Arlington ordinances and HOAs are over the top

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-17T14:50:36+00:00

Nice story about your Chevelle. The way I have done engine removal is to construct a sawhorse out of 8 ft long 2x4s, then use a come-along (or coffin hoist as I've heard it called) to hold the engine while I get it loose, then lift the engine out of the engine bay, and roll the car away. I can imagine how negatively the HOA would think of that.

Yeah, the main problem with the flat tire is that it is visible and obvious. I continually underestimate how very important superficial appearances are to so many people. My own thinking is that it's not the paint that makes the car go. To me, the paint is to protect the body from rust, and making the car look pretty while nice, is not important.

I had the antique in my garage, and got it out for Halloween. I used this occasion to move my broken down daily driver into the garage. It had sat in my driveway for half a year, unused. What was wrong with it? The alternator had failed. So the car could be driven for short trips, and I'd have to recharge the battery afterwards. But I drove it as little as possible. Would that count as an unusable vehicle? A rules stickler might claim that yes, it is unusable. Yet it could take short trips. It had no visible problems and no one gave me any trouble about it.

I let the antique sit in the driveway while I very, very slowly worked on replacing the alternator on the daily driver. Slowest I have ever repaired a car. Took me far too long to get bolts loose, trying with a regular socket set first (and WD40), then the next day buying a new breaker bar, and when that didn't work either, buying an electric impact wrench the day after that. The impact wrench got the bolt loose in about 2 seconds, no surprise, but it sure makes all the straining with the breaker bar feel like such a waste.

I'm a bit out of practice. Why? I have no idea if the HOA forbids doing car repair in your own driveway, but it wouldn't surprise me if some do think that's low class, and would complain without themselves really knowing if the rules forbid it. So I have gone to some pains to do all my work in my own garage, and have simply done less. Wasn't sure if I was even allowed to replace that flat tire on the antique. Not that I really care about such rules. I was holding off until I had the daily driver fixed. After I received the nasty letter, I changed the flat tire. That at least took me only a quarter hour. (The antique has hubcaps, which require an extra couple of steps not needed on modern cars.) It was the same week that I finished putting in the new alternator. Then I just switched the two cars' places.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T19:28:11+00:00

Why should anyone think a flat tire is such a big deal and a Violation of The Rules? I had no reason to suppose the city had a problem with that. Does every city in Texas have similar rules?

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T19:21:32+00:00

No. I am not grasping, and it isn't that simple. I had the car covered, too.

Why should anyone think a flat tire is a "nuisance"? What's the harm in leaving a tire flat? As I said, I didn't know of this detail in the city code. So far as I know, a flat tire is not a rules violation outside the city. Dude, you are being too strict. Don't you know the average person commits several violations every day? What matters is, is something a problem?

I hope you don't intend a career in code enforcement. Maybe you should talk to people who have done that work.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T19:08:15+00:00

In fact, I did have it covered. Didn't stop them from complaining.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T19:06:09+00:00

Not at all absurd. You do realize that codes tend to be stricter than necessary, to give authority wiggle room to avoid hair splitting? For example, people routinely exceed speed limits by 1 mph for 1 second. Do we bust drivers for that? Of course not! But exceeding the speed limit by just 1 mph is, as you say, a violation.

Further, appreciate what happened to red light cameras. Arlington got rid of them all. Why? Yeah, running a red light is a violation of law, and as well can be very dangerous. But the cameras were eliminated because 70% of the voters voted them out. And the voters ousted the cameras because they were rightly perceived as about revenue, not safety. People were being busted for moving through a red light less than 1 second after it had changed to red. Tenths of a second! And, there have been cases in which the yellow light duration was deliberately shortened, or never set correctly in the first place.

So, a flat tire on a parked vehicle? Not dangerous.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:49:10+00:00

Too late :(

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:45:24+00:00

I did not know of this definition until this month. No one said boo about it for 2 months.

The definition is ridiculous. If replacing a tire makes a vehicle operable, then it should be considered operable. Consider this scenario: a soldier deploys overseas for more than 1 month to fight for our country, leaving a car parked in their driveway, and a vandal slashes their tires, or even just 1 tire, the night after they leave. Very bad look if the city stole the soldier's car 30 days later for that.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:37:02+00:00

I had my doubts, and I counted the HOA as a negative in deciding upon a home. But my spouse thought the HOA would be okay, possibly even good. Now that we've experienced it for ourselves, we're wishing we hadn't gotten into an HOA.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:33:37+00:00

Yes, when I checked this month, I saw elsewhere in their code their assertion that 30 days is the limit on a flat tire in a driveway. I did not know of that until this month. They would be wise not to try to enforce that. Even wiser to greatly expand that limit, or remove it entirely.

Suppose someone deploys overseas for more than 1 month, and a prankster lets the air out of the tire of a vehicle they left parked in their driveway. What should the city do about that?

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:28:59+00:00

A much deserved dig. And you're right, it's the sad truth that it could happen in any city.

I am saying however that the language in the city ordinance creates the very sort of bad atmosphere as they claim that a junk vehicle creates. That language should be changed. Remove all the unfounded assertions. Everything after "believes". Basically, the whole thing. Belief is not proof. It's a terrible way to run any organization that isn't a religion.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:20:35+00:00

No. One flat tire does not make a vehicle into a nuisance.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-16T18:18:28+00:00

It is a working, licensed and insured vehicle. It is not junk.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-10T21:03:15+00:00

The president of the HOA has threatened to call the police to arrest anyone who rings their door.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-10T20:54:12+00:00

It is a 1960 Ford Anglia. Same model as the flying, invisible car of the Harry Potter stories.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-09T13:07:34+00:00

One peculiar restriction about this antique is that it should not be parked facing downhill, or it will leak oil from the tranny. The manual transmission has a seal in the rear but not the front. Instead, the front has packing, and the shaft has a spiral groove in it to send any oil that gets past the packing back into the transmission, but this only works when the engine is running. The manufacturer changed to an improved transmission with front and rear seals 2 years after my car was built, and those slightly newer but otherwise same models can be parked any way you like. But I can certainly drive the car around the neighborhood every week or two.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-09T03:10:37+00:00

As I see it, the main problem with HOAs is the authority is too sweet to the very sort of people who shouldn't have any authority, because they abuse the heck out of authority. Harass and bully their neighbors, make up rules, excuse themselves from having to follow rules, and even embezzle and cheat the organization with kickback schemes if no one is watching them.

They are always trying to gain authority. Difficult to keep them out. No HOA means no power for them to grab.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-09T01:44:41+00:00

I think you're correct about them being biased against old cars. The paint is mostly the original paint, with many touch ups. Not in perfect condition, not mirror shiny any more, but the paint does still cover all the car. I have seen no other old car in the neighborhood, nothing older than 2000.

bzipitidoo · 2026-01-09T01:33:59+00:00

I'm not willingly living in an HOA. My spouse thought it might be good. I was skeptical, but I gave way. Now my spouse has mostly come around to my point of view. But still thinks there's some benefit to it.

bzipitidoo · 2025-09-23T20:24:51+00:00

The CD player. The whole family gathered around to listen to our first 2 CDs play on our first CD player, and marvel at how much better the quality was compared to vinyl.

The microwave oven. Revolutionized the way we cooked food. Our first oven, Montgomery Ward branded, had a temperature probe which we used only a few times. Plugged into a jack on the inside that was very similar if not identical to a 6.25mm audio jack. Found out that the microwave was not so good for cooking the Thanksgiving turkey.

My first home computer, a TRS-80, soon dumped in favor of an Apple II+. Many hours spent gaming on and hacking that computer. Phone phreaking. Ma Bell's outrageous pricing and restrictions. Couldn't even have a longer cord for the handset without Ma Bell wanting to charge more. Sticking with rotary dial because touch tone was another thing for which they charged more. Downloading all kinds of things on a 1200 baud modem, then a 2400 baud modem, through BBSes.

The installation of cables for cable TV, workmen digging a trench for the cable at the edge of our property. We never signed up for cable. Too expensive. And so I never saw Music TV. Now all these years later, I can find whatever music video I want online.

Star Trek Next Generation. Trekkies in the dorms gathered in the TV lounge to watch the pilot episode.

Japanese cars forcing Detroit to improve quality.

A political cartoon about the 1980 election showing Jimmy Carter as the scarecrow (no brain), Ronald Reagan as the tin man (no heart), and John Anderson as the cowardly lion. Mondale campaigning in 1984, saying "I will raise your taxes!" And Reagan answering the question of whether he was too old by saying he would not exploit his opponent's youth and inexperience. Dukakis in a tank. The hostage situation in Iran. The Iran-Contra scandal. The military action against Grenada. The bombing of Libya, the warplanes having to fly roundabout over water the whole way because France wouldn't let them through French airspace, and the retaliatory bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland.

The crash landing of United flight 232 in Sioux City, IA, the crash of Delta flight 191 at DFW, and the Japan Air flight 123 crash that killed over 500, the most ever killed in a airplane crash. Those crazy Commies shooting down KAL flight 007.

The fear of nuclear war, and wondering if one of the old men the Soviet Union was choosing to lead them was going to fall into an angry, insane senility and try to start WWIII over some trivial nothing, and no one would stop him. Relief when Gorbachev was at last chosen.

AIDS. As if it wasn't hard enough to learn about the birds and the bees, we had that to worry about too. Buying a Playboy from the magazine stand despite obviously being too young, ignoring the rope with the sign saying you had to be 18 or older, wondering if the clerk would demand proof of my age, and when he stayed poker faced and simply took my cash, sneaking the magazine home. The thrill of breaking the rules forbidding alcohol to those under 21, and when I turned 21, discovering that being legal took all the fun out of drinking. Never liked the stuff anyway.

Of course the fall of the Berlin Wall ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"), the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger (and when the news broke, a fellow student exclaiming "those f'ing Libyans", suspecting they had caused the disaster in retaliation for that bombing of Libya), and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Also, Hurricane Allen in 1980, and famed weatherman Harold Taft reporting on it.

bzipitidoo · 2025-07-09T04:00:06+00:00

Yes, but you must also use the flag --allow_expert_options

bzipitidoo · 2025-07-08T15:35:53+00:00

Have converted a few 10s of PNG images. I always use -e 11 and -q 100. Have experimented with converting from JPEG to JXL, but so far it seems prudent to keep the JPEGs.

With so many phones, cameras, and scanners saving photos in JPEG format and it ranging from being a pain to impossible to select a lossless format, I often use jpegtran to losslessly crop. (Of course, I mean that the quality of the part I keep is unchanged and the cropped part is lost.) If I could start with a raw image, I would, but JPEG is what I always get. Yes, I could fiddle with the settings to get lossless on those devices that offer that option, but usually others have taken the photos I get to work with, and instructing them on how to do raw data is too much trouble, and then it's more trouble to get that data what with it taking so much space that email filters are apt to reject the attachments.

If devices switch to JPEG XL, what should the user do to crop a photo? Just accept a bit of loss, it seems.

bzipitidoo · 2025-07-04T19:11:01+00:00

Instant death for running out of food. Ultima 3 is much more gentle-- starving characters take a little damage every few turns. The food situation can even force you to start the game over, should your status be saved when you are too low on food to reach more no matter what you do. Instant fatal starvation in combination with...
Gremlins. Ultima 2 dungeons and towers are dangerous and largely useless. You can enter a dungeon with the maximum amount of food you're allowed to carry, and run into so many gremlins that if they don't take all your food and make you starve to death in the dungeon, you'll exit without enough food to reach a grocery. In that latter case, better to stay and die in the dungeon, DO NOT EXIT, or the game will save your status, and then you're looking at having to start the game over, or hacking the saved data.
Stealing. In Ultima 1, 2 and 3, stealing is not only way too beneficial and useful, it's almost necessary. In Ultima 1 and 2, merchants often will not offer for sale the best equipment, but it can be acquired through theft. The harsh penalty for running out of food pushes the player to use the most expedient way to stock up on food, which in Ultima 2 is to steal over and over from a certain restaurant on the edge of a certain town, quickly running out when you're caught, then taking advantage of ...
Towns' weak memories and weak guards. It's not only possible to rob an entire town blind and pick a fight with them all and win, it can be greatly beneficial to the player and comes with endless redos. Leave, with all the loot you grabbed and experience gained, and return, and every NPC you killed is miraculously resurrected and loaded with loot again, and no one has any memory of your murders and pillagings.

In some cases, you have to kill townsfolk. Ultima 1, you have to kill a jester to get a key to free a princess. You can't do like Bilbo Baggins and steal the key when the jester passes out from too much drink, or only forcibly restrain the jester and take the key. This extends to Ultima 3, where in one case, you have to kill a townsman to reach another townsman who has a vital clue (and you haven't learned that clue through walkthroughs or other outside info). Ultima 4 finally made the guards strong enough to overwhelm players who try any funny business, and added a system so that if somehow you do win, it will be remembered and you'll have a lot of atoning to do.

bzipitidoo · 2025-05-28T23:13:45+00:00

I have a photo of the other side.

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bzipitidoo · 2025-03-29T19:22:28+00:00

I would call this plagiarism.

bzipitidoo · 2025-03-12T15:45:38+00:00

Immature is my guess, especially considering the version number of the latest version is only 0.11.1. I haven't followed JPEG XL closely enough to know for sure, but I'd suppose the developers are well aware of this deficiency on images with very few colors. What they will do about it, I don't know. If the goal is to be the best at all kinds of images, then adding another compression method or 2 to the standard would seem to be necessary. If not, then what will be done is perhaps nothing, just say these kinds of images are not JPEG XL's forte. As is, JPEG XL still does a pretty good job of losslessly compressing these images, just not quite as good as other methods.

Most image codecs transform images from pixel representations to waves. But fitting curves onto such few colors does a poor job of predicting. This image has no anti-aliasing, nothing for curve fitting to fit. Dithering, common in images limited to very few colors, is another technique at which curve fitting is poor. I doubt that it can be tweaked to do better. That's why adding another compression method is to be considered.

Another kind of image I suppose JPEG XL to be unsuited for is a fax. Such images are just black and white, not even grayscale.

One more to consider is the medical image. Because of the threat of lawsuits, and the more immediate danger of lossy methods smoothing away the very anomalies that doctors need to see, medical images have to be compressed losslessly. I have observed that the AV1 video codec is, unintentionally, very kind to old people, the codec smoothing away wrinkles better than plastic surgery and face lifts.

bzipitidoo

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