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rich00 wrote:Is that technically the law for the cycletrack, that bikes yield to peds the entire length?
Bikes must yield to cars coming out from driveways on the LAB, to pedestrians standing on the green bike lane on Guadalupe and to squirrels on the capitol grounds. But yes, we are a bike-friendly city.
Aramaic is also incomprehensible to me.
Well said.
+1
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http://john-s-allen.com/blog/?p=5722 Speaking of failed cycle tracks. $$$
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note the similarities to the Guad cycle track http://streetsmarts.bostonbiker.org/201 … omerville/
and note how the proposal for improvements to the unsafe plan mirrors what was on the drag before the cycle track was put up:
The Somerville mayor’s goal is evidently to advance his political ambitions. If he, other city officials or the design consultant understood the first thing about safe design for cyclists, they would steer clear of the proposed design. But at Tuesday’s meeting, they showed new drawings with new hazards.
Along with the other cyclists who opposed the project, I support David Olmsted’s proposal, discussed at the meetings, which would provide for bike lanes that are safely outside the door zone of parked cars over the entire length of the project, and would serve the majority of the cycling population, other road users, residents and businesses admirably well. No, not little children on bicycles, but you can’t have everything, and it is deeply unethical to claim safety while actually producing the opposite result.
Last edited by Jack (2013-11-25 15:50:51)
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Jack, this is a lost cause for now. The cycling 'community' obviously prefers to mock the concerns of those of us who know better, egged on by the moderator of this very forum most recently on bookface.
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Thread Here
2013-11-22 21:57:54
AusTexMurf
From: South Austin
Interesting posts today on this thread:
Quote Originally Posted by mstraus View Post
"I was in Portland, OR earlier this week and was honestly a bit jealous how great a biking city it was (minus the amount of rain they get maybe). They have tons of great bike routes, great bike lanes sometimes separated from traffic or given an entire lane, etc. They also have a lot of great bike shops (I visited a few to get some new gear tax free).
I then saw an Article on the Copenhagenize index, which in 2013 only had one North American city - Montreal.
http://copenhagenize.eu/index/
in 2011 Portland and San Francisco both made the list as well as New York.
Finally I saw this article declaring San Francisco as the most bike friendly city in the US - though this article seems very flawed as it is based entirely on bike facilities (lanes, paths, routes) per square mile. Some commenters on the article thought the same.
http://mashable.com/2013/11/21/bike-...united-states/
I live near San Francisco, and commute into San Francisco by bike, and while its pretty good, I would not rate it above Portland from what I saw for a variety of reasons.
This got me thinking - how would you all rate your city or area for biking? Are there cities in the US that you think are better then where you live?" end OP
Reply; "I don't think bike facilities are the things that make Portland a great cycling city. IMO, these things are more important:
*Downtown portland has been traffic calmed to ~14 mph by signal timing.
*20 mph low-traffic bike routes and bike boulevards.
*Elimination of multi-lane "freeway-style" arterials via road diets.
*25 mph is the default arterial speed.
*Motorists respect cyclists right to take the lane.
Despite our recent progress in regards to bicycle facilities, Austin seems to be lacking in the above areas.
Food for thought.
Yesterday 20:38:04
AusTexMurf
I agree, but might add;
*Motorists frequently have a cyclist's perspective
*Citywide planning vision that is compact and connected
*Women/Children/Folks of all ages and ethnicities cycling through the city
*Removal of on-street auto parking in pedestrian/cycling/local business dense areas
*PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION options to make the environment work !!! Networked light rail and bus priority, citywide ???
Last edited by AusTexMurf (2013-11-25 17:23:11)
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Jack, this is a lost cause for now. The cycling 'community' obviously prefers to mock the concerns of those of us who know better, egged on by the moderator of this very forum most recently on bookface.
I am a moderator on this forum -- true. (I assume you're talking about me, anyways.) I almost never do anything moderator-esque other than delete spam, however, so I question the relevance of that fact. As I see it, you're attempting to paint me as a bully or something? If so, you're barking up the wrong tree.
In any event, I would suggest that you have egregiously mis-categorized the discussion (and my part of it) on this matter. Jack has probably seen it all, but maybe not everybody who reads this has. If somebody wants to read it for themselves and come to their own conclusions (which I would suggest -- don't take my word for it), the relevant threads (and it's not just on "bookface" -- some of it is here) would be --
{ this thread }
http://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1532
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5775119 … 778547798/
https://www.facebook.com/mike.dahmus/po … 4800405413
https://www.facebook.com/jason.abels.16 … 3682906952 {unfortunately, this thread is only visible to Jason's Facebook friends.}
But as a quick summary, in general, your observations have been acknowledged, your conclusions (which I will quickly summarize as: "this cycletrack is worse than what was there before and therefore should not have been built" -- it's not your only conclusion, but certainly the most contentious) are not universally held and there is considerable (but far from total) disagreement with them, and the only thing that has been "mocked" was the childish manner you have handled everybody not accepting your conclusions as gospel.
(And yes, this is a greatly oversimplified summary. For the entire story, read the threads I listed, and yes, I may have missed something.)
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What that discussion showed is that before the facility was fully complete I predicted a bunch of problems; when it first opened I observed those exact problems and was mocked for it by your pal (IIRC you were just moderately dismissive), neither one of you believing those problems were frequent (in your case) or real (in his case); then after the facility opened many cyclists reported the same exact problems and characterized them as major irritants, not occasional, and neither you nor your pal were willing to admit the problems were real and frequent.
Real men admit when they were wrong even if they think the other guy was an ass. Neither one of you guys were willing to do so; and you, instead, engaged in a week-long campaign of mockery as I wasted hours of time digging up the old facebook thread so you could just wuss out and be a complete dick about it.
If I could block you here, too, I would.
Last edited by m1ek (2013-11-28 13:02:17)
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Whew. Okay, everyone, let's remember the "no name-calling" policy. We can discuss things without resorting to insults.
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What that discussion showed is that before the facility was fully complete I predicted a bunch of problems; when it first opened I observed those exact problems and was mocked for it by your pal (IIRC you were just moderately dismissive), neither one of you believing those problems were frequent (in your case)
I remember three or four reports from you that you'd driven by (at 7 or 8am each time) and seen heavy pedestrian traffic in the area (no surprise -- it's UT) and that some pedestrians were standing in the cycletrack or crossing without looking (I've seen that myself) and I think one said there was unloading going on in the track. Correct? You haven't made any reports about other times of the day, have you? Or did I miss them?
I've ridden through it at around 1pm a few times, and there was light pedestrian traffic, and while I saw some problems -- a pedestrian here and there, people opening doors, etc. the facility seemed perfectly usable. And no, I'm not extrapolating that to say it's great 24/7.
Just to make it clear, I don't have any reason to disbelieve you about the heavy pedestrian traffic in the morning. And having it used as an unloading zone doesn't surprise me at all -- the old lane was used as a double parking zone, a passing zone (rarely) and a "I'm not good at parallel parking, I need more space/time" zone. So the new facility traded those issues for some new ones with pedestrians and loading.
And I don't doubt that the issues you brought up happen every morning, and never said I did. So I don't know where you're getting this idea that I don't believe it's "frequent".
My point is more that 1) I don't know just how unusable the facility is at that time in the morning -- the issues I saw (not in the morning, to be clear) were easily ridden around, and I haven't been there in the morning, and 2) I didn't take the old facility in the morning either, so I can't compare it to that, and 3) even if the facility is totally unusable for an hour or two each morning (and note that I don't know this to be true, and suspect it is not) -- is it still a failure?
or real (in his case)
He didn't doubt what you saw. He just didn't think they were the serious problems you did -- after all, a pedestrian standing in the track or somebody doing some unloading may be an issue, but if you can just ride around him does that mean that the track is still a failure?
then after the facility opened many cyclists reported the same exact problems and characterized them as major irritants, not occasional, and neither you nor your pal were willing to admit the problems were real and frequent.
See, here's the problem. You want an admission of wrongness from me, and yet I don't think I made the error you seem to think I did.
Real men admit when they were wrong even if they think the other guy was an ass. Neither one of you guys were willing to do so;
Find my incorrect statement (and give a link to the context.) If I agree it's incorrect, not entirely accurate or just simply unfair and it has not already been corrected, I will do so. (And if I don't agree, well, it'll be out there in the open for everybody to see and make their own decision about if I should admit that I was wrong or not.)
If you can't do that, a real man would admit that *he* was wrong and drop it.
and you, instead, engaged in a week-long campaign of mockery as I wasted hours of time digging up the old facebook thread so you could just wuss out and be a complete dick about it.
Sorry I got you to spend hours of time digging up stuff to support your claims, and then had the gall to suggest that what you finally presented didn't really support your claims. I'd already spent hours of my own time trying to find the support and couldn't -- I was hoping you'd have something that I missed.
If I could block you here, too, I would.
Real men (and women) have the willpower to manually decide what to read and respond to, even if the software involved doesn't have the option to "block" somebody. And if they don't have this willpower (or decide not to use it), they don't blame others for their own weakness.
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MBJ and dougmc, agreed.
+1
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IN AUSTIN, A BUS-BIKE ALLIANCE PAYS OFF
November 20, 2013
Michael Andersen, Green Lane Project staff writer
Article Here
Lavaca Street before the changes. Photo: Definiitive HDR Photography.
Austin has just done the impossible: it's replaced 9 percent of the city's downtown on-street auto parking with a buffered bike lane without howls of protest.
The trick: bike and transit advocates teamed up.
For years, Austin's Guadalupe and Lavaca streets have been Texas-sized thoroughfares through the central city: four auto lanes in each direction, plus hundreds of metered parking spaces on both sides of each street and sharrows that supposedly welcomed bikes to the rightmost and leftmost lanes.
It made for a bike route that few actually wanted to ride – and a wide channel for auto traffic that somehow didn't seem to alleviate peak-hour congestion elsewhere in the city.
Lavaca Street. Image: Google Street View.
When Capital Metro, Austin's transit agency, lined up a long-awaited plan to put dedicated bus lanes on Guadalupe and Lavaca, bike planners at the city saw something else: a chance to use Austin's political support for good transit to mend a broken link in the city's bike network.
Transit planners, meanwhile, saw a valuable ally for one of their own goals: removing the lane of paid auto parking that ran between the dedicated bus lane and the sidewalk, blocking bus loadings and slowing transit travel times in each direction.
The result is under construction now: not only are two 11-foot traffic lanes turning into the first dedicated bus lanes in central Texas, but the 8-foot parking lanes will be two of the state's most useful buffered bike lanes.
'The real estate we needed'
Rendering: Capital Metro
"It's through the heart of the city," said Chad Crager, acting bicycle program manager for the City of Austin. "Removing the parking gave us the real estate we needed."
Though the 1.25-mile project removed 267 auto parking spaces on Guadalupe and Lavaca, the city says all but 94 will be replaced eventually by new angle parking planned on side streets.
That's still a significant impact to Austin's auto parking capacity. It's about 3 percent of the central-city total.
Todd Hemingson of Capital Metro said his team felt the auto parking had to go for the sake of the bus project, but didn't want it to go to waste, either.
"The parking space would be essentially empty, and we knew that wouldn't sit well with the constituents and property owners," Hemingson said. "The biking community is very vocal and great advocates for their cause, and so when we can align transit interest and bike interest, all the better."
Crager saw similar political upsides to bus-bike teamwork.
"Whenever something else can be a catalyst besides bicycles, it certainly helps us with the public," he said. "We didn't have to go around downtown and tell people that we were removing all this parking on main roadways for bikes."
The new route links the city's new protected bike lanes on Guadalupe near the University of Austin with the protected lane on Barton Springs Road, south of the Colorado River,
"Wherever we can create north-south connectivity, that's a very big thing for Austin," Crager said.
Still some concerns
Rendering: Capital Metro.
Though the the design is a significant improvement over sharrows, it doesn't offer the continuous, physically protected bike facilities that are proven to make biking truly mainstream.
"There will be pinch points where the curb line is extended to allow for the bus stop to be created," he said. "The bikes are going to have to go into the bus lane to go around the bus stop, and then go back in the bike lane."
CapMetro's safety and operations staff was hesitant to allow that mixing. But the city pointed out that from a biker's perspective, mixing only with professional bus drivers was actually a huge improvement.
"We told them, 'Hey, this is no different than most bike lanes in Austin where the bus essentially merges over the bike lane,'" Crager said. "Yeah, you have 60 buses an hour, but that's nothing compared to the number of vehicles that you have next to bike lanes."
Hemingson said that argument was, ultimately, persuasive.
"We realize no one's going to get everything they want." he said. "But I think we ended up with a solution that allowed us to get something we've desperately sought for years."
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I personally like using Dean Keaton because outside of the green lane parts, it's a great ride, and no wait (underpass). I do see lots of cyclists using it.
But there are design issues with the lane striping.
Manor rd is so-so at the I35 light, and is not bike friendly on that straight. Overall, cars seem use to it, having a bike in the sharrows during the day. Someday that section will be rebuilt with proper bike facilities, I would hope.
? What sort of facility is "proper" on that part of Manor? Sharrows work fine; I've never had a trouble with the 'friendliness' of that stretch.
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Doug, I suspected your real goal from the beginning, and when you hit "Like" on one of Jason's many mocking personal attacks, I knew what the truth was - you're just being disingenuous.
I made claims that the facility had numerous problems I observed during AM rush drives; Jason called BS on them in a mocking, attacking, manner, asking cyclists to verify the 'bloodbath' and other such nonsense; several cyclists immediately chimed in and said they had seen the same things and that it DID suck; I pointed you to said statements, and you still claimed it's not enough. You're no doubt thrilled you sent me on a wild goose chase through facebook's horrible interface to dig up said statements and still didn't accept them.
I'm not accepting any more homework from you; and today when I drove down Guadalupe during the AM rush and saw pedestrians using the green lane as a second sidewalk, I came to some inner peace by thinking "at least some elements in the bicycle community are getting what they deserve". I'm considering whether this community is worth even the small amount of fucks I continue to give about it, given your appalling behavior.
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Doug, I suspected your real goal from the beginning, and when you hit "Like" on one of Jason's many mocking personal attacks, I knew what the truth was - you're just being disingenuous.
Jason said a lot of things in that post. I already explained why I hit "like" on it, but if that still offends you, well, you've already decided that you know what motivates me and, well, I can live with you being wrong.
The reality is ... I was never disingenuous. I saw your claims (that others were wrong, that you were owed apologies), but they seemed wrong to me, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt, assuming that you weren't simply making stuff up. But then you kept making the claims, so I asked for what they were based on, you hemmed and hawed and finally provided something that didn't support your claims, IMHO. I didn't "accept" them because they didn't support your claims, not because I was trying to waste your time or something.
If that's what you consider "appalling behavior" well, as I said before ... you need to grow some thicker skin, and I'm surprised that you've gotten this far without doing so. You seem quite able to dish out the bile and have done so for years and clearly revel in it, but seem incapable of taking even the smallest amounts of it yourself? (And really, I wasn't dishing out bile at all, at least not at anywhere near your level anyways -- that's not my style.)
"at least some elements in the bicycle community are getting what they deserve"
Your schadenfreude seems misdirected here -- every time I've taken the cycletrack it's been fine with no or very minor issues, and from what I've heard Jason has had similar experiences. Maybe some day I'll be there at 8am, and I can experience this misery that you feel I deserve -- though my guess is that it'll be closer to a minor inconvenience than a horrible experience.
It could also be that I will find whatever I'm looking for -- if I'm expecting a fairly easy ride where I might have to slow for some pedestrians but generally get through just fine, I imagine I'll find that, and if I'm expecting a horrible ride where I'm obstructed by pedestrians at every step -- I might be able to find that too. And I suspect that both can be found in the same place at the same time.
But if I do go at 8am, I'll try to video tape the ride (and post that), so people can get a less subjective idea of what it was like. If I'm not in a hurry, I'll try to go through it a few times.
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Great response, dougmc.
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rich00 wrote:Drivers will not yield to cyclists there because they designed the road striping to allow seamless easy flow of auto traffic to the right turn lane. It happens all the time at Dean Keaton/35. Green paint means nothing to many drivers.
Bingo. Drivers frequently don't yield to me at Dean Keaton/35, despite the green paint and signage. And two different drivers *accelerating* when my wife tried to cross was the final straw for her, and why she won't bike any more.
Colored paint in Austin considered: http://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/macheme … 0areas.pdf and
http://john-s-allen.com/blog/?p=4350 commentary on the study.
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Doug, that's a nice attempt to reroute but fundamentally disingenuous just like your whole participation in this affair. The whole thing started when I noted some problems on my OWN FACEBOOK PAGE, and then your buddy Jason ripped me a new one ON MY OWN PAGE - to which I stayed relatively civil in response even as my coworkers asked me What The Ever Living F*ck.
That's how it STARTED.
Since then I stayed more civil than Jason, and have simply called you out on your game as it became more and more clear that nothing would have satisfied you (nothing) - I provided exactly what you were asking for - attacking language making false claims that was refuted by actual cyclists with no acknowledgement from Jason and no apology. Don't expect to get away with liking somebody else's personal attack and then try to get out of it.
And even now you're still mocking the idea. You're basically Jason with a nicer face.
Austin cyclists, if this is who you prefer to have on your team, continue to line up behind them and I'll just give up and let you follow them off the cliff - I have relatively little personal interest in trying to make things better for you at this point, and it's not worth this kind of abuse.
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Again, on the
Guad 'cycle tracks'--just to illuminate the nature of the trend toward facilities now, see http://john-s-allen.com/blog/?p=1927 and how 'cycle tracks' like just now placed on the drag were experimented with and rejected as too hazardous fifty years ago. That's how modern and innovative that 'accomodation' is. "Davis was the first community to introduce bike lanes in the USA, and that its bicycle program strongly favors conventional bike lanes, which are separated from the adjacent lane only by a painted stripe. However, I have found that the Davis documents uniformly and strongly recommend against bike lanes behind barriers or parked cars. Not only that, the recent warnings are more definite than the early ones." The page quotes experts on the Davis experiments.
This is why it is a pity some are taking this 'experiment' in Austin with a "wait and see how it comes out" attitude. The experiment has been run already.
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Not only that but an experiment with very few differences was run ON THIS SAME STREET about 20 years ago (northbound side, 2-way protected (by concrete barrier) bike lane, which was ripped out to much acclaim in the 1990s). Those who insist this one is nothing like that one have very poor analytical skills; most of the problems of the old one are still around in the new one (the only real exception being wrong-way cycling, which seems to be happening in the new one anyways despite lack of official sanction).
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Doug, that's a nice attempt to reroute but fundamentally disingenuous just like your whole participation in this affair. The whole thing started when I noted some problems on my OWN FACEBOOK PAGE, and then your buddy Jason ripped me a new one ON MY OWN PAGE - to which I stayed relatively civil in response even as my coworkers asked me What The Ever Living F*ck.
For somebody who brags about having his own "bake sale of bile", you handle being on the receiving end remarkably poorly. But we've been over this before, so there's no point in rehashing. If somebody wants to rehash it, there's links to the stuff up above.
In any event, I rode the cycletrack this morning. Four times, starting at about 8:45am (so not exactly the same time you drive by, but close.) It was not bliss on two wheels, but neither was it horrible (so your schadenfreude should not be satisfied.) For the most part I got through just fine -- I encountered one cyclist going the wrong way, one pedestrian who almost walked in front of me (and yet he was facing me while he did it!), and a few more that moved out of the way as I came up on them. There was also one scooter that encroached on the track by a bit, and one delivery guy who got out of the way just as I came up on him. Ultimately, I was able to go about as fast as I intended to and only had to slow down a few times. And looking at the video, it seems that I even pretty much kept up with the car traffic -- looks like my average speed on the track was about 15 mph, and that includes the times I had to slow down.
I did notice that the thermoplastic paint, when wet, was a little slipperier than the pavement next to it. I'd never noticed it before being more slippery than the pavement when dry, but when wet it was noticeable. Not bad, but noticeable.
If the city was trying to make a track for 25 mph cyclists even during the busy part of the day -- they failed. Those cyclists would be happier on the road (though they wouldn't get to go that fast for long, as the car traffic was too heavy for that.)
If the city was trying to make a track for 15 mph cyclists ... they seem to have succeeded. Comparing to what was there before, I see less risk of doorings, I was able to avoid the stopped bus effortlessly, and I didn't have to contend with any cars using the bike lane as a staging zone for their parallel parking attempts or just plain double parking. Pedestrians weren't perfect, but for the most part they were off the track or moved out when I came up on them.
Enough of that -- here's the videos, people can come to their own conclusions: Here's the front facing camera, and here's the rear facing camera. I just jammed the four segments of this track together, removing the other parts of the ride.
Austin cyclists, if this is who you prefer to have on your team, continue to line up behind them and I'll just give up and let you follow them off the cliff - I have relatively little personal interest in trying to make things better for you at this point, and it's not worth this kind of abuse.
And you had the gall to suggest that *I* could be more humble? While I thought Jason went too far with his "transportation Jesus" business -- he seems to have nailed it.
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...and then your buddy Jason ripped me a new one...with no acknowledgement from Jason and no apology. Don't expect to get away with liking somebody else's personal attack and then try to get out of it....I have relatively little personal interest in trying to make things better for you [Austin cyclists] at this point, and it's not worth this kind of abuse.
Wow. For m1ek to complain so vehemently about personal attacks, that ought to win some kind of award for irony. I mean, no one would call someone "a complete dick" on this forum and then a few breaths later complain about being abused, right?
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Nice video, Doug. That seems to be consistent with my use of the cycletrack.
Coincidentally, I just recently uploaded a video of me riding on Guadalupe St. a bit before the cycletrack was added. This should be useful for comparison.
Last edited by btrettel (2013-12-05 21:55:35)
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So, my last message as I leave you guys - I will give as good as I get sometimes; I don't initiate the personal attacks but will gladly respond in kind sometimes; but in this case that's not even true. I was polite to Jason even as my friends and coworkers were wondering who this crazy MF was.
Bike community, you made your choice. I'll not spend a moment more time advocating for your needs. Best of luck with who you've chosen.
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Oddly enough, people have come up to me and asked me who this crazy MF was as well (and no, they weren't talking about Jason.) Others have come up to me , maybe knowing who the crazy MF was and maybe not, but commending me on keeping my cool with him. I mean, it's not often that I'm invited to f*ck off, especially when all I did was express doubt and ask for specifics.
In any event, here I was looking forward to being told that either 1) I rode the track at the wrong time [again], or 2) that it wasn't actually as usable as I thought it was. (Well, there's also 3) "you were lucky" [four times], and 4) "maybe it's not so bad after all", but those didn't seem so likely.)
I guess it's easier to leave (again?) in a huff.
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Excellent posts, doug and btrettel.
Thank you for sharing the before and after video links.
Last edited by AusTexMurf (2013-12-05 17:03:32)
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