Hmm..I thought I had posted a response, but I guess I must have closed the window before hitting post. This week has been a bit...crazy for me.

For anyone who has a caught Bagons they want to evolve and haven't yet, I'd hold off on that until December if you can wait that long. I'm guessing that Niantic will do another year-end review CD again. And Outrage on Bagon brings it from somewhere around 10th best dragon type to 2nd or 3rd. Amazing what one charge move can do.

I was only out for a little bit on CD but managed to snag 3 shiny. Evolved all of them even though none of them were high level (or high IV), but I figured they're much more valuable as trade bait with the CD exclusive move anyways.

Within the last couple of days I have managed to score a shiny Solrock and a Shiny Buneary!

***IMPORTANT ONLY IF YOU READ THIS BEFORE 6PM LOCAL TIME ON 4/19***

Apparently there has been an unannounced legendary raid hour going on in some parts of the world at 6pm local time. No one knows if this was intentional or not, but Australia, parts of Asia and London have confirmed this. It could have something to do with the Safari Zone event going on right now in Singapore.

***End of immediately important notice***

Speaking of which, Shiny Lapras has been confirmed at the event. Also, Shiny Shuckle has been confirmed as well. And starting on 4/20 6AM local time till 4/21 10PM local time, we are getting worldwide increased Shuckle spawns (shiny confirmed in the Twitter post).

Unfortunately I have dinner plans at 6:30, so I probably won't be doing many raids if the legendary hour happens on the US east coast. Hope you all have (or had if it already happened where you are) better luck planning.

Also, for anyone who cares, Blast Burn Blaziken (if that is indeed the CD move it will get) will rival Moltres as the top fire type attacker in the game. It has a better DPS, but isn't as tanky so the TDO is lower. Fire type isn't super useful, but it will be an usable alternative when facing Steel and Ice types. There aren't many(any?) Grass or Bug type legendaries (but my knowledge past gen 2 is non-existant), but if you raid the lower tiers, there is plenty of opportunity for it to shine.

Shiny Shuckle...you WILL be mine. I VOW it...

The kid landed one while we were out getting ice cream this afternoon. So, you know, he's having a pretty good day.

I've clicked on about 300 bunnies and 200 shuckles. I have wasted all of that time.

I don't know if this is just me, but I have always only ever really done anything with my Pokemon that appraise out as amazing. Occasionally I will evolve something of a lower-quality whenever I need to meet a research goal or something. Otherwise I just leave those ones alone. Does anybody ever do anything with the ones that appraise lower? I ask because I got a shiny Mareep with very high CP, but it only appraised out as strong. I was wondering if it is worth evolving that one up.

I will evolve a low IV pokemon or shiny to check them off in the pokedex. I will hold off as long as reasonable to see if I can get a better one, but if I don't then I'll evolve the crap one. Other than that they are garbage.
If I were determined to maximize, there are some pokemon I have over a thousand candies for who I should evolve before I delete for the exp but eh, who has the patience for that?

I save lower pokemon for those events where a field research would be "Evolve X pokemon". Otherwise they get sent to the grinder.

I am on a streak of catching 100%ers in the wild. 2 weeks in a row so far, last week was a Girafarig and this week was Buneary. BTW Clamperl can be found in the wild if anyone cares. I was near a large body of water, which I am sure mattered.

I go for level more than IVs. I generally consider anything in the top two appraisal categories (strong/best for Instinct) as potentially worth evolving if I don't have to spend all that candy or stardust to level it up. Shinies even moreso. I guess I figure I'll save the stardust for Pokémon that can't be caught at high level (raid/hatch/research-exclusives) or just those that are super rare in the wild.

I think my approach is fine for most people who aren't super-competitive. (But I've also probably sent away several 100%s without even appraising them.)

Now I'm off for my second day of looking for shiny Shuckle.

UPDATE: I got myself that shiny Shuckle. I made good on my vow!

Grats!

I clicked on about 400 bunnies so far, but I will probably click on a few more tonight. About 260 Shuckles was all I could manage over the weekend.
Hatched a few dozen eggs.
Plus however many other pokemon I managed to click on. There were lots of Merills around.
Allllll of it a waste of time. Pretty cool.
Didn't get any CPs over 90% in the wild either, thought I didn't focus on catching since clicking is all the game rewards(at least in theory).

My GF got a Shuckle after clicking on like 30 of them. I'm supposed to be happy for her though.

I started avoiding clicking on Mareeps just because if THAT was the shiny i got I'd flip the metaphorical table. Even though I know getting a shiny mareep would have no bearing on the RNG of other pokemen.

I totally get that, though, and I feel the same way when I get a shiny that isn't part of a current event. I throw my hands up in the air and think "Well, there go my chances of getting the one I want!"

My criteria have changed a bunch since I started playing the game at launch. At first I kept everything that was high CP. Then I found out IV's were a thing, so I started appraising everything. Then I realized how much time it was actually taking; I wasn't aware of apps like PokeGenie/Calcy IV and was using a website to do it manually. So I decided to only do it for the ones that were useful, rare, high level/cp. Then I realized that a 2k+ Nidoking, while having high (relative to what else I had at the time) was never going to actually be useful, so I dropped the level criteria. Then I started catching more and more high IV useful Pokemon so I raised the bar from 80%+ to 90%+ (I've since raised again to 90%+ and 15 att). I've started trading away all the rare ones that weren't useful (like Aerodactyl before all that research).

So now, my criteria is 90%+, 15att, meta relevant that I don't already have 6 already powered-up of. Everything else gets either transferred (non-meta relevant ones) or traded for 2-3 candies (meta-relevant ones). For legendary ones, I try to remember to do at least 1 special trade per day to thin those numbers because something about outright transferring one still hurts my soul, but I still miss more days than not for special trades.

In other (non-PoGo, but Niantic related) news, I found out today that one of Googles rules for apps is that a developer has 90 days from the start of pre-registration (in any given country) to release the an app (in said country). After that period, if still not released, Google will terminate the pre-reg. The app can still be released, but it can't be listed for pre-reg again. Using that knowledge, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite started pre-reg sometime in March, which means that Niantic should be releasing the game before the second week of June. The beta was also released last Friday in New Zealand. So it shouldn't me too much longer now, muggles! I'm really excited about the game and the in-game footage (a NZ'er has posted 14 minutes of game-play on Youtube) has me even more excited! I spent about 2 hrs last night watching WU videos on YT last night. I also suspect that WU will probably cut into my PoGo time significantly...at least at first. One of things I really like already is the crafting of potions, which are equivalent to 'items' in PoGo, including one potion that functions the same way as a 'lucky egg' does in PoGo! Another thing I like is the way they're handling 'raids' or 'fortresses' as they're called in HP:WU. They can be done by up to 5 players in a single lobby. Each Fortress has multiple levels which progressively get harder to beat. To beat a level, you just need to defeat a certain number of enemies within a given amount of time. But what makes it different is, from what it sounds like, each player in the lobby can choose to battle a different monster and battles are still done 1v1 regardless of how many players are in the fortress. But, the ones not in battle can aid the combatant(s) by casting buffs, debuffs and healing. It sounds really amazing and even if you're not part of the battle, you are still helping! And its not just everyone stands around chatting while mindlessly clicking on their phone. There's obviously more to the game, but if you're interested, you can do a bit of digging and find out more.

@hail eris
I was at 7-11 getting a slurpee and they have Ludicolo slurpee straws. I don't know how much you love that running joke, but they're just $0.99, so nothing exorbitant.