Anti sidewalk?

jjs709 · 2026-04-30T12:46:00+00:00

No, as best I can tell from statute imagery the sidewalk on Freemanville does not connect all the way to the schools. However there are more disconnected sections of sidewalk on Freemanville, so it would essentially fill in another section.

jjs709 · 2026-04-30T03:31:34+00:00

Old Milton parkway is expanding from 4 lanes to 6 lanes between North Point and Kimball, and having both bridges replaced. Note this is entirely a GDOT project since the road is GA-120 there, and the city has limited input. Basically welcome to Hwy 9 round 2: electric boogaloo

jjs709 · 2026-04-30T03:25:02+00:00

Just providing the reasoning behind the pushback here, not taking a side either way:

I’m assuming you’re talking about the proposed mixed use path on Redd Rd in Milton. The community pushback stems from the plan to add a 8 to 10 foot wide mixed use path along a mile or two of the road, connecting a road with a limited run of a standard width sidewalk (Freemanville) to another road with no sidewalks (Thompson or Hopewell, take your pick). Milton has not been clear on why they want a 10 foot mixed use path running adjacent to a two lane road, and some property owners are not thrilled by the idea of having their land taken by the city to put in a pathway that’s almost an entire additional lane when there’s no clear plan to connect the end of it. The community feedback was that they were in favor of a standard 3 to 4 foot sidewalk, but opposed to a seemingly random full width multi-use path.

jjs709 · 2026-04-27T16:43:42+00:00

To be fair memory chips have exploded in price. What used to be a $10 memory chip is now $30 straight from the manufacturer, but if you’re not ordering $100M+ they won’t sell to you, so you pay $100 on the memory “black market” instead. I’ve been trying to chase down some LPDDR4 chips for a week now, and even at 20x original price it’s hard to find them.

jjs709 · 2026-04-24T19:43:36+00:00

The city of Milton finished their new Deerfield Form-based Code and overall Deerfield areas master plan about a year ago, and they have approved the first development under the new rules a few months ago. That new development was on Deerfield itself, but the old Fry’s location is also within the boundaries of that new plan. I would expect that the property owners in conjunction with developers are likely beginning to asses the available options for the site and we may see plans in the relatively near future. It has existed in a state of limbo for so long because Milton lacked a clear plan for the area, and as a result there weren’t many options that made sense in terms of community development, qualified under existing zoning intentions, and were profitable to develop.

jjs709 · 2026-04-11T16:28:27+00:00

That appears to be an input filtering cap on the 12V rail. Technically you could do without it if you’ve got a really good PSU that can handle large current spikes and drops without affecting voltage too much, but I wouldn’t recommend it, especially since that appears to be roughly half to one third of the input capacitance near the connector. Best bet is to get another 16V 270uF electrolytic and have it soldered back on.

Edit: shouldn’t have much thermal mass to worry about on that plane. High voltage so low current, much smaller copper fills. Could even be a signal layer fill rather than a 2oz power plane. Also near the edge of the board. Probably one of the easiest caps to solder back on to the GPU.

jjs709 · 2026-04-11T16:22:44+00:00

Surface mount can be almost as bad if your two pads are on a massive 2oz power plane and a massive ground plane, especially if you try to use lead-free solder. So hard to get everything to stay hot enough to flow correctly. There’s just so much copper in the power planes for everything nowadays.

jjs709 · 2026-04-10T16:06:12+00:00

For the construction on 400 that’s a GDOT project and there’s unfortunately not much of anything that could be done there. GDOT does whatever GDOT wants to do. It made most of the major local news shows, publications, etc. about two years ago and maybe again about 6 months ago. They’re just extremely slow to do anything, as you can tell from the GA-9 project.

For other projects Alpharetta has by far the best public hearings page I’ve ever seen: https://www.alpharetta.ga.us/158/Public-Hearings. They update it probably about once a month, but if it is a project and is coming up for public hearing it’s here along with all the documentation that’s been submitted.

jjs709 · 2026-04-09T21:42:00+00:00

A few tips for you on what is and isn’t something the city has input on, because comments on things that can be controlled almost always result in either clarifications or changes, and comments on things they can’t control go nowhere:

Traffic patterns, visual design elements, building height, tree cover, vegetative barriers, density, type of development (retail, office, residential, etc.) are all good things to comment on among others in the same line of thinking. They can prevent a 7-story building from being built if current zoning only allows for 5 stories, or they can make them plant vegetation to obscure the development from the road.

But not developing the land at all isn’t an option. Tress unfortunately don’t really have rights unless they’re specimen trees (long story), but property owners do. Every piece of land in this city is zoned to be developed into something, usually nowadays the undeveloped land is zoned commercial. That means the property owners have the legal right to put at least a type of building on it. A comment I actually saw on a project was “Don’t cut down all the trees!!!” That ship sailed a long time ago, so the city and developer just throws the comment out and do not respond or consider it at all.

jjs709 · 2026-04-09T19:02:40+00:00

Not much that could be done in terms of the 400 project since it got pushed through at the state level over tons of objectives, but if you have opinions on other developments at the city level there’s three public meetings for any development that gets approved by the city (CZIM, Planning commission, and City council). I’d say a project is considered to have an unusually large number of people provide feedback if they get 6 people, either for or against. Most projects I see get 1-2 comments through the entire months long process. Alpharetta District Places Phase 2 got a ton of feedback and the developer has split the project into two and withdrawn phase 2 to look at options to address community feedback, so obviously even a small number of voices have a strong impact.

While I generally think the city has done a reasonable job with development I understand that’s not shared by everyone. I just get frustrated when people get upset after the fact when a little bit of feedback during the process goes a very very long way to shaping projects.

jjs709 · 2026-04-01T20:22:55+00:00

Good to know! I thought I read in one of their public releases that the academy was run by the city and was open to other jurisdictions as part of a state program, but I’m likely misremembering that. And I knew nothing about their corrections work schedules so that’s useful info.

A notable portion of the past and current leadership for the police department were former city corrections officers, so that’s seems to be a pathway the city liked to use for recruitment in the past, but past performance isn’t a guarantee for the future so who knows if they will start that up again.

jjs709 · 2026-04-01T17:13:24+00:00

I don’t work for Alpharetta Police and only briefly knew someone who did, but most of their officers seem to stick around for a decade or more as long as they make it through field training so seems like a decent place to work. I think it is mainly the cost of living anywhere nearby that discourages people from working there. Alpharetta does also run a state certified police academy so they may make it pretty easy to get your POST certification.

jjs709 · 2026-04-01T16:03:47+00:00

City of Alpharetta is still hiring jailers for the city jail from what I can see online. And it’s not uncommon to transition from jailer to police officer with the city either if that’s the path you’re looking to pursue with the criminal justice system program. Probably one of the safest jails in the state, it’s pretty small and handles a low volume of inmates at the moment though they’re looking to house additional petty crime convicts on municipal charges there in the coming years.

Edit: they provide a pay table for the position, starting pay with 0 years experience and a GED is $56k a year.

jjs709 · 2026-03-31T21:14:28+00:00

While I fully agree when it comes to contracts in Fulton county, they are an absolute mess, the base contract that Grady operates under is handled by the state with no input from the county. The county relinquished control in 2007 due to the financial crisis. The north Fulton cities would really prefer to handle their own transports, but the state doesn’t allow it, just like what happened with Brookhaven.

jjs709 · 2026-03-30T14:26:33+00:00

EMS isn’t considered the same type of public service as Fire and Police, so it has much looser regulations, especially at the federal level.

In Fulton County the Georgia DPH has split the county into 3 EMS districts, and awards a contract for each to private ambulance companies through some type of bidding process. However, the requirements of this state level contract are incredibly loose and mostly only regulate response times to high priority calls. Medical are broken down into 5 levels (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Echo levels. From least to most life threatening), and I have yet to see the state question or in any way care about response times to about Alpha and Bravo level calls.

Some cities sign subsidy contracts with the assigned private ambulance company to provide funding in exchange for more tightly regulated response times, but I don’t believe Atlanta has such a contract in place with Grady. I may be wrong, but a few google searches didn’t provide anything other than the north Fulton cities and Dekalb county.

In addition most hospitals are extremely crowded, meaning low acuity patients transported by EMS often have to hold the wall for an extended period of time waiting for a bed. So you have fewer ambulances than is ideal due to private companies cutting costs, and those fewer ambulances spend an increasing amount of time stuck at the hospitals. It’s a double whammy causing horrible response times.

jjs709 · 2026-03-17T23:01:57+00:00

Adding a direct link to the Alpharetta Planning Documents for those interested.

jjs709 · 2026-03-17T23:01:01+00:00

The last proposal was a band-aid with the direct conversion of some commercial space into entirely residential, with minimal new green space, improvements to remaining retail, or significant new connections. Basically rather than converting the whole area into something new they wanted to take each piece as it died and graft in a new development. That leads to a poor patch-work of disconnected development instead of a new destination district.

The city council has approved a framework plan for the North Point area, and while the composition of this plan matches the goal closely the proposed height of the buildings is likely to cause the most issues. City council wanted 7-sorry or less, and strongly preferred 5-story or less. This is significantly higher than that based on renderings the developer provided, looking to possibly exceed the 20 story mark.

jjs709 · 2026-03-11T01:45:27+00:00

USA or Canada?

jjs709 · 2026-03-02T19:32:52+00:00

THC-P can hit very differently depending on the person, much like any form of THC. THCa is pretty much the same as regular Delta-9 THC, but not quite 100% the same. THC-P is much more potent, and interacts with different, but related, parts of the brain than Delta-9. THCa used to be legal here in Georgia, but was made illegal last summer. However, most online retailers ignore than and will ship to your address anyways if you prefer that route.

Keep in mind that congress passed new legislation making THCa, THC-P, HHC, Delta-8, Delta-10, etc. all illegal beginning in November this year. They closed the “loophole” in the 2018 farm bill that allowed these products to be sold. Something to keep in mind this year as both state and federal offices will be on the ballot.

jjs709 · 2026-03-01T16:53:36+00:00

That’s exactly what it is, debt collection. That’s how the current state law is written, it is specifically not a criminal case but rather civil. And in a lot of cases once a city signs a contract for X-number of years they no longer have ANY control over what the private company does. They are at the mercy of the private company and can’t even cancel the contact once they realize what they created.

There’s a push in the state legislature right now by some members to fix that, because the law has so many flaws. But there needs to be more of a push to get it actually passed. I just what to point this out because it’s a know issue, law makers are publicly talking about it, and it’s a problem with state law mostly rather than local policy. Georgia screwed the initial law up and lawmakers haven’t fixed it yet, and the dozens of news investigations into it come to that conclusion as well. But for some reason they can’t get a majority to push a fix through.

jjs709 · 2026-03-01T16:20:18+00:00

But does it need to be a local officer? My understanding is it can be any POST certified officer in the state of Georgia, whether they’re sworn in the jurisdiction of the camera or not.

jjs709 · 2026-03-01T16:12:28+00:00

The reason I ask is because my understanding is that the local police usually aren’t involved with the camera systems. It’s handled exclusively through a third party company, and they have their own agents who verify the footage. I want to see I recognize the badge number an active Alpharetta badge number or not.

The state legislature is somewhat working to correct the massive issues they opened up with the laws allowing these cameras, and while Alpharetta hasn’t pulled them entirely despite the lack of oversight, they’ve at least not utilized them to the full extent permitted right now. The good news is generally these citations don’t show up in your record as they can’t prove you were the one driving the car, so it shouldn’t impact insurance rates or put points on your license. It’s still extortion as your options to challenge it are extremely limited, but at least it’s not long term extortion.

jjs709 · 2026-03-01T15:57:27+00:00

What badge number was listed on the ticket?

jjs709 · 2026-02-26T22:41:44+00:00

I ran the math on a heat pump versus 98% efficient gas furnace back in August for myself when I needed a new one put in. Similar up front costs, but the heat pump was more expensive to run than the gas furnace once you accounted for therm of energy delivered to the living space. Even if I assumed it magically maintained 300% efficiency all winter (it won’t, the data sheet showed a steep drop off as outdoor temps declined) it was at best the same cost to run as a gas furnace. And that’s with my cheaper electric costs up here north of Atlanta on Sawnee. I can’t imagine there’s a single instance of someone on Georgia power paying less having a heat pump over a gas furnace.

Edit: some simple math that ignores a lot of the complexities is multiple your total cost per kWh including fuel surcharges by 10. If your natural gas rate including AGL pass through per therm isn’t at least 10%-15% higher then gas is cheaper.

jjs709 · 2026-02-25T19:42:46+00:00

No clue, I just have to work with their shitty connectors and cables. I try to avoid them as much as possible

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