cottonmather0

If it's that close to my house, then I guess I have no choice. It sure beats driving down to South Main to get rid of old fertilizer like I did this time last year.

Thanks. Like I said, this person must be arguing some kind of technicality. You are correct that there are no "sides" - all I was trying to say was that there are doors to Edwards on the west side and doors to Koch on the east side and patrons of both buildings park there. When a garage is constructed between two buildings with entrances on each side, that's "sharing" the garage according to my definition.

OK, I give up on whatever technicality you're arguing here, but Edwards ("Regal" now I think) uses the west side of the structure and people who work in the Koch building on the other end of the block park on the east side of the exact same garage that is directly connected to their building via walkways. I have visited there before and I know people who work there today. I'm not going to go anymore off topic than this. Cheers.

Insulation is usually installed from the inside. That said there needs to be a solid layer of sheathing over your studs and insulation: the best is probably plywood but most builders use OSB these days because it's cheaper and almost as strong. THEN you put the waterproofing on: Tyvek or some other similar product (Lowes sells a store brand). And after that goes the exterior siding. The sheathing is actually what holds everything together.

Unless you're talking about a different Koch Building it certainly does. This is the picture from the KS&T website: Which seems to be pretty clearly visible in the overhead (NW corner of Cummins and Norfolk): Google Maps Is the parking garage in between the two some kid of Google mirage?

In Greenway. It's the red and black stair-stepped looking building that shares the parking garage with the Edwards theater.

Yeah, downtown is very quiet. They've cleaned it up and renovated a lot lately, but not many people work down there anymore and there is no retail or consumer business down there at all except for stuff related to city and county government and tourists (all of those pretty stores in the pictures are touristy type places).

Eh, nothing too special. All of those small cities - Abilene, Midland/Odessa, Lubbock, San Angelo - are kind of like centers of their own universe as they cater to all of the smaller towns and communities around them, so I would say that growing up in a place like that makes one think slightly higher of it than it really is in the grand scheme of things. I left and went to college in a (much) larger city on the east coast and pretty quickly realized that I was still from way out in the sticks, even if it was one of the larger sticks. I'm not putting it down at all, just saying that I learned a lot about the world when I finally got out. Very small town, very parochial, not much to do but drink beer and play golf, even for the college kids. High school sports are HUGE. Generally the workbase is kind of poor - the rich people in town are all lawyers and insurance agents and the handful who own any kind of industry. Everyone else either works for the school district or college or the military or a service industry to one of those. There are a few outside companies that have come in lately: call centers and the like, but there's not many of those jobs these days. Hardly any oil or gas money in San Angelo - all of that is further north. It is always striking to me when I go back how poor the town is, or, at least, how there are no parts like Houston. Almost all of those pictures are from downtown or around downtown - generally, all of the action in town is on the west or southwest side of town and it's decidedly less attractive in those areas with wide city streets and very few tall trees except for the few in people's backyards. It's a very arid climate and geography and is very noticeable once you live somewhere else for a few years where there are lots of trees and the grass stays green on its own all year long. As far as the lake goes - what you are referring to is OC Fisher which is the most noticeable as the earthen dam stretches for about 10 miles right next to highway 87 on the north side of town. It was built for flood control and nothing else, so it's supposed to be dry, much like Addicks and Barker here in Houston. The river rises further north towards Odessa and flows through the basin of the lake year round. There is always water in the river, there's just hardly enough to ever accumulate in the lake. You can tell from some of the photos that the natural river channel is pretty shallow and narrow - it wouldn't take much rain upstream to overwhelm the banks through town, hence they built the dam (and floodgates) to keep that from happening in town. There is a similar reservoir on the south side of town built on the south fork of the river called Twin Buttes Reservoir and it's usually dry, too, for the same reasons. Upstream of that dam is much smaller Lake Nasworthy ("nasty-water") which is kept a constant level for city drinking water and recreation and is the lake you usually see when you are flying into town. EDIT: Nasworthy is downstream of Twin Buttes. Minor technical error on my part.

Hey I grew up in San Angelo (or at least 5th - 12th grade) and my mom still lives there. Those are great pics. Bouquets Unique florist used to be owned by a friend's mom. We spent a couple of weekends one summer working on that building when she first moved in. We hung a suspended ceiling and painted, among other things. I need to go out for a visit soon.

They agreed to the tow because they were told they were being towed to shore when they were really being towed further out. The tow line was also being gradually shortened without the knowledge of the pirates, too, precisely to get them close enough to get a good shot. It was a very well conceived plan, imho. The only problem I have now is that they have a ratty malnourished pirate "in custody" when he should have been summarily shot and dumped off the side of the ship as soon as we knew the captain was secure. Keeping him alive and in prison somewhere gives him much more standing than he deserves.

Very often they'll issue a tornado warning based only on the radar signature and there won't be an actual tornado or any damage reported. Better safe than sorry is fine with me.

Well, the good news today is that I mentioned it to the foreman today and he immediately started apologizing for it. He said it is always the last thing that they do and that they will do a thorough policing of the entire property when they finished next week. I actually kind of felt bad for even asking about it, he was so nice and apologetic. So that's good.

LOL - I know exactly what you mean. I am more concerned about getting a bad inspection report, but you do speak the truth about the buyer mentality.

Really? That makes me feel better. It seems kind of sloppy that it's now all mixed in with the insulation and covering everything up there, but if you say it's OK I will not press the issue if they so decline.

Many of the old aluminum shingles were damaged at the seams and were leaking underneath. The original inspector didn't catch the damage and was reluctant to go up and look and risk further damaging it since it looked OK from the ground. We just assumed that the limited leaking we saw during the storm was a function of wind-driven sideways rain blowing through the seams. Since we had that long dry spell with no significant rain right after the storm, we didn't know there was any damage for a few months until there was finally a big downpour last month that caused leaking again. The next day we called the roofing contractor and he came up and immediately noticed the damage and helped us work with a new insurance adjustor. It was actually leaking all over apparently and just running down the tarpaper on the underside of the aluminum - we would have never caught it except that the one spot what was leaking there was a puncture in the tarpaper. The good news is that the insurance company is paying for everything (we had already used up our deductible) and the roofer is going to leave the lifetime warranty open until the house is sold and is going to put that into our new buyer's name whenever we finally find one. Hopefully a "free" brand new $40,000 roof with a lifetime warranty will help us finally get the house sold. Anyway, selling the house with a bunch of flurf in the attic might be tough, so I have to get this taken care of.

We're getting our new post-Ike roof installed this week, courtesy of the insurance company in San Antonio. Still mad at them about the flood damage that wasn't caused by a flood, but they have been pretty accommodating since we determined that our roof was more badly damaged from Ike that originally thought. They are replacing our old 25 year old aluminum shingle roof with a brand new aluminum shingle roof worth about $40,000 and did not once try and get us to downgrade or otherwise play games with the numbers. Anyway, the point of this post is this: The original metal roof was installed back in 1983 directly on top of the old cedar shakes, which themselves were attached to wooden lathe with no solid decking (you could go up in the attic and see the old shakes before this week). The insurance company required that the old shakes be removed and new plywood decking be installed. They are doing it the right way. Tonight my wife and I thought we smelled smoke so we got to looking and eventually decided it was coming from a recessed light in the kitchen. I thought I would go up in the attic and take a look and when I opened the attic stairs dirty crap rained from above: old tar paper, wood chips, nails, dust, you name it. So when they were removing the old roof from the wood lathe, naturally a lot of debris fell into the attic since there was no solid decking beneath it all. I knew it was going to be a mess, but I didn't picture the mess being not only all over the yard, which they cleaned up, but also all inside the attic and the garage (which has no ceiling). I guess I wasn't thinking. I didn't see any smoke in the attic when I went up there, but nonetheless we turned off the light and the smell went away. I am afraid that some of this stuff fell onto a light and started to smolder. I am going to raise the issue with the crew tomorrow when they are here and I'm going to call the owner of the company, but I am curious if it's that big of a deal. His contract says they will "clean up all debris" - I'm wondering if he's going to tell me I am SOL in expecting them to clean the attic, though. Most of the roofer websites out there don't have much to say on the subject except to move valuables in the attic if we don't want them to get dirty. Nonetheless, our furnace and A/C are up there as are the aforementioned can lights and it seems like a fire hazard to me. Is it? FWIW: pictures are here. EDIT: added pictures

I have heard it's a total high-pressure sales scam. You go to your private tour and then they tell you to sign up for a very expensive membership on the spot or you'll never get another chance to do it again, the reasoning being that now that you've seen their great prices you have an incentive to go shop their prices around to other retailers. I have also heard that customer service isn't too hot - late deliveries, wrong deliveries, hidden charges. Most people seem to think it's a good deal if you're going to spend 10's of thousands of dollars, but that otherwise it's not worth it. Do a Google search for complaints and ripoffs on them and you'll find a lot.

It was stinky and entirely biodegradable! I'm sure some varmint or bird had a nice snack later that day, anyway.

My wife and I stopped at Subway in Sealy once to grab sandwiches for the road. We got a few miles down the interstate and when we opened our sandwiches something smelled really bad, so we didn't eat them. Did want to stink up the car, either, so I just rolled down my window (she was driving) and tossed our sandwiches out. I didn't know that I had hit the car behind us until he flew past us in the other lane a few seconds later giving the one finger salute. I felt terrible when I realized what had happened. I would have been pretty pissed myself. My mom from small town West Texas refers to those ramps as "high and nars" (narrow). She hates driving on them and will usually hide her eyes if she's in the car when I drive over them. She also used to get REALLY scared if she was in the car with me or my wife on the freeway at night - almost to the point of shrieking and crying at every lane change. To those of us who live here, it's done without a second thought but I can see how it would be intimidating to people who aren't used to it, for sure.

The way I learned Spanish, which admittedly is more vernacular than the formal stuff, was to do manual labor over the summer when I was a kid: landscaping, painting, roofing. The guys I worked with hardly spoke any English and I learned pretty fast. I would go home at night and watch Telemundo as practice and bought a couple of instruction books, too. I'm not saying that's a good way for an adult now, but what I am saying is that of all the foreign languages you could choose, Spanish is definitely the easiest to expose yourself to if you live in Houston. Take your formal lessons and then seek out opportunities to use it and you will pick it up really quickly.

I spent my 4th grade year in San Marcos growing up while my mom was getting her paralegal certificate at SWT- errrr, I mean, "Texas State." I attended Travis Elementary which was literally next door to Aquarena Springs on the other side of the golf course and just over the hill. This was almost 30 years ago, and the park was still going strong then. We would ride the school bus past the SWT football stadium (which seemed big to me), cross next to the golf course, and then to school. The golf course was always crowded and I remember the space needle tower ride thingee rising about the playground every day during recess. San Marcos was (and I guess still is) quite the party town then. I didn't really appreciate it being so young, but there was lots to do and it was a very happening place even for a 10 year old. I can imagine how great it would have been for college kids. I do remember lots of frats and frat houses, for sure. It was also very pretty with all of the rivers and the hill country and whatnot. I remember swimming and tubing in the river and eating at the restaurant built over the old dam at the head of the lake - it was called "Peppers on the Falls" back then. I seem to remember the last time I drove through San Marcos the restaurant was closed, just like Aquarena Springs

LOL, I see how that's confusing. I guess the answer is both? Maybe they could have built a larger second floor (or a third floor) on a smaller footprint and added a few more parking spaces? I recognize that there were a lot of constraints - money, lot size - and that they did a very good job with what they had. Just making an observation.

It's a great facility but that place is ALWAYS crowded and seems to have been built a little too small. I've wondered if the LEED process had anything to do with the relative size of the building versus the parking lot. They could have built up a little bit higher and saved some of the footprint for a few extra parking places.

We bought a custom wooden door from Cambridge Doors and Windows a few years ago. People always comment on it when they visit for the first time and it still looks as good as it did when we bought it. The one thing I need to warn you about is that the guy that we dealt with (the owner, I think, can't remember his name) declined to quote us a final price in the store (we had a rough idea from the sticker) and said he needed to come to the house to measure and inspect the existing jamb before he could tell me the cost. So he showed up to measure a few days later and got REALLY pissy when I told him that despite his trip to my house I had never committed to buy anything because I literally had received a firm price from him 10 seconds beforehand and needed a chance to sleep on it. Nonetheless, my wife called him a few days later and smoothed things over and we got the door for a great price and have been very pleased.

This quote is a perfect example of this. And the nonsense of "only entering my field of view from the front" is pretty darn selfish and pigheaded. No, you're not responsible for other people, but as you yourself have pointed out, you are responsible for your own actions and if you know that your own actions will have a derogatory effect on someone else's ability to act safely and carefully themselves (i.e you weave and speed so much that you surprise and distract someone else into having an accident in your wake and you KNOW that is more likely to happen when you drive that way) then that's the legal definition of negligence. You have a duty to the other drivers on the road not to put them in any more danger than they would reasonably expect otherwise and you clearly admit that you are. What kind of car do you drive, 6? I need to get my paintball gun ready.... LOL