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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • The most difficult part is creating the charter and selecting the appropriate category; after that it’s a small filing fee (most states) and - as long as you stay under $50k income - a trivial tax reporting burden. I’ll be filing two returns - one for MD and one for VA - for two non-profits I’m on the board of this weekend. I’ll be done before breakfast. They both have federal EINs and both are small enough we use Excel for ledger (since QuickBooks has gone to online-only annual extortion as their business model). Without paid employees or stockholders (just a board of directors), edit: and have no substantial physical property, and without donations coming from prohibited individuals or sanctioned stated, there is diminishingly little paperwork. If it’s just a virtual organization with leased remote assets like web services, the bar is pretty low. Maryland has no annual fee; Virginia has a small one ($75, I believe) to maintain the corporation.









  • Picking a fight with a superpower is generally a poor idea. Killing military members - even in Jordan - might be considered a bit beyond mere commerce.

    Edit: I did misremember the attackers in Jordan and thought that was part of the Houthi organization. The Houthi’s are attacking US warship(s) in the area, but haven’t directly killed an US service members that we know of/yet. The Jordan attack was (now that I’ve checked again) by one of the groups operating under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

    My only defense here is that all of these attacks on US and UK vessels (merchant and military) are in retribution for the US support of Israel. And, yes, there are a lot of groups backed by Iran and Iraq who are using the Israel-Hamas/Israel destruction of Gaza as an excuse to lash out at Western powers who (generally) provide support to Israel. My apologies for the error.




  • One option would be to make the beam a flush condition. To get a 16’ span with rafters you’re going to be using at least 2x8s. That’s 7.25" deep. If you were set the top of the beam at the top of the rafters and hang them from the beam (simpson or USP hangers) that buys you some space. Now an 11.88" LVL would only stick down 5-5/8" below the bottom of the rafters. (okay, 5-3/4"-6" with the additional slope over the 5.25" of beam) I’m not saying that a 3 ply 11x88 LVL with a 2.1E, bearing in a BC6 cap on 6x6s would work for your application, but the height tolerance would seem to add up in your favor.


  • The advantage of LVLs are that

    1. you can put them up 1 ply at a time
    2. they hold nails/cut easily
    3. the lumber yard will likely size them for you if you ask

    The disadvantage is that the depth will be about 1/16th of the span when using 2-3 plies.

    The advantage of steel is that an I beam (W shape is what you want, for “Wide Flange Beam”) will be about 2/3 the depth of an LVL. The disadvantages are

    1. An engineer will likely charge you about $600-800 to size this beam, but will also tell you how to top connect it
    2. It will be one piece (fwiw it will weigh about the same as the LVL)
    3. You will have to buy a 40’ piece, or pay a premium to have it cut down from a 40’ piece. (stock lengths of steel are 20’/40’)

    Note that nobody can properly answer your question from the data given (edit - just notice you mentioned 16’ rafters below). You would need to include the span of the rafters and (at least) your location to determine the snow loads and wind loads (edit: and seismic, though it’s unlikely to control for this design) for sizing the connections.

    Disclaimer: I’m a structural engineer, but I’m not your structural engineer. For a long span like this I recommend contacting someone licensed in your jurisdiction to help you out.