Archive for the ‘Roads’ Category

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Random notes: April 18, 2012.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Invasive species are good eating.

Frankly, yeah, I can see eating tiger shrimp. The Asian Carp…well, it makes me think of the old joke about how to prepare carp. (Nail it to a board, prop it in front of a fire until one side turns black, turn the board over and wait until the other side turns black, then throw the fish away and eat the board.) I’m not a big chili fan, but nutria bourguignon could be interesting. And as for feral hogs, let me just say two words: feral bacon.

This one goes out to Andrew: how to replace a bridge in a weekend, instead of months.

Oh, look! Greg “Three Cups of Tea” Mortenson is being sued for fraud!

The lawsuit is asking a judge to order that everybody who bought the books be refunded. Whatever money is left over would go to a humanitarian organization selected by the plaintiffs’ attorneys and approved by the court.

Would it shock you to learn that one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs was also involved in the James Frey lawsuit?

Posted in Books, Bridges, Clippings, Food, Law, Roads | Comments Closed

More random crap.

Monday, November 28th, 2011

First of all, a couple more obits: Lana Peters. You might know her better as “Svetlana Stalina”, Josef Stalin’s daughter.

I missed this over the weekend (I’ve been distracted, working on my final project for school) but Tom Wicker, noted NYT journalist, passed away on Friday.

…the sputtering economy and municipal budget cuts are presenting new problems for the Tournament of Roses.

Speaking of municipal budget cuts, Lourdes Garcia, one of Robert “Ratso” Rizzo’s employees, has lost her job with the city of Bell.

Garcia is now a witness for the prosecution in the government’s case against her former bosses. She has been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony.

She was making $422, 000 a year until last year, when her salary was cut to $165,000.

We haven’t had a “Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark” update recently. How are things going?

In an interview to mark the Monday anniversary of the production’s first, fumbling preview performance, the producers of “Spider-Man” said they were considering new plans for recouping the show’s record-setting $75 million capitalization. The most unusual idea: adding new scenes and perhaps a new musical number to the New York “Spider-Man” every year, making it akin to a new comic book edition, and then urging the show’s fans to buy tickets again.

The producers also say that they’re not planning on mounting touring companies, but instead want to concentrate on making the Broadway production successful. And this decision has nothing to do with Julie Taymor’s lawsuit. Nothing at all.

Weekly running costs alone for “Spider-Man” total $1 million or more, by far the highest amount on Broadway, while its net income has ranged recently from $100,000 to $300,000 a week. At that rate the show would need to play on Broadway at least five more years — and possibly quite a bit longer — to pay off debts, a run very few shows achieve. In other words, it would need to turn into a hit on par with “Wicked” or “The Lion King” (the latter directed by Ms. Taymor), which after lengthy runs still regularly sit atop the weekly Broadway box office charts.

Bruce Boudreau out as coach of the Washington Capitals.

Up until about five years ago, I drove Loop 360 every day. I still have to drive it from time to time, so I was quite interested in the Statesman‘s coverage of plans to improve traffic flow. The biggest change involves implementing “Michigan left turns”: instead of left turn arrows at the lights, drivers will have to turn right, go down to a median cut, and do a U-turn.

I had plans: if I was ever diagnosed with a terminal illness, I’d go out late one night and blow up all the pointless traffic lights on Loop 360. The “Michigan left” plan doesn’t go quite that far, but I think it is a good step, if properly implemented. However, the plan doesn’t address the other major problem I used to see: traffic backs up horribly at the Loop 360/Mopac (Loop 1) intersection. That area badly needs a massive intersection redesign.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Firings, Law, Obits, Roads, Sports, Theatre | Comments Closed

Public service announcement.

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

The Texas Department of Transportation is closing the ramp from northbound 183 to southbound Loop 1 this coming weekend. The closure is supposed to start at 9 PM Friday, and run until 5 AM Monday.

TXDOT does have a pretty good reason for the closure; they’re repairing a section of the highway damaged in a horrible tanker truck accident/explosion last fall.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads | Comments Closed

Lonesome Roads.

Monday, July 18th, 2011

The Texas Department of Transportation has been building a couple of additional “flyover” connections down south of town; specifically, at the intersection of Loop 1 (also known locally as “MoPac”) and U.S. Highway 290.

Unfortunately, TXDOT contracted with Wiser Construction,  a company based in Nevada. (The Statesman says Wiser is based in Las Vegas, but all the business addresses I found for them are in Moapa, which is about 55 miles away according to Google Maps.)

Why is that unfortunate? Because Wiser Construction declared bankruptcy last week and walked off the job, leaving the flyovers uncompleted. (A search of the two Las Vegas newspapers turned up nothing about this bankruptcy.)

Edited to add 7/19: Here’s a link to another Statesman story. If you look at both that story, and the blog post I linked to yesterday, neither one currently contains any mention of bankruptcy. (The Statesman blog post appears to have been revised sometime after my original post.)

A bond insurance company informed TxDOT’s Austin office Monday in a letter that Wiser Construction Co. would not complete the $8.4 million job, said Tim Weight, TxDOT’s Austin district director of construction. The letter did not explain why the Las Vegas company was quitting the project, Weight said.

However, this story from KUVE still refers to the contractor’s bankruptcy.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads | 1 Comment »

Links to make Lawrence happy.

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Because I live for his happiness.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Politics, Roads | Comments Closed

Yet another public service announcement.

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Once again, our friends at TXDOT are closing I-35 at Ben White this weekend.

Fortunately, we’ve already picked our SDC venue, and it is almost as far away from that mess as we could get.

Posted in Clippings, Roads | Comments Closed

Public service announcement #3.

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

The planned closure of I-35 at Ben White/Texas 71 this weekend is still on.

Even better, the Texas Department of Transportation is also planning to close I-35 the weekend of March 4th as well. Yes, that’s two weekends in a row.

Next to come, [TXDOT spokesman John] Hurt said, will be various weeknight closures for the construction of flyovers linking eastbound Ben White to southbound I-35 and northbound I-35 to eastbound Ben White.

And:

…installing beams for the flyover linking northbound I-35 to westbound Ben White will once again require weekend closures of the I-35 main lanes, Hurt said. It is unclear when that work will occur or how many weekends might be involved.

Is there any good news?

The $26 million project and all four bridges should be done by September.

That would be just in time for the start of the UT football season. Anybody think that’s a coincidence?

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads | Comments Closed

Public service announcement #2.

Monday, February 14th, 2011

TXDOT states that they’re planning to close I-35 at Ben White Boulevard again the weekend of February 25th.

Does anyone have any first-hand reports from this weekend’s closure they’d care to post? I tried to stay as far away from I-35 as I could; I saw one report in the Statesman of 15-minute delays at that intersection, but someone close to WCD stated they’d heard the delay was more like an hour.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads | 1 Comment »

Public service announcement.

Monday, February 7th, 2011

The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.

Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:

The frontage road traffic lights at Ben White (Texas 71) will be on permanent green during the 50-hour plus diversion, meaning that the regular I-35 traffic will be able to move on through without stopping. But given that I-35 has three northbound lanes and three southound lanes in this section, there will be 33 percent less capacity for about a mile and all of those cars will have to exit and then re-enter the main lanes.

If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads, Stupid | 2 Comments »

Three no trump.

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

This one is for Andrew: northbound Highway 45 bridge in Milwaukee closed after highway department discovers the bridge is falling apart.

I haven’t found any good photos of the actual structural cracks yet, but I’ll update this post if I do.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads | 1 Comment »

Random notes: December 4, 2009.

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Today’s memo from Captain Obvious: scalpers find it hard to sell tickets when the team is awful. And sympathy for the Nets.

Mangino out.

So your scam involves taking money for hot tubs from people on eBay, then not shipping the hot tubs? I can’t decide who is dumber; the scammer, for not thinking that he’d be caught, or the people who actually thought purchasing hot tubs off eBay was a good idea.

In other news, we’re all going to die (well, mostly you folks in Houston). Film at 11.

Edited to add: The Observer has a nifty interview with Maj Sjöwall. I’m kind of ashamed to admit, even though I’ve read some of the Martin Beck books, I had no idea Per Wahlöö was dead. (Hattip: Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Firings, Hysteria, Loser, Media, Roads, Stupid | Comments Closed

Happy Halloween.

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

I am not sure why this story is in the Statesman rather than the HouChron. However, the Statesman has decided to acknowledge the 35th anniversary of Ronald Clark O’Bryan’s murder of his son.

This happened shortly after my family moved to Texas. I remember reading about it in the Chron at the time, and the story still makes me angry.

“This guy had never had anything but a parking ticket in his life,” he said. “So how did the evidence support that he wasn’t capable of rehabilitation?”

Well, gee, Clyde, I don’t know. Maybe because the evidence shows he killed his own kid for the insurance money – and, by the way, also tried to kill four other kids to cover his tracks?

I’ve mentioned this at least once before, but, for the record, here’s one of my favorite Halloween stories.

Edited to add: I’m going to throw this in, for the benefit of Andrew and other folks who don’t read SlashDot; a pretty good explanation of what’s going on with the Bay Bridge, complete with photos and diagrams.

Edited to add 2: When I clicked through to this article on the NYT website, the Times decided to display an ad …for Brighton Beach Memoirs. And as a libertarian who eats out a lot, I don’t see a damn thing wrong with this list, except maybe that the people who need it the most are also the least likely to read it.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law, Roads | 2 Comments »

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