HOUSTON – Hello from the Xfinity Sports Desk and KPRC 2 Sports.
Here’s what’s happening this week on the sports scene for our teams and programs.
TEXANS
The Houston Texans are riding a two-game winning streak after their 41-25 Thanksgiving thumping of the Detroit Lions. This week, they prepare to face a division opponent -- the Indianapolis Colts next Sunday. Quarterback Deshaun Watson has been on a tear the last six games. 16 touchdowns over 1,700 passing yards, 71% completion percentage and the biggest stat? Zero turnovers!
The Texans look to build off of this momentum and the outstanding play of Watson with % games left in the season.
TEXAS A&M AGGIES
The Aggies got their revenge from last year’s blowout loss to LSU with a 20-7 win over the weekend. Running Back Isiah Spiller finished with 114 rushing yards and a touchdown. Head Coach Jimbo Fisher was pleased with his defense as they racked up three sacks. The Aggies are 6-1 on the season and are ranked No. 5 in the AP polls. The Aggies have a big matchup with the Auburn Tigers this Saturday.
TEXAS LONGHORNS
The Longhorns’ three-game winning streak came to an end when they lost to the Iowa State Cyclones 23-20. Head Coach Tom Herman and the Longhorns will look to bounce back this weekend as they take on Kansas State.
RICE OWLS FOOTBALL
The Rice Owls are anxious to get back on the field after their game against UTEP was canceled due to COVID-19 related issues. The Owls are scheduled to face Marshall this Saturday at 11 a.m.
UH COUGARS BASKETBALL
The No. 17 Cougars start the season 3-0 after a 64-53 win over #14 Texas Tech. Sophomore Guard Marcus Sasser led the way with 17 points and Junior Guard Quentin Grimes poured in 15 points. Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars look to remain undefeated when they take on South Carolina on Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.
Keep it locked into KPRC 2 Sports and Click2houston.com’s sports page for all of your local coverage. We’ll bring it to you from the Xfinity Sports Desk each night!
PLANO, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – For years, the Westridge Light Show was known as one of the best displays in Plano.
Its creator is now coming out of retirement in order to bring his neighbors some joy during the pandemic.
The inflatables, Christmas trees and 70,000 LED lights are synched with Christmas music on his very own radio station.
It’s a lot of work, but for Jim Beckham it’s worth it.
“In 1992, I was diagnosed with something and at that time, the doctor told me I had six months to live,” he said. “That would have put me dying right at Christmas.”
That year, he thought he’d do a little Christmas light display for his family to remember him by.
“I put up a little tomato cage and that was my Christmas and each year I’ve done a little bit more and it’s grown from a tomato cage to this because I have lived and I am doing great!” he said.
Jim Beckham sets up his inflatables and Christmas lights in Plano (CBS 11).
For years, his light shows at 2708 Westridge Drive brought joy to his Plano neighbors, but after his 2018 season, he decided to retire because the work was getting hard on his body.
However, given the pandemic, this year his neighbors asked if he wouldn’t mind bringing it back for one year.
He accepted.
“We never know what we have until there’s a chance it might be taken away and with the year we’ve had, a lot of people have had things taken away,” he said. “It’s needed, everybody needs a little joy, a little happiness right now. I wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t something for me in the end which is the feeling I get in my heart making other people happy!”
Boulder Fire-Rescue has stopped a gas leak near East Moorhead Circle and Tantra Drive in Boulder’s Table Mesa neighborhood after a construction company hit an unmarked gas line while working with machinery, according to Boulder Police and Fire spokesperson Dionne Waugh.
Repairs are underway, according to a tweet from Boulder Fire-Rescue’s Twitter account, but gas has been shut off for numerous homes in the area around Table Mesa, Tantra and South Loop drives and East and West Moorhead and Walden circles.
“What will take time tonight is for (Xcel Energy) to re-light every home’s pilot light,” Boulder Fire-Rescue stated in a tweet.
Waugh wasn’t certain how many homes had been affected or what person or company hit the gas line. However, she said all those affected should have received a reverse 911 notification.
A longtime audio engineer in the theater world, Ashley Turner was tired of the long hours and wanted to code and build websites instead. She started taking programming classes and went to local tech events to build her skills, but felt isolated as she tried to enter the industry.
“When I attended these events, I always noticed that there weren’t a lot of people of color, and especially women of color,” she said. “So I always had a desire to have a space where women of color could attend these workshops together and not feel so marginalized.”
While looking for more events, she stumbled across a group called Philly Tech Sistas.
The group was exactly what Turner had been looking for — an informal organization of women of color who went to conferences and events in the tech industry together. Started in 2014, Philly Tech Sistas was a casual group of women who felt as isolated as Turner.
Around a week after Turner joined, the initial organizer stepped down, so Turner took the opportunity to become the group’s leader. Since then, she and other volunteers have developed a series of workshops and classes to help local women of color learn the skills they need to enter the tech industry, expanding beyond the community to those who already have jobs in the sector.
After growing a base of volunteers, Philly Tech Sistas launched its first coding workshop in May 2019 and has continued to offer classes in website design, beginner programming skills, and more.
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Part of the reason Turner transitioned Philly Tech Sistas to a skills teaching organization was because she “noticed we still weren’t getting the jobs” in the tech industry.
A report released last April from the National Center for Women and Information Technology showed that while women comprise 26% of the computing workforce, African American women make up only 3%, Asian women 7%, and Hispanic women 2%. “I want people to think about that and how they can change it,” Turner said.
Turner sought to focus workshops not just on code, but on career “soft skills” as well. “I wanted to have leadership workshops, goal-setting workshops, or panel discussions around the skills you need to further your career or gain employment.”
While there are a growing number of similar workshops and programs for middle school students like Girls Who Code, Philly Tech Sistas aims to provide these resources to adults.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, all workshops cost $25, which Turner used to provide lunch and supplies to students. Now, with the workshops entirely online, workshops are free. And if a student doesn’t have access to a computer, Philly Tech Sistas has machines for students to borrow. “I didn’t want the women to have to worry about anything else but learning during the workshops,” Turner said.
Turner also wanted to use mentors as teaching assistants, who could help students one-on-one. She tries to ensure that all of the mentors and instructors are women of color. “Representation does matter,” Turner said. “You can’t be what you don’t see.”
Philly Tech Sistas is a completely volunteer-based program, even for Turner, who works full time as an academic technologist at Swarthmore College. Since offering the first workshop, Turner says membership, which consists of MeetUp attendees and a mailing list, has “gone through the roof,” increasing by nearly 20% to 1,500 during the pandemic. With growing interest, she wanted to find a way to provide more resources without increasing the cost.
Last year, she received a grant through Philly Startup Leaders. Jaclyn Allen, the head of programs and operations at Philly Startup, said the funding comes from a partnership with the city’s StartupPHL Grant Program, which split $75,000 among 20 entrepreneurs.
While Philly Tech Sistas is more an organization than a business, Philly Startup Leaders saw an innovative spirit in Turner. “She’s an entrepreneur at heart who’s building a community around technology and coding,” Allen said.
Philly Tech Sistas received its grant at the start of 2020, and Turner said almost all of it has gone to transitioning their workshops to an online format. She declined to say the amount of the grant. She’s also hosted webinars on career skills and diversity in the tech industry. “I want to keep the conversation going on how we can still advance in this field, during this time of COVID, by being out there socially online,” Turner said.
In the spring, one mentor, Kisha Williams, lost her job at a local tech company. She offered more of her time to the program, taking on an instructor role.
Williams thinks the confidence she gained from leading workshops is what ultimately led her to find a new job with education technology company Udemy in San Francisco. “The community at Philly Tech Sistas let me know that I’m not the only Black person in tech,” she said. “And it helped me realize that it was important for me to not only work with other Black people, but with people from all different walks of life.”
The Future of Work is produced with support from the William Penn Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.
Police say a witness stopped to help the driver of the overturned Tahoe but backed away when he saw several occupants from the other cars approach the SUV, yelling “you hit our car.” One of the subjects reached into his front waistband, implying a weapon.
It’s officially the holiday season! I don’t know about you but I absolutely love this time of year. Sipping hot chocolate, wrapped in a warm fuzzy blanket curled up on the couch, and watching Christmas movies.
One of my all-time favorite holiday films is Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCalister, a kid who is unexpectedly left home alone after his family rushes out of the house to try and catch the plane for their upcoming vacation.
Well, to get us into the holiday spirit, Catherine O’Hara, known for portraying Kevin’s mother in the film, posted a video to TikTok recreating one of the famous scenes from the movie!
The TikTok video shows O’Hara side by side with her character from the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The famous scene that she is reenacting is when O’Hara’s character realizes she lost her son for a second time, while taking their Christmas family vacation. Once the reality hits her, she screams and then quickly faints.
In case you’ve never seen the holiday classic, the official movie description for Home Alonereads:
When bratty 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) acts out the night before a family trip to Paris, his mother (Catherine O’Hara) makes him sleep in the attic. After the McCallisters mistakenly leave for the airport without Kevin, he awakens to an empty house and assumes his wish to have no family has come true. But his excitement sours when he realizes that two con men (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) plan to rob the McCallister residence, and that he alone must protect the family home.
Home Alone is now streaming on Disney+. If you aren’t yet signed up for the streaming service, you can get started here.
Do you love the Home Alone films? Are you excited to see O’Hara recreate the famous scene? Let us know in the comments below.
Florida Highway Patrol is reporting a fatal crash in Osceola County on Kenansville Road. Kenansville Road is shut down in both directions. The fire department on the scene is reporting a two-vehicle crash with one person pronounced dead.
One constant drives the supply chain, whether there’s a pandemic or simply bad weather: Businesses solve for risk in order to offer predictability to customers.
Because South Carolina Ports has a 25-year history working closely with advanced and automotive manufacturers, serving high-demand companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz Vans, it’s able to confidently pivot toward retail. SC Ports is well-versed on how to create, manage and grow a tight supply chain under the demands of the pandemic and peak retail season.
“SC Ports has consistently run efficient operations, enabling BMW to export 70% of our South Carolina-made vehicles to more than 125 countries around the world,” said Knudt Flor, president and CEO of BMW Manufacturing. “SC Ports has also found creative ways to move our vehicles to customers faster, including overnight rail service between Inland Port Greer and the Port of Charleston.”
In an interview with FreightWaves, Micah Mallace, SC Ports’ director of national accounts, offered three ways SC Ports provides this certainty through its infrastructure, visibility tech and customer service.
1. Build infrastructure for the next 30 years
Mallace said a lot of U.S. ports are running into capacity constraints, leading retailers to send cargo to ports with efficient operations and ample capacity, like SC Ports.
“There are macro-level factors that are compelling to big retailers and serve as wind in our sails, such as being in the fastest population growth region in the U.S.,” Mallace said. “Ultimately, retailers are solving for how they ensure they don’t stock out at their store and how they deliver to every doorstep within a day — within less than a day soon.”
Capacity is crucial for retailers, and SC Ports has invested more than $2 billion to enhance infrastructure to handle more cargo. In March, SC Ports will open the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal, marking the first container terminal to open in the U.S. since 2009. The Leatherman Terminal will offer more port capacity and big-ship capabilities in the booming Southeast market. The terminal received its first cargo-handling equipment recently with the arrival of five new ship-to-shore cranes with 169 feet of lift height, along with the first four of 25 hybrid rubber-tired gantry cranes.
SC Ports is also modernizing the Wando Welch Terminal and deepening Charleston Harbor to 52 feet by 2021, all of which will allow SC Ports to handle four 14,000-twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) vessels at the same time next year. In fact, several of these improvement projects are already leading larger container ships to call South Carolina ports. In September, the CMA CGM Brazil — the largest container ship to call the East Coast — stopped at SC Ports’ Wando Welch Terminal as its last U.S. port of call before heading back overseas.
In addition to port capacity, large-scale retail distribution requires an investment in land and square footage. In 2018, SC Ports purchased 1,000 industrial acres in nearby Ridgeville, South Carolina, as part of its retail distribution strategy.
SC Ports’ investment in infrastructure and available land attracted retail giant Walmart to announce in July its plan to build a $220 million, nearly 3 million-square-foot distribution center at the site near the Port of Charleston, which will create 1,000 jobs and support approximately 850 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in the region. Walmart’s long-term trust in SC Ports also means a projected 5% volume boost annually for the port when the distribution center is fully operational.
“SC Ports’ proven track record of handling high-demand supply chain needs for the automotive industry gives us full confidence in their ability to meet our retail distribution and e-commerce needs,” said Greg Smith, executive vice president of supply chain for Walmart.
2. Utilize data visibility to help retail customers plan ahead
Technology adoption among shippers isn’t consistent. While SC Ports can connect with some customers via EDI or API and send automated reports, other companies still want to be sent a spreadsheet and have someone in customer service walk them through its content and implications.
But regardless of method, the willingness to consistently provide and update data for customers can help them rectify bills, plan for warehouse labor and prepare trucking capacity and power. SC Ports has a dedicated customer service group that solves issues for retailers and shippers and answers these repeated questions: When is my container available? When can I send a truck to get it? When does the container leave the port and when does it come back empty?
“The questions we’re getting asked — it’s the same question for everybody — are on in-transit and postdelivery visibility challenges,” Mallace said. “We’re able to give them event notifications, real-time container visibility for existing shipments, actual issue resolution and after-delivery analysis. We then consult with the shipper to help them understand what the data suggests and how to improve.”
3. Remain nimble to act on all customer needs — especially during peak season
Service providers are always problem-solving for that one container, truck or widget. SC Ports assists with those customer concerns by providing reliable, predictable service.
“We lend certainty to concerns so that if something goes wrong, customers call us on the supply chain side. If they need one part out of a container to keep a manufacturing line running, we’ve had helicopters land on our terminal and we open the container and take one part out, put it on the helicopter and a helicopter flies to the plant. You just can’t do that in nonoperating ports,” said Mallace of SC Ports’ willingness to create customized solutions for clients.
Mallace said SC Ports partners with retailers wanting to open distribution centers in the Southeast by assisting with the unique challenges around economic development and site selection.
“We have gotten quite good at taking a lot of the uncertainty out of the site and facility’s economics, answering questions like: ‘Will the facility deliver in time for the next peak season? If not, how do we shorten the timeline?’ ‘What are my actual transportation economics going to be?’” Mallace said.
SC Ports’ acquisition of 1,000 acres of industrial land in Ridgeville, for example, required wetland management and infrastructure investment, including new roads, all of which is always a huge time constraint. But by taking care of those components, SC Ports can now offer the property to customers looking at large distribution centers in the Southeast market with a more solidified timeline, Mallace said. Walmart will be the first tenant of the Ridgeville Industrial Campus when it breaks ground on its nearly 3 million-square-foot distribution center in December.
As far as pairing peak retail season with pandemic-caused tightened capacity, Mallace remains confident with SC Ports’ diverse cargo base, ample capacity and efficiently run port terminals.
“Our peak season is less sharp than other ports because we have so much advanced manufacturing business, which remains stable throughout the year,” Mallace said. “So the retailers that do business in our port are not having to fight for capacity as hard as they are in other port markets.”
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Turkish research ship in port after Mediterranean survey - Atlanta Journal Constitution
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