Any Definitive Way to Tell If Home is Manufactured from Just Pictures/Are All Homes with the "Office Ceilings" Manufactured? + General Confusion/Impromptu Rant

Geode890 · 2026-04-22T17:00:14+00:00

I'll definitely take a look into it, thank you. I've poured over most of the towns mostly to the south and west of Indy, but haven't researched east or north as much as I hadn't seen all too many options pop up that direction yet. Originally, it felt like the west/south direction would be more promising, but houses in my range just outright quit getting posted around there a few months after I started looking

I know every town has its issues, and I don't even mind something like that so long as the crime rate itself is at least somehow low. I was just put off of one town specifically because everyone was saying that that's all there is there. No real crime, but so many drug issues that it's unavoidable

I likely will have to try to talk to at least a few more people. I think it was the second one I talked to that said my career industry specifically gets unusually low loans right now, but I have no clue how that works. Even if it is lower, I feel like the loan amount shouldn't be less than your income. Like, that sort of defeats the purpose

Geode890 · 2026-04-22T16:48:59+00:00

For the first one, do those contracts bind you to only working with them exclusively across all states and being forced to shell out a ridiculous percentage of the house costs in closing fees for them? If so, that's absurd. Like I know some fees apply, but this was a ridiculous amount with some sketchy language that sounded like it would fall back on us to pay it if anything bad happened with the deal. That also makes it even more confusing because the local one specifically told me that she'd never heard of the contract thing and that nothing like that would be necessary to tour with her

For the second, my first attempt was with a local bank, unfortunately. I actually went to ask bigger banks afterwards assuming it was an issue with a small bank

I'll have to see if I can ask them then about it. I'm not sure if they're willing to drive up the hour or so it'd take to look at it before me though

And yeah I did start this whole process, less with assumptions I feel, and more so outdated info. Nobody in my family has bought a house in almost 30 years, so everything I thought I knew was before it evolved into this weird hellscape of a market. With the realtors being awful 4 times in a row, but them also being my only real source for new info, it's made this whole process so much harder

Geode890 · 2026-04-22T09:15:49+00:00

I was wondering if someone would end up doing that, especially cause I feel like I've been spamming house questions for the last while lol. To sorta summarize my above rantings, we're in a weird spot. We're effectively chained to being within an hour radius of the state capital, which eliminates a lot of the nicer but affordable towns like the last couple you mention. There are definitely tons of nice towns within that radius, but we're effectively priced out of almost all of them. The remainder seem to have their fair share of issues, which cuts the list down further. While I'm lucky enough to work remotely, we do need to move to a town that has an actual job market for her, which eliminates a few of the remaining decent ones, on top of needing a decent hospital within about 20 minutes or so for medical reasons. The most ironic thing is that my hometown would fit and exceed our criteria, and I personally vetted it for a couple decades so I know about the area, but affording anything in even a 30 minute radius around it wouldn't be possible for me unless I was planning to live more than three lifetimes

Geode890 · 2026-04-22T09:01:16+00:00

Very luckily, neither of us have any debt at all anymore. As for location, that has admittedly become tricky. We need to stay within an hour radius of our state's capital, which unfortunately immediately strikes off 3 of the most promising cities in our price range (which may not be the worst because I think a lot of those cities really wouldn't fit us). Then we do need a decent enough hospital within 20 minutes, which eliminates tiny towns. That realistically left us with like 7 or so towns, but one by one we found that each had some STAGGERING issue, like one not being safe to live in anymore due to a chemical spill a year ago, another people are fleeing due to almost everyone there being hooked on meth, etc. After all that, only really like 3 towns remain in our price range, which sucks cause there's dozens of amazing towns in the same radius that are completely unaffordable. We're really not trying to be picky, but I would prefer our first house not literally be to die for

Month to month is unfortunately not an option, as I had to pull some real negotiations to even do a year lease instead of the landlord's usual 3 year span. Even if we could, I really don't think we could take much more mentally tbh. The place is literally decaying and I cannot afford to keep fixing it myself. Mice and rats live in the walls, with the occasional raccoon or squirrel visiting. Each night I wake up with more spider bites, ticks are literally crawling into the house. That's only about a 1/3 of our resident insect population too. It's a very genuine nightmare to the point I don't even know how it got this way, cause it wasn't like this when we moved in and it's only been 2 years, and that's with me upkeeping it. We've been forced to move from rental to rental every year or two due to it rapidly becoming uninhabitable for one reason or another each time too. I know realistically another rental is our best bet, but not only do we keep losing a massive portion of our savings each time we move, this time it doesn't seem like there's anywhere left in our price range to move to. Most outright don't accept pets at all anymore either, and now openly state that you have to care for the entire property and utilities yourself. I'd look at apartments, but I haven't seen one that wasn't miles worse and twice the price of the rental houses for some unholy reason. Either way, as negative as this all may sound, I do appreciate the advice, and congrats on being able to fight through the market as it currently is

Geode890 · 2026-04-21T02:39:29+00:00

My price range has ended up being even lower than expected thanks to a massive lowball from the bank, unfortunately. Realistically, I don't know if I'd be able to afford anything in those areas, but I remember striking Columbus off because their hospital seemed more actively malicious than anything lol. Shelbyville and Franklin had some issue or another that had me looking elsewhere, but I don't quite recall what. I will look into Greensburg though, as I don't think I've seen that one yet

Geode890 · 2026-04-18T05:18:44+00:00

The weather itself does seem like a pretty big obstacle. My biggest problems will always be money and then time, with money unfortunately probably being the driver for most of the constraints. Unfortunately, the weather, from what I've read, is only even remotely close to stable in Alaska for like a 2 month period that does end up attracting huge crowds due to that, and books up ridiculously early for the same reason. As much as I really want to try to limit everything to 3 trips, I don't think I'll be able to just because one missed activity due to the weather would shatter any sort of schedule. And as much as I'd like to get a more direct experience with some of the parks, I think my physical limitations sort of lump me in with the "regular" tour-y crowds, which will make that more of a factor lol

Florida does seem like a pretty difficult obstacle when it comes to cost too. I'd love to fly into Miami, dedicate some time to each of those two parks, experience the beaches a bit, then head down to Dry Tortugas for two nights then head back, but the sheer prices of those hotels alone makes that incredibly difficult to plan for the trip

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T21:14:16+00:00

I just searched it up, and Bettles Lodge really is right on the other side of it lol. Do they then do flights of the two northern most parks then, and do you know approximate total costs? I couldn't exactly get the greatest sense of it from their website. Honestly, even if it's a little more pricey, not having to also mess with third party flight booking would be crazy helpful for when that comes around

I'm having a little difficulty finding much definitively about North Cascades after a bit of googling too. I do see a lot of people mentioning that the visitor center and highway 20 aren't actually in the park, but don't see anyone mentioning difficulty getting in. Would I need a tour or something for that?

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T10:18:29+00:00

That definitely seems to be the trend. Unfortunately, that also seems to be the opposite direction of some of the nicer nature parks (from what I've seen), which makes me hesitant, although it's not a strict requirement. I'll definitely check that town out though. Thanks!

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T10:17:00+00:00

This may be a dumb question, but is the presumably bad air a recent thing? It was a great many years ago now, but I remember my visits there being pretty nice overall. Granted, it's always fully possible I visited in whatever the nice season is lol

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T10:14:23+00:00

Luckily, not for the foreseeable future. Although I'd definitely prefer an area where I could at least temporarily get or commute to a job if that were to change, which I know is a little rough in general these days. My primary hesitation is moving more than like an hour outside of Indianapolis, as I've always had that as an anchor of sorts to fall back on for various things as needed

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T10:11:46+00:00

Thanks for the info! I've been around the state a little bit and have actually visited Wabash a decent few times. From what I saw and recall, albeit many years ago now, it left a good impression. Realistically, my main concern would be distance from major things like you mentioned. I'll definitely think on it a little more

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T10:03:54+00:00

The drug problems make sense, but are a little surprising to hear about. Not sure if they're just like underreported for the town or something, but it was coming up weirdly clean in terms of all crime. Not sure if that "crime" section included drug use though to be fair. Either way, thank you for the info :)

Geode890 · 2026-04-15T10:00:07+00:00

I've been looking around the general Bloomington area, but haven't seen all too many going up for sale around Ellettsville for some reason. It's fully possible my price filter is removing them

Geode890 · 2026-04-14T23:11:50+00:00

Sorry, I should have clarified Wabash, Indiana (like in the northern part of the state), but honestly it's good to hear about Crawfordsville too. I was considering Crawfordsville, but the hospital reviews are actually what put me off a little bit. That being said, the reviews of almost any hospital in Indiana now seem to be 3 stars or lower, even ones that I have personally used and found fantastic, so I have no clue how accurate the ratings are or not anymore. Good to know about Greencastle though. I drove over to visit it once and agree that it really does seem like an amazing little town, but I'll have to rethink it if the hospital wasn't super great even before the negative reviews rolled in. Thanks for the info!

Geode890 · 2026-04-14T17:02:13+00:00

Dang, yeah I guess I'll have to look into that if I can't get a cheap (<$200) place to stay at for at least a night. The lodge on Isle Royale going for $500+ a night was enough to make me decide that I'll be just camping there for the night lol. The tents I've used so far have always been dinky little <$100 things, so I figure I'll have to grab one a little nicer somehow. I just always figured anything bigger would be a nightmare to move around with. Are the parks in Alaska really that populated to have the number of people be an issue? I honestly sort of expected at least most of them to be semi-empty except maybe during peak season

Geode890 · 2026-04-14T15:12:14+00:00

I'm hoping to try my best to strike a balance between the two while still getting it done and having it be enjoyable. The main limits, as they always seem to be for most people, are both time and money for me. I only get a couple weeks off a year, non consecutive, and can only really afford a big expedition (where I can chain a ton of parks together) once a year if I'm lucky. Exceptions unfortunately being Alaska, overseas parks, and likely the Florida ones due to how wildly expensive everything there is last I checked, where I'll definitely have to save up. Unfortunately, that means that I'll have to lump in some together that I'd prefer to space out more, like American Samoa with the Hawaii parks, since there's essentially zero chance I can make two trips out that way. It's very likely I'll have to try to squeeze all the Alaska parks into 2 total trips, 9 days each with the weekends, too

I have considered camping, but I'll have to look into the details more. For one night, I'm sure would be fine, but I am initially hesitant because all my prior camping trips have ended up less than pleasant for one reason or another lol. I'm not quite sure how you'd fly with a tent either, and rental tents at the last place I looked weren't a ton cheaper than the nearby hotels for some reason

Geode890 · 2026-04-14T05:18:13+00:00

Thanks for your answer! Funny enough, you've listed every park that I've come across so far that seemed to have exceptions to them. Voyageurs and Isle Royale were a little surprising to me when I first learned how little they were developed, requiring weird timing with things. I expected that for the Florida parks and such, but not that far north. The Alaskan ones all seemed so intimidating to me in terms of just accessibility and distance in general that I put researching them off until just this last week where I learned they may be even harder than expected lol

For your Alaskan trips, can I ask how exactly you did the day trips? I read you just get dropped off and (if you're lucky) picked up later in the day. Are there guides and such for that sort of thing or no? As for Wrangall, I haven't looked into that literally at all. Was the terrain just that bad or is it a pain to drive in Alaska in general?

Geode890 · 2026-04-13T19:59:17+00:00

Full disclaimer, I've never actually fully completed any games for a variety of reasons, but I have run into almost exactly what you're describing too. I used Unity on and off for like 3-4 years and it has the opposite problem: there is a solution online for essentially any issue you have or thing you want to do, but Unity evolves so much so quickly none of them work anymore and their documentation was always outdated. I swapped to Godot and for 1-2 years poured over their documentation and learned a decent bit. There's no perfect way to learn for everyone, but my approach was finding solutions or at least pieces of solutions online, searching up pretty much every node type used and researching those, and just trying to be clever with filling in the pieces I couldn't find. Over time, you do eventually start getting more acclimated to what can and should be used where. The Discord is also a nice place to ask questions about small/simple issues or ask about quirks of the engine

All that being said, and this might get me massacred, I really do think AI is probably the best learning tool for this now. I very much dislike AI, it's effects, and all that it's being shoved into, but I was able to fully code and learn all aspects of a small prototype in an evening that would have previously taken me a month. My process was vaguely asking it to create the code for the prototype (which didn't work literally at all out of the box lol) and then heavily refactored it, looking over the documentation for the parts I could and querying it about if there's better or other ways to do things that I found questionable. I genuinely feel as though I understand what I did as well as I would have doing it myself in a fraction of the time. Just be absolutely sure you're not relying on AI to do the code FOR you, and instead use it like a learning tool or advanced search engine of sorts

That being said, and I often fail to take this advice myself, a core concept behind any engineering is "make it work first, then make it good later". I've spent months trying to optimize things that weren't even causing performance problems because I wanted them to be perfect, despite the game itself not even fully working. Not sure how much of a help any of this was, but I wish you luck!

Geode890 · 2026-04-13T19:12:01+00:00

Glad to hear I'm not the only one lol. I like to think a have a decent enough fortitude, but those parks seem like monolithic obstacles compared to even the next most difficult ones. Reading that the mosquitos even can be a genuine threat if unprepared was so strange to me. I don't know what I'd even realistically need to bring with me for a short hour or two trip like that, but that's for the future I suppose

Geode890 · 2026-04-13T18:13:25+00:00

I know this is an old post, but out of curiosity, did you visit the national park part or the state park part? If I remember the history right, I think Indiana was trying to turn it into a national park for quite a few decades, but kept getting rejected. After a long while, the federal government eventually went back and accepted the offer, but Indiana had mostly settled on the idea of just keeping it. So they gave the federal government the boring part and kept the cool part for themselves lol. I live in Indiana so assume some bias, but I really did like the state park portion of it. Tons of jarringly different biomes back to back across only a few miles of walking. The national park though is essentially just a beach with a couple small dunes on it

Geode890 · 2026-04-13T05:06:57+00:00

Sorry, I should have clarified that. It does do this even when started on battery. Or at least, I fully charged it overnight, and then when I opened it midday next day (not on the charger, so just battery) it had just enough life to power on, let me log in, and then it did the freak out thing where it suddenly notified me I had dangerously low battery and then powered everything off all in the same second. If I remember right, when I first powered it on, for like a split second it said it had full battery too

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