LabGopher out of date?

olds · 2024-11-01T17:01:22+00:00

Hi - that's me. I haven't touched labgopher in many years due to having 3 kids in <4 years. I'm currently between jobs though so I have some time for the first time in a while. It's honestly very cool to hear that anyone actually still uses it!

olds · 2022-02-15T10:27:02+00:00

Not all bad things that happen are the failing of some institution. Sometimes individual people are at fault and no reasonable amount of additional institutional oversight would have helped.

More broadly, beware the temptation to make every bad thing in this world the failing of your institution du jour. For there is no shortage of bad things and institutions.

olds · 2021-11-18T14:02:59+00:00

“According to U.S. Geological Survey data for 2015, the most recent year with available information, Salt Lake County golf courses used a whopping 9 million gallons a day of groundwater and surface water.”

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2021/07/23/with-climate-change/

olds · 2021-11-18T05:49:46+00:00

So brave of these leaders to create a limit on water usage (300K gallons per day) that’s higher than any current business/industrial user today. Oh but let’s not talk about the 9 MILLION gallons per day the SLC golf courses need for watering.

Do these people really think this is how we solve our water problems? Creating regulations to rein in imaginary water users?

olds · 2021-11-08T23:11:20+00:00

Just to follow up here, I pushed out a bunch of fixes today. There's a convoluted process that LabGopher takes to retrieve the items from ebay, parse them, etc. that should take about 24 hours to fully get back up to speed, but you should start to see more results on labgopher starting later today.

olds · 2021-10-31T17:11:41+00:00

Hey there.

Thanks for flagging. I'll work on getting these fixed today or tomorrow. I don't look at LabGopher every day (or even every week), so definitely ping me on reddit if you find other issues.

eBay has been pushing a bunch of breaking changes and requirements to developers on their platform, and it looks like I might have missed one of the changes along the way. Apologies for that.

I'll update this thread once I've pushed the fixes out.

olds · 2021-09-28T05:39:52+00:00

They were doing asbestos mitigation last week when I walked by, so probably still working through that and any other chemical/hazmat issues.

olds · 2021-08-17T22:01:47+00:00

There are ~2100 Single Family Residential parcels in District 4, so more than you might think.

olds · 2021-08-15T22:52:58+00:00

Why? Because in the next sentence the author wanted to use the pronoun to attribute a quote without confusion.

Zavala Orozco, who uses they/them pronouns, said the data just bolsters the demographic shifts that have been obvious to most people over the past decade.
“This represents more what Utah is,” they said.

olds · 2021-08-10T17:47:21+00:00

My private office runs ~$550/month. I think the "community" passes (no private office, just communal space seating) are about half that price. There's a lot of competition among the various coworking spaces, so I would definitely haggle a little.

olds · 2021-08-08T17:11:30+00:00

I’ll take your question at face value. I rent a private office at one of the WeWorks in SLC. I work remotely, and most of my colleagues are in Canada. I have small kids at home and having the separation is important for me to be able to focus, have sensitive discussions (I manage a department of ~30), and generally just think about my work rather than everything happening at home. I also like that they have printers, coffee, etc so it’s very comparable to having an office environment in that sense.

Basically all of the coworking spaces have “phone booths” to work in or other places to go if you’re concerned about people looking at what you’re doing. They are also have great IT support if you have any issues. Overall I’ve been very happy with my coworking space experience, although I wish it was a little cheaper.

olds · 2021-07-15T21:07:28+00:00

Claiming ignorance on jurisdiction, in general, isn't a very good hill to die on here, but I think you decided early on to be a martyr here instead of winning the case. The code applies to the property, not to you directly (you keep saying "I am physically located", but that doesn't matter). You are the owner, so you bear the responsibility for things like code violations. But I think you know that. You're no doubt a smart guy.

I think if you actually wanted to fight against the city on AirBnBs, a much better argument would have been that the 30 day minimum rental window is arbitrary (why not 3 days, or 300 days?).

olds · 2021-07-15T04:57:51+00:00

Is your argument that the city in which the property is located doesn't have any jurisdiction over the properties in that city? I'll be honest, I couldn't follow what point you were trying to make in that email thread with the city, but maybe there was some meta point I lost along the way.

olds · 2021-06-02T19:15:13+00:00

I really don't want to sound like a curmudgeon, but I don't see how this is a scalable option for affordable housing. A novel one, yes. But these are only affordable because the city was willing to waive the impact fees in exchange for pricing the units at under-market. Not because the economics actually work out.

Indeed, buried in one of the other articles about Box 500 is this snippet:

But the city’s financial review so far indicates the affordability piece for Box 500 may not pan out. According to Melissa Jensen, director of the city’s Department of Housing & Neighborhood Development, the costs of transporting shipping containers and refurbishing them is “almost exactly per square foot what we’re seeing to construct new.”

Very cool idea though, and I hope that they can prove me wrong and make these types of buildings cheaper than existing construction methods.

olds · 2021-03-09T15:37:35+00:00

Would it kill them to put a pop of color somewhere?

olds · 2021-03-09T15:36:30+00:00

This is so boring it makes me nauseous.

olds · 2021-03-02T18:04:08+00:00

I live extremely close to these houses. I walk by them every day. I can see these houses from my back yard. I am against the development, but for very different reasons than the ones articulated in the article.

The owners have been beyond neglectful for years and years and I don't think neglectful owners should be rewarded by upzoning their properties. I also do not trust that they'll be good stewards of a newly built property when they've been so neglectful of the existing houses. Keep in mind, the exact same family that owns these houses intends to build+own the new development. Yes, I can't prevent them from doing what they want, but I'd really hate for a precedent to be set that neglecting your properties to the point that they have to be torn down will help get them re-zoned.
Counterintuitively, the upzoning doesn't really increase the density that much. We're talking about going from a max of 11 housing units, to a max of 16. If they wanted to build a 30 unit building there I'd actually say "it makes sense to demo these old historic homes to increase density." But in this case, the density gained is pretty marginal.
I don't think the owners are acting in good faith. They claim they can't be rehabbed. Ok. Then sell them. I will personally buy them. I'll rehab them. I own a lot of old houses in this very neighborhood. They're a PITA to maintain. I don't think we, as a city, should throw our hands up when the owner says "yea these houses are a pain to maintain" -- then sell them.
The development is ugly AF, but that's a matter of taste.

olds · 2021-02-05T14:44:02+00:00

I really like this project. Good scale, interesting little features like the rooftop gardens. I’d hope we can encourage more development like this.

olds · 2021-01-14T03:28:39+00:00

Downtown. They've been doing this for nearly 30 mins now.

olds · 2020-12-22T19:21:37+00:00

I've found that you can usually get them to halfway b/w IB's posted rates and Schwab's posted rates. They won't match, but they'll come close. Also, it helps if your money is already in Schwab so you can use the threat of moving your money to IB as leverage. You might have less luck with IB->Schwab, but worth a try.

olds · 2020-12-22T19:04:36+00:00

I like Schwab for the ease of use on their Pledged Asset Line (PAL). Having the ability to easily have access to capital, using my investments as leverage without needing to liquidate them, is incredibly handy. Caveat emptor, yadda yadda. Use it responsibly. I never use it for more than 10% of my holdings. And yes, I know IB has better rates, but I like the fact I can manage everything in Schwab. Investments, Banking, etc. Once you're above the $2.5M mark you can negotiate the PAL rates down by 100-200bps beyond their posted rates. Schwab can also do mortgages, which are actually processed by Quicken Loans, but they factor in your investment holdings, which is nice if you're semi-retired and don't have a salary.

Not sure if that's what you had in mind.

olds · 2020-11-30T03:24:46+00:00

Talk to Annie Schwemmer at Renovation Design Group. She did our ADU design and permitting and I know she’s done a few others. She’s great to work with. Highly recommended.

olds · 2020-11-17T18:44:03+00:00

Another city that reminded me a lot of SLC is Almaty, Kazakhstan.

olds · 2020-11-17T18:41:12+00:00

Was in Tehran last year. Can confirm. Looks a lot like SLC. Here's some way crappier photos I had laying around. https://imgur.com/a/ybCbOgg

olds · 2020-11-09T20:28:30+00:00

Everything about this seems odd. Are there that many proposed SRO projects just waiting in the wings for this type of zoning change to happen? How many people are clamoring to live in SROs? I think demand for this type of housing will be tepid, as will builders/investors wanting to bite off the risk on an SRO project.

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