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Dude, my point is that that those appliances are a static cost - shrinking the apartment doesn't reduce those expenses. Plus, you still have to hook utilities up to them. Running the power line to the stove, for example, costs darn near the value of the stove. You have to run water and drains to the bathrooms. You can mirror units to reduce the amount of pipe, but you're still looking at more pipe.

Plumbing and electric are part of building costs. Duplication costs are negligible. Been there and done that.

My point is you're saying, "Here, instead of spending $1,000,000 and $300 of it is this static cost, you're spending $250,000 of it and $300 is static cost."

Those static costs are not major expenses. Those static costs are pocket change.

You're looking at your yearly budget and obsessing over whether you spent $3.19 on that jar of Jif peanut butter or missed the sale at Sir Save-a-Lot for $3.09.

Expensive apartment, 680sqft for $700/month. That apartment was *cheap* to build: $85/sqft (best case scenario). $57,800; it's going to take the landlord 6 years 10 months to pay off those costs. The kitchen and bathroom bring $1,000 of appliances, so $58,800, 7 years. Those appliances cost $11.90/month.

Cheap apartment, 224sqft for $224/month (remember my budget is $300). $85/sqft, $19,040. That right off is 7 years 1 month pay-off; but add in the kitchen and bathroom, $1,000, 7 years 5 months. Those appliances cost $11.18/month.

What changed?

Price per square foot is $1.03 in the first, $1.00 in the second.

Now of course that assumes you replace the stove, bath tub, toilet, and refrigerator every 7 years. Does that actually happen? Let's see.

Normal lifetimes. Refrigerator: 15 years; stove: 14 years; bathtub: 20 years; toilet: 20 years; Bathroom sink: 20 years.

That $1,000 I computed should equate to about $5/month. Clothes washers and dryers are usually in the building's laundry room, and are not static expenses per apartment; boilers and heaters are part of controlled zone systems (not per-apartment; the zone control panel would cost like $300 per 6 units, the HVAC zone baffel would cost about $100 per unit, the control panel would meter usage time per apartment, and you'd install as much furnace capacity as per your heated space). A commercial TED on the building would cost $1,200 for a three-phase, 2,000 amp system; for 8 units, you'd need a $600 800 amp system with $150 8-breaker monitoring set.

In other words: there's some additional $10/month per unit expected, except those costs are included in every unit of a certain square footage cost. For a 1,000sqft apartment, it's 1 cent per square foot; for a 224sqft apartment, it's 4.5 cents per square foot.

You're telling me that maybe the apartment will cost $235 instead of the budgeted $300?

Have you noticed that I have particular equipment for multi-circuit monitoring, construction costs of apartments, and appliance lifetimes for rental properties on hand? I'm not speculating that some "static costs" might make each unit thousands of dollars more expensive; I'm projecting the cost of risk based on real-world factors.

All that stuff you said? I covered that when I came up with these numbers.

MD : http://www6.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgtmpl.asp?url=/content/pio/emergency/Code_Section_49-24A.asp
"A person is responsible for removing snow and ice on any sidewalk, other walkway, or parking area on or adjacent to property that the person owns, leases, or manages, including any walkway in the public right-of-way, to provide a pathway wide enough for safe pedestrian and wheelchair use. "

DC: http://web.lexisnexis.com/research/xlink?app=00075&view=full&interface=1&docinfo=off&searchtype=get&search=D.C.+Code+%2525A7+9-601
"It shall be the duty of every person, partnership, corporation, joint-stock company, or syndicate in charge or control of any building or lot of land within the fire limits of the District of Columbia, fronting or abutting on a paved sidewalk, whether as owner, tenant, occupant, lessee, or otherwise, within the first 8 hours of daylight after the ceasing to fall of any snow or sleet, to remove and clear away, or cause to be removed and cleared away, such snow or sleet from so much of said sidewalk as is in front of or abuts on said building or lot of land."

VA: http://alexandriava.gov/special/weather/snow/default.aspx?id=40386
"Snow and ice must be cleared from all paved sidewalks abutting your property within 24-72 hours of the end of the snowfall, depending on the storm response level"

No idea about CA, and of course city/district level rather than state usually.

"FBI Zeroes In on Potential Terrorists: Operation Tripwire standardizes field offices' handling of clues to locate 'sleeper cells.'"
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/dec/13/nation/na-tripwire13

"Operation Tripwire: Montgomery County Police Department - Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities" (37 page manual)
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/pol/districts/ISB/sid/ViceIntelligence/operationtripwirewebready.pdf

"To identify potential terrorist sleeper cells, Operation Tripwire commissions all JTTFs to ask specific questions of specific industries (e.g., suspicious behavior of airline passengers) then looks for patterns from the collected data. We're collecting and analyzing data on radicalism in prisons. We're coordinating new initiatives for railroads and cruise ships."

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2004/july/njttf070204

And here they are, from the 2-hour training session for first responders to Chevy Volt accidents. It's necessary to open the trunk and cut 12V cables at two points with heavy wire cutters. The cut points are marked with yellow tape printed with a firefighter hat and wire cutters. Here is GM's official instruction sheet for this. There's also a battery disconnect switch inside the center console of the vehicle, where a big plug is turned and removed. That's the normal procedure for disconnecting power during service.

So that's the documented "protocol following the crash". That's what GM says to do, and what a first responder or a tow company would have done if they did everything right. It would have had little effect if a battery had an internal short.

The Prius, Civic, and Ford Escape each have completely different battery disconnection procedures. The first responder community is not happy about this. They want a standardized, easy to get at way to quickly disconnect the high voltage battery in an emergency.

If you want an inexpensive solution which will be financially self-sufficent then install a toll road. Create multiple barrier queues to pay automated/manned toll booths (if there is an unemployment in the area make sure the toll booth is manned). Make the toll equal to ONE OR TWO coins(so paying the toll is quick and easy), charge more for large commerical vehicles because they can pay more, have a police officer behind the toll gate in radio contact to catch toll violators ( a toll violation fine should be $$). Setup an emergency lane for fire/rescue vehicles, police vehicles and military vehicles who are allowed to pass freely. Just paying the toll will slow down all the vehicles. Use all the toll's net revenues to improve the roads by hiring people from the area.No radar. no lidar. no traffic light. Just space and people. However if you want a high tech solution look here.... http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/poltmpl.asp?url=/content/POL/districts/FSB/sod/speed/Speed.asp It's expensive. It's hi tech. Employment opportunities are limited. It operates 24/7 365 days a year with no labor disputes. Is it effective at lowering speeds? Yes. Is it financially sustainable or profitable for the government? That is still being debated because it depends on contract details and the resulting revenues. Early reports indicated that after one or two years the revenue from fines from a fixed camera/radar speed trap unit drop off as drivers all learn to slowdown. Well placed random camera/radar/laser speed traps can consistently generate more money over time but are more expensive if manned. However, if your only priority is to lower speed and save lives then the only way to get vehicles to slow down is to post swarning signs of a upcoming speed trap enforcement area with either a fixed or random enforcment. hth. Washington DC Area Driver

I've had my house burglarized three times in the past ten years.(Okay, one time was the detached garage.) Two of those times were in Ohio. This past time was in an urban county in Maryland of about a million souls (375,000 households or so) where according to police reports, over 160 residential burglaries happened every month in 2009. That puts the odds of being the victim of a residential burglary at about 1 in 190 over the course of a year.

As for what they take, anything that can be relatively easily converted to cash, digital video records and iPods, laptops, jewelry, etc. While the pawn shops may be overly filled, things like these move quite easily on Craig's List, eBay, or on the streets and in the schools.

I don't know if Maryland has any.

I was actually prepared to respond to this with a "nope, luckily in MD we don't have any silly HOV lanes" but then I realized this is /. and I should probably check first ;)

Anyways apparently we do have a few in MoCo for 270, but it looks like that is it.

Oddly enough, the county I live in has suggested you opt out of this Comcast arbitration clause. Given that cable is regulated here (as elsewhere), I would think they would have just disallowed this change in the agreement.

Homeland Security was created by Bush and his crew.

The Department of Homeland Security at the Federal level was created by Congress at the request of President Bush. Montgomery County, Maryland has its own Homeland Security department under its own jurisdiction which may work with, but is not under the jurisdiction of the Federal DHS.

Do I really need to use a big fat black marker to connect the dots for you?

You might want to go read up on the topic of Federalism before making a comment like that.

Podcast novels? Do you mean something like this? Or this? Not to mention this and this.

I wish we had something like this in New Mexico.

... we have the Transfer Station, which collects all our stuff and trucks it away to dumps far from here. The station tries to recycle as much as they can - especially stuff like appliances, building material, plant material for mulch, hazardous stuff, etc... you drive in and there is a 1/4 mile drive past huge dumpsters, each marked for unique types of trash. I have been known to take my geeky out-of-town visitor friends up just to view the spectacle of metropolitan waste collection.

There are always stacks and stacks of Mac LCs and LC2s stacked at the PC recycling station, but never an FX (snif) or a IIci...

Libel and slander are both defamation, and defamation requires the statement made to be false. Glossary of legal terms courtesy of a U.S. Circuit Court.