doodlebugging

I haven't been hit with it yet. I won't be logging in just to surf subs though. That just isn't going to happen. Sounds like I will finally not be a redditor.

Well. This will be the end of reddit for me. I rarely log in when I surf those subs. If someone needs help and I know the answer then I will log in, otherwise I just bounce around. I'm not changing that. If a login is required on old reddit then I will finally be officially done with it.

Oh boy. I guess my time is coming too. Pretty funny. I've been cutting way back on my engagement across the board. Luckily I have real hobbies and can spend time doing productive things. Maybe.

I read the author's post and many of the comments and decided that I was finished with reddit, finally. I have always used old reddit to surf the subs and have never used new reddit.

I did my normal morning routine of checking 8-10 subs that still have interesting content and did not see any nag screen for logins at all. Everything worked on my end just as it always has worked. I read comments and post titles with no issues and no login prompts.

I wonder if the login nags only happen on mobile devices. I surf entirely from a desktop using Firefox or Librewolf and a couple of extensions. I never log in to reddit unless there is some issue that I can help with. I avoid most of the popular subs and focus on things that I have direct experience doing or using. If I do post I leave it up for a day or two and then edit it a bit like Yossarian-style censoring - death to all modifiers!

He already has precipitation, elevation, and distance from highways. I don't think I saw sunlight or tax rates.

I suspect you didn't do much digging into the content before posting since 3/5 of the things you mentioned are already there and easy to locate.

Precipitation - Select one of the properties to view. In the right sidebar the listing should appear. In that sidebar there is a heading "Water Security" so select that. The first item in that list is the expected annual precipitation.

Elevation - Select one of the properties to view. It will appear on the right sidebar. The main listing block includes the property elevation, in meters, and maximum relief in meters. Under the "Parcel Report" you can find the slope, probably an average value, in percent. Just below that information you find the nearest major road distance, in miles.

With those notes, it feels like there is room here for a units toggle to select metric or American. Mix and match just feels like I'm selecting wrenches while working on a late 90's vehicle. Use the one that fits best.

Property Taxes are mentioned in the "Diligence Documents" drop-down at the bottom of the list.

In a different comment I suggested they include sunlight data so that people could determine suitability for solar installs especially for rural sites that are not close to grid power.

Your project reminded me of this recent Texas Monthly article about nine-pin bowling alleys [0]. Your upgrades could help them draw in new customers.

[0]https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/ninepin-bowling-end...

I grew up in central Texas and bowling was a big family event. Dad was a frequent bowler, bowling in local leagues and travelling the pro-am circuit later. He debated going pro and ultimately, due to a job relocation, stopped bowling. Us kids were active in leagues for younger bowlers. We used to spend quite a bit of time at the bowling alley playing pinball or shooting pool (no video games back then). In those days, a bowling alley offered food and drinks so that you could take the whole family and spend day there without having to go anywhere else for anything. That may be the norm today too. I haven't bowled in about 6 years though.

Best of luck to you! I love bowling. It is a skills game that is easy to learn and requires discipline to master.

Keep up the good work!

There is a lot of truth here. Especially the part about capitalizing on the interest without ever producing a vehicle. This is something that I have considered when looking at Slate, Rivian, and other interesting vehicle concepts. Those two did end up with production vehicles. Others were a lot more vaporware.

It feels great and sad at the same time that automakers have lost touch with their customers and no longer produce vehicles that the average consumer would buy and use.

Ford, with the Bronco, took years to commit to resurrecting the nameplate. In the process, they gathered so much critical information from Bronco drivers and other 4WD enthusiasts that they were able to condense their configurations to match the options that buyers were requesting and to offer factory installs of and warranties for components that buyers usually had to buy from aftermarket sources. They did everything right and even though there are hiccups with the vehicles, some due to pandemic parts shortages, others due to similar quality issues, they have a bonafide hit. It is hard to go anywhere around me in NTexas without seeing multiple Broncos and Bronco Sports.

If this guy at REO is smart and committed to the process he will scour forums for configuration information for his vehicles so that he can select components that buyers prefer. He can work on styling once he hires someone with CAD experience.

Nice start to what can be a really useful tool. I did try some of the filters and I think there is a problem in your lookup database somewhere. I clicked on one of the listings in south Texas, Real County, and instead of the map showing the location of that property it took me to Uvalde, Texas which is quite a ways southeast of the property.

I saw similar things for a property in Joshua Tree, California that had no address, just a street name.

I would do as /u/ecommerceguy has suggested and at the very least add a toggle for State and County lines, and label roads and towns and other useful information.

As a feature that you could consider eventually adding for those who are interested in finding a rural property to land on, consider adding a toggle that can show the locations of the closest power and water access for a property using an labelled icon or other visual aid.

Sometimes the biggest challenge in determining whether you should purchase a property that you can live on is to find a place that is close enough to existing infrastructure that it doesn't cost more than the land value to gain access to water. Electricity is less important unless you are far enough north that your exposure limits your collection ability so that battery storage becomes a critical cost to consider.

With that in mind, adding info about solar suitability could be useful.

Here is a Google maps project that can help evaluate options for a property.[0]

[0]https://mapsplatform.google.com/maps-products/solar/

Water is the biggest challenge in most places. I see that you recommend pulling state wells logs for the properties. Perhaps a link to that resource would be useful. I have done water availability and quality work now for a couple of relatives in different states. There is a lot of variability in the data available and the quality of the data. Knowing which agency handles private and public well locations helps a lot. Knowing which agency monitors water quality locally also is important.

I know this is part of due diligence for an interested buyer. I think for your tool to maximize value to a buyer it should make it easy to find the bits of information that can steer the buyer to a conclusion.

Not the poster but I had to go check the website to see this. I believe it is in Spanish. It makes me pretty happy to realize that even though I have had little or no conversations with Spanish speakers for about 30 years I was able to understand the untranslated text. There is so much that clicked once I had the context through the words that I recognized. The rest of it began to make sense.

Thanks for that mental exercise.

I agree on both points. They are testing the waters and trying to get a foot in the door. Starting with a gasser only configuration gets them into production with enough interest from people who would like a smaller truck at a lower price point.

I don't think any reasonable person expects the price of the 2-door truck to be $21500 when it finally is produced. That price is guaranteed to rise between now and the delivery of the first vehicle in 2028, it it ever happens. For potential customers it is a signal that they are committed to delivering a quality vehicle at a low price point. If you read the privacy policy, the reservation agreement, and payment terms it is all laid out in plain english.

Once they get vehicles on the road and a dedicated owner base they can determine whether there is interest in a hybrid drivetrain model. I understand why they aren't offering it right out of the gate. I do expect that they would be willing to consider it in the future should they ever make the leap from marketing vaporware to manufacturing.

Thanks for reminding me that these guys exist.

I had to read a little since I had not checked on their progress in a while.

First, I like the backgrounds and experience levels of the key personnel in the company. Many are oil and gas industry veterans with a good mix of skills - drilling, deviated well design, fracking, downhole monitoring sensors, etc.

DAS deployed downhole as their paper describes should give excellent information about conditions near the boreholes as they pressurize and depressurize the formations through the enhanced fracture networks. Induced seismicity is a common side effect of fluid injection and anyone who has watched USGS earthquake data for California has likely identified the geothermal fields by their frequent seismicity. Reducing the levels of induced seismicity related to geothermal energy production will decrease the likelihood of formation damage due to accumulated stresses in the production field. It sounds like they are able to tie specific stress/relaxation events to pressurization events so that is a very useful tool.

A lot of the earthquakes in the Permian Basin area are related to fluid injection. A DAS network could possibly mitigate some of that so a technology transfer back to the O&G industry may benefit all of us.

I agree with their goal of expanding geothermal energy production as an integral part of the power generation grid since, like they say, it is completely renewable. It does take advantage of downhole conditions in order to produce the energy and there is an opportunity to utilize existing boreholes as geothermal generation sites after the oil and gas becomes uneconomical so it could give new life to old fields and preserve jobs in the area since there will already be a trained workforce locally.

Pretty interesting. I lost track of these guys and now I see that they IPO'd a couple months ago. I expect that their business and their competition will both be increasing over the next few years at least.

A bit like that. I don't see a new vehicle manufacturer spending the time or capital to develop drivetrain components when there are already trusted manufacturers with decades of experience and products on the shelf that already function perfectly together.

I expect this guy will be looking at reliability data for various components, popular aftermarket upgrades, etc and designing a drivetrain that already uses popular components known by the automotive community to be reliable. Otherwise he will have a hard time hitting the 500k mile target I think I saw on the site.

He needs a dependable I4 engine mated to a dependable 6-spd manual transmission, mated to a dependable transfer case that sends power to the wheels through dependable differentials. I bet one could pull data from off-roader forums and configure something in a couple of days for their marketers to build interest.

I agree. The last thing I want in a dumbed down vehicle is a function that is tied to a smart phone. I know that many people use CarPlay but I think the best way to deal with music, etc in a new vehicle would be for the manufacturer to include suitable slots, like DIN slots, where the buyer can add their own preferred system any time in the future when it becomes useful to them. Just keep a list of popular options on hand that are available in pre-order so that those who want it can have it on day one instead of making everyone have it.

Today it only exists in the imagination of the company CEO and a few trusted others, none of whom have figured out how to hire someone with automobile CAD experience to produce a mock-up that might increase interest for their proposed product.

Very true. This truck, if it ever exists in the promised form, ticks almost everyone's boxes. The one thing I would change would be the CarPlay offering. All I want in a vehicle is a DIN or double-DIN slot. I'll fill it with whatever I end up wanting. I don't need a radio or other entertainment device when I'm driving since that is the only time I really get to practice singing all the songs I thought I had learned over the years. I'm comfortable driving for hours singing to myself, inventing lyrics as I go or warbling my way through tunes I've mostly forgotten.

I agree though I kinda wish it was a hybrid. Maybe down the line that will happen. The price point is a valid point and it ticks all our boxes - 4WD, manual transmission, not huge. I've priced out components for one of my trucks and $21500 is not gonna buy all of the running gear. I expect that none of this truck's drivetrain will use custom parts and that all of the critical drivetrain parts will come from existing supply lines for simplicity and ease of hitting their "repair in your driveway" messaging.

The guy is probably gauging interest through reservations and prepping his lie sheet (marketing data) to present to existing supply chain providers to try to earn discounts on volume orders.

I hope it all works. We will likely reserve one or maybe two. Our existing small truck, a 4WD Ford Ranger with manual transmission, is long in the tooth and I'm tired of dicking around with it.

Boy how I wish it had used ultrasonic frequencies. Sadly enough though, I spent large parts of every day in front of a laptop connected to a transducer waiting for signals to appear in the noisy stream of data coming from the standpipe transducer. Every few seconds if your tool still functioned you would get the first bit of a signal that contained toolface orientation information and gamma ray data if you had a gamma ray sub. It was a binary stream of ones and zeroes where a 1 was a pressure increase and a zero was a decrease to background. You needed to be quick on the decode because the directional driller on the rig floor was using the real-time toolface orientation to help steer the drill bit to the target formation and on to TD (total depth).

As the days went by and the hole was progessively deeper it was inevitable that some part of the downhole BHA (bottom-hole assembly) would fail due to erosion from the drilling mud, erosion at the bit/formation interface, friction along the borehole wall, etc. The hope was always that your tool would function well enough until something else failed and necessitated a round trip to replace a critical component. The costs of the round trip were placed on the service company that had the failed equipment so even if your company supplied the MWD/LWD services and the directional drilling services (DD), if your tool failed the cost of the trip fell on your service and impacted your service quality assessment which affected your rig bonus calculation.

It was common for a DD with a failing mud motor to hang around the MWD shack or keep the MWD engineers on the phone, harassing the engineers to get them to admit that their tool is nearing the point where the toolface data was so low level that it was undecodable. If he could hang the trip on the MWD he would every time so the MWD engineers were incentivized to struggle through poor signal for as long as possible when they knew from the pressure data that the mud motor was about to crater or that the drill bit needed to be replaced.

Battery failures and erosion of the pulser valve components that resulted in signal amplitudes diminishing to the point where they were undetectable were the things you knew would happen and you just hoped that downhole conditions killed someone else's tool before yours inevitably failed.

Downhole tools used in MWD/LWD do not use ultrasonic frequencies. Drilling is a very noisy environment. The first tool that I used employed a downhole pulser with a surface transducer and operated at about 0.5-1 Hz. That's not ultrasonic. It was a pretty low frequency signal. Data transmission rates limit the volume of information that can be transmitted from the downhole tool to the surface where they are decoded.

Your tool has to set up a pressure wave in the mud column that is detectable miles away from the tool while the well is being drilled.

This is a good recent paper authored by an experienced drilling engineer about MWD/LWD drilling history and pulser designs and data rates that can be expected.

https://www.aade.org/application/files/1917/4604/2319/AADE-2...

How can UHC use AI in the same way? They're an insurance company. They're not administering the actual healthcare?

UHC, the HC stands for Health Care, does have a field operation that handles home health care evaluations for those who live in rural areas with minimal access to medical facilities. Those patients are visited regularly by field personnel, trained nurses, who evaluate their conditions and insure that they have access to appropriate treatments for their conditions. Part of the evaluation of appropriate treatments has recently been pushed off to an AI-based system which uses various inputs to determine eligibility for treatment options.

About 14% of Americans think AI is moving us towards a better world. About 17% are creationists. About 26% believe in Telekinesis.

0 people that I know are in all three. Pretty confident about that.

For the any two of three cases where [A] includes creationists and those favorable to AI; [B] includes creationists and those who believe in telekinesis; [C] includes those favorable to AI and who believe in telekinesis.

[A] 0 ; [B] 0 ; [C] 0

Considering people that I know who could be part of one of the three groups now is an interesting question. I am pretty sure that two relatives are creationists based on interactions over the years. I haven't ever heard anyone I know talking about telekinesis so I probably have to say that this could be a non-zero number. If it is a non-zero number then [B] could end up being non-zero. AI is universally hated or even feared by those that I know who are being forced to use it or whose employer is adopting AI tools in their workplace.

So based on my own recollections I have to say that there are only 2 people that I know who belong to one of the three groups you identified. Interestingly enough, the children of those two creationists are not religious as adults. I think they had all they could stand growing up in that environment and as soon as they went to college they 'rebelled', leaving the parents disappointed that the kids didn't want to tote all that baggage in their own lives.

Sample size is small though since I don't know many people.

I'm a person who will definitely not eat a banana that is past its prime. I completely understand the option to just throw it out since bananas are inexpensive and widely available.

I have a solution that we have instituted here at home if you would like to cut waste on bananas and other perishable fruits and vegetables. We bought a food dehydrator. I was initially skeptical about the utility of the device but after several years of ownership I find it is one of the most useful tools for anyone who cooks at home.

Bananas, even those that are well past the point where I won't eat them, are ridiculously delicious when sliced and dried. The flavor concentrates so that a single banana chip can be like the old Lays Potato Chip slogan - no one can eat just one.

This also works great for berries like blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, goji berries, kiwi fruit, apples, plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries, etc.

We buy them fresh or grow them here and before they reach the toss stage, we dry them for future use. Some of the things are also great frozen. I have several pounds of berries from this year's crop in the freezer now and quite a few available for adding to granolas that we make here at home.

We have made fruit leathers in the past using strawberries and the flavor is better than the store-bought products.

I grow and dry vegetables too. Some of them are also freezer items.

Good luck with the grocery bill.

The nurses in my family would agree with your assessment.

Indeed, increasing quality tends to increase costs and decrease profits so keeping costs aligned with their profit goals automatically degrades quality.

Slurping their way up to the C-suite.

With all of that in mind I have to wonder whether there is overlap between these response groups and if so, how much. Could be zero to 100% without more information.

Yes it is. Somehow that might appear to be incentive to improve quality of care but maybe their corporate culture is a bad fit for quality.

This problem with workplace AI interfering with nurses ability to manage healthcare obligations for their clients is not confined to Kaiser. UHC has also introduced the AI surveillance tools and are using it to do similar things.

That gas station is way out in the boonies on a long stretch of two-lane highway (at the time) that takes you cross-country into Grants Pass. It is one of those "last gas for 150 miles" type places. I should've just rolled on past but everyone else was filling up so I followed the crowd since it was my first time on that highway. Turns out I could've made it into the next station in Oregon since I was carrying a jerry-can strapped onto the back of the Bronco.

Thanks for your recollections correlating closely to what I remembered. I never swam in the GSL. We worked 7 days a week so no opportunity. I'm kinda glad now with your description.

I agree. They are easy to work with. Easy to reach online or over the phone. I'm glad we switched all those years ago.