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Notes from the build
Short, dated notes on web infrastructure, design, payments, support and building with AI. When a note outgrows itself, it becomes a case study.
I’ve been slowly transitioning clients from WordPress to Drupal; I’ve not expanded my skillset in quite a while.
I’m absolutely hyped to finish up the long-awaited overhaul for urchoices.net.
I used to really want to build games; during college, I realized how difficult building a game actually is and redirected to web development. Now, I’m building a game. Stuff really does come full-circle sometimes.
Ballot Cheat Sheet
Williamson County, Texas · November 3, 2026 General Election
Districts for this address: U.S. House 17, State Senate 24, State House 136, State Board of Education 5.
Democratic nominee in each race. Mark every race; there is no straight-ticket option.
1. Federal and state
Federal
| Race | Candidate |
|---|---|
| U.S. Senate | James Talarico |
| U.S. House, District 17 | Casey Shepard |
State
| Race | Candidate |
|---|---|
| Governor | Gina Hinojosa |
| Lieutenant Governor | Vikki Goodwin |
| Attorney General | Nathan Johnson |
| Comptroller | Sarah Eckhardt |
| Land Commissioner | Benjamin Flores |
| Agriculture Commissioner | Clayton Tucker |
| Railroad Commissioner | Jon Rosenthal |
| State Board of Education, District 5 | Allison Bush |
| State Senate, District 24 | Joe Paz Herrera |
| State Representative, District 136 | John H. Bucy III |
2. Courts
Texas Supreme Court
| Race | Candidate |
|---|---|
| Chief Justice | Maggie Ellis |
| Place 2 (unexpired term) | Chari Kelly |
| Place 7 | Kristen Hawkins |
| Place 8 | Gisela D. Triana |
Court of Criminal Appeals
| Race | Candidate |
|---|---|
| Place 3 | Okey Anyiam |
| Place 4 | Audra Riley |
| Place 9 | Holly Taylor |
Appeals and district courts
| Race | Candidate |
|---|---|
| 15th Court of Appeals, Chief Justice | Jerry Zimmerer |
| 15th Court of Appeals, Place 2 | Tom Baker |
| 15th Court of Appeals, Place 3 | Marc M. Meyer |
| 3rd Court of Appeals, Chief Justice | Darlene Byrne |
| 512th District Judge | Leslie Booker |
277th, 368th and 480th District Courts: Republican only.
3. County and nonpartisan
Williamson County
| Race | Candidate |
|---|---|
| County Judge | Heather Jefts |
| County Clerk | Erin Block |
| Tax Assessor-Collector (unexpired term) | Eric Hanke |
| Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 (if on your ballot) | KT Musselman |
Republican only
Treasurer, District Clerk, County Courts at Law 1 to 4, Commissioner Precinct 2, Justice of the Peace Precincts 2 to 4. Vote for that person or leave the race blank.
No party listed
- Appraisal District board, Places 1 to 3
- Round Rock ISD trustees, Places 3 to 6 (if you live in Round Rock ISD)
- ACC trustees, Places 1 to 3 (if you live in the ACC district)
Each allows "None," so skipping is fine.
At the polls
No phones while voting, so bring this sheet on paper. There is no straight-ticket option: mark each race.
4. Measures: your call
Austin propositions appear only if you live inside city limits. Round Rock ISD Prop A appears only if you live in that district.
| Measure | What it does | For | Against |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round Rock ISD, Prop A | Ratifies the $0.9484 tax rate; operating revenue up 3.09% ($12.3M). Tax increase. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop A | $260M parks bond. Tax increase. Council sent it 8 to 3; Watson, Velásquez and Duchen voted no. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop B | $35M library bond. Tax increase. A and B together: about $42 a year for a typical homeowner. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop C | Redistricting commission changes: independent of council, student members, a bigger applicant pool. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop D | Drops the weekly council meeting rule. Vela backs it; council already meets about every other week. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop E | Lets council set its own rules and agenda without passing an ordinance. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop F | Campaign contribution limits update every Jan 1 instead of at budget adoption. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop G | Citizen initiatives go only to even-year Novembers. Higher turnout, but some votes wait longer. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop H | Council, not the city manager, hires and fires the city attorney. Fuentes proposed it; a 2012 version failed 51 to 49. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop I | Charter-required outside audit, including before any tax-rate election. Opposed: Rep. Casar, six council members, AFSCME Local 1642. Backed: Save Austin Now. | [ ] | [ ] |
| Austin, Prop J | Fixes typos and removes language overridden by state law or court orders. | [ ] | [ ] |
Sources
FedEx, count your days.
This site runs on Astro 7. Most pages ship no JavaScript at all, and the page-to-page transitions are plain CSS.
Hourly billing at SERVERIZZ is the monthly price divided by 672. That's 28 days of hours, so no month ever bills more than the monthly price.
One rule for the billing ledger: you never edit money. A correction is a new row, and the database itself refuses anything else.
CREATE TRIGGER ledger_append_only
BEFORE UPDATE OR DELETE ON ledger_entries
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE FUNCTION reject_ledger_change();Before the relaunch: the old site split its links between two domains and quoted two different prices for the same plan. Saving the snapshot before it changes.
The ⌘K palette started in the SERVERIZZ portal prototype. It's on this site too: press it anywhere to jump to a page.
That's every note so far.