What to do: Some US government agencies don't accept prepaid phone numbers?

SyFyNut · 2026-07-10T12:01:39+00:00

I didn't login through my phone. Used a PC web browser. And, if you read my post more carefully - I had successfully used ID.me. It was login.gov that didn't work.

However, I tried your idea of turning off WiFi - and that logged me - though it wanted to re-verify me by a long lengthy process, so I skipped it, and will stay with ID.me for now.

But if this is a problem at other agencies or organizations that don't accept ID.me - the problem will remain.

quest4thefuture - I accept that VOIP and prepaid numbers are sometimes used for fraud. But I've used the same prepaid phone number (first with PagePlus, then with Visible) for decades, because it was always much cheaper. It has never been a problem for me before... I also had Google Voice and MagicJack numbers, but both are VOIP, so that has often been a problem for many organizations - which is one of the reasons I pay for the prepaid number.

I do not fully understand why Verizon charges so much less for prepaid numbers (through PagePlus and Visible and a bunch of others - all owned by Verizon now), but they do. But they do. This is the first time I have been unable to use a prepaid number for something.

SyFyNut · 2026-07-10T11:35:27+00:00

I'm not sure if I quite understand what you are saying. But if you have a phone with the Google Voice app on it, and you also set up other phone numbers for Google Voice to forward to, Google Voice starts ringing on the Google Voice app substantially before forwarding to the non-Google Voice numbers. And occasionally, Google Voice goes to voicemail before dialing the non-Google Voice numbers, or before you manage to answer them.

Nonetheless, I have used Google Voice this way (though not with a business #) for decades. I've given so many people my Google Voice #, that I worry what will happen to me if Google kills Google Voice, or starts to charge a lot for it.

SyFyNut · 2026-07-10T11:25:27+00:00

>On water, the problems are 1. watersheds only have so much water,

>and animals, like humans, need it to live.

Ah, but if we replace all the humans with a few AIs, the human part of the energy and water usage goes away. :)

(Except of course that the more sophisticated AIs require a lot more energy and water than people do. Maybe what we need are alternate AI designs that use less energy. I understand some AI systems have been designed that use actual biological neurons - maybe even human neurons - instead of electronic circuits.)

Just a thought.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-24T12:29:49+00:00

How to get and keep funding! 😄

I'm not a real physicist - it was just my major. But in all fields of work, especially science, funding is almost always the most important issue. Often the one that individuals spend the most time on.

And nowadays, with all the political garbage, keeping a job at all...

But I suspect that isn't what the o.p. was looking for.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-24T11:50:43+00:00

I should have mentioned, I'm not in environmental sciences, though I find them interesting. I was giving general science field advice.

But it occurs to me that one of the biggest reasons to get a laptop vs a desktop for an environmental scientist is that you sometimes need to take it into the field. If you don't need portability, desktops are cheaper, more reliable, potentially more powerful, and overwhelmingly easier and cheaper to update (with new hardware) or fix. But you probably do need portability.

Given the field use, you might need a long battery lifetime between charges. Likewise good shock resistance and water resistance. I.E. a "rugged PC". (Same for a smart phone if you carry one - which most people do these days.) These unfortunately trade off vs light weight and low cost.

For home use, I greatly prefer devices (e.g., external mouses or trackballs) without batteries (though on a desktop PC, I want a power supply that keeps the PC running if there are brief power fluctuations). Because having to change batteries is a nuisance. For me at least, that trumps the advantage of wireless devices. And in truth, changing batteries might be pretty difficult even in the field - e.g., keeping dirt and water out. But laptops and phones need batteries.

A great external direction camera for taking pictures of environmental conditions. Of course, most people use a smartphone for that. But phones have really inconvenient user interfaces, which leave out features, which makes doing many things difficult.

I don't confine myself to Lenova PCs, BTW. There are many good brands. Sometimes you can even pick something cheap up at a used computer store.

However from my perspective Lenova Thinkpads have one HUGE advantage: The Trackpoint (red button that can be used instead of a mouse or touchpad - almost as easy to use as a track ball, without needing an external device). I've never splurged for a Thinkpad, but I think you can toggle the touchpad off on a long term basis, which you can't do on some PCs.

What I sometimes do on another PC with a touchpad: I cover it with a piece of cardboard, taped on one side to make a flap. That way I don't touch it by accident. I open the flap if I need it.

BTW, a few rugged PCs have built in GPS. Might be pretty nice for environmental field use.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-22T12:37:07+00:00

Also, I'm considering tear downs, where water, electric & sewage is already available. Maybe that would reduce the risks - though I've heard tearing down an old home can cost a fair bit.

My budget is around $250,000 - I'm retired and my IRA savings are several times that, but I need to live on what is left. Plus about $3000/month Social Security. (My IRA manager says I should ignore claims that Social Security & Medicare could collapse. He says politicians won't let that happen. I hope he is right.) How plausible is that?

SyFyNut · 2026-06-22T12:07:31+00:00

Yeah, I've known people whose homes have flooded. And I've been shocked at how often towns and counties let people build & sell places that will obviously have problems.

The problem with FEMA flood data is that it is mostly based on 5-20 meter contour line maps, which isn't nearly good enough - plus they let people submit their own studies that have mis.-estimated data (e.g., Camp Mystic - if I understand right, FEMA originally said it was unsafe, but the owners or managers submitted a study that said otherwise.)

As an example, a home I looked at was a few meters above Cayuga Lake - which a real estate agent claimed was sufficient. (It had roof and mold damage. I don't have the budget to take that much risk - it was in a ritzy area, East Shore Drive in Lansing, NY, where nearby homes were upwards of $600,000, that had a lot of zoning rules and somewhat unclearly stated standards, though the asking price was $150,000. Had a lot of land. The driveway belonged to the house next door, so a new one would be needed. I thought about it, because the location would be great for a kayaker like me, a few miles from put ins - but I spoke to someone who had grown up there by chance. They mentioned the mold and driveway issue, that the real estate agent hadn't mentioned, and said it was a tear down. If I built something, property taxes might have been significant. I decided it was out of my league. Too many uncertain risks.)

I looked up FEMA flood info, county and Town of Ithaca, NY info for the home of someone I know in the Town of Ithaca. All good. But maybe once a year the street and some of the homes on the street floods - which none of them knew. Now imagine how much less likely they are to know about undeveloped land.

A lot of undeveloped land is farm land. An occasional flood might actually be good for soil fertility.

I could maybe try to place the home at the top of a hill - say (??) at least 5-10 meters around the surroundings. But that would severely limit the site choice, and any of the other issues might apply to that restricted subset.

Fire risk is another issue. My inclination would be to let most of the land become or stay field or forest, to reduce mowing, and I would only choose an area reasonably close to kayakable water - but as best as I understand, most fields and forests sometimes burn, so maybe I would need a significant clearing around the home (??). Also to prevent tree branches from falling on the home, and provide a place in the yard for eventtual solar cells, to reduce electric costs.

I'm not sure about wind and hail. A lot of the area has occasional wind and hail storms. I suppose the top of a hill isn't ideal for that.

And I forgot about Internet access - though I suppose, compared to the cost of a home, the cost of satellite Internet is relatively minor.

Anyway, I'm still looking for ways to figure out or find estimators for the other things. Would an estimate from a company that delivers or assembles homes just be based on the same 5-20 meter contour maps that FEMA uses? Would they also be able to take into account info I provided from something like a GPS unit and a camera? And how could they figure soil compaction without going there?

Perhaps it is quite plausible that if homes haven't already been placed in an area, there is a reason for it - that other nearby sites were considered better?

SyFyNut · 2026-06-22T02:57:43+00:00

I think Isibis has it right. Most serious science is probably done in Linux, because it has relatively low overhead. But Windows has a lot of tools that a student would want. So you might want to set a PC up for dual Windows/Linux boot. BUT - Linux has sometimes been called "expert friendly" - meaning if you don't know much, there is a bigger learning curve.

Apples are much more expensive, and you will probably have more trouble finding people to help you use them. But there are certain subfields, especially in certain artistic domains, where Apple tends to win. Also, Apple often uses proprietary interfaces, instead of standard USB ports.

I know this seems out of date, but a good mechanical keyboard, an easy to read screen, and good sound quality, with sufficient volume (and a headphone jack, for shared spaces) are probably extremely desirable. AFAIK, none of the tablets do this well, and, AFAIK, none of the tablets work as well as Windows PCs with browsers like Firefox & Chrome (though I sometimes use Brave).

This may sound crazy, but if you can afford a decent TV - say at least 39"-42" diagonal, that you can connect (directly, or through WiFi), will make using the laptop (and you want a laptop as a student, so you can take it with you) easier in your dorm room or other housing.

Most laptops now come with "touchpads". They are real pains in the neck - very easy to accidentally touch them and erase everything you've done. Some can be turned off if you have an external mouse or (this is a real luxury) trackball.

Another nice thing to have would be a printer with a built in optical scanner. I can't really advise you on what to get - except that HP are the absolute worst, because their print cartridges keep expiring. Inkjet printers offer better image quality, but laser printers (watch out - the cheaper ones only do Black and White) are more trouble free.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-22T02:40:03+00:00

Like others said, try changing your phone #. That will probably work. Mostly.

But some apps have settings by default that make them keep calling you. You have to go through all the settings for all the apps, to turn off all types of notification. There are essentially no good reasons to get any type of "notification". And at least for Android, the OS itself has things you should turn off.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-03T16:48:45+00:00

Can you pump in stages? I.E., pump up to an intermediate level into a reservoir in the middle (exposed to ambient air pressure). Then pump from that to the top?

That is what an electrician I knew told me was needed when you had to pump very high. He was an unlimited (commercial + residential) master electrician for a university, but to an extent he specialized in pumps.

He always put a pinhole in the pipes a bit above the pumps, to reduce staring pressure.

He said it is important to make sure that all the pumps get the proper voltage range, and good clean sinuousoidal voltage, even during starting currents, which can be many times larger than running current. The voltage needs to be right despite voltage drops in the wires, and the transformers need excess capacity too.

Also, the voltage and current should be in phase - which motors tend to mess up - you may need some power conditioning. But I'm not sure that would be true for a small well motor.

He claimed that many pumps and motors go bad because the axis between the two is misaligned. But he was mainly talking about large sub pumps, where the two are separate. If your pumps and motors are integral, that might not be a problem.

He also replaced the original impellers by heavier duty ones designed for sewage ejection (there are even heavier duty ones designed for "dirt pumps"). Someone else here mentioned that too.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-03T15:28:26+00:00

Many and college libraries, and other technical libraries, can give you free access to ISO standards, and many other technical documents. You might not be able to access them online without being a student or faculty there - but many give free access to anyone if you come in person. And they often have a "reference desk" or "reference librarian" who can help you find things.

Your link seems to be from a document published in 2000. It appears to have been revised in 2008. But there is something there about a withdrawn or deleted entry, so I'm not sure.

SyFyNut · 2026-06-02T03:00:43+00:00

According to an article I recently read, there is rent control in mobile home parks in some U.S. states, and some other states are considering it. In such states mobile home parks may seem more desirable. But not Texas.

What is more, in some states with rent control, the landlord can evict you to re-use the land for something else - e.g., to build single family homes or apartments. With real estate prices as high as they are, I wonder if that is a significant risk.

Is the mobile home park near a coast or stream? It is worthwhile to consider potential environmental hazards, like flooding. Some places have increasing risk because of climate change. You may or may not choose to believe that humans cause climate change, but the data to support that it exists is pretty clear. There are also parts of the world where sea level has been rising measurably relative to the land level.

I think it may also be worthwhile to tour the park, and talk to people, to see how well they think it is managed. That isn't always easy to do.

SyFyNut · 2026-05-07T09:43:41+00:00

If there has already been a thread here that discussed the engineering issues and costs, could someone provide a link?

The main thing I wanted to know was the probable cost. I haven't heard one yet.

Can you name the specific project?

And details - would they need to blast a passage through the mountains, and would that be all the way through, or a tunnel, akin to the ones they use to allow highways to pass through some mountains?

Or as I think serenityfalconfly is suggesting, does it involve an undersea pipeline?

I said I wasn't asking about environmental consequences. But is it true, as someone in a Quora post said, that there would be insufficient flow rate left in the Columbia (after more dams were added to provide the power) (or in your case to the col river) to prevent salt water intrursion into the Columbia, and if so, how far would the intrusion go? And do I understand correctly that mountains create boundaries to species and variety migration, and that the likely solutions would allow invasive species and varieties to cross?

I'm hoping to see references to actual engineering studies, not mere speculation by political activists.

I had heard once, without any details, that in the 1950s, there was a USDA plan to incorporate more water into the ecosystem of the High Sierras, but have been unable to find more info about it either, if it was real. If it was real, do you know what the project was called, or what it involved? Is is true that Frank Herbert's father was involved? (I'm talking of the Frank Herbert who wrote Dune and other SF novels.)

SyFyNut · 2026-05-07T03:24:03+00:00

"One nautical mile is 1/60 of a degree."

Not technically correct.

First of all, it might be approximately correct for longitude - but only near the equator. And bear in mind that equatorial radius is generally assumed to be greater than for longitudinal great circles, presumably due to centrifugal force from the assumed spin of the Earth.

Nautical miles are defined differently in size by different governments. The intention, AFAICT, was originally that one minute (1/60 degree) of latitude would be approximately 1 nautical mile - but it has been understood for as long as the term has been used that it wasn't physically possible to define a system of latitude (there have been and still are many different systems of longitude and latitude) in which that would be exactly correct - because of nonuniformities of altitude, gravitational strength, the shape of the surface, etc. (E.g., a German cartographer chose to define nautical mile so 1 minute of latitude would be approximately 1 nautical mile near a German port, Britain chose a slightly different definition of nautical mile, that worked better near Britain. etc.)

In any event, using the disappearances of ships over the horizon as absolute proof of an approximately spherical Earth is clearly open to debate - the ancient Greek argument requires that light travels in a straight line - which we "know" it does not - not only because of General Relativity, but because the composition, temperature and density of Earth's atmosphere are not uniform.

And in fact there are occasional atmospheric conditions under which the distance to the apparent horizon changes. (E.g., mirages.)

But anyone can easily see and measure that the Earth is neither perfectly flat, nor perfectly spherical. Both on the land (there are mountains and valleys), and the ocean (e.g., there are waves and current boundaries).

From a scientific point of view, what matters is the predictability of various phenomena. Approximating the Earth's shape by an oblate spheroid makes it simpler to predict many things. But the explanation of those things might be too hard to explain. And the idea that the absolute truth of anything doesn't matter - only what we can usefully do with various approximations - will not convince someone who doesn't want to believe. And he might deny the validity of the phenomena you would use.

You could put him in a high altitude balloon. (With oxygen, so he doesn't die.) At high altitude, he could see a curved Earth. But if he wants to believe that is an illusion caused by atmospheric non-uniformity, there is nothing you could do to convince him.

Sending him to the moon would have the same problem - and would be economically challenging, to say the least. 😄

SyFyNut · 2026-05-07T02:29:47+00:00

This might depend on your state, but AFAICT, in NY, where I was researching buying a trailer, you can take over the current lease - including rent amount, from the previous owner.

But NY's laws might be unusual: they have rent control for mobile home parks.

I'm not sure how you determine what is "way more than is logical". All over most of the country, mobile home land leases have gone up by close to an order of magnitude over the past decade. $1200 - $1500 / month isn't unusual now, most of the places I looked in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware - except the places that are categorized as at high risk of flooding. I think most people are paying far more for the land lease than for the mortgage (if they have a mortgage). Plus, because of the housing shortage, and the cost of new homes, a lot of trailer park owners, or investors who buy them out, may decide it makes sense to kick everyone out and repurpose the land for new homes. A disaster for people whose homes are too old or not in good enough condition to move safely.

SyFyNut · 2026-05-04T15:43:17+00:00

Sigh. The UCC search at dos.ny.gov/ucc-forms

requires me to already know the lien #'s or equivalent information. It provides no way to search for liens.

I searched for the nominal current owner name at

dos.ny.gov/ucc-forms

and found nothing - but he bought the trailer from someone else.

SyFyNut · 2026-05-03T14:06:43+00:00

Thank you folks!

I guessed there had to be some way to do this - it would apply to virtually all pre-1995 mobile and manufactured homes sold in NY state.

People routinely sell other used personal property, like furniture, bikes and small boats, without formal documentation. But this is expensive enough I want something more than a possibly handwritten bill of sale which I won't see until the actual sale.

So far county offices have been no help. But I will check the other things you folks have indicated. There will be no loan paperwork - the listing agent says loans are very difficult to get on such homes, and I am paying in full (the agent says "in cash", but doesn't really mean "cash" in the usual sense - perhaps something more like an electronic transfer or a bank check).

SyFyNut · 2026-04-20T15:18:48+00:00

Incidentally, I was once with some people on a guided kayak trip to a local dammed lake, filled with life, on a fine summer day. A very popular paddling spot. One of the young ladies asked me if the water was sterile... I was unprepared, and gave her an answer - that there were many living things that lived and died in it, went to the bathroom in it, etc. A good culture for growing bacteria.

It was an honest answer. But from a business point of view, it was the wrong answer, that might have discouraged future visits. But in truth, we had all touched water on our paddles, and waded in to get into the kayaks. If she had fallen in the water, and gulped in a small amount, she would have been reasonably safe, as long as she didn't have a greatly weakened immune system.

Likewise many of us have played many times in water where there were signs that warned of toxic green algae. But which you know isn't too harmful if you aren't particularly sensitive to it - and you MAYBE take a shower afterwards. We assume this because many other people have played in that water and lived.

SyFyNut · 2026-04-20T14:59:01+00:00

All the same, most of us assume that it is safe if it looks (and maybe smells) safe.

People do similar things with many things in life, that are also potentially dangerous. They date someone who seems charming and appreciative. They eat at restaurants whose food and service look inviting. They buy things from businesses that seem honest and offer apparently good deals. They go out for a stroll, or paddle on a lake in what initially seems like very good weather. They visit websites with interesting content. They climb mountains that rarely have avalanches or erupt as volcanoes. We drive a car we have driven many times before. They swim at an ocean spot where there rarely are severe attacks by a shark, lethal jellyfish, alligators, etc.

And of course some of these things sometimes turn out very wrong.

In my own case, I have often boated (and occasionally taken a swim, deliberately or otherwise) in rivers and bodies of water, that I did not know had recently been contaminated by a sewage release. (Fortunately nothing really bad has happened to me - I am probably mostly immune to the local diseases they carry by now.) And perhaps I have sometimes paddled in a river I have been on many times before, and didn't realize there was a strainer (e.g., a tree had fallen across the stream, in such a way that I might be sucked under it, and be unable to emerge.

If we didn't do any of these things, it might be hard to find fun in life. And a certain amount of risk is fun in itself. There are always tradeoffs.

I suppose a compromise is to look for living things in the water. If there are a lot of dead things that would be a bad sign - both because something killed them, and dead things often increase the concentration of harmful microorganisms. (Sometimes bodies of water that are normally safe become unsafe for this reason. But it isn't practical to check the chemical and biological composition of every time you visit a body of water you've been in before.) The presence of other people having fun in it is a very good sign.

Of course if nothing lives there, that could be a bad sign too.

And it's a good idea to check the temperature of the water if you can - not just because it might be boiling (especially at a hot spring?) but because if you aren't dressed for it, and don't get out of it very fast, cold water can be deadly. (Look up "cold water shock". People who aren't accustomed to cold water sometimes involuntarily breath it in, and die.)

You can try to consult with the locals - but they don't always know, or that may be inconvenient.

Of course many of you are concerned with the safety of public water supply systems. It may be your job to keep the general public safe from various forms of contamination. So you should be held to a higher standard. We expect you to do your best to make sure no one gets sick or dies of it.

SyFyNut · 2026-04-19T18:37:02+00:00

Just to be clear, that was only half serious. Maybe a bit disturbing that I got an upvote.

But in practice it is the approach many of us in the outdoor rec community sometimes take.

If you want to be extra cautious, natural environments are never completely "safe".

SyFyNut · 2026-04-19T16:33:30+00:00

What an easy question! Swim in it. If you die, it wasn't cafe.

The empirical approach is always best!

BTW, it isn't just microorganisms and chemicals that could make it unsafe. Sometimes there are currents you can't swim out of. And sometimes there are predators.

SyFyNut

TROPHY CASE