any data might be helpful in determinig a good area to wholesale? 

I met a realtor, he's on BP also, through Craigslist who gave me great information on pulling comps from non-mls sources.

One of my buddies is a data scientist that does consulting work.  

Review the face pages for Notice of Petition to Administer Estate, copy down the case name and file # and then pull the actual file from the clerk and review to extract the names of parties you wish to contact and the addresses of properties that interest you.That's it.Or, you can find someone to do this for you and pay them to research and pull data while you're at home (or the beach). 

No minutes or data were used but somehow managed to rack the bill up to $2000.

Fortunately, not for most people.Even after you do get court data, you'll need to vet and segment your lists into priority and high-shot leads and focus your attention on those opportunities.I had some guy contact me off these BP forums who wanted to sell nationwide probate leads.

For instance I'm good at gathering data and and asking probing questions.

At one of my local REIA's last month, I met a guy who is working for a small real estate startup, based out of Washington D.C. 

So I have spent the last 10 days trying to get a card designed that I can run through my own printer using a mail merge data list.

I have met a few women investors that have learned to handle this very well, you should be no exception.