Me get up early and travel most of day.
Me spend much of rest of day driving around getting me Vegas legs back.
Me tired.
Me talk like Thag from “Far Side” due to travel and being tired.
Me sincerely hope Gary Larson having a wonderful life wherever he may be.
You come back tomorrow. Maybe some blog for you than.
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.
Lawrence pointed out that I hadn’t trolled the crowd for panel suggestions yet, and the schedule is up. Here’s the stuff I’m tentatively planning to see.
I’m open to requests, but I won’t make promises.
I’ll bring the cheese. His Gruberness has already brought the whine.
There’s two funny things about this. The first one: if you read the entire article, the Shifty Jelly people were fully aware going in that they weren’t going to make any money off of being the “free app of the day”, and had a chance to reject the offer…
And now you’re complaining?
Here’s the other funny thing. I’m one of those 101,491 people who downloaded Pocket Casts when it was free. I’m glad I did; if I had paid $2.70 for that app, I would have been very unhappy. Pocket Casts “works”, in the sense that it manages my podcast subscriptions and lets me play back podcasts.
But it’s buggy. For example, when I first start Pocket Casts, it frequently tells me there’s no podcasts playing. Sometimes that’s true; other times, I quit out of Pocket Casts during a podcast, so I’d expect it to show me the last podcast I was playing. Even better, when I select a podcast from the ones I’ve downloaded, Pocket Casts just displays the same “no podcasts playing” message. Repeatedly. No matter how many times I select a podcast; any podcast, I get the same “no podcasts playing” message. The only way I’ve found around this problem is to actually quit and relaunch the Pocket Casts application.
Good luck, guys. Don’t let the door hit you where God split you.
I really wish I could find that original Bloom County strip, but I digress.
The plan to build a new stadium for the New York Islanders failed. Overwhelmingly.
(Newsday has a pay wall set up, but the first two paragraphs are really the relevant part. ETA: here’s the NYT coverage.)
Yes, Michele Catalano has another “I”, “I”, “I” post up already.
…
We’re all Islanders. Don’t we all want what’s best for our communities? Perhaps not.
Because reasonable disagreement about whether subsidizing a professional sports team is a good idea equates to not “wanting what’s best for our community”.
Edited to add: I didn’t pick up on this right away.
So all along, you’ve been agitating for other people to pay the bills for your hockey team, Catalano, knowing full well that you’d be moving away and not having to deal with the tax burden you wanted to impose on other people in Nassau County? This explains much.
…to the previous post:
American McCarver: absolutely no mention of Hideki Irabu. Mike Monterio did find time to reblog an old article about Andre the Giant from Modern Drunkard.
Grantland, the heavily hyped Bill Simmons led ESPN spinoff: absolutely no mention of Hideki Irabu. Wright Thompson did find time to write about the death of William Faulkner’s niece, and Jay Caspian Kang found time to write about Amy Winehouse. (Edited to add: to be fair, Kang’s piece was published before Irabu’s death.)
Right Field, the National Review Online spin-off sports blog: absolutely no mention of Hideki Irabu.
You would think someone would acknowledge, even if just in passing, the suicide of a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees at the relatively young age of 42.
Yeah, Michele Catalano is at it again, trying to convince people they should vote for a new stadium for the New York Islanders. (Previously on WCD.) It is a curious article, full of “I want” and “I won’t” and “I”, “I”, “I”. It is as if Catalano thinks Long Island and Nassau County revolve around Catalano and her wants; as if everyone should just give in and let her have her beloved Islanders, because…
The idea that other people have wants, too, and those wants include things like wanting to keep the money they’ve earned (instead of putting it into the pockets of team owners so people like Catalano can “…get in my car fifteen minutes before game time and be in my seat with a pretzel and Coke before the puck drops”) seems never to have crossed Catalano’s mind.
Meanwhile, the indispensable Field of Schemes links to an interesting Montreal Gazette article about the deal. The Islanders are projecting $229 million a year in revenue if the referendum passes and a new stadium is built.
…is brought to you by Central Falls, RI.
Receiver Robert G. Flanders announced the step at City Hall Monday.
(Simpsons mode ON)
Stupid Flanders.
(Simpsons mode OFF)
I used to spend a fair amount of time in Rhode Island. (There’s a reason this blog has a “Rhode Island” tag. Actually, two reasons, but Buddy Cianci’s been quiet recently.) I don’t recall ever going through Central Falls; looking on Google Maps, it appears to be to the north of my old stomping grounds, closer to Pawtucket than Providence.
We previously noted the troubled Loop 1/US 290 flyover project.
Today’s City of Austin project that’s falling apart at the seams is a 3.2 mile long bike trail in North Austin.
The city got $1.9 million in stimulus grant money back in 2009 for the bike trail, claiming the project was “shovel ready”. So far, according to the Statesman, about 20 feet of trail have been cleared. The architects (Larson, Burns and Smith, who have been paid $764,055.91 to date) and the construction firm (Westar Construction, paid $329,000 to date) have been fired, and oversight of the project has been moved from the Parks and Recreation Department to the Public Works Department.
(Larson, Burns and Smith apparently have nothing to say, at least to the Statesman. Westar basically says that Larson, Burns, and Smith screwed up the plans, and there were issues with the city that prevented them from doing more work on the trail.)
I do agree with one of the Statesman commenters: that is a pretty nice sign.
Anthony Magsam worked for the Philadelphia Police Department in the Firearms Identification Unit. In that position, Officer Magsam had the opportunity to handle a lot of nifty guns. Officer Magsam was something of a gun buff as well:
Unfortunately, Officer Magsam let his gun buffery get the better of him. Allegedly, he removed the trigger group from what’s described as an AR-15 with three-round burst capability, and replaced it with a semi-auto AR trigger group. He also allegedly took parts out of an M2 carbine:
So this is bad, m’kay? Officer Magsam was fired and criminally prosecuted, right? That’s what would happen if you or I were in illegal possession of full-auto parts, right?
Bzzzzt! Wrong! Thanks for playing! Officer Magsam was allowed by the commanding officer of the FIU to transfer out of FIU into another unit, and the theft was not reported.
If I understand the Daily News article correctly, Internal Affairs is investigating. But IA had been investigating for over a year when the Daily News reported the story; it seems the investigation was “stalled”.
By the way, the guy who was overseeing the IA investigation used to work with Lt. Testa in the FIU. And Officer Magsam’s mother…
Frank Bender, noted forensic sculptor.
Among his other accomplishments, Mr. Bender did the bust of John List for “America’s Most Wanted”; that bust led directly to List’s capture.
That bugs me. I’d like to think that if I ran a police department and asked Mr. Bender (or someone like him) to do work for me, I’d at least have the courtesy to let them know how it came out, wrong or right, as soon as I knew. Good thing I don’t run a police department, eh?
I haven’t read The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry
It is well established that I’m not a baseball fan, and I’m especially not a Yankees fan, but this is just horrible and depressing. I’m sorry for his family and their loss.
You know, if you run a restaurant, it only makes sense to buy your food – things like meat – from respected restaurant suppliers, such as Texas Meat Purveyors (not the bluegrass band, the restaurant supply house). I’m not saying you have to purchase your meat from them specifically, but you should at least purchase your meat from someone with a license and reputation, not from sketchy people on the street.
I know, I know, this is obvious, why do I feel compelled to say this? Some folks didn’t get the memo, that’s why.
The APD conducted a sting operation today that resulted in five arrests, warrants for two more arrests, and the closure of three restaurants. (The article says six arrests, but I only count five names on their list. Likewise, it states three people are at large, but names only two. Edited to add 7/29/2011: the Statesman updated the article late last night with the correct numbers.) It appears that a ring of folks were stealing meat from HEB…
The restaurants had their health permits revoked, and
The three restaurants in question are:
It’s kind of interesting to see that, of the seven people named, three have the first name of “Willie”. Do you have to change your name to “Willie” to work at a barbecue joint in this town? (Only two of them work for Willie’s Bar-B-Que: Willie Joe Showels and Willie Joe Showels III. Yes, I do wonder about Willie Joe Showels II. The third Willie, Willie Don Mays, worked for Sam’s.)
In addition to the Butch Davis firing, UNC has also lost Dick Baddour, who resigned his position as athletic director, but will apparently stay on for the next year to “help with the ongoing NCAA investigation into the football program”.
Bruce Cockburn’s “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”, which can best be summarized as “I want peace and justice, and I’m willing to blow people up with a rocket launcher to get it.”
So what brings this to mind?
Here’s a (warning! Slideshow!) “gallery” (warning! Slideshow!) of the seized weapons, which include “numerous firearms, including shotguns, semi-automatic shotguns, rifles, handguns and even a rocket launcher.” Oh, my, shotguns and semi-automatic shotguns!
It looks to me like the cops seized a slightly beat up Browning A-5, and I can’t tell for sure what all else. It looks like there’s at least one older double gun in there as well, and maybe one or two revolvers on that pistol rug. (These are, frankly, really crappy photos. Thanks, Chron.)
The photo of the “rocket launcher'” isn’t half-bad, though. Several of the Chron commenters speculate that the “rocket launcher” in question is actually a spent or demilled LAWS launcher, of the sort you can easily find on the surplus market. I don’t have enough experience to be sure about that; if any of my readers know for sure, please leave me a comment or drop me a line.
(Feel free to comment or drop me a line as well if you dispute my “dumbest song ever” statement, but please be prepared to discuss your own personal choice for “dumbest song ever”.)