u/HolidayPlatypus751

Turned on ECO mode when I purchased a '23 RTL (cuz I'm a cheapskate!) and left it on for ~6 months, happily checking in w/ 22.5-23 mpg on my very regular commute up/down a mountain pass, freeway speeds + some city driving throughout the day. I'm a very regular 400 miles/week.

About a month ago, from a post on Reddit informing that ECO gives you diminished AC performance (and 100 degree days in SLC), I turned off ECO and did indeed have a bit more oomph from the cooling system in addition to a peppier driving experience.

Here's the part I did not expect: MPG went immediately to 25 after that. I'm 4 weeks in and I guess the ECO mode is dead to me now.

Tangent/sidenote: my digital MPG is ALWAYS ~+2 MPG from what the pump says. My last Ridgeline was exactly the same, overstating MPG by ~+2. YMMV. Literally.

I know this topic has come up before, often cluttered with AI-generated posts or vendor shilling, but I’m hoping to start a genuine discussion among professionals. I'd love to hear what systems and processes you are currently using in your workflow.

To get the conversation started, here is a breakdown of our current setup. Feel free to use this framework to share yours and/or add any other relevant details:

Trade Scopes: Div. 7 Fireproofing (07-8100) , Intumescent Fireproofing (07-8123) and Firestop (07-8400)

Bid Management: Clickup with HEAVY AI processing. Clickup grabs ITB emails and either creates new ITBs for our calendar and populates with (nearly) all the data we use for the rest of the bid management process. This has been an unmitigated success, it's tamed our bid management and really solved the tornado of inbound bid communication. The time is nearly zero for the administration of ITBs and the quality of data we collect is 100x better than before.

Plan Review/PDF processing: Bluebeam. We review for our scope, review specs, prune the plan-set for use in takeoff. We mostly keep the G- A- and S- sheets from a plan-set. This is mostly manual with AI augmentation.

Takeoff: zzTakeoff. We used Planswift for years, kicked the tires of BuzzBid (it's good) and switched to zzTakeoff after using for 20 minutes. Especially makes sense coming from Planswift. There are a few "AI" type features in zzT and more in the works (guessing) but this is a manual process.

Pricing and Bid Forms: We export the quantities from ZZTakeoff and put those into Excel, where we have templates to create our formal bid proposal. We've been using basically the same bid proposal for a long time, and it's flexible and professional enough for us to price the way we want. From there we create a PDF to email out to GC(s) requesting a bid from us. We use Clickup AI and/or Claude AI populate the Excel bid form with data but then manually review and tweak pricing numbers to build out our price.

Follow up and bid results: Ummmm... yeah.

Job Management: Clickup and QuickBooks Desktop. Bid record is converted into a job record and other fields are populated via Clickup AI and manual input. We use subtasks for all the downstream items: submittals, contracts, OCIP/CCIPs, Davis Bacon, Tax Exempt certs, some financial and job costing data, etc... I can't recommend Clickup for this, but we are making it work. Planning on getting ContractorForeman rolled out in the near future. (Other recommends welcome, btw.)

Hope this helps, I'm eager to hear about your workflow.

I've had a P3 41mm for a month (bought it cheap, refurb thankfully) and dropped it on a ceramic tile floor. Shattered it? Oh yeah.

In my short time I found out I'm DEFINITELY a watch person, so much so that I think I can be phoneless most of the time. [Smash Cut] Just order a P4 45mm with BT/LTE from Google. I purchased Pixel Care for future damage but I'd like to prevent using it.

Any recommendations on the least obtrusive protective film/case/bezel/whatever? I really don't even know what the options are. Keeping the watch "footprint" as small as possible is a goal.

Thanks.

2023 RTL-E, When I am on HandsFree users on the other side cannot hear me at all. I can talk loudly and they will kind of hear me but I immediately have to switch to regular phone mode to have a conversation. Any insights??