Dallas’s Carmel Car Wash sucks

Dallas’s Carmel Car Wash chain sucks for three reasons.

Problem 1: Their product is bad. I have an Infiniti G37 and a Honda Odyssey. For both vehicles, Carmel’s equipment isn’t able to get a good clean. Vertical surfaces, and some other parts, get missed unless the beginning-of-line attendant remembers to manually brush-wash those parts. Often, that attendant forgets or does a poor job.

Overall, their equipment just doesn’t do a good job. Here’s the result of a Sunday (July 14, 2019) wash on my van:

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that van just needed a second run through the equipment? I admit, it was pretty dirty. That leads to…

Problem 2: They don’t stand by their product. I went back to Carmel to ask for that second run on my van. (If you’re from Carmel, it is the Mockingbird Lane location. I was there on 7/16/19 around 5:30 PM and went to the left lane.) I presented my receipt, asked for a re-run, and was told they do not stand by their $7 wash, so I would need to pay for another $7 wash.

Problem 3: Plus-sales are out of control. Every time you do the basic, $7 wash, you’ll get hassled about gift cards or car-wash extras that Consumer Reports says are not worth it. This started a few months ago. I am tired of it!

We’re done, Carmel Car Wash. Not even #friendzone. Just done.

Adding books to Kindle Freetime accounts

If you want to add an e-book to your child’s Freetime account, it more complicated than delivering it to the device after you buy it. I cannot find any documentation, so this is how I did it:

  1. Visit www.amazon.com. Log in if you haven’t already.
  3. Click Show Family Library.
  5. Click Add to Library.
  6. At the bottom of the Add to Library dialog, select the child you want to have the books.
  7. Press OK.

After that, you then need to pick up your kid’s device and exit Freetime. Restart Freetime, and when you do so, you’ll check the box for the book you just purchased.

Google files: easy to overshare!

Do you want the whole world to see your shared Google files? It’s easy to make this mistake. You can avoid by only sharing with people who have Google accounts. Here’s how.

When viewing a Google file, on the top right is a Share button. Click on it to open the Share with others dialog. That is where you share your file.

In this dialog, if you use the Get shareable link feature, you made a link that anyone can use to see your file:

Share with others dialog with link sharing enabled

Anyone with that link can see this file!

Oh, you only emailed that link just to one trusted friend? What if his email is hacked? What if he shares the link, even accidentally? Suppose the link ends up where Google’s search engine can see it? The file will be in Google’s public search!

Fixing this is easy. In the Share with others dialog, click the Anyone with the link… dropdown, select OFF, then click Done.

Another way to over-share is when you add people. Let me be clear: it’s more secure to add people instead of sharing a view link. When you add people, the person you shared with gets a link to the document, but Google won’t allow viewing unless the person is signed in with the account you shared the link to. If the recipient shares the file’s link with someone else, that other person cannot view the document!

A catch: the people you share with must have Google accounts.

Watch this. It shows what happens when you share with someone without a Google account:

What happens when you share a Google file with someone who doesn’t have a Google account

Did you see this text: “Link sharing is ON. Anyone with the link can view” Don’t use that! If someone doesn’t have a Google account, then Google has no way to know if that person is who is viewing the file. Therefore, it sends the same kind of link mentioned above: it lets anyone view the file!

What does “Google account” mean? It is an account used to sign in to Google systems. The account name is the person’s email address. People with Gmail addresses already have a Google account. People with other email addresses may set up a Google account at https://accounts.google.com/SignUp.

How to avoid sending a view link: When you share to people who don’t have Google accounts, always select the Send an invitation option. With that, the recipient gets an invite to set up a Google account. Until that is done, the link won’t let the recipient view the file.

Samsung S7’s firmware-version eFuses



List of Sprint S7 firmware versions (source)











The phone still worked fine.




  • Bluegrass Cellular (LRA)
  • Nextech / C-Spire (ACG)
  • Sprint (cdma) (SPR)
  • Tracfone (TFN)
  • USA (TMK)
  • USA (USC)
  • USA (AT&T) (ATT)
  • USA (T-Mobile) (TMB)
  • USA (Verizon) (VZW)
  • Unknown (AIO)
  • Unknown (BST)
  • Unknown (XAA)
  • Unknown (XAS)
  • Virgin Mobile USA (VMU)

I-345, Bogeyman of Dallas’s New Urbanists

(This was jointly authored in April 2014 by Ed Woodson and me. It was originally posted at Candy’s Dirt, a Dallas-area blog focusing on real estate issues. It is still relevant.)

Patrick Kennedy wants to rip out downtown Dallas’s Interstate 345, and the D Magazine editorial board agrees with him. When we realized this, courtesy of D Magazine’s Front/Burner blog and its 17 posts on this in 2014, we thought “What is Interstate 345?” Upon answering that, our second thought was “That sounds like a bad idea.”

Nothing we’ve discovered since has changed our conclusion. What we have discovered, however, is that much of the evidence used by Mr. Kennedy, et al, is unhelpful and misleading, and Mr. Kennedy’s agenda is broader than we think.

What is I-345?

Interstate 345 is the elevated freeway on the east side of downtown between US 75 (North Central Expressway) to I-45. Really, it’s just a part of a continuous freeway from Galveston to the Oklahoma border.

There are no I-345 signs; this designation exists only on paper. It runs along Deep Ellum, the Arts District, and the Farmer’s Market. You use I-345 if you travel between US 75 and I-45 or between US 75 and I-30 east of downtown.

I-345 needs about $100 million in repairs, and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) intends on starting soon.

Why do some want to tear down I-345?

The short answer, as we understand it, is some think downtown’s highway loop (Woodall Rogers, I-345, I-30, and I-35E) is a “noose”, preventing residential and commercial development in downtown’s immediate vicinity. Under the theory, removing I-345 opens downtown’s east to development and removes a barricase. This type of high-density, mixed-use development would help Dallas become a “world class” city and create new tax revenue.

Also, the theory holds that I-345 is primarly used for through-traffic. Therefore, I-345’s teardown will minimally affect traffic as through traffic will exit affected highways before downtown and re-route to other roads: surface streets, Northwest Highway, I-635, George Bush Tollway, Ledbetter, and others. To the extent traffic elects to flow through city streets between US 75 and the the southern highways (I-30 and I-45), that will simply further economic growth in the area to be developed (i.e., busy streets = more customers).

While we have tried to honestly represent Mr. Kennedy’s arguments, please refer to his own site at www.anewdallas.com for his arguments in his own words.

The longer answer, which we think is more enlightening to what is actually going on, is that Mr. Kennedy and his fellow new urbanists don’t approve of how North Texans live their lives, and they see the I-345 teardown as a means for forcing people closer to a utopian urban-ideal lifestyle. While Kennedy pays lip service to the concept that we can have our cake and eat it too (i.e., we can have a new urban downtown Dallas without material impacts on everyone else), that is wrong. We also doubt Mr. Kennedy believes this himself; for new urbanists, inflicting traffic misery on everyone else is a feature, not a bug.

Dissecting the short answer

Looking at our version of the short answer, a few questions jump out. Will traffic impacts be minimal? Does Dallas need the teardown to be a “world class” city? Is there a “noose” around downtown preventing development? We’d answer those questions with, in order,  “no“, “that begs the question”, and “we don’t know”.

Traffic Impacts

The “A New Dallas” website cites five examples of freeway teardowns in the United States in support of the demolition of I-345, described below. The site claims that these demolitions occurred with minimal traffic impacts while triggering valuable development. Even if one assumes that the development benefits as described by Mr. Kennedy are accurate, none of the examples are remotely similar to the situation in Dallas.

The Embarcadero Freeway (San Francisco)

The figure below illustrates the status of the Embarcadero Freeway (highlighted in red) prior to the Loma Prieto earquake of 1989. The Embarcadero Freeway was intended as an extension of I-480 from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge (both highlighted in green). It was divisive from its inception and aborted mid-construction: the red dots represent the portion of the freeway that was never built.  Cars traveling on the freeway were diverted onto surface streets for about a mile, between the two segments of completed freeway.

At its peak, the Embarcadero only had a half of I-345’s daily vehicle count.

Mr. Kennedy is wrong to compare I-345 to an incomplete freeway with only a shadow of I-345’s traffic.

Perhaps of interest to local politicians, a public referendum to remove the Embarcadero Freeway was defeated prior to the earthquake, and after the Mayor championed its removal post-equathquake (without a referendum), he was promptly voted out of office.

Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco

Central Freeway (San Francisco)

The map below indicates the location of the Central Freeway (circled in red) in San Francisco. In case it’s not clear from the map, the portion of CA 101 extending north from the Central Freeway spur is not a traditional highway and is, instead, a surface road. When originally planned, the Central Freeway, like the Embarcadero Freeway, would have extended north and connected with the Embarcadero.

It was also controversial from its inception, aborted mid-construction, and removed following significant earthquake damage. Prior to demolition, the spur was a highway to nowhere, and its removal simply meant that cars entered surface streets less than a mile farther south than prior to demolition. Yet again, Mr. Kennedy is attempting to argue that the destruction of an incomplete, dead-end freeway somehow relates to his I-345 removal fantasy.

Central Freeway in San Francisco

Park East Freeway (Milwaukee)

We may have identified a trend. The map below shows the location of the Park East Freeway in Milwaukee. The part of the freeway that was demolished is in red. The part of the freeway in green however, was never built. For the third time, Mr. Kennedy is comparing the I-345 to an incomplete, “dangling” freeway that ended in surface streets.

Park East Freeway in Milwaukee


Harbor Drive (Portland)

Harbor Drive was actually completed prior to its demolition. Portland is not, however, a strong argument in favor of destroying highway “nooses” around downtown necks. The figure below is a map of Portland freeways. As the arrow points out, like downtown Dallas, downtown Portland is encircled by freeways

Downtown Portland, OR

The former position of Harbor Drive within Portland is illustrated below (highlighted in red).

Portland’s Harbor Drive

Harbor Drive bisected the downtown Portland loop and occupied prime river-front real estate. Furthermore, Harbor Drive was removed only after traffic levels declined thanks to the opening of the Fremont Bridge. Therefore, the removal of Harbor Drive followed a change that reduced its need, and its removal did not impact the major flow of traffic in the city by breaking up a direct connector between two heavily-used freeways. Yet again, this freeway is not remotely similar to I-345.

West Side Highway (New York City)

Though cited by Mr. Kennedy as the West Side Highway, it might be more accurate to describe the demolished highway as the “West Side Elevated Highway” since a new “West Side Highway” replaced the earlier, elevated version. The elevated highway, which was old and too poorly-designed to handle commercial traffic, was closed in 1973 following a partial collapse. It was replaced by a modern, urban highway that was completed in 2001. We do not know what this case study is intended to illustrate, as even the comparative traffic flow figures (before and after demolition) seem to have no value given the 28 year period between the “before” and “after” statistics.

Interstate 345 (Dallas)

The function and use of I-345 in Dallas are dramatically different from the case studies cited by Mr. Kennedy. The map below shows the major highways within the I-635 loop in Dallas (we apologize profusely for the limitations of our MS Paint skills):

Traffic Flows into Dallas’s I-345

In central Dallas, five “Northern” freeways feed into the downtown loop:I-35E, US 75, Texas 114, Texas 183, and the Dallas North Tollway (the blue arrows). In addition, six “Southern” freeways feed into the downtown loop: I-30 from the east, I-30 from the west, I-45, US 67, US 77, and US 175 (the red arrows).

Those two groups of freeways are connected by the two sides of the downtown loop (highlighted in green), I-345 on the east and I-35E on the west. Those two routes are choke points between Dallas’s northern and southern freeways, and the overall capacity of the highway system is limited by the capacity of these choke points. The fact that they are serving a vital function is supported by the large volume of traffic which flows throgh them. If I-345 were removed, any traffic which didn’t “disappear” or reroute to the outer loops (Loop 12, I-635, Bush Turnpike) or to surface streets would be forced through the Mixmaster (the intersection of I-30 and I-35E and nearby freeway segments).

For anyone who drives in Dallas, that is terrifying. The Mixmaster is already highly congested, causing peak hour backups on all of the freeways leading to downtown. Shifting even a portion of the traffic from I-345 to the Mixmaster will make things far worse. Note that this will impact not only through traffic, but also commuter traffic into and out of downtown. Even worse, part of the Mixmaster is about to undergo a three year reconstruction ( “Horseshoe” project), during which conditions will further deteriorate. Common sense says that even if you wanted to tear down I-345, Dallas should stage its construction projects so that the teardown occured after completion of the Mixmaster upgrades.

This situation, and the 200,000 cars travelling on I-345 each day per TxDOT’s 2012 traffic counts (or 160,000 per Mr. Kennedy’s optimistic but inaccurate figure), is vastly dissimilar to that found in Mr. Kennedy’s case studies. Quantitatively, even the Embarcadero Freeway, the largest cited by Mr. Kennedy, only experienced 100,000 cars per day of traffic. The qualitative differences are even more stark, and make us seriously question how anyone could honestly attempt to rely on such case studies in the first place. Mr. Kennedy seems like a smart man. Based on that, we can only assume he realizes this and just doesn’t care.

Dallas as a “world class” city





The “noose” around downtown



Considering the longer answer, and “New Urbanism”



Induced Demand


Where would the traffic go?








Lets all take a deep breath.

