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PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   656 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 10, 2025

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Court opinion:

  • An officer finds a woman asleep in her still-running car in a parking lot. When roused, the woman appears to be intoxicated, and admits that she used methamphetamine 16 hours ago. The officer arrests her and takes her to a hospital for a blood test.

  • At the hospital, the woman consents to the blood test. However, after four failed attempts to draw blood, she withdraws consent due to the pain. The officer gets a warrant and the woman cooperates with a fifth, nonconsensual attempt to draw blood, but that attempt also fails. (Some cursory searching indicates that (according to various reputable-looking sources, including this paywalled standard) the normal maximum number of attempts is three.) The woman refuses to cooperate with any further attempted blood draws. She offers to take a urine test, but the officer doesn't take her up on that offer.

  • The woman is convicted of driving while intoxicated (sentence six months of jail with the possibility of parole after three days) and obstruction of justice (sentence two years of probation concurrent with the jail time; the appeals panel notes that this appears to make no sense). However, the appeals panel vacates the obstruction conviction (and remands for resentencing).

    Norris did not commit an unlawful act concurrent with, physically interfere with, or attempt to thwart the investigation at the outset by refusing to cooperate with the police's effort to execute a valid search warrant. Instead, Norris complied with the police officer's investigation until the point that the multiple failed blood-draw attempts became painful and, it appears by any reasonable and common-sense standard, futile. Under these circumstances, we believe: (1) the statute does not compel a person subject to a DUI blood draw to submit to an unreasonable number of attempted blood draws, as was the case here; and, more importantly, (2) a defendant's refusal to cooperate after five failed attempts does not prove her intention to obstruct the trooper from obtaining a blood sample.

RSMeans is an authoritative source of cost-estimation data for construction contractors in the US (and Canada). The current residential dataset costs about 0.5 k$/a in paper or 1 k$/a online. However, a paper copy for year 2019—just before the pandemic produced a paradigm shift in construction costs—can be purchased for just 25 dollars. Even if such an old version cannot be used for current cost estimates, it still is interesting to look at for comparison purposes.

For example: Let's say I want to build a house for seven occupants. I have three designs.

  • One-story: 1182 ft2, three bedroom+bathroom suites

  • 1.5-story (finished attic under steep roof): 1560 ft2, one bedroom+bathroom suite on floor 1, two bedroom+bathroom suites on floor 2

  • Two-story: 1541 ft2, one bathroom on floor 1, three bedroom+bathroom suites on floor 2

The book indicates that the second story of the two-story design can be built in three different ways—above ground (standard), below ground (finished basement), or halfway below ground (bi-level). That yields five different cost estimates.

  • One-story: 1182 ft2 × (115.45 base* + 4.95 for air conditioning) $/ft2 + 2 extra bathrooms × 6489 $/extra bathroom = 155 k$

  • 1.5-story: 1560 ft2 × (111.3 base + 3.69 for air conditioning) $/ft2 + 2 extra bathrooms × 6489 $/extra bathroom = 192 k$ (+24 %)

  • Two-story, standard: 1541 ft2 × (111.55 base + 3.01 for air conditioning) $/ft2 + 3 extra bathrooms × 6489 $/extra bathroom = 196 k$ (+26 %)

  • Two-story, finished basement: 770 ft2** × (135.5 base + 31.7 for finished basement + 4.95 for air conditioning***) $/ft2 + 3 extra bathrooms × 6489 $/extra bathroom = 152 k$ (−2 %)

  • Two-story, bi-level: 1541 ft2 × (103.25 base + 3.01 for air conditioning) $/ft2 + 3 extra bathrooms × 6489 $/extra bathroom = 183 k$ (+18 %)

So, according to this dataset, moving all the bedrooms into the basement has approximately the same cost as keeping them on the ground floor. (Beyond cost considerations, having a smaller footprint on the plan view may free up space under the "maximum impervious coverage" prescribed by the local zoning or environmental regulations, while sticking to a single story may be preferable from a long-term "aging in place" perspective. But cost still is an important factor that one should consider.)

Of course, the highly simplified numbers demonstrated above are open to question. (Does it really make sense that putting the bedroom floor halfway below ground is significantly more expensive than putting it all the way below ground?) But the book is divided into four main sections:

  • 96 pages of uncomplicated per-square-foot prices, as demonstrated above (including materials, installation, and contractor's overhead and profit)

  • 186 pages of moderately complicated per-assembly prices (cost per yd3 of excavation, per ft2 of 2×6 wall, per water heater, etc.; including materials and installation)

  • 384 pages of very complicated per-unit prices (cost per ft of 2″×4″ stud, per ft2 of sheathing, per yd3 of concrete, per acre of topographical survey, etc.)

  • 82 pages of reference: equipment-rental costs, crew listings (e. g., a topographical-survey crew consists of a chief, an instrument man, one or two rod men, and an electronic level, for 954–1232 $/d if employed or 1550–2008 $/d if subcontracted), location factors (e. g., multiply prices for materials and installation by 1.21 in Newark, NJ, or by 0.92 in Wilkes-Barre, PA), reference tables (state sales tax rates, state workers' compensation insurance rates, typical architectural fees, etc.), estimating forms

So, a dilettante who doesn't trust the per-square-foot prices can dig deeper into the per-assembly prices, and a true contractor can use the per-unit prices. I'm too lazy to go any further here, though.

*The base $/ft2 number is taken from a list of numbers that decrease as area increases—e. g., from 150.15 $/ft2 at 600 ft2 to 82.2 $/ft2 at 3200 ft2. This list can be approximated with a quadratic equation in a spreadsheet—e. g., 28.55 $/ft2 + 3052 $/ft ÷ √(area) − 1482 $ ÷ area—but I have not done that in this example. There are separate lists based on quality (economy, average, custom, luxury), story count (1-story, 1.5-story, 2-story, 2.5-story, 3-story, bi-level, tri-level), and material (wood studs + wood siding, wood studs + brick veneer, wood studs + stone veneer, painted concrete block, solid brick, solid stone).

**The book's estimating procedure is based on the non-basement living area, even if the basement is finished.

***The book does not give a separate number for adding air conditioning to the finished basement. If I naively double the number that it gives for adding air conditioning to the non-basement living area, the final cost is 156 k$ (+1 %).

/r/hailcorporate

At the hospital, the woman consents to the blood test. However, after four failed attempts to draw blood, she withdraws consent due to the pain.

I wonder who was trying to do the draw. In my state, many officers are supposedly trained to be phlebotomists and will do the draw themselves, but once at a hospital, it's usually staff.

Not that staff are necessarily better. I have ridiculously prominent veins and I've had them screw up so badly (during a blood donation) that they gave up and tried the other arm, only to also screw that one up. I went home with a bandage on each arm and no blood donation.

The opinion says:

A phlebotomist and a lab technician made four attempts to draw blood from both of Norris’s arms but were unable to do so.

A second phlebotomist failed the fifth attempt to obtain a blood sample from Norris.

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