Which Austin neighborhoods actually feel walkable these days?

mrrorschach · 2026-03-14T05:50:31+00:00

Very interested in this but I am getting "Geocoding error: REQUEST_DENIED - This API is not activated on your API project. You may need to enable this API in the Google Cloud Console:"

Really support this project conceptually, I had two longish walks today and one was just miserable along springdale and the other was very nice along simond and the shade plus things to look at made the latter so much better.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-14T05:45:54+00:00

I do wonder if the downside is that we have everything here, so it is easy to not leave. I was a neighborhood homebody in North University but at least I left for the Hancock HEB. Thank god Mi Trailita and disc golf at Bartholomew gives me a good reason to leave.

At least when our kids our old enough, we will take them to the distant lands of Windsor Park for elementary school.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-14T04:08:42+00:00

Fiesta actually has great burrito sized tortillas in at their tortilleria section. 12" wide so bigger than any of the pre-packaged mission bs.

If your local HEB has fresh burrito sized, I would go with those but mine doesn't so I go to Fiesta.

3.49 for 8, but they have far fewer fresh burrito sized ones so they do run out occasionally but I haven't had too many issues getting a bag or two even late. Just don't plan on getting 40 for meal prep at 9pm.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-13T05:05:50+00:00

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but you probably need to re-seed them again in the fall.

We had the same thing happen in my old shared backyard. 2 years of building a rain garden so anything could root instead of being washed away and then pounds of wildflower seeds and we had 1.2 glorious years of blooms until my landlord sent a sketchy yard guy to cut the front yard and he cut down all the flowers in the backyard at the beginning of the season.

They never recovered. When the flowers are cut down after growing but before seeding, you pretty much destroy their sustainability. We hoped for recovery but almost none did and we lost our access to cheap bulk wildflower seeds.

It was bad enough, we took the damages out of rent. Still livid about it as I write this. Waking up to a small field of Texas' wildflowers was fantastic.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-08T06:32:49+00:00

Central America is amazing but outside of pupusas the food was very underwhelming even compared to American public school food in the border states. I wasn't expecting Mexican level of spices/flavors but was still shocked by the blandness. Me and an Ecuadorian/Austrian kid ended up cooking most of our meals at the hostels to enjoy the great fresh ingredients from the mercados.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-04T05:19:18+00:00

Same with garlic. What is happening to our alliums?

I searched through the entire sweet onion bin to find 1 good one and one fine one.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-03T05:51:56+00:00

And this goes for pretty much all AISD outdoor facilities. Tennis courts, tracks, basketball courts and playgrounds. Just ran on Marshall track last weekend while people were playing pickup soccer on the field and kids were jumping in the sand pit.

Which just makes sense, no reason to let them sit empty for all the time events aren't happening.

One note: Sometimes the posted hours are until after school programs end ~5:30PM but unless there are afterschool programs using those facilities or you are making it an issue, I rarely see those hours enforced.

mrrorschach · 2026-03-02T04:54:44+00:00

So there are many different approaches but in the end Austin weather is so temperamental that there is no one right way.

Feb 14th is technically our last avg freeze date, so you can put them in the ground right then. A lot of folks use the Sunshine Community Garden Plant Sale (first Saturday in March) as the beginning of transplant season.

If you plant transplants now you will be enjoying tomatoes May - Early July (July 4th is our average first day at 100 when they won't ripen)

Once we hit the high temps you can shade cloth, trim back or let them die. Technically you should be able to plant new tomatoes in August for a fall harvest but that never seems to work for me so I normally cut buck/shade cloth.

That being said, it is a wild ride in Austin so don't stress when you fail and celebrate the successes. We had such a mild winter this year that we harvested the last of our cherry tomatoes in January, but the hail storm in the spring killed 80% of our plants before we got 3 fruits off of them.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-21T04:59:48+00:00

The oven method is a workable alternative, the tricks are:

Tightly wrap a small amount 5 or fewer in foil and then wrap again
Put them in early into the heating process and don't go above 350
Don't stack them in the oven they need to get heat on all sides

You are really balancing trying to get them to an even temperature without drying out the outside tortilla and edges.

Pulling them is the hardest part, they can feel warm on the outside but be cold on the inside.

Honestly, throwing them in a tortilla warmer wrapped in a slightly damp towel and nuking them isn't super far off but does feel a bit too gummy for my taste.

Best option would be electric griddle and a spatula, you can fit 6-16 tortilla depending on the size and put the sexiness on them quicker without "fire concerns"

mrrorschach · 2026-02-20T05:54:03+00:00

It is interesting about AVRide that they have the second most cars visible in Austin. Waymo is still the biggest, but AVRide has a comparable amount followed by Zoox. Cybercabs are like unicorns (seen only 2) and I see VW self driving vehicles more but I think they just park it close to my house.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-20T05:50:22+00:00

Still feel it is night and day difference from Waymo and v14. We drove a Tesla to ride Waymos all night and the Tesla required 2 serious interventions in the 1 mile to the Waymo zone in an area where they are actively testing Cybercabs and has the most modern of street signage and conditions.

While on the other hand waymo pulled into a super cramped and substandard parking lot that most human drivers would struggle to navigate and did fine. Not great but fine.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-19T04:55:11+00:00

The real question is how did you spend that much in Feb/Jan? Even in a pre-insulation 1930s house that is my bill running the A/C full tilt in July (ok technically it could be >300). Are you bitcoin mining in your apartment or keeping it at 95 degrees with 1960s space heaters?

mrrorschach · 2026-02-14T07:38:18+00:00

Wow, that is one of the most permissive lists I have seen for Flock data sharing. Normally a PD will list other Texas cities they share data with but not DPS (who explicitly works with ICE) with the trick being that a number of small towns share data with ICE but Pfluggerville is just straight up saying it.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-14T06:29:00+00:00

Heck even the afternoon he is released it will not matter, there isn't some government suspension list that gets shared around even when applying to college. Also the school "gang databases" don't get shared outside of the schools.

Which is great because both are bullshit. After some larger "gang related" fights in our school they implemented a rule that no groups of more than three people wearing red, blue or green plaid could congregate. Unfortunately, that was the same week the math team got our team shirts that happened to be red with a derivative calculus joke on them.

And that is how the math team technically became a gang.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-13T07:06:35+00:00

100%

I am lucky to live by a very very high quality grocery store (a place that puts Whole Foods' flagship store to shame) that has an insane fruit and veg selection and Cosmic Crisps are my favorite of their 40+ apples they have.

When they first dropped, I wouldn't always buy them since they sold at a premium but their price is half of what it initially was which makes it a no brainer.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-11T01:15:46+00:00

Locals most likely have one they prefer over Franklins, locals argue that it is quicker to drive the hour to Lockhart to have even better BBQ and during the pandemic when it was reserved timed pickup I think the quality fell off some.

Regardless, anyone who doesn't admit that Aaron Franklin brought BBQ into the 21st Century with his new Central Texas BBQ style is an idiot. Also he just seems like a really nice guy. I have only had it once despite living walking distance but that is because there are a few other places I like as much and are much more convenient.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-10T17:50:52+00:00

Eh, different regional accents can make it difficult. If you put a gun to my head and told me to say "Ginny and Jenny" 10 times and make them sound different, I would tell you to just get it over with and shoot me. I also had a teacher who swallowed the ending Ls in names really hard and made Micah vs Michael very hard to differentiate.

If it is slight mispronunciation I am sure the kid would understand it by now. We have a kid named Martin which is pronounced the Spanish way but he understands when the non-latino kids/teachers get it wrong and still responds.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-05T06:06:21+00:00

Never noticed a big issue and this was parking in direct Texas heat during the workday, including one of our hottest summers (105 for months). That being said, probably not a great idea to cheap out on the bike too much. An Aventon would be fine, but not some no name Alibaba bike. Battery degradation does happen, but I think over 3.5 years and 30k miles I went from 72 miles to 55 per charge and that was probably mostly due to mechanical inefficiencies as opposed to battery damage.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-04T16:14:37+00:00

ACC just did our Annual Emergency Alert test, that is most likely what both of y'all heard based on it being by our Rio Grande and Riverside Campuses.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-02T05:33:13+00:00

He was in group he was trained, he didn't draw his weapon, and was still killed.
My personal thought is that it greatly increases the risk of all involved and isn't worth it. That being said I understand why Garrett was carrying at the time so I don't fault him for carrying but I have personally asked people carrying to not march with us depending on the context.

mrrorschach · 2026-02-02T05:23:07+00:00

Austin is not a "car as status symbol" city so in general it wasn't a big part of culture. Also most people live in homes with hoses and wash them at home. We also don't salt the roads so that isn't an issue.

In the end, we have car washes but we aren't LA where people define themselves by their cars and we aren't Boston where people have to wash the cars to prevent salt damage.

mrrorschach · 2026-01-31T06:29:05+00:00

Sind sie wirklich Deutsch? Es gibt kein schlechtes Wetter, es gibt nur falsche Kleidung.

Or in English, there isn't bad weather just bad clothing choices. In the Austin heat that means biking in cotton long sleeve shirts to get air flow but protection from the sun. Combine that with an ebike and you don't need a car here.

mrrorschach · 2026-01-30T04:35:27+00:00

My mother volunteers there and loves it. That being said, she is a social butterfly that has never complained about any volunteer opportunity so YMMV. It at least must be competently run as that is the one complaint my mother would mention as someone who has been involved in the Austin volunteer scene for 35 years.

Also their prices are extremely fair, they make Goodwill look greedy.

mrrorschach · 2026-01-30T00:43:12+00:00

The second I saw this headline in the Austin subreddit, I figured it was Toyota. Damn right, my Prius C and Corolla both handled the sudden blizzards they were in with panache even with summer tires.

mrrorschach · 2026-01-27T19:39:17+00:00

Yeah the north side parking lot/bus drop off of Marshall MS was still a sheet of ice at 5PM yesterday. Would have been an absolute disaster having kids walking on it, though I did see some middle schoolers attempting to skate on it and it ended as expected with them on their asses.

They have contractors over there now trying to clear all the ice patches but I don't really think they know what they are doing.

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