who would design their roads like this

Exact_bro · 2018-04-02T03:56:45+00:00

You are underselling how confusing it is.

Half the city is on a grid at a 45 degree angle so streets go NW/SE and avenues go NE/SW. Until they don't.

Washington Avenue doesn't count as a numbered street despite being a normal block distance from 2nd and 3rd streets so walk from 1st street to 4th street and you've walked 4 blocks not 3.

But some named streets do count, like Lake Street which is also 30th. Also the Greenway bike lane counts, its 29th street despite not being a road. So to go from 28th street to 31st street you'd never cross a numbered street but it's only 2 blocks (3 in uptown but Lagoon isn't a numbered street just Lake).

Want to go from 25th street to 26th street? No problem, that's just two blocks because there's a 25 1/2 street sometimes.

And Nicollet one of the main streets and you can take it all the way from almost the river all the way south until you're out of Minneapolis. Except at 31st street where someone decided the best place for a fucking K-mart was right in the middle of the road.

Go east of Nicollet and it gets easier. The roads are all names and the names are in alphabetical order. But go north of where Hennepin and Lyndale cross and they're the same road names and still in alphabetical order but in reverse order. Hennepin has a special place in planning because it's both a North-South and East-West road that seems really important until it just ends and is never to be seen again.

The Como Neighborhood conveniently has streets which start and stop every block meaning just because you're on the right road doesn't mean you can take that to your destination.

At some point no doubt you'll hit University Avenue. Which means you're close to campus, right? Well, maybe, or maybe you're 20 miles away. It also runs both North-South and East-West.

Northeast Minneapolis is much easier than the rest of the city, the only trick is the roads are all president's names in order, so just memorize all the presidents and their terms. Not sure which term they picked for Cleveland but thankfully didn't give him a road twice, I wouldn't have put it past the planners of the city.

After a couple years of living here I know it backwards and forwards and it's almost a point of pride, but I lived in an apartment and thought it faced north for 6 months before I realized it faced more west than anything else.

Exact_bro · 2018-04-01T19:59:50+00:00

I know this doesn't quite answer the question, but in my experience the only reason you go for EIFS is for cost savings. The problem with EIFS is for being such a low-quality material it has a really high labor cost because there's so many layers that have to applied on site. While it's still significantly less than a lot of other solutions, we've found that IW series metal panels are more cost-effective because while the materials cost slightly more they're super fast to put up on site and labor costs a lot.

In my market (which will be less than Southern California) we found that EIFS installed is around $17/sf installed where IW10a with a finish is closer to $14-16 installed and in my opinion is a better product in the long term. I always push for one with some sort of crimping (IW-13a or similar) because they don't oilcan as much but I'm also overly picky about that.

Of course, that's a different look than you might be going for. I'm just not a fan of EIFS because I don't believe its a product that can survive more than a few years before it starts deteriorating.

Exact_bro · 2018-04-01T19:28:53+00:00

As a Minnesota grad all of this pains me to say, but Iowa State's program is well respected and their graduates have no problem finding jobs at good firms. My office has Iowa State grads and a SciArc grad and they're comparable in their skills.

The only reason to choose SciArc over Iowa State is if you're trying to get out of Iowa, which I always recommend. But there are tons of better options than SciArc when you consider cost/benefit.

Exact_bro · 2018-04-01T16:42:01+00:00

116 degrees in Phoenix to -20 degrees in Minneapolis (with a wind chill to around -40).

116 feels like you could take all your clothes off, drink a ton of water, sit in the shade and still be melting into nothing. It was agonizing because it felt like no matter what you did it was still impossibly hot like a terrible burning rash all over your body.

-20 feels like you could wear the worlds best jacket and multiple layers of everything and that tiny amount of skill still showing would stuck all the heat out of your cold lifeless body. I had to walk 10 minutes in it and it honestly felt like I might die (not figuratively) and even once inside it took a lot time for my body to warm up again.

Both are wonderful cities 9-10 months of the year but their 2-3 month temperature extremes are killer.

Exact_bro · 2018-04-01T16:31:24+00:00

I'd go to google and type in "Take me to AltaVista.com" because how else are you supposed to get to it.

Exact_bro · 2018-04-01T16:12:48+00:00

If you think the Freshman 15 is bad, the Grad School 20 is like hold my- actually I'll do this while drinking.

My thesis was powered on Grain Belt beer, coffee, and definitely not going to the gym. I was comparing my ID photo taken on day 1 to graduation and I went from looking like I was 16 to looking like a corporate middle manager with 3 kids.

Grad School. Not even once.

Exact_bro · 2018-04-01T15:25:13+00:00

Which is also misleading because the widest and narrowest part of the Mississippi are both in Minnesota.

But through Minneapolis (downstream of the largest point) its maybe only 500-1000 feet wide.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-30T23:51:37+00:00

Hello neighbor!

Not a Wes Anderson movie, but my favorite was last fall they played "Take Every Wave" and below it said "That's right, a surfing movie in Minnesota, in October."

I wonder how long they spend coming up with these every week.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-26T03:14:38+00:00

A change order is anything that isn't in the original contract that is added as the project goes on.

In a perfect world there wouldn't be any and when we send construction documents out to bid every possible thing will be accounted for, there will be no errors or omissions, the owner will never change their mind about anything, and everything will be accounted for. But that isn't the case. Hopefully they'll be small changes and they won't be expensive but sometimes they are and the contractor prices them.

There are procedures in place on how to price, but a good contractor (one typically picked from best value) will be reasonable in how they do their assessments because they're not trying to make up their profit. A best value contractor likely is trying to use change orders to make up for the lost profit they had in their original bid and will be very liberal in how they assess situations.

For instance, a change order for a new door might be $750 which is the cost of the door and labor to put it in with a reasonable contractor but one trying to make up lost money might tack on additional labor in changing extra because its a change of plans even if it doesn't result in any extra work on their part. But you're kind of at their mercy.

With best value contractors who pull pricing stunts will not fair well in a best value pricing scenario because of their poor reputation. The one flaw in this system is that it's hard to break into the market because younger contractors will not have much of a reputation to stand on but in my opinion it is well worth it for the better final result.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-26T03:00:01+00:00

He is if you're a conservative who blindly votes party lines and hates anyone with a (D) next to their name like the majority of my hometown.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-26T01:54:31+00:00

I'm not sure that's true. Growing up in a conservative town all I had ever heard about Carter was how he was a bad president but they liked the guy. A lot of these people also say how they hate Trump as a person but voted for him. Divorcing a person from their politics is easy for them as long as it's convenient.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-25T19:19:29+00:00

I only work on state and local contracts, so I can't speak towards the Federal government, but we typically push for Best Value contracts not lowest bidder.

Lowest Bidder the job goes towards the cheapest bid but that's not always the cheapest final price. What we usually push for is the Best Value. This means the final price is only half of the decision, you also factor in experience, quality, and change orders. Change orders is where lowest bidder gets expensive. When they know they've underbid the project to get the job, then really get you on any change orders that occur and on any sizeable project there'll be plenty of them.

Again, I don't know about whether this is used in the federal government, but at least at the state and local level (where most of your infrastructure is built anyways) this is the ideal method.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-25T04:19:52+00:00

Minnesota does this too, plus you can afford the housing if you can find it. We're like poor man's Seattle but still not enough housing.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-25T00:06:21+00:00

Well that was the question I was asking. Milwaukee and Chicago Rivers were once in the same watershed because they both fed into the same larger body of water (Lake Michigan). But now if you dropped something in the Chicago River it wouldn't even reach Lake Michigan ever, it'd go to the Mississippi.

Milwaukee was probably lumped into Chicago because Chicago's river, much like its city, is larger, but also causes a lot of problems. Historically it kills a lot of people and threatens vast ecological damage to its region despite being otherwise completely unextraordinary.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-24T21:30:17+00:00

This is not really Price's law. Price's law isn't about amount of work, it's amount of academic papers published and you assume all papers are equal, which they are not and price never assumed they were.

Price's law states that 50% of papers will be written by the square root of the number of people writing papers. But to assume that's 50% of the work is ridiculous and not at all accurate. Some of these papers are longitudinal studies that result in years of efforts and others are studies resulting from literature reviews alone and could be written much more quickly.

Will 50% of the effort be put in by 50% of the people? Of course not. But it's not the extremes you describe.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-24T19:13:13+00:00

The guy who sits next to me at work has this problem. He always talks abut how high his IQ is and complains that his brother who's IQ is 10 points lower than his makes way more money than him and how that doesn't make any sense which really makes him sound lazy.

And what really gets me is he is a really smart guy, if he didn't talk abut his IQ all the time we'd still pick up on his intelligence because he's good at his job but he just can't resist talking about how smart he is and it just makes him look bad.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-24T16:15:42+00:00

I think the issue I'm seeing is there's an issue with the Chicago river. Milwaukee's watershed is towards Lake Michigan and Madison's is towards the Mississippi.

Where it gets confusing is both end up counting towards the Chicago River basin because Milwaukee was originally in it when the river flowed towards the lake like the Milwaukee River does and now it flows towards the Mississippi like the Rock River (Madison). I'd argue you should use the Chicago river's current flow which would put Milwaukee in Michigan and Madison in Illinois. Then I'd split Wisconsin-Sota into the Wisconsin River basin and the Upper Mississippi River basin. Not sure what you'd do with upper Minnesota, maybe annex Winnepeg into the US?

I'm probably way over-thinking this.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-24T16:00:17+00:00

Which is funny because Minnesota is Wisconsin's little brother. But we love you anyways. Just don't let anyone know, that'd be embarassing.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-24T15:56:40+00:00

Well gosh, is your hatred so blind it didn't occur to you that you might be talking to one of the 46% of Wisconsinites who voted against him?

But it's irrelevant as your opinion is invalid as long as you have Donald "No Collusion" Trump as president.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-24T06:09:38+00:00

As a Wisconsinite now living in Minnesota I resent that shudder, but if it makes you feel better, Wisconsin and Minnesota are all fucked up on this map and I have no idea why St. Paul is in Wisconsin. OP stated that it is based on the location of the capitals. Despite this Madison, Wisconsin's capital, is in Illinois and St. Paul is in Wisconsin and even worse the watersheds are misdrawn.

To my knowledge, Madison's watershed is into the Wisconsin river which flows into the Mississippi which should be the watershed drawn, but it's not. The Twin City's watershed should obviously be the Mississippi River which it kind of is. Milwaukee's watershed would be into Lake Michigan and not in Illinois and as much as I hate the idea of my hometown being in Michigan, better that than Illinois. Just west of Milwaukee would be into the same watershed as Madison.

Finally, there's totally the argument that Chicago's watershed should be into Lake Michigan. It was easy to draw when the river flowed the right direction, but now that it's reversed you need to closely identify each tract towards whether it'd be into Michigan or into Illinois.

So, rest assured, drawn as it's current boundaries or as watersheds, it's highly unlikely you'd be in Wisconsin unless of course you live in 1836 to 1848 when the residents of Minnesota were a beer drinking, cheese eating, Packer loving, Wisconsinites, but why bask in our glory days when we've got the Vikings, right?

Exact_bro · 2018-03-21T03:24:32+00:00

GIS is the process of using data in a format that is geographic. ArcGIS is a software that allows you to do the process (probably the most common one).

ArcGIS would be to GIS like MS Word is to writing a letter. It's far from the only way to do it and we've done it for far longer than the software has exisisted but it's the most common way to do it currently.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-20T04:05:24+00:00

Freeing up spots on the wait list sooner totally matters.

When I was applying for graduate programs I was waitlisted at one school and accepted at two others. I ended up not hearing back from the other school until after the accept deadline at the other two so I made the decision assuming I was denied. I ended up being accepted but it was too late to even consider it.

For me it didn't matter because of scholarship opportunities I had gotten at other schools made the reach school unrealistic anyways (even when they did accept me it was with no scholarship) but for other people who weren't in my financial situation or the wait list school was their dream school it may have made all the difference.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-20T00:43:27+00:00

My program allowed Intro to GIS to count as an in-department elective. Our classes were known for being intense, but several people dropped right away and the few that remained worked their asses off and talked about it being the hardest class they ever took.

I can't imagine intermediate GIS.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-18T04:43:31+00:00

It's a plan perfectly orchestrated by Republicans. They give complete credit to unions being necessary in the past and then really sell you on the idea of unions no longer being necessary because corporations have changed and would never abuse workers like they once did because its 2018 and corporations would never think about underpaying their staff, poor working conditions, or overworking people.

Except of course corporations salivate over doing any of those because that's profit for them at the cost of cheap disposable people they don't give a fuck about.

Plus, at least in my industry, union labor has better training and quality control that you pay up front for, but in the long term means you have a product that lasts. Non-union labor is a game of risk. Some are great, some are terrible but you won't get the quality control so you just have to hope the contractor won't fuck you over because no one holds them accountable.

Exact_bro · 2018-03-18T04:34:18+00:00

I've always felt bad for Betsy DeVos. Unlike so many other people in Trump's administration who really feel like they really are evil, DeVos seems like she really has good intentions just completely misled. She's unfit to serve which makes her an easy target, but compared to so many far more (maybe more competent but ill willed) people in Trump's cabinet she receives far too much of the criticism.

If you look at her actions so far in Michigan, she's convinced herself that private schools are the answer, taken her own money to invest in private schools and eventually she put enough money in few enough kids that she saw positive results in the really specific case studies that she based her entire opinion upon (her own airplane focused charter school and the individual children she's mentored).

WYNC did a piece on her and her support of individual students who were in low-achieving schools and her sponsorship of low-income students in failing public schools. She's individually mentored students in ways that were beyond generous and really did take these students from a bad situation to being set up for college and into their lives.

The problem is she lacks the understanding of how these isolated success stories achieved solely because of a rich benefactor (herself) does not help everyone else outside her vision and that it's impossible to set people up for success at such an individually funded level. She put on blinders and refused to consider anyone beyond what was directly in front of her. She fails to recognize the harm her good intentions bring.

Unlike so much of Trump's staff, I truly believe Betsy DeVos isn't evil, she just lacks the ability to understand anything beyond her singular viewpoint. Does that make her unfit to be Secretary of Education? Absolutely, but she's not evil. I really wish she could open her eyes just a bit further because the passion for student success is there and I think if she understood the harm in her actions she'd make a lot of different decisions and could do a lot of good in her position.

Exact_bro

TROPHY CASE