K-Eye is reporting that 1-2,000 people may be without phone service until Saturday in an area north/northeast of downtown. The more amusing part is the mistake in the headline. For a minute, I thought Austin Energy had missed a section of the city after those big storms a week or so ago and some people were still without power.
Austinst pointed to a leaked lineup for this year’s ACL Fest this morning and News8Austin just posted a list themselves. The official list is supposed to be released tomorrow. I don’t see anything there now and I haven’t seen anything from ACL Fest’s crappy e-mail notification system. Mike and Jason of 101X will be discussing the lineup on their show tomorrow morning as will many other local radio stations, I’m guessing.
Nothing on the lists that I’ve seen makes me regret my decision to skip the festival this year.
Two days until the election that’ll include a rubber stamp for our current mayor and other things that don’t generally garner too much attention like school board and city council seats. There’s also 7 city charter amendment propositions. 1, 2 and 6 appear to be the most hotly contested. My gut feel would be to vote yes for all of them, but 1 and 2 seem to be getting some opposition from places you wouldn’t expect.
As M.J.L. posted, make sure you’re going to the right polling place. She also linked the League of Women Voters Guide for this election.
I looked out my window this morning when I arrived at work and this is what I saw. The back side of our building is a nice little hideaway from the street. They’re either enjoying an illicit donut away from prying eyes or my web browsing habits have finally done me in.
While I’m on the subject, I had unsatisfactory exchange with another gaggle o’ cops a couple of weeks ago. A van had been abandoned in the driveway of my son’s school for at least a week. I’d been meaning to call 311 and report it and on that particular morning, I noticed a group of 4 cop cars around a dump truck a block or so down the road from the school.
Figuring that’d be easier than calling it in, I walked over to tell them about it. I walked up to two of the cops who were talking to each other, but weren’t involved with the dump truck. I introduced myself, said that my son went to the school next door and that there was an abandoned van in the driveway. In fact, one of the windows had been broken out in the last day or so. I could see the one cop’s eyes glaze over as I talked to him. He told me they’d check it out and the other cop mentioned that he’d seen the van. I walked back to my car and waited a few minutes to see what would happen. I watched as each cop left without stopping to do anything about the van. Is it possible that they all got called out on another call? All four of them? How many cops does it take to make a traffic stop on a dump truck anyway? They didn’t look very busy when I walked up to them.
I ended up calling 311 to report it. I got a call back a couple of hours later from another unit who was having trouble finding the driveway. Gee, if one of the other guys had taken 5 minutes to deal with it when I’d asked, it would’ve been easier.
My wife and I haven’t been able to call in or out on our cell phones for most of the afternoon and evening. The last incoming call I got was at 3:11. Tech support says there’s something wrong, but can’t say what or when it’ll be fixed. On top of that, of course, our home phone is also out because of last night’s storm. I think the power going on and off fried the telephone adapter for our VOIP service. This’ll be the second one we’ve had to replace if I ever get cell phone service back long enough to call tech support and order one.
Isn’t technology awesome?
M.J.L. already mentioned last night’s storm. We lost parts of two hackberrys in the backyard (luckily they both fell toward the center of the yard) and the cottonwood between us and the neighbor littered branches big and small across the front yard. The neighbor across the street had a tree completely uprooted. The power went out briefly and we thought we saw sparks from a branch touching the power lines in the back at one point. Looks like I’ll be firing up the chainsaw tomorrow and calling the Tree Tender to get on what I’m sure is already a long waiting list.
We spent the roughest hour of the storm with Jim Spencer, the greatest weatherman on the planet. Seriously, whenever I want to get the scoop on the weather, he’s The Man. Spencer started at KXAN the year after I moved to Austin and, in my mind, it wouldn’t be Austin without him.
Update: Word is that AISD closed Barton Hills, Lee and McCallum today because of power outages. I also forgot to mention that my commute was 20 minutes longer this morning because of flashing red lights, the worst being the one just north of Callahan’s General Store on Northbound 183.
One of the drawbacks to living on the most heavily travelled path between the airport and downtown…
I got stuck for a good 5-10 minutes at Burleson and Ben White this evening waiting for at least 20 motorcycle cops with lights flashing and another 10-20 cars travelling westbound, I’m assuming from Bergstrom. I’m guessing it’s a VIP in town for WCIT (note the green light and the big black suburban)?
This has happened to me a few times before, most notably the time I got stuck in the same spot with my infant son while Clinton’s motorcade passed on the way to Guero’s or something. The Boy was already cranky and sitting motionless for 10-15 minutes didn’t help.
At least we get free wi-fi out of it this time.
Arlen Specter has finally grown a pair and is calling for hearings on W’s presidential power grab. The impetus was this article from the Boston Globe, calling out the massive number of signing statements that POTUS has issued and how his use of them differs from past POTUS’s. It also calls attention to the fact that W is the first president in modern history not to issue a single veto. Not one. Another sign that something’s not right. Did W have a basic government class in high school or college or was he doing lines in the bathroom or something. Here’s more on what Specter said.
Glenn Greenwald sums it up:
To recap: a Republican Senator is vowing to hold hearings because the President of the United States has embraced theories which maintain that he has the right to break the law and has, consistent with those theories, been breaking the law repeatedly and deliberately. Maybe some journalists other than Savage and The Boston Globe could tell their readers about that extremely significant fact.
Stephen Colbert got nervous laughter at the White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday because he dared to point out that the press hadn’t been doing their jobs. Of course, many on the right interpreted the nervous laughter was Colbert bombing. He wasn’t. He was right on and when somebody hits that close to home, people get uncomfortable. It’s about fucking time.
Update: More on Colbert’s performance.
[tags]stephencolbert, bush, abuse, specter, feingold, signingstatement, constitution, bostonglobe[/tags]
Last year’s smoking ban wasn’t the last assault against those modern day lepers known as smokers.
The Texas House passed a $1/pack tax increase today to offset the property tax cuts. Of course, the Senate will have to approve it as well, but if they do, that’s a 60% increase on what you’re currently paying. Those trips to the Gas N Sip for smokes and a refuel are getting more and more painful.
Texas Music Matters has a follow-up on the effects of the nearly 9-month-old smoking ban. The report cites mixed results with at least one bar claiming not to have seen much of a difference. The consensus seems to be that it’s not affecting the Fridays or Saturdays or nights with big draw bands, but may be contributing to slower nights during the week and forcing some club owners to shut down on weeknights that were already slow and have become economically unfeasible since the ban.
At least Lovejoy’s is still open although I do believe that ownership changed hands.
Ok, so normally I wouldn’t plug those carpetbagging ice cream hippies over our local favorite, but we’re talking free here, so I don’t feel like I’m cheating.
The free cone giveaway is from noon to 5pm 8pm today. I tried to go to their web site to get you links to the local locations, but it appears that everyone on the planet is trying to do the same thing and has brought their server to its knees. If I recall correctly, there’s one just north of Braker on the east side of Mopac in the same shopping center as Yoga Yoga and Tacodeli. There’s also a location at 5th and Lamar, but good luck trying to park around there.