here. So, if you're in the business to extract hydrocarbons, you're going to look for the customer that's going to pay you the most money.

And that is most decidedly Asia at the moment, and Europe. Europe's paying about, what,

$9.50, $10, something like that.

The EIA--Energy Information Administration--reported that, as a result of export, domestic natural gas prices would rise by more than 50%.

This populist argument that industries used about, you know, "American gas, by Americans,

for Americans," while, in the background, they're working very hard to be able to export this gas out to grow other economies. pricing pressures are just going to dictate that the domestic price is going to go up.

And wouldn't it be great for industry if they get us to be much more dependent upon natural gas, and then suddenly the gas price starts rising? To me, that's a classic consumer squeeze, and we will have done it to ourselves and put ourselves right back in the same boat that we're in with crude oil right now.

We'll be much more dependent

upon natural gas, and it will no longer be cheap.

--gasland part 2

Debunking GasLand...

http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Debunking-GasLand.pdf

I'd just cut and paste it but it's 11 pages long.  By my count it debunks at least 50 points made in the film, and lists them by time point in the film.

Here's another..."‘Gasland Part II’ director uses hoax as evidence against fracking"

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/08/gasland-part-ii-director-uses-hoax-as-evidence-against-fracking/

 

The Washington Free Beacon reports that the controversial anti-fracking sequel features a scene where a Texas landowner is able to light the contents of his garden hose on fire. This is then used as evidence that nearby oil and gas operations  caused the contamination.

However, a Texas court ruled that the scene was a hoax concocted by an environmental activist  engaged in a prolonged battle with a local gas company. The environmentalist sought to inflate the dangers of fracking.

 

Texas’ 43rd Judicial District Court found last year that the Texas landowner,  “under the advice or direction” of environmental activist Alisa Rich, “intentionally attach[ed] a garden hose to a gas vent — not a water line” and lit it on fire.  “This demonstration was not done for scientific study but to provide local and national news media a deceptive video, calculated to alarm the public into believing the water was burning,” the court ruled.

It seems very strange that Saudi Arabia, among many other countries, can have exported hydrocarbons for many decades, made huge profits, employed thousands upon thousands of their citizens, built infrastructure from from nothing and, apparently, you think the US can't do the same.

LNG is going to be mostly exported overseas. Its benefits to Americans are short term and limited.

Same thing with keystone that crude is going to be shipped from gulf to other countries as well. I wish people would see this.

And will it magically move from the well to Europe via a great big pink unicorn?

Are you arguing that we should not export oil and gas?

I don't understand the religious opposition. Does the Bible say that gambling is bad (serious question)? I can't really see what the downside is, especially if they had specific casino districts like Galveston/the islands, as mentioned above.

The Bible doesn't directly address gambling.  But, it doesn't directly address dancing or shooting pool either but both activities have traditionally been looked poorly upon by certain religious denominations.

May not have to wait for the legislature to decide..they will be able to go offshore.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Casino-boat-coming-to-Texas-in-January-5845419.php

Except taxi isn't a peer to peer market it's an industry that requires its drivers to pay outrageous license fees and for the car itself just to join. Whereas uber you can use your own and it's online only, no "call". The cartel doesn't want anyone coming into their zone.

Lyft is 80% smaller than uber

It's a different business model for the same industry.  Taxi companies will adjust or lose.  My guess is that they will adjust.  So you have at least two competitors in the same market, three if Lyft happens to also be there and maybe more if it turns out to be profitable.  Should be a net benefit for consumers in both cost and service.