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PaperclipPerfector
12hr ago
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Notes -
A person has been convicted of "sexual battery". He is on the sex-offender list, and is required to register his "place of employment" with the county sheriff's office. His employer is a janitorial service: every day he shows up at a central location and is transported by the company to an assigned jobsite. He registers the central location as his place of employment.
The service assigns him to work at a children's camp in a different county. After several weeks of being transported to that location every day, he is charged with the felony of failing to update his registered workplace. He argues that (1) the law is unconstitutionally vague, and (2) it defies common sense for the law to require him to update his registered place of employment every time his employer changes his jobsite. But the trial judge rejects his arguments, and he pleads no contest and is sentenced to three years of probation. The appeals panel and the state supreme court affirm.
Originally published in year 1727, recently uploaded to Project Gutenberg:
(It appears that "T——d" stands for "Turd".)
1967: A railroad company acquires a railroad line, including a tunnel. (I can't figure out the tunnel's exact location, but it's somewhere in this rectangle.)
2000–2001: The company asks the federal STB (Surface Transportation Board) for permission to abandon service on the line. The STB grants permission.
2001–2002: The company asks the state PUC (Public Utility Commission) for permission to "abolish" 29 rail crossings, including the tunnel. However, the PUC grants permission to abolish only 27 crossings. The two remaining crossings, including the tunnel, cannot be abolished because negotiations between the company and the state DOT (Dept. of Transportation) for "final disposition" are ongoing.
2002, later: Despite lacking the PUC's permission, the company sells to a third party a large property that contains the tunnel.
2012: The PUC erroneously assumes that all 29 crossings have been abolished by now, and closes the case.
2019–2025: The PUC opens a new investigation of the tunnel, which has fallen into disrepair. It finds that the company cannot weasel out of responsibility just because it sold the tunnel (without govt. permission) back in 2002. It assigns to the company 2.8 M$ of repair costs, as well as future maintenance costs.
2026: The appeals panel affirms.
Weird anecdote:
>Be me
>Visit 85-year-old grandfather
>He complains that he hasn't been feeling very motivated to do stuff lately
>Ramble at him regarding how designing code-compliant houses and subdivisions is a fun retirement hobby
>He mentions that his uncle gave him two vacant lots in Florida a while ago (he lives in New J⁎rsey), but he doesn't want to give them to anybody else because the property tax would be a burden
>Look up the county property records later
>Somebody (presumably grandfather's uncle) bought the lots for 4 k$ in 1977, and gave them to grandfather for free in 1984
>For each lot, assessed value is 30 k$, and "burdensome" property tax is 300 dollars per year
>This fogey has been letting perfectly good land sit overgrown, 900 miles away from him, for literally 40 years without either building something on it or selling it
>MFW
>Send him an email explaining that the lots are buildable under the municipality's zoning code (minimum house size 1200 ft2—example design is attached), but I would just sell them since they're so far away
I assume since gramps hasn't been getting constant notices about the lawn being overgrown, they are not in an incorporated area?
Like based off of minimum size and setbacks, or did you also check the hydrology? Selling someone an unseen ½-acre (20 Qb) parcel of Florida swamp is a tale as old as time.
Since you are retired and associated with New J⁎rsey, aren't you constitutionally required to snowbird, even if you hardly go outside of your climate-controlled shack?
They are in a municipality. They're filled with trees, not just bushes, so I guess they've been promoted from "unkempt lawn" to "random patch of forest".
They are surrounded by houses, and do not appear to be in a federally-designated flood zone or a state-designated wetland.
(1) If I had known about these properties prior to buying land in Pennsylvania, I might have considered purchasing one (though I'm not a big fan of living in Hurricane Land). But I definitely am not rich enough to own two houses.
(2) Infuriatingly, my climate-controlled shack STILL is not complete, as the electric company needs to upgrade the transformer on the nearest utility pole before it can provide service. It's now two months past the "tentative completion date" in the contract.
"Florida real-estate developer" seems like a great intersection with your retirement hobby tho?
I don't have a college certificate on the topic. But, as I understand it, the business of single-family-residential real-estate development consists of several different paths.
(1) Buy a medium-sized lot; subdivide it into a few small lots; and (a) sell the small lots to people who want to build custom houses, or (b) collaborate with a homebuilder to build on the small lots "speculative" houses that you'll sell to people who want to buy new houses.
(2) Buy a large lot; subdivide it into many small lots, plus drainage features and new roads; give the new roads to the municipality; give the drainage features to a homeowners' association; and (a) sell the small lots to people who want to build custom houses, or (b) collaborate with a homebuilder to build on the small lots "speculative" houses that you'll sell to people who want to buy new houses (getting a bulk discount with the homebuilder either way).
Regarding options 1b and 2b, people tend to dislike my house designs. Regarding all four options, I do not have access to a small loan of one million dollars.
Almost $10MM now, using CPI adjustment.
Assuming you could solve the "small" problem of how capital-intensive this is, there's probably some class of people looking for custom houses where they have an off-the-shelf plan requiring modification / site-specific edits or something in mind and need someone to make plans and stamp them. I don't recall if you are/were a Civil PE, but I assume it would not be an automatic transfer to Gatorland SE anyway. Though I think their structural engineering recognition program is supposedly less onerous than some other states, excepting the hurricane/wind-loading note you already made. The prospective clients would presumably also be expecting you to handle most of the project management stuff too. But this is all starting to look like real work and not a retirement hobby at that point.
I technically am eligible to take the exam and obtain a professional engineer's license, but while I was employed I saw no reason to go through the process, since my employer offered no incentive for it. Previous discussion
(It was hilarious to see all the best employees constantly leaving for private employment in part due to this reason. Compare this recent announcement of special bonuses, and even special positions, for licensed employees at NYSDOT.)
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