The fall season has been postponed, and the staff offices have limited web access so the company's web site has been unable to provide much info for subscribers and fans.
Executive director Maureen Patton, however, updated matters in an e-mail:
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After several days of unbridled neediness on our part, CenterPoint finally gave Hair Balls a call back to answer some of our questions about outside electricity repair crews being sent home last week when nearly half a million customers were still without power. (That number is currently about 80,000.)
CenterPoint’s Leticia Lowe echoed earlier statements that the crews in question were not trained to climb the backyard power poles that keep many of Houston’s residential streets uncluttered and many of the city’s households running Amish-style after a natural disaster.
Lowe, who said there had been "a communication breakdown" that caused CenterPoint to not return our calls, tells Hair Balls that there was no financial motivation for sending extra crews home – it was simply a matter of a lack of work available for the non-climbing crews.
As WWII was winding down, McConn, a young GI, was in Munich, guarding the building that had once been Hitler’s headquarters. “I was a lieutenant at the end of the war,” he told Hair Balls by phone. “My CO had assigned me and my platoon to guard a place called the Feuerbau, which had been Hitler’s headquarters in Munich. I found a desk set in the cellar of the building. I boxed it up and sent it to my dad.”
Jeff Murphrey, an attorney with the Houston law firm of Tekell, Book, Matthews & Limmer, had a deposition scheduled in a case where the opposing counsel was a Dallas lawyer named Dale Markland.
Murphrey tried to reschedule the depo but apparently got some grief from Markland.
Resulting in the following classic letter:
Unless you're looking for premium gas.
Many stations have focused on getting as much regular gas as possible, leaving consumers who use premium gas scrambling.
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In a lawsuit, Fred Beuckman of St. Louis claims his 16-year-old daughter was receiving psychological out-patient treatment for a condition involving a obsessive relationship with a boy when she struck up a dialogue over Facebook with a "Jane Doe." Beuckman says that once Doe learned of his daughter’s mental problems, Doe created a persona on Facebook with the name of "Jennifer Litzinger" who claimed to be a rival for the boy’s affections.
Enough. It's time to start looking for the benefits of Hurricane Ike. Over the next few days we'll be looking for the bright side of the big blow, starting with:
1. Exotic bird sightings.
While the dregs of Ike were still lashing my neighborhood in near southwest Houston, I donned some foul-weather gear and went for a little walk around my neighborhood. In almost every vestibule of the McMansions that loom over my house, I found little flocks of dazed birds huddling in desperation. Most were run-of-the-mill suburban trash birds like house sparrows and grackles, but in one doorway a few houses down my flooded street I sighted two electric blue indigo buntings, their wet plumage mostly brown in the storm's dim light. While this was not a first for me -- not a new addition to what birders call a "life-list" -- their storm-addled mental state afforded me the chance to observe them up close and "personally," as it were. Indeed, I think I could have picked them up and taken them home had I wanted to wade through the floodwaters with them in hand.
All bow before the power of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce!!!!
After their press conference yesterday, after a two-hour closed-door board meeting, it appears for now that HISD superintendent Abe Saavedra's job is safe for another year.
At least it is according to a terse statement by district spokesman Norm Uhl:
On Dr Saavedra's contract, the HISD board took no action last night and I'm told no action is expected today, which would mean the contract will automatically renew for another year as of tomorrow (October 1.)
So there you go. We assume Saavedra is even now planning another massive bond program without any input from neighborhoods or school-board members.
-- Richard Connelly
More than 1,000 inmates and correction officers did not evacuate from the jail, despite a mandatory order to do so and warnings from The national Hurricane Center that those who refused to flee would face "certain death." Even though city officials claimed before the storm that virtually the entire island could become submerged, the jail was not evacuated, says the ACLU.
The people left inside the jail are still battling conditions that include limited power and water, few windows for ventilation and having to use portable toilets, according to the ACLU. For three days, inmates had to use trash cans as toilets.
Anyone who's listened to a radio in the past two weeks has heard the heartwarming commercials from insurance companies, full of comforting music and sympathetic voices consoling you and informing you that an army of adjusters is chomping at the bit, eager to help you in any way possible.
Except now, it seems, those insurance companies are getting a feel for just how much they'll be paying out for Ike, and the sweet, sweet music isn't playing when they're inspecting your house.
"We've had reports of fisticuffs between adjusters and contractors," Dan Parsons of Houston's Better Business Bureau tells Hair Balls.
