samagon

Couldn't decide to put this in Environment or here, but it doesn't seem to fit in either, so I took a chance So, twice a year I deal with allergies, once in early January, and then again in late August. It's much worse in January, this year it's come on a bit early. Symptoms are typical stuffy nose, completely congested, itchy eyes and typically a headache or two, you know, what you would expect. In August it's usually just a runny nose. I'm curious if anyone else deals with Allergies at the same times, or if anyone has any ideas what could possibly cause this, I'm not really hopeful of doing anything about it, but I'd at least like to have an idea what it is that causes it so I can curse it properly.

heh, he's been on this kick for as long as the site was announced as being Walmart. The three things you pointed out are extremely valid, but he won't really answer you. This guy has been going on about all sorts of weird things, and all they do is really ruin perfectly good discussions about anything. Another thing is that this guy is using traffic as a crux of his argument, but a mixed use development would introduce just as much, if not more to a parcel that size. He's also asked for people to show him examples of Walmarts that have access by less roads than this place will, I personally linked him to multiple Walmart locations that fit the bill, but I think he has ignored me, cause he doesn't respond to me any longer. lol. I guess he got tired of me asking for him to cite references, and give proof of what he was saying. My favorite was when he said that this Walmart location was going to introduce 20k more cars worth of traffic because he read the traffic manual, but that the manual said a supercenter would bring in 10k more cars, but the manual didn't have any reference to an urban walmart, so he said it would bring in 20k. I laughed good on that one. Also, he had been using 10k as the number, then the stop heights walmart did a traffic study, found that the number of cars that were using the road was WOEFULLY low, so low, you could add 10k cars for walmart and still be well within the expected max use of the road, so after that he started saying this walmart would add 20k cars. Anyway, I've found it's great fun to read when he tries to answer questions and such. Too bad it's ruined this topic though. On the point of the topic, I think that without doing an analysis of land prices over the course of the past 4 or 5 years, it's really hard to pinpoint whether the drop in value from $40/sf to $30/sf started to decline after the housing market thing, or after the walmart was announced earlier this year, there's no way to accurately say why land value dropped. But since we've really only known about walmart for about 9 months now, I don't think that's the reason, but that's just my gut, no relevant data to back it up. I know some people who've had to move out of the area, but one was to get up to dallas to be with family, and the other was to move to denver for a better job. So my only experience is my first hand experience, nothing more.

You're not thinking of urban, you're thinking of an area that would be most convenient to travel by some means other than by car. Washington, due to it's nature as a linear street, will always be most convenient to travel by car. where a parking lot is doesn't make it more convenient to travel by walking, or biking, or mass transit. Look at an area like Midtown, do you think it is more urban because there are less CVS, or Walgreens, or stripmalls? Not hardly, There's plenty of surface parking butting up to the streets in midtown, right next to the 'great urban example' of the post midtown, there's a CVS with a big parking lot, and 2 strip malls, one with a BW3, and one with a Starbucks. What makes Midtown more urban in some peoples mind is the grid layout of the streets, and that there isn't one main street, but many. Washington is what? 1 street, a few cross streets. that's linear, one dimensional. somewhere on here I've seen examples of walkability, and blocks situated like they are in midtown make for easy travel by walking. but blame it all on the walmart if you want, target is already there and washington isn't less or more walkable as a result.

well, they are also suburbanizing west gray around Shepherd as well.

Hey there, don't forget, Target it only open for a certain number of hours, forcing all shoppers to shop within that timeframe, however the WalMart will have some random people shopping at 3am cause they aren't forced to shop at normal business hours. So while Target has to fit 60,000 cars* down that one street every day within business hours, Walmart will only have to fit 20,000 and that will be at all hours of the day. * I made the 60,000 number up based on numbers S3MH has used in the past to figure how many cars will visit the Walmart, and since there are 3x as many parking spots, I decided there are 3x more cars. S3MH logic is easy!

it's probably got something to do with ease of separating the different types of recyclable materials. I wish they took Styrofoam, but I think they don't allow it for the same reasons, ease of separation.

gotta remember what recycling is. recycling is part of conservation, which is great for the environment. there are 3 parts of conservation, of which recycling is the last one (not least important, but the last one in the process), reduce, reuse, recycle. the whole point of conservation is two fold. 1. if a person follows the 3 "Rs" of conservation, the waste products that go into landfills will be less. 2. the amount of raw materials needed per person will be less. so conservation is more about saving the environment from a perspective of not needing as much raw materials from the Earth, and not needing to then return as much of the waste to the Earth in the form of trash in a landfill. with this in mind, you'd have to compare the raw materials that are used in the entire process of recycling, vs the number of raw materials that don't have to be used because of the process of recycling. really, unless the costs are being subsidized really heavily, they wouldn't want to do it unless they were able to turn a profit, and I would assume in order to turn a profit, there has to be less being used to make the process work than there is being made as a result of the process. Anyway, conservation only really works if you follow all 3 of the steps, and not just recycle. it sucks, cause from what I can tell, the first 2 reduce and reuse are almost ignored, but then reduce goes against the way our economy runs, so I can see why that one is easily overlooked. sorry for the tangent and greenway of my post, I'm just a real fan of conservation overall, to get on the subject of the big green cans (heh, martian ladies, hello!) my neighborhood was part of the pilot, and I don't have a lot of waste overall, but I find that a lot of stuff that would have normally gone to the landfill goes into the recycle bin, and I like that. TL:DR version... when you recycle, you not only have to think about the stuff used to do the deed of recycling, but you have to think about the stuff you don't use by not having to get rid of the trash, or on the front side of the raw material chain, through recycling you now have processed materials that are ready for use to make stuff that someone doesn't have to create from raw materials from the ground. recycling's a win win on both sides of the coin.

absolutely, whether the intersection is metered through use of traffic lights, or signs, they are still safer, cause when you enter the traffic circle, you should only have to look for cars coming from the left.

wonder what the average length of a named street is in houston? like, westheimer is 28 miles from one end to the other, bissonnet is 18 miles, but what's the average length? and what is it for other cities? and then what is houston city limit size vs those other cities? are we that far out of the norm?

How far is it going to go? Just on the part of the street that isn't currently there, or will it extend all the way to the stadium? answered my own question regarding distance by reading the first post. Are they going to have EaDo written on it? Can we petition for another name? (kidding!) if this 'could' start construction soon after they start construction on the stadium, where is the funding coming from? Since they are going to have to permanently close street access to cars, has the city done impact studies? What info can we find on this? Are there any potential clients for the shops that will be facing this walking street? I just haven't heard enough about this to get super excited about it being more than as Niche said, a 'wet dream'. I think it would be awesome to have an east end version of rice village, but I haven't seen much to do about it, and I would assume the 'eado' people would be shouting about it from the rooftops.

well, I spend as much time as I can using EaDo in regular conversation, but I pronounce it differently all the time, my hope is that eventually, through casual conversation, all of these different pronunciations will drift back to this "EaDo Alliance" and they'll have to come up with a less stupid name. currently, I'm using the pronunciation: "eh-yah-dough", gives it a nice northeast flair, I think... It's so silly cause EaDo is so generic and has no backing in the history of the area. Something like Old Chinatown, or East Warehouse District (E.W.D. even has a better ring than EaDo) might give the area some direction of character. Or maybe it should be named for the future, Generic Town Houses Are Us District (G.T.H.A.U.D. still kind of sucks though)...

I imagine they are going to continue to let them sleep all over the place, and stare gloomily at anyone in their general vicinity.

I remember when they put in these 'roundabouts' I had an aunt living in the area, so I got to hear all about them going in. Apparently, those were done because people were using those roads as through streets and driving exceedingly fast, there were some accidents caused, and possibly even a fatality, iirc (almost 20 year ago now). I remember very clearly that after they initially put them in there was a big to do on the radio about it, cause there was apparently a fire in the neighborhood, and because they hadn't designed these 'roundabouts' with fire truck clearance in mind, it was difficult for the fire trucks to get where they needed to go. they had to go back and fix it by making those sidewalk ramps, previously it was all curb, so they made a ramp, giving enough room for fire engines to swing around. Anyway, yeah, those aren't in place to help traffic move easier, they were put in place to slow people down (this was before road humps were invented). I haven't been down those streets in forever, but I wouldn't be surprised if they went back and added road humps as well. Here's a proper roundabout in Houston... http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Meadowglen+Lane,+Houston,+TX&sll=29.729543,-95.327272&sspn=0.013546,0.01929&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Meadowglen+Ln,+Houston,+Texas&ll=29.731477,-95.554764&spn=0.003387,0.004823&t=h&z=18

what else is interesting is that it looks like the bayou took a more meandering route not too long ago, I wonder how long ago that either changed on its own, or was changed by some civil engineers? it almost looks like a road went through where the bayou is now, you can see it leading down from bellfort, and up from reed rd. well, answered my own question, going up to that historic aerials link, the bayou meandered quite a bit at that time! looking at the maps, some time between 81 and 02 a road was built there, and the bayou was straightened out.

Parking was rough Saturday night for sure. I think there was something at Toyota Center, Rockets played at Chicago, so it must have been a concert. I went to one of the bars at HP and it was much busier than it was a year ago (when I last went to a bar in HP). I suppose it will be a year again before I go back. drink prices are close to scandalous.

this saturday! http://www.29-95.com/bars-clubs/story/leons-reopens-saturday

this isn't a conspiracy, cause they are being dishonest and disingenuous in front of our faces. If it were a conspiracy it would be done in some backroom dishonestly and disingeniously that we don't know about. Not being a lawyer, or anything more than an armchair lawyer, could it be that this is not considered "due process" and would therefor be not a lawful way to conduct a ballot?

very nice find Melwood! Work brought me to the west side of town this week, and I ended up taking I-10 through town, and they are working on a trail on the bank of White Oak where it runs along I-10.

correct you are, I knew I had read it on here, but couldn't remember where!

I think I read somewhere that all of the tracks going through east end were supposed to be set to quiet zones at some point.

never knew that, for some reason, I am fascinated by the history of our streets? thanks for the info!

I'd imagine they can get some propane heaters as well.

as hwy6 mentions, I believe that the numbered streets out here on the east side were a part of the town of Harrisburg, and then changed when it was incorporated into houston

although it is fairly obvious you are either ignoring me, or choosing to not respond to my questions, but since you feel redscare is against community participation in the process of development, let me ask the question that begs to be answered... what role are you taking in the development process? All I have ever seen from you is hatred and words that point distinctly to the fact that you do not want a walmart there. that isn't taking part in a process that is opposition to a process. taking part would be working with the developer to offer better strategy for their vision. what are you doing, what is your group doing towards that goal? don't pretend like you're taking an active participatory role when you are in fact taking an active opposition role. the two are distinctly different, and there's no way you can confuse the two.

heh, his posts are pretty entertaining, so it isn't all a loss. a bit redundant, and predictable, but entertaining still.