BTW

Welcome to Midland. You may have already figured this out, but starting April 22nd Delta is going to be operating non stop flights to AUS 3x per day. This is a very exciting development for those of us who have languished in getting to Austin in a timely fashion from Midland. The non-stop to Vegas is clutch as well and it usually pretty rowdy on Friday afternoons. I'm part of the Texas Exes here, so shoot me a PM if you want and I'll make sure you get included on any gettogethers for game watching etc.

I ended up cutting off the fast Saturday for dinner after 6 full days. I was down 11.5 lbs overall and after eating normally for a couple of days I'm still down 6lbs from where I was when I started. All in all it was an interesting experience, but not one I'm in a hurry to repeat. The one thing I can say is that it really did help me get used to feeling hungry all the time. So far it has been much easier to tell myself "Okay that's enough food" and just stop eating before I arrive at feeling "Full". I have 10 more lbs of real weight I'm trying to shed and if I can pace at a pound a week, I should be there by the first of April.

I crossed the halfway mark on the fast this morning. Everything I've heard and read says the cravings and discomfort is supposed to peak between day 2 and 3. Being in day 4, I can say that while it's still not 'easy' today has been way better than yesterday which was better than Tuesday which was absolutely miserable. I've also cut out caffeine today (I was allowing myself black coffee and unsweet tea for the first 3 days) and I've gone to strictly water. Surprisingly, I haven't had any headaches yet today. I've decided this is the hardest thing I've ever tried health-wise. Prior to this, that distinction was held by the marathon I ran in 2010 ... this is harder. This morning I was down 9 lbs since Sunday night, but I recognize that probably 2/3 of that is water that will come right back once I start eating again. I'm hoping for 6-7 lbs of actual weight loss by the end of this, but I guess we'll see.

It's been a few years since I've done a sustained fast and maybe I'm just getting older, but I don't remember it sucking this bad. I'm just under 48 hours and I have felt hungry for probably 75% of my waking hours today. I seem to remember the hunger as being pretty strong for short stints and then more or less fading away. If my resolve wanes, I'll prob go with Troph's suggestion and try to eat minimally.

I have not participated in this thread in the past, but I'm jumping in for this year. I saw my largest number ever on the scale last week and it has my attention. I've never been a big guy, but I need to drop a solid 20lbs from that number to get back to my desired weight. I'm doing dry (damp) January as well. Meaning I had one preplanned drinking day last Saturday and I'll be ending the month with a trip to Cabo where I'll allow myself to moderately imbibe. The more notable thing is I started a 7 day water fast after dinner last night. I've done 3 day fasts in the past, but his will be my longest to date by more than double. I'm not doing it simply for the fat loss part of it, but more for the autophagy and metabolic reset it purportedly provides. Coming off the fast, I'll be implementing my simple three rule eating plan: 1) No processed sugar 2) no flour 3) nothing deep fried. I will strictly adhere to this until my weight goal is met, then I'll allow myself occasional consumption of those, in moderation of course. Lastly, I'm going to ramp up my workouts as well. Last fall I averaged one 45 minute cardio session and a one hour trainer led lifting session per week. Over this month I'll double that to 2x cardio per week and 2x weight training. I'm looking forward to comparing notes and cheering each other on as we kick 2024 off the right way together.

Just stumbling across this thread, but here is one from here in Midland last week: https://www.mrt.com/news/crime/article/former-midland-youth-pastor-charged-child-18460557.php Apparently the dude got on Skype and asked for a "mother/son" live feed. And when it came on, he turned on his camera and could be seen beating his meat to the feed.

Does anyone know how to steam fox when out of country? YouTube TV is cock-blocking me as it seems to be able to tell my location despite my being connected to a Dallas based VPN Please PM as I’m hoping not to derail this game thread.

Went to see Tyler Childers in Santa Barbara last month. The show was great, it was my first time seeing him and he's just so impressive live. He chose not to play his biggest song, which is always annoying, but it was still well worth it. If you haven't been, the Santa Barbara Bowl FUCKS! I will be monitoring their schedule going forward and going back anytime someone I want to see is playing there.

Anyone participating in a Calcutta? (or maybe I should be asking in the gambling forum)

I should ask my Piedra buddies if they would like to buy me lunch this week

Headed west for this show at the end of the month: It has been a long time coming because I was supposed to see him + Sturgill in late march of 2020 and the show got canceled

I wore my American Aquarium t-shirt the T-swift concert I mentioned two posts above yours. I'm an investor in a music publishing company that has a current deal with BJ. He really is a gifted song writer.

Attended the 3/24 show in Vegas with the fam. She played Allegiant stadium and was on stage for just over 3 hours, only taking 1-2 minutes breaks for wardrobe changes. I'm not much of a Swifty, but it was pretty entertaining. Apparently Marcus Mumford came on and did a song with her the next night, I'm bummed because I would have enjoyed seeing that.

I really wish I had started keeping track of GS's crude price forecasts vs the actual outcome over the years. I believe a handsome sum could have been made by trading the opposite of what they predict. I don't know how bad they've been, but I'd wager it's worse than a coin flip.

Crested Butte, I picked it up in late 2020 right before the COVID effect on real estate pricing up there really kicked in. I'd like to say I knew what I was doing, but it was dumb luck.

Reading the last two pages of this thread, it sounds like my timing is horrible, but I'm looking to do a cash-out re-fi on an investment property in Colorado. Does anyone have someone they would recommend who is licensed in CO?

I'll echo that this seems to be a common practice. Here are two examples that come to mind and they are both incredibly brazen: A landman I knew used to do some contract work for an independent operator here in Midland. They would assign his group sections of land to go run title and lease for them. During the process of being in and out of their office working for them, he got a look at their maps indicating the full scope of their areas of interest. So he took it upon himself to go ahead and run title and buy leases under his own LLC for some of the sections of land they hadn't assigned to him yet. He then reserved an override and tried to sell the leases to the client at a premium to what he paid. Needless to say, they demanded he assign the leases over at his cost and without any overrides. At his refusal to comply, attorneys were hired and when he realized he wasn't going to win they ended up settling and he was reputationally blacklisted. Example two is about two young and very successful guys who are now household names in the Texas oil and gas scene. They knew a landman who was employed at a publicly traded Oklahoma based E&P. The version of the story I was given is that while the landman was employed at the E&P, these guys began paying him on the order of $10k/month to feed them legal descriptions for areas his official employer was interested in leasing. They would then take the leases and offer them for sale with subsequent mark-up and overrides attached. After a while, the E&P thought they had identified the information leaker so they set up a sting. They picked two random sections of land out in the middle of nowhere and provided that information only to this one landman. When they were approached by these guys with an offer to buy the leases on those two sections they knew they had their man. I believe he was only terminated and they did not pursue criminal or civil action.

I'm told this has a lot to do with some refinery maintenance which should be wrapping up in the next month or so. Also, Exxon bringing another 250k/day of sweet capacity online will be nice for Texas producers.

NAPE recap: I'll start at end. I woke up Friday morning in MY hotel room, alone and wasn't wearing my suit jacket or shoes, so I count that as a win. Limited it to Thursday AM - Friday AM from now on, this is the way. Although I did hear that Ryan Bingham was pretty good at HOB Wednesday night, I do wish I had caught that. Schedule as follows: Coffee meeting in Marriott Marquis Lobby (MM) Coffee meeting at Uncommon Grounds Lunch meeting back at MM HH #1 at Four Seasons bar (Little Midland) HH #2 at Morton's HH #3 back at Little Midland HH #4 at Biggio's HH #5 back at Little Midland Dinner at Papa's Bros (original location) Wake up at MM I don't have any receipts or other evidence that I went anywhere after dinner, but I also haven't spoken to anyone I was with at dinner since then so who knows.

Username checks out

I believe he was working on a venture called "Drillmap" or something

I'll be at NAPE for the first time several years. When I say "be at NAPE" I really just mean, I'll be in downtown Houston on Feb 2nd. I'm definitely not planning to subject myself to the actual expo. Although there are some fond memories from the expo in the past. Like at the Wednesday icebreaker, only minutes after meeting @immamac in person for the first time, I blasted some unsuspecting lady with a dodgeball in an effort to win a ford pickup ... good times.

Thanks for the input and the clarification. Definitely haven't decided for sure rather or not to dive into this project yet, just trying to gather info to make an informed decision. Ours would not be a build and flip, but a build and hold/rent. Seeing as we do not live in Austin, managing the project remotely will be a headache and would necessitate a GC. We are still in the "tire kicking" phase and are just trying to gather info.

Thanks all for the input. I'm relieved to hear that construction costs may not be as high as I was initially told. As this project is an investment and not a primary home, it definitely helps with the economics to be in the $450-$600 /sqft range for the build. We are looking in 78701 and 78704 (Clarksville, Bouldin, etc) so lot values are a meaningful portion of the overall project cost. I would love to go with something already built, but the properties we have looked at so far are all on the extreme ends of the spectrum. Meaning they are either brand-new/re-done asking in the $1,000/sqft range or they are total dumps being sold for lot value.

Does anyone have an estimated range for new construction costs in central Austin at the moment? I know there are a million caveats associated with that question, but I'm wondering about buying a property for lot value, demo and rebuild on the site. Not cookie-cutter floor plans and finishes, but architect drawn, designer picked finishes in the 2-3k sqft size range. I asked a realtor and she told me she thought something like that would be ~$800/sqft right now, but I'm looking for some more input on the topic. Thanks