Capital Metro's commuter rail line, set to begin operation in a few months, still doesn't have approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Wear: What's in rail name? Tougher rules

Looks like former rail director, Rich Krisak bailed for Atlanta just in time.

Richard Wright, keyboardist and founding member of Pink Floyd, died today of cancer.

Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright Dies at 65 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

IdolHands takes a look at BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com to see how they stack up against each other in standards-compliance and design. The verdict? Republicans still have work to do.

A pedestrian was struck by a Houston Metro Rail train earlier this week. One of nearly 40 rail accidents that go unreported or underreported. Another glimpse of things to come for Austin.

Capital Metro's commuter rail line is (not surprisingly) running behind schedule. The rail line running from Leander to downtown Austin is now not expected to open until March.

One more broken promise from CapMetro. First, Austin taxpayers get soaked with annual operating costs that are double what they voted for, now the project is months late.

Woman's weight poses challenge for courts in murder case:

The Hidalgo County Jail is not equipped to handle an inmate who weighs nearly 1,000 pounds, Sheriff Lupe Trevino said. And even if a cell and a bed for Rosales were available, deputies are not sure if the physician on staff can handle her various medical needs.

The costs of checking Rosales in for constant medical care could reach as high as $5,000 a day, according to the district attorney's office.

Austin's Health and Human Services and Police departments paid UT $48,000 to survey Austin's omnipresent panhandlers. I'm sure they were shocked to learn that these people have problems:

Panhandlers in Austin want regular jobs but confront multiple barriers, including mental health problems and lack of identification materials, that make it hard for them to secure them, according to a study conducted by University of Texas researchers for the City of Austin.

I'm more than a little skeptical of the "want regular jobs" part.

This comes after caving to homeless advocates on stricter panhandling. If you haven't been to Austin lately, imagine a busy intersection - just about any intersection in any part of town - and then imagine at least two panhandlers, sometimes three. There are multiple well-established homeless camps under several bridges just in Northwest Austin alone. Even more downtown. Apparently, the police can't do anything to remove them.

Welcome to the hobo capital of the southwest.

Update: much more on this at Quid Nimis

Two stories today on illegal immigration. First, the Statesman has a report about state Sen. Dan Patrick and Rep. Frank Corte, Jr.'s request to the Attorney General to issue an opinion on the policies of "sanctuary cities" (like Austin) that restrict the ability of local police to enforce immigration laws. Cities like Austin argue that police should be focused on crime, not immigration. Entering the country illegally is a crime.

Also, the Travis Monitor reports on the upcoming state house district 50 race between Democrat incumbent Mark Strama and Republican challenger Jerry Mikus. North Austin conservatives will be interested to know that their representative voted in favor of giving illegal immigrants welfare.

I blogged about this a couple of weeks ago. AISD met last night to take public input on a proposed property tax increase to pay for teacher raises and benefits. No one opposed to the increase showed up for the meeting. The board will vote next Monday to put the proposal on the November ballot.

I'm not vehemently opposed to giving teachers a raise personally. I just wish any tax increases would be matched with a complimenting increase in accountability.

Austin Bloggers News and Announcements: Zero Tolerance:

In the past week, I've removed six real estate blogs from the portal for violating the guidelines of this site. I intend to remove on sight any real estate blog (or, for that matter, any non-personal blog) that violates the guidelines.

I was wondering when this was going to happen. As the housing market has gotten tighter, real estate agents are obviously trying to squeeze all of the exposure they can out of every possible medium. Unfortunately, they've been pushing it too far on Austin Bloggers lately - in many cases using the aggregator as a free listing site. Austin Bloggers usage guidelines prohibit commercial/promotional posting.

Our mayor and city council... the bigger the price tag, the more they seem to like any proposal that comes to the chamber.

The Travis Monitor: Up in Smoke - Austin's BioFuel Boondoggle

Valleywag has more on T. Boone Pickens' energy scam:

Greenwashing: T. Boone Pickens proves where there's a drill, there's a way

Greenwashing — the practice of gussying up old-fashioned capitalism as newfangled Earth-saving — is an art form. I used to think local greenwashers Pacific Gas & Electric and spam-prone solar shill Steve Westly were the masters. But they look like rank amateurs compared to Oklahoma native T. Boone Pickens. The man is a case study in how to effectively cloak your greed in green. As a result, he's won plaudits, taxpayer money, and eminent domain over private property. The latest example?

Update: The Travis Monitor has more.

This story seems to run counter to the commonly-accepted doom-and-gloom narrative for the Austin real-estate market:

The Austin-area real estate market continued to outperform the nation in the second quarter of 2008, a new report from the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

Median home prices in the Austin area rose by 4.1 percent, to $194,200, from the year-ago period, while the national median fell 7.6 percent, the real estate group said.

Dallas, Houston and other Texas cities aren't doing so well.

A closer-analysis though, reveals that while median prices may be up, the market still sucks.

I've been using a couple of different rechargeable wireless mice for a while now. They're crap.

Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Logitech.

Seriously. Any product that requires you to have a completely different duplicate product as a backup really needs to be re-thought. When the battery dies on a rechargeable mouse, what are you supposed to do? Stop using your computer? That may be fine if I'm just screwing around, but otherwise, it basically means I have to have a backup mouse available to use while the rechargeable is sitting in the charge-cradle for half an hour.

I love the features of my Logitech MX Revolution - the free-spinning wheel, the multitude of programmable buttons, the resolution, et al., but when the damn thing dies, I have to pull out the clunky old Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 to use while the Logitech charges. The Microsoft may not be as sexy, but at least it uses standard batteries that I can replace (and I use rechargeables there too, so...)

Anyways... Mental note: the next mouse I buy, if it is wireless at all, will utilize replaceable batteries.

For such a "green" city, Austin is really behind on a lot of things. We will finally getting single stream recyling this fall.

Single-stream recycling allows you to place all of your recycables into one container rather than having to sort them out into multiple bins. In our case, we'll be getting a 90-gallon cart. For my wife and I, that's going to be really handy. We recycle pretty aggressively and I have to drive our four bins down our long, steep driveway to curb currently. Yes, Republicans do recycle.

But probably the best thing about the new program is that you can now recycle more items, including mixed paper - cereal boxes, soda/beer cartons and the like. Before we had to take that stuff downtown to Ecology Action.

District 50 state rep. and uber-liberal Mark Strama extolled the virtues of the Democrats' "Drill nowhere. Drill never. Pay more" energy plan last at the Travis County Democratic Issues Policy Forum.

Sticking to the party talking points, Strama repeated the asinine "we can't drill our way out" meme (maybe not, but more drilling would certainly move us further toward energy independence than sitting on our hands) and claimed that even Republican T. Boone Pickens agrees. Blue Dot Blues has the real story on T. Boone's plan and it ain't altruism.

Predictably, Strama blamed Republicans for "making families suffer" because of their energy policy, but neglected to point out the fact that gas prices have risen 74% since the Democrats took control of congress.

Quid Nimis has been blogging about the Russian attack on Georgia since the outset. The Illustrate Conservative wonders, where's the outrage from the chronically-outraged?

Hmm... Fodder for the chain-emailers and something for Obamatons to cry foul over no doubt, but Obama holds both US and Kenyan citizenship.

h/t Libertarian Republican

O-no by Quid Nimis

10% of home users still on dial-up, broadband availability still an issue in rural communities

Home broadband adoption continues to grow, with 55% of Americans now having broadband connections at home.

Just 10% of Americans are still using dial-up. Broadband growth was also strong with lower-income Americans as well as in rural communities, according to the Pew Research Study. Unfortunately, 24% of would-be rural broadband users say they can't get service.

While broadband is finally becoming the norm in America, speeds are still very low compared to other countries. The US lags far behind countries like Japan, France and Korea which have download speeds of up to 93Mbps. Typical broadband download speeds in the US are less than a 10th of that.