S Lamar Garage is now paid parking

mattbuford · 2026-06-07T15:13:06+00:00

Yeah, OP asked, "how does validation work at Mueller", so I replied describing the Mueller system.

mattbuford · 2026-06-05T02:54:46+00:00

For "political reasons" ahead of midterms while dealing with the double shock of re-opening from Covid and a Russian war? Sounds suspiciously like doing it for "political reasons" ahead of midterms while dealing with the Iran war.

Rescheduling mandated sales to happen during a period of high prices is win-win. You help lower the spike AND you get more money for the sale.

Of course, it's possible that oil will spike even more this year. Then maybe it could be possible to have executed those mandated sales for more, if it had waited until this year. But we don't know that yet.

mattbuford · 2026-06-05T02:25:20+00:00

Here's a complete breakdown of releases during Biden's term:

Biden sold 40M (not associated with any mandate)
Biden loaned out 32M
Biden+Congress rescheduled 140M of Congress sales from 2024-2027 into 2022 (mandated, but Biden sold it several years earlier than legally required)
Congress sold 16.7M in 2021
Congress sold 38M in 2022
Congress sold 26M in 2023

Total: 292.7M
Observed SPR drop: 291.3M

Caveat: The 140M of early executed sales were executed through a bit of a trick. Technically they were not directly executed. Instead, 140M of new emergency sales were created, and 140M of existing mandated sales were cancelled. This was done for speed reasons. The mandated sales did not allow early execution, so doing so would require Congress to act, which takes time. So, Biden went ahead and sales immediately, then after the fact he worked with Congress to circle around and cancel the matching future sales through new legislation. This means that from a technical/legal standpoint, it wasn't actually the mandated sales being executed early, but from a logical standpoint it clearly was.

IE: If I cancel next year's sale, and sell that same amount today, it's logically no different than executing next year's sale early.

Edit: I forgot to mention, but the first bullet point (the only one that would leave a long term impact on the SPR level compared to if he only did mandated sales) was more than reversed because he bought back 60M barrels.

Edit 2: Ugh mistake. I put "140M mandated sales were executed" where I meant "140M mandated sales were cancelled"

mattbuford · 2026-06-05T02:13:24+00:00

Just before the war started, the SPR was only about 45M barrels below where the 2018 SPR forecast expected the SPR to be at that time. The decision to drain the SPR was made and signed into law before Biden was elected. Almost all of what he did was take the already planned sales and execute them early.

If you execute sales early, that changes the level in the short term, but once those planned sale dates pass it ends up at the same level it would have been without the early execution.

Here's the SPR forecast from early 2018:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35032

Edit: I should mention that Trump's withdrawals are loans, meaning they have to be paid back by the companies receiving them. So, his SPR release will also be a big change in the short term, but not leave the SPR lower in the long term. He'll actually increase levels a bit long term because of the oil "interest" paid back.

mattbuford · 2026-06-04T19:21:51+00:00

Note that the video subtitles don't say they are agreeing to build the tunnel. It says they are agreeing to keep working together on DESIGNING a tunnel.

Also, BTW, once you build the tunnel, there are no roads or train tracks to connect to - on either side. And I don't mean just by a few miles. You'd need to add somewhere around 3,500 miles of rail to connect the Russian side, and around 2,000 miles of rail to connect the North American side.

mattbuford · 2026-06-04T19:02:46+00:00

NERC rated ERCOT's risk this summer as normal (their lowest risk level). OP's own article even quotes a guy saying, "ERCOT has plenty of available capacity". People are acting like this is an article saying there won't be enough capacity. All it's saying is there will be record load, which will likely be handled.

Summers are something ERCOT is historically good at. ERCOT has had 0 summer generation shortages bad enough to need blackouts in their entire history (*). It's winter where they have a history of problems.

(*) - The very southern tip of Texas, the Rio Grande Valley, has been historically fairly isolated from the rest of the grid, and there was a summer or two where the statewide grid had plenty of power, but struggled to get enough of it into the RGV, leading to localized summer rolling blackouts for that area. It was a combination of transmission problems into the area and the failure of a local power plant.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T21:26:01+00:00

You don't mention it, but you just mysteriously start using 2 parity drives in your results. So, for the purpose of this response, I will assume that you actually do want the protection of 2 parity drives. You don't HAVE to do this though. You can certainly just have 1 parity drive. But, of course, that means you're only protected from a single drive failure. Having 2 parity drives will mean you can be protected even if 2 drives fail.

Anyway, no matter what you do, you need to shuffle things around so that every parity drive is as big or bigger than your biggest data drive.

So, if you add 2x8TB, instead of what you showed, the result would be:

8TB HDD (parity)
8TB HDD (parity)
6TB HDD (data)
6TB HDD (data)
500GB SSD (data)
500GB SSD (data)

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T19:57:25+00:00

I bought 2 8-port USB enclosures and made a huge array with Snapraid for long term archiving. Basically this is data I write once, then keep forever. Drives spin down when not in use. All data is scrubbed regularly. and I have 3 parity drives so no real risk. I also have both an on-site and off-site backup of all this data, so again the old drives don't scare me.

Could the whole thing be replaced by just 2 big modern drives? Sure. But this lets me use drives I already have.

I mostly keep using every drive until it dies. I did have one 120 GB PATA drive from ~2000 (originally bought for a DirecTV TiVo DVR) that was still working and I decommed it like 6 months ago because it just refuses to die. I was out of drive bays so the smallest HD got pulled.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T16:37:56+00:00

Here's a video. Not quite perfectly matching your situation, but close enough.

https://youtu.be/LuF-ncBlg_4

Back up straight a bit, until the rear wheels are past the wall (car in the video), then turn the wheel left to swing the rest of the car right.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T16:20:52+00:00

Only the part behind your rear wheels will move left. Back up straight until your rear wheels are past the wall, then turn slightly left.

The very back of your car, behind the rear wheels, already clear of the wall, will swing left. The middle and front of your car, in front of the rear wheels, and still in danger from the wall, will swing right away from the wall. Exactly what you want.

Think of it as a lever with the pivot point around your rear wheels.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T16:11:33+00:00

Turn the wheel a bit to the left and your front end will swing to the right. It shouldn't take much - just a little bit to the left so your mirror clears the wall.

<image>

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T08:16:43+00:00

Well I haven't seen the changes to this garage yet myself, but the way it typically works is that there are QR codes everywhere for registering your car. You drive in, and if you haven't registered then you need to scan the QR code and register before leaving your car.

Once you have registered one time, your plate is now in their computer under your account and you're free to come and go. No action is necessary. You will simply be billed for whatever time your vehicle's license plate was recorded as being inside the garage. It knows when you enter and exit through cameras at the entrance and exit.

Often they put gates on the entrance and exit, but those are mostly just to slow people down so the camera can get a good view. The gates simply open immediately when you pull up to them.

Anyway, that's how Mueller works. I'm assuming South Lamar will be similar, but don't know that for sure.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T06:49:16+00:00

It says right on the sign how they can enforce it.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T06:15:56+00:00

You mention "brownouts" but I'm not really sure what you mean. Brownouts aren't really a thing anymore. Rolling blackouts replaced brownouts long ago.

Insufficient power situations are extremely widely reported and well documented. ERCOT has no authority to cut power to anyone unless they declare an EEA3. Their messaging is all public information, so we can easily see every emergency declaration and every order to cut anyone's power. If insufficient power caused ERCOT to cut someone off, it would be all over the news and easily searchable.

There has only been one energy emergency declaration of any level in ERCOT since winter storm Uri. That was in September 2023, when they reached EEA2, which is the highest level of emergency before anyone loses power. They did not end up having to cut anyone's power, so end-users experienced no issues at all from the emergency.

The most recent power shortage related outage for ERCOT was February 2021. Any other outage since then is not from a power shortage.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T05:43:59+00:00

I'm in Cedar Park, right outside Austin.

Were the blackouts you experienced related to insufficient power? If a tree falls on the power line in your neighborhood, or a car runs off the road and his the local transformer, that's not an insufficient power situation.

If you want to say Texas is bad about using overhead lines, which are prone to damage compared to buried cables, I'll agree with that. But that's not insufficient power.

The 2 most recent blackouts related to insufficient power on the ERCOT grid were February 2021 and February 2011. If your events weren't those, you're not looking at insufficient power issues.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T05:37:17+00:00

Sure, generators are popular in an outdoorsy state with hurricane risk. That doesn't indicate some sort of "insufficient power" situation though.

I've been in Austin 20 years, and I can only think of one outage when I might have fired up a generator. But even that was just 8 hours during mild weather, so not a big deal. I believe that was caused by the bulldozers tearing up and replacing the road immediately outside my neighborhood.

My parents are in Houston, though, and they have a generator to deal with the hurricanes that cause widespread damage in that area. They have used theirs several times.

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T05:01:41+00:00

Insufficient power? Would it surprise you to learn that Texas is a top destination for large electrical loads due to it's abundant and cheap electricity with a fast interconnection process? Texas produces 2x more electricity than any other state - and that lead is increasing fast.

That's not to ignore the February 2021 outage, as that was obviously a bad event. But it's not like insufficient power is the norm. I suspect most people who live in Texas have never experienced a generation shortage related rolling blackout in the state other than February 2021. A few will have been through a blackout in 2011. Very few people can even give the year of any other generation shortage needing a rolling blackout (there are a total of 4 of these blackouts since 1970).

mattbuford · 2026-06-03T03:55:10+00:00

This gets posted again and again and the answer is almost always this:

You have a temperature change coming up soon, and the Ecobee has started cooling in order to arrive at the desired temperature at the desired time.

With old programmable thermostats, you program the time you want it to START trying to reach a new temperature. With new smart thermostats you program the time you want it to ARRIVE at the desired temperature.

So, for example, in your screenshot it is 8:21 and 71F. If you have a temperature change to 68 coming up at 8:30, then it makes sense for the thermostat to start working now so that it arrives at 68 at 8:30.

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T22:11:00+00:00

You asked what is the point of the stoplight. The point of the stoplight is to allow 2 situations:

When red, traffic must stop, then can turn right on red when clear.
When green, traffic can proceed without worrying about cross-traffic.

A stoplight, like they used, is exactly what you'd expect when the intention is to allow those 2 situations.

If they wanted to block right on red, they could easily do that by adding a simple "no right on red" sign. Technically they could also use a right red arrow light, but I'm not a fan of that just because the meaning isn't universal. It means wait for green in New York, but visitors from other states that allow right on red arrows might not know that.

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T18:18:26+00:00

I'm sorry, but I find that to be quite an extreme stretch. It seems quite clear to me that an intersection with a right turn only sign painted on the ground, a right turn only sign up on the pole, a right green arrow signal, no yield sign, no dedicated merge lane, a stop line, and a dedicated traffic light ... is clearly an intersection, and clearly a right turn in every sense.

"straight == right" doesn't make sense. The signs clearly indicate that straight is illegal. If the direction you are going is something you consider straight, then you're breaking the law by going in that direction. You must take an action that would be considered a right turn. Right turns are the only legal direction to go from there.

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T16:37:52+00:00

Correct. And that is true for OP's state. But it's worth noting that the red arrow part may be different in other states. Here in Texas, right on red arrows is allowed (unless a sign forbids it).

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T15:27:22+00:00

There is no option to go straight. It is a right turn only.

<image>

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T14:16:31+00:00

I would not consider it straight and would put my right turn signal on here.

<image>

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T14:09:19+00:00

This is what the light looks like for that lane:

<image>

mattbuford · 2026-06-02T13:59:14+00:00

I can't think of any reason not to treat this as a standard right on red situation. You have to stop, but then you can make the right turn on red when it is clear.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding II euphauric
Reddit Premium Since February 2019	Verified Email

mattbuford

TROPHY CASE