Here's something to think about.
I recently picked a new primary care doctor.  After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, he said I was doing "fairly well" for my age.  (I'm moving past 65)
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, "Do you think I'll live to be 80?"
He asked, "Do you smoke cigars or drink beer or wine?"
I lied and said, "Oh no, and I don't do drugs either"
Then he asked, "Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?"
Again I lied and said, "Not much...I understand that red meat is very unhealthy."
"Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicyclng?"
"No I don't", I said.
He asked, "Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?"
"No", I said.
He looked at me puzzled and said...
"Then why do you even give a s**t?"

I received a phone call from a gorgeous ex-girlfriend who this morning called "out of the blue" to see if I was still around.  We lost track of time, chatting about the wild, romantic times we used to enjoy together.  I couldn't believe it when she asked if I would be interested in meeting up and rekindling some of that "old magic".  "Wow!" I was flabbergasted.  "I don't know if I could keep pace with you now", I said, "I'm a bit older and a bit grayer and balder than when you last saw me.  Plus I don't really have the energy I used to have".  She just giggled and said she was sure I could still rise to the challenge.  "Yeah", I said. "Just so long as you don't mind a waistline that's a few inches wider these days! Not to mention my total lack of muscle tone...everything is sagging and I'm developing jowels like a Great Dane!"  She laughed and told me to stop being so silly.  She teased me saying that tubby, gray-haired, older men were cute, and she was sure I would still be a great lover.

"Anyway," she giggled, "I've put on a few pounds myself!"

So I told her to get lost.

A crusty old marine sergeant major found himself at a gala event hosted by a local liberal arts college.  There was no shortage of extremely young idealistic liberal ladies in attendance, one of whom approached the sergeant major for conversation.
"Excuse me sergeant major, but you seem to be a very serious man...Is something bothering you?"
"Negative, ma'am. Just serious by nature"
The young lady looked at his awards and decorations and said, "It looks like you have seen a lot of action."
"Yes, ma'am, a lot of action."
The young lady, tiring of trying to start up a conversation said, "You should lighten up a little.  Relax and enjoy yourself."
The sergeant major just stared at her in his serious manner.  Finally the young lady said,"You know, I hope you dont take this the wrong way, but when was the last time you had sex?"
"1955, ma'am."
"Well, there you are. No wonder you're so serious.  You really need to chill out and relax.  I mean no sex since 1955! Come with me."
She took his hand and led him to a private room where she proceeded to "relax" him several times.
Afterward, panting for breath, she leaned against his grizzled bare chest and said, "Wow, you didn't forget much since 1955!"
The sergeant major said in his serious voice, after glancing at his watch, "I hope not; it's only 2130 now."

Once upon a time, a prince asked a beautiful princess,"Will you marry me?"  The princess said, "NO!", and the prince lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and had sex with curvy women and hunted and fished and played golf and went to naked bars and dated women half his age and drank whiskey, beer, and Captain Morgan and never heard bitching and never paid child support or alimony and kept his house and his guns and never got cheated on while he was at work and all his friends and family thought he was cool as hell and he had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up. The end.

Sorry Cameron, but my simplest one exceeds the 5000KB file size requirement for a post   Like you gave me the idea before, I'm saving those comments for the "Dr Bob's Big Book of Home Inspection Comments and Other Remedies"--It might need two volumes, however.  Now with the addition of [[]] maybe even three volumes ....  BTW, now that Dom is going to use symbols you suggested, I really think you need to press him on the royalties issue--I'll back you up, I promise (trust me-I'm a doctor)

Dom-
Excellent suggestion-much less cause for confusion

One more thought which might help put this in perspective--I think this makes sense, but I often have glaring holes in my logic, so be gentle if you find one-Thanks

Let's say you wanted to directly compare between a set of single comments and a single comment-building comment containing three lists with three items in each list. Which is easier? How many single comments would we have to create to come up with the equivalent of our comment-building comment?  My brain is a little rusty, but I think the answer derives from the nine comments in the lists taken three at a time.  If I'm right, it would take 27 single comments (3x3x3)to include all of the combinations. Once I created these 27 comments (which might sound like a lot of work) any one is available in the report with just two clicks (provided you can find them easily and have the front-end time to create them). Now let's look at our comment-building comment--Building each of these 3-list comments takes 11 clicks. Instead of going through the pain of creating 27 comments to cover what I can do by creating one comment-building comment containing lists, it is only going to take me 11 clicks to create any of the single comments I had to create individually. Sounds good, right?  However, think about the next report, and the next, etc..  With my single comments, to get any one of them into my report takes only two clicks--So my click ratio is 2:11.  In 50 reports I have only had to enter 100 clicks to get any one of them into a report. In 50 reports I have had to enter 550 clicks to get the same comment in my report using my comment-building comments. It keeps diverging as you increase reports--100 reports=200clicks vs. 100 reports =1100clicks. It seems to me that at some point single comments might make a better return on your time investment, but each to their own.  At least consider this as you move forward building comments.  There is a break-even point somewhere.

Here's something for everyone to think about when deciding how you want to construct your comments:
Comparing Selection Panel Comments to Damage Panel Comments
To add a selection panel comment to a report: 1 click to highlite = 1 click per comment
To add a damage panel comment to a report: 1 click to highlite + 1 click to move to Black or Red = 2 clicks per comment
Comparing Complete Comments to Comments Containing Lists
To add a damage panel comment containing one list: 1 click to highlite + 1 click to move to Black or Red + 2 Clicks to open <<LIST>> + 1 click to select item in list = 5 clicks per one list comment
To add a damage panel comment containing three lists:= 11 clicks per three list comment (you can do the math)
If you want a formula for how many clicks it takes to add a damage panel comment:
Total number of clicks/comment = 2 + 3 times the # of lists
For a selection panel comment it's 1 + 3 times the # of lists

You might not consider any of this significant until you consider adding, let's say 100 comments into your report and you have structured all of them to comment-build from maybe three lists, like maybe <<MATERIAL>>, <<LOCATION>>, <CONDITION>> or something like that.
Adding 100 damage panel comments to your report with each comment containing 3 lists represents 1,100 clicks! Even if you do it in a selection panel you will only save 100 clicks.  Now compare that to having the complete comment available to add without any lists--the differences are pretty dramatic.  To add 100 complete damage panel comments to your report only takes 200 total clicks, a savings of 900 clicks compared to our comment building option containing 3 lists. 900 extra clicks in the field starts to get particularly significant in my opinion, if that's how you do your report.
Don't get me wrong--I'm definitely not arguing against the <<LIST>> feature--It's essential in simplifying comment entries in your report, but I think everybody needs to be smart about it.  I would suggest you try the simplest approach first which is comparing the trade-offs between a comment with and without lists before making your whole report full of cool comment-building options.  Sometimes it takes a lot af trial and error to decide, but starting simple is probably always the best approach.  For what it's worth--

Hey Dom-
Should I add CA sales tax to the programming invoice I'm sending you?

Looks like I didn't add the template page to the last post-here it is

Hey Cameron-
I thought you might want to see this after all of your efforts to try to support my unconventional ideas. You may already know this, but remember your question to Dom about incorproating the HTML convention of {{}} or [[]] to maybe "hide" my keywords?  It turns out if you use the selection panel like you suggested rather than the damage panel it already exists!  If I add <<KEYWORD>>Comment to a selection panel, anything included in the <<>> is not returned in the report. Don't ask me how, but I'm sure it must have something to do with Klingons. I attached a sample template page and the corresponding report output to show the differences between how the two panels (one selection, one damage)handle the same input differently--It really is a versatile program! The only active list I created is <<LIST#1>> which contains the comment "List Item #1".  None of my <<KEYWORD#...>> inserts have a list attached to them. You can still use the lists feature in the selection panel,it just shows up a little wierd in the section but ends up perfectly OK in the report.  In addition, if for some reason you want the comment contained between <<>> (I don't know why you would since we have worked so hard to eliminate it)just add it as <<::...>> and everything after the :: is included.  Dom's probably reading this thinking "I could have told you that"--I think he is just waiting for all of us to catch up someday

Hey Cameron-
It's interesting isn't it? The <<lists>> addition kind of freed up the selection panel to maybe be used as something totally different which you easily seem to have figured out. I would never have thought of that in a million years.  Hats off to you--it's been a very interesting and valuable discussion for me so far.  I guess I should have been an architect--it certainly seems to have worked for you . 

DrBob

Hey Cameron-
Serge was right about you-you are one creative guy when it comes to template setup.  The selection panel idea is very interesting.  For a work-around how about I have one selection panel which contains all of my comments, and one damage panel which duplicates all of those selection panel comments, or at least the majority of them likely to make it into a summary because of health/safety or significant deficiency concerns, etc.  Now I can have the best of both worlds.  In the field I can do a single click and my comment loads in the report just like you said.  The header for that panel would be something like "Observations".  Like I suspect most guys experience, I usually have a lot more non-summary comments than summary comments, and this would save a boatload of black/red clicks.  However, if I needed a summmary comment, I still have my original damage panel with the black/red conventions.  Going to this panel with one red click I can add the comment to the summary. The header for this one would be something like you suggested, i.e., "Important" or "Summary Items". With the Copy/Paste functions it should be easy to reproduce all the comments from the selection panel to the damage panel. I can't see a downside to this approach, can you?

Hey Jeffrey--

The incoming lines as well as all of the interior lines were copper.  From what I remember he continually was cleaning the screens as he reported "they got clogged again as soon as he cleaned them"--I don't know if the problem has gone away over time but I intend to sak him--More later

Hey Cameron-

I thought about your last suggestion about eliminating the tabs and including the tabs<<comments>> in the damage panel.  It's an interesting idea, and might help, but I wanted to philosophize with you for a minute...

Let's say I'm in the field and I am in my favorite master bathroom.  The way I envision having my ideal program set up is that I can click on Interior, Bathrooms, a bathroom <<list>> for which one, and have a whole bunch of subtabs for plumbing, electrical, etc. As you know I have some seriously detailed comments for my bathrooms and other systems and components --maybe 50 or more of them arranged as to condition, implication, recommendation(the number increases the older I get)which don't necesaarily show up well on my 10" screen. As you know, I am hoping to find a way not to have to include a front-end <<list>> to eliminate my keyword.
Consider what happens when I am in that space--It has taken me 3 clicks to get there on my C2Go in the field-Once I am in the right section (Interior/Bathroom/<<Master Bathroom>>, now I simply want to click on an observation which executes the comment I need to add to my report, (not necessarily my final report but one that represents my on-site observations). I have so many substantial comments that I need a keyword to identify which one to add--When I am on an inspection my mind can only think in those couple of key words--not the comment details. Back at the office I would look at my field comments in the black panel and decide which ones needed a move from black to red or a front end convention comment supplied by a Macy Merge (Repair/Replace, Monitor, Health/Safety, etc.).
 
I think this is where the philosophical break might occur with Pro users--I guess it depends on whether or not you want to spend your time expediting your report in the field or editing your comments back at the office--I don't know which is better, but I have always had a vision that less post-inspection time in the office is better from a business (and sanity) standpoint. I don't know which one optimizes a business, but as usual I have an opinion.
I call it my leaky faucet observation--The question I guess I would have in order to put my point across is: How many ways are there of reporting the observation, implications, and recommendations regarding a leaky faucet??
Having thought about it over the years, I guess there might be maybe no more than a couple of dozen comments, if that many, to intelligently describe the conditions and recommendations regarding a leaky faucet.  Sure, individual circumstances may require editing, but in my opinion whatever leads to a leaky faucet should be addressed and taken care of in at least a few dozen constructive comments, if at all that many, without a whole lot of editing. Building them into your templates should theoretically start to eliminate your office time in my opinion.  The problem is that all of those comments ends up being a cumbersome library which needs searching to come up with the right one.

So, I am a firm believer in what I call front-end-work, i.e., developing as many comprehensive comments as I can regarding conditions that might be found in the field, regardless of how unique they might seem at the time. Once you have invested the time to have them, your work is over for all subsequent reports, provided you can find the appropriate comment.

If I have all of these in my Interior/Bathroom/<<List>>/<<KEYWORD>>Comments I have theoretically only executed four clicks to get it into my report.  My problem with the current setup is that I think I need one more indented category--maybe something like "bathroom/electrical" to get me to a clean screen that has all of my bathroom electrical comments.  Because I don't have that option I have had to create kind of an "artificial category" which consists of the keyword at the beginning of a comment which gets me to the actual comment--Unfortunately I can't currently decouple the keyword from the comment which potentially adds three more clicks--two on the <<list>> and one on OK to get rid of the keyword category.  It would be so much easier in my mind if what I clicked in the field would be my default comments in the report. If I needed to move them to the summary, think about it--the ratio of black/red comments might be several hundred to one--I add far fewer red comments than black and functionally I think the program should reflect this in less clicks--just an opinion
As you had noodled with me in previous posts, what if a click on a comment would auto-add it to the the black comments--especially if we had formatting options for these comments in the panel, and then a choice as to whether or not to move it to a red panel for inclusion in the summary.

I'm dreaming again but would appreciate your thoughts--If we believe the beta site is for dreamers, the future program might include all the stuff we haven't found anywhere else--OK Dom-Time for philosophical developer comments as well

Thanks, Cameron-
I went on the web and it seems to be much more common than I had imagined--Time for another of my "brief" comments--I'll call this one "Stud Ghosting" which seems to be what most inspectors call it.

PS-Most of you guys have forgotten more than I will ever know about inspections.  Keep up the good work. 

Hey Cameron-
I have some of those socks and never noticed any beads that came with them .  Maybe I should look again...

This is probably going to be one of those "you had to be there" kind of stories.  My neighbor took out the conditioner and replumbed the lines so the conditioner can no longer be the issue, and probably all I will ever get at this point is second-hand information which is hard to piece together.

At any rate, regardless of where the particulate went the only conclusion I can draw is that it must have come from the conditioner somehow.  I don't have a lot of experience with conditioners and don't know if one of their failure modes could cause them to pump resin throughout the whole plumbing system.  Doesn't sound too feasible, but there's lots of stuff I don't know about.

On another note about this same house, the previous owner called me over to look at their living room walls and ceiling--soot (which I later determined was likely due to a stove fire that occurred when she must have seriously toasted whatever she was attempting to cook)had deposited on the walls and ceiling in an exact pattern which reflected where the underlying studs were.  I had never seen anything like it before, but some of my ASHI colleagues had seen similar patterns in homes that burned lots of candles or inscence.  The owner had had some tests done and ruled out mold and any moisture behind the drywall, and the problem went away after they re-painted.  On this one I was able to remove a picture on their wall and you could see a patch of clean paint.  The soot evidently went everywhere, but it was more concentrated at the studs for some reason.  No one has ever been able to give me an explanation as to why this happens, but it evidently is more common than I thought.
I'll keep everybody posted on this house-I'm sure we're not done with all of its strangeness yet.
   

I have a new next door neighbor that moved into a foreclosure that sat vacant for about a year.  The plumbing system had been winterized, and when the water was turned back on my new neighbor complained that all his fixtures were clogged with a "black granular material"  that restricted most of the flow.

When I went over to check on what he was experiencing, I determined he had not yet opened the cold water valve to his hot water heater or turned it on yet, and that the home had a water conditioner with both inlet and outlet lines shut off and completely out of the plumbing loop. 

I did see what he meant by the black granules-they were everywhere, and I took a guess that the backflush on the conditioner might have malfunctioned with the previous owner and filled the lines with resin particles somehow.  Sometimes out here in our water district homes that sit for a while with the water turned off collect mineral deposits which are usually quickly flushed from the lines when the water is turned back on.  My neighbor, however, had been experiencing this for days on end.

I suggested he open both the cold water line and the drain valve on his hot water heater and see if we could flush all of his lines to remove the particulate.  The next day he said he had tried it, but nothing came out of the drain valve but he thinks he had solved the problem.  When I asked what he had done he told me that the problem seemed to take care of itself when he opened the cold water line to the water heater and turned it on.  I can't figure how this would solve anything, but he doesn't seem to be experiencing the issue anymore.  What am I missing here?  He also told me that he has no plans of using the conditioner and had not fiddled with either valve since moving in, so I am assuming it is still bypassed in the plumbing system.  Where did all of that particulate go, and why?

Cameron-
Thanks for all the thoughts-I really appreciate the effort.  I'll keep plugging away at it--Like they say, Even a blind squirrel gets an acorn every once in a while .  I particularly like your comment-selling suggestion--How about "Dr Bob's Big Book of Sure-Fire Home Inspection Comments and Other Remedies".  Maybe if I threw in a free Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar with each purchase I might actually sell a couple!
Karma to you and thanks again,
DrBob

Thanks, Cameron-

OK let's try it.  I hopefully have posted a residential section I call Exterior -Structure which contains 24 tabs with a range of comments in each one.  The comments listed are for the exterior wall cladding.  I guess if I had to characterize my report, it is mostly room by room because my clients seem to understand and picture this a little better than global categories like Electrical, Plumbing, etc..  To each his own I guess.  But I also have Electrical and Plumbing, etc. Sections to characterize systems and components which don't fit well in a room by room, so it's a little bit of everything.  I get a bunch of "discussion" from my ASHI colleagues that it is too much and overwhelming for the customer, but to me that is a good thing.  They can't get the kind of info I provide them anywhere else and I design my reports to be living documents which hopefully convey knowledge for the duration of their home ownership, not just a real estate transaction. 

The example is based on my HIP 2.8.2 version as I have obviously not yet decided how I can use the new list and Merge features in 2.9.3 to modify the entries, but I think you get the idea.  I only want to change it once if at all possible, and don't want to start until I have taken full advantage of what the new versions have to offer.

To give you an idea of the scope of the comments, take the INSULBRICK- comment for example.  Here is what it says:

INSULBRICK-  The siding on the home appears to be Insulbrick, a popular form of siding in the 1930s and 1940s.  It consists of a fiberboard backing coated with tar and sprinkled with granular material.  It was commonly embossed to give a brick-like appearance.  The insulbrick siding on this home is in fair condition.  While this type of siding is considered low quality by today's standards, it can last a long time if properly maintained.  However, we consider this type of siding to be a safety concern as it is highly combustible.  Most lending institutions will not place mortgages on properties with Insulbrick exteriors.  Insurance companies often take exception to the material.  To minimize the potential fire threat to the home, we suggest removal and replacement of all of the siding as soon as practical.  We do not recommend an aluminum or vinyl siding overlay as this only conceals the underlying combustible material.

OK, so I'm a little over the top but once you have made the investment in substantial comments I think it is win-win for everybody