(08-10-2015 12:52 PM)CanadianOwl Wrote:  I remember arriving in Houston on a red eye from Seattle, walking through the exit doors of Intergalactic into that wall of humidity. My first thought was, "Oh my God! What have I done!?!" But you eventually get used to it.

"But you eventually get used to it."

I don't know. I've lived here 60 years, and I'm not used to it yet. Learn to deal with it or learn to tolerate it, maybe. Thank goodness for A/C!

(08-10-2015 03:50 PM)billstudabaker Wrote:  Couple that with the stench that emanated from the ship canal, it made for a rude wakeup call.

If you were waking up to the smell of the Ship Channel, you were having a pretty rough night on the town.

In my back yard, the oak pollen can have a distinctive smell, but I wouldn't call in a stench.

(08-10-2015 12:52 PM)CanadianOwl Wrote:  I remember arriving in Houston on a red eye from Seattle, walking through the exit doors of Intergalactic into that wall of humidity. . . But you eventually get used to it.

What you don't get used to how much long-time Houstonians still complain about it. In most places, residents take a perverse pride in their native difficulties, the way the English call their weather "bracing" or New Yorkers used to call their graffiti and crime "exciting." But many Houstonians just seem to complain.

In the late 60's and early 70's I remember the distinctive and pungent smell of coffee roasting (?burning) and permeating the air in the early morning hours. And I don't mean that it was coming from commons breakfast.
Wasn't there a coffee company somewhere near downtown Houston back in the day that roasted coffee?

(08-10-2015 06:54 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  In the late 60's and early 70's I remember the distinctive and pungent smell of coffee roasting (?burning) and permeating the air in the early morning hours. And I don't mean that it was coming from commons breakfast.
Wasn't there a coffee company somewhere near downtown Houston back in the day that roasted coffee?

That still happens on the occasion. At my old place in Montrose I could smell the coffee roasting in the early morning every once in awhile.

(08-10-2015 06:54 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  In the late 60's and early 70's I remember the distinctive and pungent smell of coffee roasting (?burning) and permeating the air in the early morning hours. And I don't mean that it was coming from commons breakfast.
Wasn't there a coffee company somewhere near downtown Houston back in the day that roasted coffee?

Maxwell House...the plant was originally a Ford Model T factory.
http://houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-con...-house.pdf

(08-10-2015 07:10 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  

(08-10-2015 06:54 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  In the late 60's and early 70's I remember the distinctive and pungent smell of coffee roasting (?burning) and permeating the air in the early morning hours. And I don't mean that it was coming from commons breakfast.
Wasn't there a coffee company somewhere near downtown Houston back in the day that roasted coffee?

Maxwell House...the plant was originally a Ford Model T factory.
http://houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-con...-house.pdf

A don't forget the delicious aroma from the old Nabisco plant on Holcombe -- now a Texas Medical Center administrative building.
http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/04_15_00/page_03.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stori...ocus5.html

Thanks, Tiki. That pungent coffe smell is embedded in my brain... Years later

(08-10-2015 08:02 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  Thanks, Tiki. That pungent coffe smell is embedded in my brain... Years later

Maryland Coffee also had a plant off I-10 near 610. Used to get my first "cuppa" of the morning on the way to work driving through the aroma of roasting coffee.

(08-10-2015 07:08 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(08-10-2015 06:54 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  In the late 60's and early 70's I remember the distinctive and pungent smell of coffee roasting (?burning) and permeating the air in the early morning hours. And I don't mean that it was coming from commons breakfast.
Wasn't there a coffee company somewhere near downtown Houston back in the day that roasted coffee?

That still happens on the occasion. At my old place in Montrose I could smell the coffee roasting in the early morning every once in awhile.

Two different sources reflecting two different eras. The big Maxwell House factory near downtown vs. the micro roaster located in Montrose (on Taft).

(08-10-2015 07:55 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-10-2015 07:10 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  

(08-10-2015 06:54 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  In the late 60's and early 70's I remember the distinctive and pungent smell of coffee roasting (?burning) and permeating the air in the early morning hours. And I don't mean that it was coming from commons breakfast.
Wasn't there a coffee company somewhere near downtown Houston back in the day that roasted coffee?

Maxwell House...the plant was originally a Ford Model T factory.
http://houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-con...-house.pdf

A don't forget the delicious aroma from the old Nabisco plant on Holcombe -- now a Texas Medical Center administrative building.
http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/04_15_00/page_03.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stori...ocus5.html

And the Mrs Baird's bakery on West Gray around Dunlavy. Imagine how much that land must be worth now, yet it was industrial until at least the mid 70's.

(08-11-2015 07:33 AM)temchugh Wrote:  Two different sources reflecting two different eras. The big Maxwell House factory near downtown vs. the micro roaster located in Montrose (on Taft).

Plus ca change, no?

Parking availability is a lot better now than when I was at Rice. I suspect that people used to park in the stadium lot to go shopping in the Village, and the parking gates provide an incentive not to do that. Back in the day, I had to drive around for quite a while just to find a space. Now, the stadium lot is usually close to empty.

I suppose the Harvard comparisons only make sense to people without direct Rice experience. The atmosphere on campus is totally different, even if the quality of the education and quality of the study body are comparable to what you get at Harvard.

The pre-med thing is dead right, and it ruins most of the intro science classes except for physics, since the pre-meds aren't smart enough for the real physics classes. The outright "cheating" the pre-meds do is annoying, too; I hated competing against them in orgo because I didn't know that the exams recycled questions from previous years and the pre-meds had stashes of old exams (you could get 50% of the orgo final just by memorizing last year's test).

The list left out the worst thing about Rice, which is obviously Lovett College.

(08-11-2015 01:15 PM)OwlAndSparrow Wrote:  The outright "cheating" the pre-meds do is annoying, too; I hated competing against them in orgo because I didn't know that the exams recycled questions from previous years and the pre-meds had stashes of old exams (you could get 50% of the orgo final just by memorizing last year's test).

If old exams were not a prohibited resource, how was it cheating?
Or is that why you used the quotation marks? :)

(08-11-2015 01:39 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 01:15 PM)OwlAndSparrow Wrote:  The outright "cheating" the pre-meds do is annoying, too; I hated competing against them in orgo because I didn't know that the exams recycled questions from previous years and the pre-meds had stashes of old exams (you could get 50% of the orgo final just by memorizing last year's test).

If old exams were not a prohibited resource, how was it cheating?
Or is that why you used the quotation marks? :)

Yeah, that's why I used those.

I know it's not technically cheating, but it's annoying, especially to those students who have never seen those kinds of tactics before. I wouldn't have cared so much if it weren't for the fact that the exam grades were curved.

Now, when I was in grad school (at a lesser school), I often caught people copying answers to old homework and exams even when the questions were different. I'm not sure if that should be amusing or infuriating.

(08-11-2015 01:46 PM)OwlAndSparrow Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 01:39 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 01:15 PM)OwlAndSparrow Wrote:  The outright "cheating" the pre-meds do is annoying, too; I hated competing against them in orgo because I didn't know that the exams recycled questions from previous years and the pre-meds had stashes of old exams (you could get 50% of the orgo final just by memorizing last year's test).

If old exams were not a prohibited resource, how was it cheating?
Or is that why you used the quotation marks? :)

Yeah, that's why I used those.

I know it's not technically cheating, but it's annoying, especially to those students who have never seen those kinds of tactics before. I wouldn't have cared so much if it weren't for the fact that the exam grades were curved.

Now, when I was in grad school (at a lesser school), I often caught people copying answers to old homework and exams even when the questions were different. I'm not sure if that should be amusing or infuriating.

All of which reminds me of a joke my Dad (an engineering professor) liked to tell about his colleagues in economics: they give the same exam questions year after year; they just change the answers.

(08-11-2015 01:58 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 01:46 PM)OwlAndSparrow Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 01:39 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 01:15 PM)OwlAndSparrow Wrote:  The outright "cheating" the pre-meds do is annoying, too; I hated competing against them in orgo because I didn't know that the exams recycled questions from previous years and the pre-meds had stashes of old exams (you could get 50% of the orgo final just by memorizing last year's test).

If old exams were not a prohibited resource, how was it cheating?
Or is that why you used the quotation marks? :)

Yeah, that's why I used those.

I know it's not technically cheating, but it's annoying, especially to those students who have never seen those kinds of tactics before. I wouldn't have cared so much if it weren't for the fact that the exam grades were curved.

Now, when I was in grad school (at a lesser school), I often caught people copying answers to old homework and exams even when the questions were different. I'm not sure if that should be amusing or infuriating.

All of which reminds me of a joke my Dad (an engineering professor) liked to tell about his colleagues in economics: they give the same exam questions year after year; they just change the answers.

Indeed, "the Dismal Science".....

Not to be superficial, politically incorrect, and overly focused on the primal basics of the college experience but gotta add a) weather, b) % of people with limited social skills/capabilities as a % of total Rice population, and c) % of unattractive co-eds (male and female) as a % of the total population to the above list that IMO would rank above some of these listed things.

(08-11-2015 05:31 PM)owl40 Wrote:  Not to be superficial, politically incorrect, and overly focused on the primal basics of the college experience but gotta add a) weather, b) % of people with limited social skills/capabilities as a % of total Rice population, and c) % of unattractive co-eds (male and female) as a % of the total population to the above list that IMO would rank above some of these listed things.

I hear that b) and c) have slowly improved since our day.

(08-11-2015 06:28 PM)owl95 Wrote:  

(08-11-2015 05:31 PM)owl40 Wrote:  Not to be superficial, politically incorrect, and overly focused on the primal basics of the college experience but gotta add a) weather, b) % of people with limited social skills/capabilities as a % of total Rice population, and c) % of unattractive co-eds (male and female) as a % of the total population to the above list that IMO would rank above some of these listed things.

I hear that b) and c) have slowly improved since our day.

Perhaps, but the percentage of students who complain that other students are not more sociable or more attractive no doubt remains constant.