Hey y'all--I haven't posted on here in forever, and now I have a cheap plug, but I doubt y'all will mind too much because it means free dinner and a free concert for some of y'all.
I'm in charge of the welcome dinner for the SEC career fair again, and the dinner is tonight--MONDAY at 7 PM at the BRAZOS CENTER. It's being catered by Rudy's BBQ, and I'm having One Light Town come out and play. If you've never heard of them, they're the featured band this month on AggielandConcerts. Anyhoo, if you want to go, you have to sign up at http://sec.tamu.edu/careerfair but there should still be spots open. So....

FREE BBQ

FREE CONCERT

TONIGHT--MONDAY at 7 PM

SIGN UP NOW at SEC.TAMU.EDU/CAREERFAIR

y'all have any questions, call 847-8567--and ask for someone besides me cuz I'll be unavailable until after the dinner. :)

oh...and you'll get cool toys to take home with you--ask Betik--he's gotten a mini guitar and mardi gras beads in dinners past

Love you guys--Happy Monday!

Well, coming from the guy who has taken defensive driving 8 times now, you've got a couple of options:

Call the court clerk and basically say "My name is _____, and I just got a ticket, can I take defensive driving for it?" 9 times out of 10 they'll just OK it, thank them and get off the phone... Write down the name of the clerk and the time you called just in case. This worked for me once... Took defensive driving, then never got around to mailing the stuff in -- got a nice letter from the court saying they shouldn't have even let me take it in the first place, but since they did, I need to get my papers in promptly :)

Write the judge a letter. Most judges are pretty lenient when it comes to this kind of stuff. Write them a polite letter, talking about how much/where you work, how you can't afford your insurance to go up, etc, etc... I got a ticket going 25 over the limit. 25mph or more over the limit is supposed to automatically bar you from taking Defensive Driving. I mailed the judge a letter basically admitting that I was in fact speeding, apologized for it, but pointed out that I really don't think I could have been going 25mph over the limit.


Basically if worse comes to worse, talk to the judge... Most judges will bend over backwards to help a polite, well presented, college student when it comes to petty stuff like speeding... Alcohol violations are a whole other story...

Well this is definitely not legal advise, but I was in the same situation you were in about 9 months ago and I took both defensive driving classes consecutively and didn't ever hear anything. The two tickets were in different counties, don't know if that had anything to do with it. Then about 3 months later I got another ticket in one of the same counties and took it to court. The defending attorney talked to me before the court hearing and worked out a deal for me to take defensive driving again even though I had taken it "once" before this year. (He knew that I had taken it once only because I told him that).

Not saying that it will work for you or even saying that I don't have warrants out for me right now, but that's my story.

bluto, i have a legal question for you. i got a speeding ticket yesterday. i also got one 2 months ago. i haven't taken defensive driving for the first one yet, but i'm pretty sure when i do that means that i can't take it for the second one. on the reply form the hi-po gave me, i have options to plead guilty, nolo contendere, not guilty, or request to take a driving safety course (i assume not an option). any suggestions on what i should plead or how to minimalize my pain?

Let's not forget about Tech! ... kidding ...

OMG, have you even been watching any football this season? If things in Stoopsville don't improve soon, Texas will nail your asses to the ground before the 1st quarter is over. And A&M ought to give you a good fight as well. Your teams are almost identical.

Dude, do you have a life?

A&M, this is an awesome website, one of the best I have seen, but your football team still sucks. OU ought to beat up on you guys pretty good as well.

Hey UT fans. Just wanted to remind you that OU has outscored ya'll 77-17 in the past two years. Nuthin better than coming down and beating you in your own state.

Man that is just too bad that OU is going to run right through the rest of the Big 12 teams this year. Late,

Drunk....and stoned....life is pretty "swiiiiiiiiite"

It's like Mardi Gras....24/7

This will provide for hours of entertainment.

The DKR expansion plans include a 2nd deck over the North (existing) end zone, which would take total capacity to just over 90,000, as well as a new South endzone in one phase, and a second deck on that in another phase. At this point, capactity would be in line with the Big House in Ann Arbor, which I believe is 107,000. This is supposedly a 30-year plan. Also, since UT is a state institution, there are certain legislative hoops that must be jumped through to get the money to do all this. The first round of "stuff" has been approved for the North endzone upper deck - in the next session, they're supposed to allocate money. Since we've been winning, I wouldn't be surprised to see it actually happen, too, with construction starting after the 2003 season.

All of the above is available for public viewing on one of the floors of Belmont Hall adjacent to the stadium during normal business hours. It's like any highway construction effort - plans must be made available to the public BEFORE anything happens.

We have an archery team? Good to know.

I heard that there were plans to add another deck to DKR or something of that nature. I was told that the expansion would increase the capacity to 110,000.

we should expand our stadium.

you know what's funny? when the archery team goes to a competition, they have to drive themselves (according to a dude in one of my classes). i thought that was pretty damn funny.

I agree. And that's possible for almost every home game. But not every student goes to every game and they can't reserve 50,000 seats for students if there isn't a guarantee that they're going to sell all those seats, especially when you know that rich alumni are ready and willing to pay nicely for them.

I think the real problem is that schools make much more $$$ off the rich alumni who are willing to spend big bucks for tickets, so they get a lot of the seats via season tickets. I think every student should be guaranteed a seat at each football game. That would mean an allocation of 50,000 seats...still leaving 30,000 for rich alumni to purchase. After all, students are there for 4-5 years, they should get to see each game if they want to.

According to A&M's athletics website, Kyle Field's capacity is 82,600. DKR capacity is just over 80,000, although we usually have over 83,000 at each game.

The only reason that UT doesn't have the same process for student ticketing as A&M is the OU game. It's complicated because it's never a home game and never an away game. It's always at the Cotton Bowl, which means we get half the tickets, so you have to have some sort of hierarchy in determining how to distribute that many tickets. We don't distribute OU tickets strictly by classification because, since it's not technically a home game, there's no "guaranteed demand" for each classification, and also because there are like 55,000 season ticket holders who aren't students, and they get priority for the OU game also. Therefore, you offer a season ticket package to students and give them the opportunity to purchase an OU ticket at the beginning of the year, along with general public season ticket holders, because there is a guaranteed demand for those tickets. After those requests are processed, you have a draw for the remaining sports pass holders. That's really the only feasible way to do it when your ticket allotment is 50%.

Also A&M only has one real high demand game (OU). Whereas UT has 2 (OU & A&M). Someone would have to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Kyle field alot larger than the UT stadium?

The only problem there is that UT's student section can't accomadate every student that wants to go to the games... generally speaking, it's not a problem to draw tickets. For some reason or another, enough people can't go to certain games that getting tickets isn't hard... it's the games that EVERYONE wants to go to (A&M, OU) that become a problem...

Unless they limit the number of football ticket packages sold, how can they possibly guarantee everyone that buys a sports pass a ticket to each game?

The OU game and the A&M game are generally the only games that require the wristband draw, because they're extremely high-demand games. If you buy the student season ticket package, you only pay $40 over the price of the All-sports package, and you pick up your tickets for each game, plus OU and any high-demand away game tickets you want, at the beginning of the year. The only reason I would not buy it is if we had a really crappy home schedule, which we sorta do this year. Except for the A&M game. And that Iowa State game is starting to look pretty interesting. Basically, that is the best and cheapest way to guarantee yourself a ticket to each game and tickets to OU and away games. You get the same seat for each game, you don't have to draw, and you don't have to worry about getting OU tickets. What's wrong with that system?

If UT would do it the way A&M does it, there'd be no problems. At A&M if you purchase the football ticket option, you are guaranteed a ticket for each home game. Unlike UT, where tickets are distributed on a first-come first-served basis, at A&M there are certain days that each class year goes to get tickets. It makes sense, plus everyone who paid for tickets gets a guaranteed ticket.

I think it's time to reformat student ticketing for football games.

Boy, you gotta love those idiots down in Florida and their complete inability to run an election. Here we go again!